Donald Trump was not in the room during President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union speech, but the Republican presidential front-runner held the centre of attention nonetheless.
Both Obama’s speech on Tuesday, and for that matter, the Republican response by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, took pains to rebuke Trump, the real-estate mogul whose red-hot rhetoric has endeared him to some and dismayed others in the campaign for the 8 November presidential election.
Obama and Haley, although from different parties, offered a defence on Tuesday of establishment politics, a plea for optimism and a quest for common ground.
Obama seemed to refer specifically to Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration following a deadly shooting attack last month in San Bernardino, California, by a couple authorities said had been radicalized.
Trump has mounted much of his insurgent candidacy on the notion of America losing ground, both economically and in terms of global influence. Obama rejected that idea outright.
It’s easier to be cynical, to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter.
Soon after Obama concluded his remarks in the chamber of the US House of Representatives, Trump tweeted that the State of the Union speech was one of the most boring, rambling and non-substantive he had heard in a long time.
While consistently criticising Obama’s record, Nikki Haley, seen as a potential Republican vice presidential choice for the November election to replace Obama, also seemed to indict Trump’s message without naming him.
Paul Sracic, chairman of the politics department at Youngstown State University in Ohio, said, “Donald Trump must be smiling tonight. He managed to make himself the target of not just the president’s State of the Union address, but also the Republican response.”
Paul Sracic, Chairman - Politics Department, Youngstown State UniversityTrump, and in particular his views on immigration, are now dominating our political discourse in a way that no one would have predicted even a year ago.
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