Chaos and incompetence are the pig on whom POTUS-45* put lipstick in his first SOTU speech. The speech articulated some items upon which he might be hard pressed to articulate
SOTU received a rather sparse analysis by the NY Times, then again it was a sparse speech for something that was stretched to 90 minutes. The fact-check includes some significant falsehoods and misinformation.
CNN Instant poll: Trump gets least positive reaction in at least 20 years
Mr. Trump did not go for brevity. His speech stretched about an hour and 20 minutes, making it the longest State of the Union address since President Bill Clinton went on for nearly 90 minutes in 2000, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Thomas Kaplan, Congressional Correspondent
IMMIGRATION
“The third pillar ends the visa lottery — a program that randomly hands out green cards without any regard for skill, merit or the safety of our people.”
False.
The visa lottery program provides 50,000 immigrant visas to people from countries with low immigration rates to the United States.
An 18-page guide from the State Department says applicants must have a high school education or two years of work experience in the past five years that requires "two years of training or experience."
The applicant must undergo a medical exam and cannot have a criminal record. Visa winners are then subjected to a lengthy background check that can last for months.
— Ron Nixon
TAXES
“We enacted the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history.”
False.
Mr. Trump won’t stop making this claim, even though zero evidence supports it. Tax cuts signed by President Ronald Reagan were larger as a share of the economy and in terms of their effects on federal revenues. The recently passed tax bill appears to rank 12th in American history, as a share of the economy.
— Jim Tankersley
But one speech does not erase Trump’s record. The speech’s banality — its embrace of optimism and platitude — is a mask. Do not be fooled: Political extremism, divisive rhetoric and bizarre behavior have characterized the first year of Trump’s presidency and underlie many of the harmless-sounding proposals he talked about Tuesday night.
Trump is fairly skilled at this play-action fake. (He's used it before, e.g. during his 2016 immigration speech in AZ.)
Hint at a more conciliatory, bipartisan tone, draw the media in, then shift gears to something more partisan after it has already committed to the narrative.