Trump makes the Democrats grimace, but maybe the Republicans shouldn’t smirk

Sometimes a facial expression speaks louder than words. As US President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address, the Democratic side was one big rictus of pain. The reason Vice-President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s faces grew more gleeful had less to do with Trump than with how their opponents were looking.

A year ago, in Trump’s inaugural address, he painted a picture of “American carnage”. Last week he radiated optimism. Barack Obama often used these occasions to tell stories of “ordinary folks”, yet the individuals always sounded like plaintiffs in a Harvard Law School case. But Trump pulled off the “shout-out” trick. There was the coastguard officer who saved at least 40 lives after Hurricane Harvey. The firefighter who rescued almost 60 kids from wildfires. The 12-year-old who put thousands of US flags on veterans’ graves.

What made this work were these carefully chosen American heroes, who appeared genuinely moved by the applause they received. The Republican applause, that is. Only very occasionally were their opponents willing to concede some desultory handclaps. Contrary to the media message that this was a “bipartisan” speech, everything, especially Trump’s insincere invitation to work with them on immigration reform and infrastructure, was to inflict pain on the Democratic Party.

“Americans are dreamers too,” Trump declared, goading those who use that term to refer to illegal immigrants brought to America as children and now facing deportation. To rub it in, one of Trump’s all-American heroes was an immigration officer named … Celestino Martinez.