robert, what are the instant reviews of what we witnessed tonight? the instant reviews are the gridlock continues. there is only so much congress can do. luis gutierrez indicated the proposal a few feet away from him, head of the freedom caucus outlining his problems with the spending bill. and the president outlined some themes, outlined some positions, but it s really those bickering lawmakers who have to come to some kind of reconciliation. robert, as you well know, presidents, after they give state of the union addresses, usually go out on the road and they sell it, and there s kind of an organized rollout campaign. let s talk turkey here. what s the chance in the next 12 hours through the president s own deeds, words and/or actions on twitter. we ll have a fresh lead and the speech will be way in our rearview mirror. these set pieces used to be defining moments in presidencies, not so much in the age of twitter. brian, you re right, in just a few hours if the president wakes
it was an uncomfortable moment. if you want to keep it open, it should feel like necessary evil. not something you stand and applaud. it is not a happy day. it should feel like, well, unfortunately that one really sort of started me. what are we cheering? it wasn t the speech they sold it to be. i go through teleprompter speeches. it is not him. there are some things he speaks sound like him. i ll throw in a beautiful and an extra totally but you can tell he s reading it. he did you tell own it. i think they would be better off letting him adlib it.
to sell immigration to his base. now to our chief foreign affairs correspondent. talk about the issue not in the speech. russia. what happened to our election and what it forces as a back drop on donald trump. well, the fact russia is overhanging everything and that he will not acknowledge what his own cia briefer mike pompeo, the cia director who he is so close to spends hours every day with has said this week that russia is still going after us, still planning to interfere with our 2018 midterm elections, that we have not stopped the russian threat. yet we see today the state department and treasury dragging their feet on the overwhelmingly approved russian sanctions from this congress, bipartisan,
last year. nothing that we ve seen he happened. and of course, it did. the american people know it. so i think this is a speech will not be long remembered. his words will float up like smoke from a fire and dissipate. in 24 hours, 48 hours, we ll see the looseness. the tweet out of left field that will extinguish this moment on of supposed normalcy from our minds. steve, i wanted to ask but the first half of the speech which was almost only about the economy and the jobs. he talked about the number of jobs that have been created. its true. more than 2 million jobs that have been created. it is the slowest pace of job growth in the last seven years. he talked about economic growth as if it is turbo charged.
the white house is in a duel with investigators over whether or not he can be the interviewed. i m saying the donald trump that we know with his twitter feed. all of this. the guy that likes the give us all nicknames. that isn t who you saw. when you don t see this trump very often. i don t know if they can sell anythi anything. exactly half the speech. it was like devils food cake with vanilla ice kriel. just great to eat. all nice. and then let have some rib eye steak now. it was a weird way of putting together a meal. the whole first part of the