On Tuesday night, at roughly 9 p.m. Eastern time, Donald Trump gave a joint address to Congress in what his reps call "his biggest speech yet."
You can read a transcript here and watch it above.
The president began the speech by mentioning Black History Month, confusingly linking it to the recent rash of anti-Semitic attacks across the country. While here he attributed them to "hate and evil," earlier in the day he hinted that the attacks were actually just staged events done in order to make him look bad.
One of the key early themes of the speech involved manufacturing. Trump promised that "dying industries will come roaring back to life" due to his recent approvals of the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines, and his withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
In the middle of reciting his accomplishments, Trump said, "We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption." The remark was met with laughter by his political opponents, who were no doubt reminded of his cabinet of billionaires.
From there, the president moved into discussing immigration. He painted immigrants as "bad ones" who are "gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our citizens." He quickly pivoted into discussing ISIS, and pointedly used the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism"—a phrase his predecessor avoided as needlessly provocative and that even his new national security advisor doesn't like.
After briefly discussing his Supreme Court nominee, Trump moved again to jobs. He made a series of misleading claims, including that "ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force."
He discussed wanting to cut corporate taxes, while also providing "massive tax relief for the middle class." The president pivoted from there to immigration again, advocating for what he called a "merit-based system."
"Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits: it will save countless dollars, raise workers' wages, and help struggling families—including immigrant families—enter the middle class," he said.
He called on Congress to "repeal and replace" Obamacare, calling it a "disaster."
However, he called to keep at least some of its key tenets, saying that people with pre-existing conditions should have access to coverage.
After that, Trump breezed past women's health and environmental concerns in a single sentence.
Then, the President spoke about education. He called it "the civil rights issue of our time," a formulation that met with near-immediate confusion and outrage.
He also announced the creation of an office within Homeland Security specifically to serve victims of crime by undocumented immigrants, even though immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than people born in the U.S. The office, he said, will be called VOICE—Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement.
"We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests," he explained.
The longest applause of the night came when the president introduced Carryn Owens, the widow Ryan Owens, of a Navy SEAL killed in a Trump-ordered raid in Yemen. Trump had been facing heavy criticism over the raid, as reports have claimed that it yielded nothing of significance. Ryan Owens' father was so angry over the raid that he rejected an invitation to meet Trump.
Trump ended by hearkening back to the country's centennial, before calling on the audience to look forward to America's upcoming 250th anniversary, only nine years away.
"When we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began," he said. "I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment and believe in yourselves, believe in your future, and believe, once more, in America."
