If the State of the Union speech is an occasion for national unity, the New York Times editorial board took a few baby steps toward admitting the state of the union is strong right now. They didn't want to give all the credit to the president, but suggested his claims of national strength were true.
These admissions were fleeting, and the Times still covered Trump in their disdain. But they lay the groundwork to suggest other media liberals ought to make the same admissions as the Times.
They dragged Stormy Daniels into their declaration: that even though Trump "has been revealed so credibly to have paid off a porn star that it made news when his own wife chose to attend his biggest speech of the year — it’s hard to believe that the state of the union is strong. And yet it is indeed strong, as President Trump said Tuesday, if not for all the reasons or in all the ways he claimed."
For example, they can't stand his "dishonest invocations of a rising immigrant menace and internal terrorist threat in order to press his nativist ideas." And yet, these are actual New York Times admissions:
Yet Mr. Trump was correct to take note of the continued strength of the American economic recovery. He was right to note that the unemployment rate has continued to drop, and that some big employers have been raising wages. That’s all good. It means that Mr. Trump has done nothing so far to derail the slow, steady recovery that began under Barack Obama nine years ago. If growth continues or accelerates under this president, he will eventually, like Mr. Obama and the Federal Reserve, deserve a lot of credit.
Mr. Trump was also right to observe that stock indexes are at astonishing heights. Though that rally also began many years ago, he clearly deserves some credit. His administration, and the tax bill he signed (not a record cut, as he falsely claimed), have been great gifts to investors, albeit gifts charged to future generations in the form of debt.
Mr. Trump deserved to take a bow for the degradation of the Islamic State — again, a result of wise continuity with the policy of the previous administration — and for tightening sanctions on North Korea. That’s progress, much as we might wish he’d refrain from bragging about the size of his nuclear button.
In the newspaper, their editorial was headlined "The Real State of the Union." Online, they were more negative: "What Trump Doesn't Get About the State of the Union."
