WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has delivered the State of the Union. Now the challenge for him is to make that message stick.
His address on Tuesday was a declaration of pride in the achievements of his still-young second term, as he boasted of an economic renaissance at home while he's imposed a new world order abroad. Trump is getting his first opportunity to test drive that midterm year message later this week, when he travels to Texas,
where the Latino voters whose shift toward Trump in his successful 2024 reelection campaign highlighted how he had reshaped the Republican coalition.
The White House is aiming to promote that message to a broader electorate that is largely disenchanted with Trump’s job performance, while a looming conflict in the Middle East threatens to shift focus away from his domestic priorities. Trump also has a proclivity to go off-script during political rallies, such as during a speech last week in Rome, Georgia, asserting that he’s “solved” affordability when high prices remain a chief concern for voters.
Still, the themes of economic prosperity and a more secure America that Trump emphasized in his 108-minute speech Tuesday night will underpin the broader narrative that he and his fellow Republicans will seek to sell to voters this November.
“This is going to be setting the tone for the following year,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., who has close ties with Trump, told The Associated Press.
Presidents often travel immediately after delivering the State of the Union to amplify their agenda. President Joe Biden, for instance, went to swing states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania the day after his speech in the last two years of his term.
Trump won’t leave the Washington area until later this week, when he heads to Texas, to talk about the economy and energy policies just days ahead of the state’s March 3 congressional primaries. Rather than hitting the road, the president will spend much of the day after his State of the Union participating in meetings at the White House, including policy sessions and a sit-down with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
But Trump — who wove a series of made-for-social media surprises into his address — is known for being able to command attention in a fractured news environment, and he is likely to find other ways to break through aside from the usual post-State of the Union blitz.
“Donald Trump is a master at the big moments, so he obviously cares a lot about how the speech goes, but what he cares a lot about are the clips that get replayed over and over again from the State of the Union,” said Austin Cantrell, who served as an assistant White House press secretary in Trump’s first term.
Cantrell, who is now with the Chattanooga, Tennessee-based firm Bridge Public Affairs, said: “I don’t expect this to be some Aaron Sorkin-esque, perfectly choreographed post-State of the Union media fan-out.”
Six years ago, it was Trump’s move to award conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, that surprised the audience. Tuesday's address — record-breaking in its length — included similar attention-grabbing moments. He said he would give the same honor to Connor Hellebuyck, goaltender for the U.S. men's hockey team, fresh off winning a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina, Italy. Trump called Hellebuyck and his teammates into the House chamber, where they were greeted with roaring applause.
Trump also used his speech to roll out some new proposals to address affordability concerns, while castigating Democrats for opposing policies that he said have led to a more prosperous, safer America. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, in Democrats' response, argued that costs remain high for many Americans and that families are still struggling under Trump’s policies.
Trump called on both parties to “protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” and pushed for measures to limit mail-in ballots and tighten voter identification rules, while warning about the dangers of unchecked, illegal migration.
“I do think a lot of the success outlined in the State of the Union will be a part of the Republican message in the fall,” Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., another close Trump ally, told the AP, pointing to the GOP's achievements on tax policy and border security. “As far as the president is concerned, I think he'll be anxious to get on the road and talk about the success.”
Senior White House officials have promised that Trump will travel the country regularly until the midterms. He so far has hit critical battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina on his economy tour, but he also traveled to reliably conservative Iowa and the congressional district of former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. He has boosted candidates — in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he bantered with Republican Michael Whatley and promoted his Senate run — while sometimes veering far away from the economic points the trips are meant to emphasize.
Just the optics of leaving Washington can help telegraph to voters that a president cares about connecting with them. Edward Frantz, a historian at the University of Indianapolis, said Herbert Hoover — an engineer, self-made millionaire and technocrat — believed he could solve the nation's ills by working with his team in isolation and rarely leaving Washington. That led to a perception among voters that Hoover simply didn't care, because they didn't see him connecting with Americans.
“If you think about a call and response ... the call is the State of the Union, and if you really do care about being in touch with others, then what's the response?" Frantz said. “The best way to be able to see that is by hitting the road.”
How Americans feel about Trump has remained relatively stable throughout his second term, making it unlikely that one speech will meaningfully shift the way he’s perceived. His approval rating has changed very little during his second term, Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research polling has found, falling only slightly from 42% in March 2025 to 36% in early February.
Nevertheless, the annual address offers Trump the chance to reframe his message, just as it has for presidents who came before him.
Presidential historian Timothy Naftali pointed out that in 1996, Bill Clinton used his State of the Union to set the themes of his Democratic reelection campaign. After George W. Bush’s midterm drubbing in November 2006, the Republican struck a noticeably more conciliatory tone toward the new Democratic leadership that had just taken charge on Capitol Hill.
“The State of the Union, they’re less important than they once were because with a president like Trump, he’s always available,” said Naftali, a senior research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. “But the State of the Union is an opportunity to reset the president’s agenda or to reaffirm it, and resetting an agenda in the social media era is different from resetting it in previous times.”
___
Associated Press polling editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.
