President Trump's First Address to Congress **live commentary thread**

[Crumpets]

Does anybody know whobthe designated survivor is tonight?

[Crumpets]

I'm not sure what I think of this Democratic response so far. It reminds me of the Pietanza's meeting for the Republicans in 2009.

[Crumpets]

I'm really liking this response so far. I can definitely see Trump angrily tweeting about it at 3 am.

[Crumpets]

MSNBC pretty much panned the response, saying Beshear has no future in the party and that it looked like a hostage situation in the diner. At the same time, I'm glad they didn't try to get a 2020er to give the response, since that has never served to advance anyone's career ever.

[Crumpets]

Also, when are we getting the Liberal Tea Party response? SAlt just gave their annual "Socialist response."

[Crumpets]

Clearly the Dems just need any old white guy they can find for their 2020 candidate and then put in a super-liberal special advisor to manipulate him.

[Crumpets]

can we stop judging Trump as a fringe candidate or as an outsider anymore? he's president now.

I agree. As much as Democrats want to avoid normalizing Trump, being considered "normal" is basically his kryptonite. If he just becomes "generic rich president dude," he loses a lot of his appeal.

[Crumpets]

I can totally see this going over very poorly with the most rabid members of his base for the fact that he didn't go off script, cuss, shoot some random Congresspeople, etc. After all, wasn't this supposed to be the guy who would shake things up in Washington?

[Crumpets]

Mediaite notes that Nielsen’s overnight numbers show that Trump’s address drew 27.8 million viewers on Tuesday evening across all major networks and cable news outlets. While this is an impressive number, Obama’s first address to Congress in 2009 drew an overnight rating of 33.4 million viewers, or roughly 20% more viewers than Trump’s drew.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/03/nielsen-ratings-for-obamas-first-congressional-address-dwarfed-trumps-tuesday-night-speech/amp/

You could kind of tell when the instant polls came out that a lot of Democrats didn't watch the speech. It's probably not the best strategy, but at least it annoys Trump and will probably cause him to spend most of this week bragging about how 5 billion people watched the speech instead of reinforcing the "New and Improved Trump" image.