The most shocking part of Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday was that there was nothing shocking at all.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress to an audience of senators, congressmen and women, supreme court justices and generals, Trump mostly stayed on script. He did not really brag about the size of his electoral victory (except to declare that in 2016 “the earth shifted beneath our feet”). He did not attack the media or go on any of his frequent verbal detours.
Trump – with only a few slips into “lawless chaos” – even mostly managed to avoid the dark, apocalyptic tones that punctuated his acceptance speech at the Republican convention and his inaugural. There were no references to American carnage or claims that illegal drugs are now cheaper than candy bars.
Instead, he spoke in the broad sunny platitudes typical of most politicians but that he, the anti-politician, has rarely indulged in. Trump talked of a future where “our children will grow up in a nation of miracles” and when “we just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts”.
Trump did occasionally escape from the text. The most notable example was when the President said of Ryan Owens, the Navy Seal killed in a recent raid in Yemen whom he mentioned in his speech, was in heaven, pleased with the amount of applause he received. “And Ryan is looking down, right now, you know that? And he’s very happy, because I think he just broke a record,” said Trump. It was undeniably awkward by standards of presidential addresses but would have barely been a footnote in most Trump rally speeches.
The mood in the chamber was entirely unlike a Trump rally. There was little hooting and almost no hollering. No one chanted “lock her up” or “build that wall” and no hecklers were forcibly ejected by security.
Democrats had warned members to avoid booing or heckling the president, and for the most part they did. There were audible guffaws when Trump bragged about “draining the swamp” and groans when he discussed a newly created federal office that serves to advocate for victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
But no one shouted “you lie” or audibly disrupted the speech. The most gauche displays where when two Democratic members gave thumbs down signs when Trump called for the repeal and replacement of Obamacare and when New York congressman Joe Crowley shook his hand in the air after Trump said “the time for trivial fights is over”. It was apparently a reference to the many trivial fights that Trump has engaged in, including debates over the size of his hands and the number of people who attended his inauguration.
Many Democratic women notably wore white, the color of suffrage and symbolic of protest and across the chamber, Democrats rarely applauded even for things where they agreed with Trump. In contrast to past speeches to Congress, where presidents received bipartisan applause for noncontroversial platitudes, many Democrats sat on their hands, refusing to acknowledge even the most anodyne statement from the president.
The only Democrat to stand with any frequency was Senator Joe Manchin, a moderate who is running for re-election in 2018 in West Virginia, a state where Trump had his strongest performance, winning nearly 70% of the vote.
Many Democrats did not even stand for a call for a major increase in infrastructure spending, something where Trump has long diverged with many in his own party. One Democrat urged others to stand as many Republicans sat awkwardly, eventually, tentatively, standing in support of their party’s leader.
Trump’s speech is not likely to change the political landscape. We have been here before, where he has seemed presidential on one day and launched a 6am tweet storm the next, making any gains in gravitas temporary. But the occasion did show how divided the country and this Congress is. When Democrats won’t even stand or clap when Trump is talking about a fallen soldier, it’s not likely that they will be willing to make deals on infrastructure, let alone controversial topics like immigration reform.
It does not matter what Trump says or how formal the setting within which he speaks. No matter what words come out of Trump’s mouth, Democrats are only going to ever hear the echoes of “lock her up”.