President Donald Trump, six weeks into his second tour of duty in the White House, vows to “TELL IT LIKE IT IS!” when he heads to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to deliver a primetime address to Congress and the nation.
The president will tout his domestic and international accomplishments, spotlight what the Trump administration has done for the economy, make a renewed push for Congress to pass additional border security funding and detail his plans for peace around the globe, according to details from the White House that were shared first with Fox News.
A former presidential speechwriter calls Trump’s first major speech to Congress during his second presidential administration “a big deal” and “a great platform…for a president.”
“It’s a dramatic setting,” Bill McGurn, a former chief speechwriter for then-President George W. Bush, said of the speech, which is on equal footing with a State of the Union address in terms of importance.
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McGurn said the first address to Congress by a president following their inauguration is “a great opportunity to broadcast their message far and wide.”
“He’s going to make his case,” McGurn predicted.
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Trump has been moving at warp speed during his opening six weeks back in the White House with a flurry of executive orders and actions. His moves not only fulfilled some of his major campaign trail promises, but also allowed the returning president to flex his executive muscles, quickly put his stamp on the federal government, make major cuts to the federal workforce and also settle some long-standing grievances.
Trump, as of Tuesday, has signed 82 executive orders since his Jan. 20 inauguration, according to a count from Fox News, which far surpasses the rate of any recent presidential predecessors during their first weeks in office.
Many of the moves Trump has taken have been controversial, including threatening tariffs on major trading partners, including Canada and Mexico, upending the nation’s international agenda and freezing foreign aid, as well as a high-profile crackdown on illegal immigration.
Also grabbing plenty of attention is Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Trump named Elon Musk — the world’s richest person and the chief executive of Tesla and Space X — to steer DOGE.
DOGE has swept through federal agencies since Trump was inaugurated, rooting out what the White House argues was billions in wasteful federal spending. It has also taken a meat cleaver to the federal workforce, resulting in a massive downsizing of employees. The moves by DOGE have triggered a slew of lawsuits in response.
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“I would write it as a triumph, and I would write it looking to the future,” Clark Judge, a former speechwriter and special assistant to then-President Ronald Reagan, said when asked by Fox News Digital what he would say about DOGE if he were writing Trump’s speech.
Following Friday’s jaw-dropping clash in the Oval Office between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump and Vice President JD Vance, what Trump says in his address to Congress regarding the Russia-Ukraine war will be closely monitored.
“Undoubtedly, he’s going to explain how he sees the world,” McGurn emphasized. “Donald Trump is not shy about saying what he thinks, so he’s going to express it full-throated.”
Additionally, he predicted that “there’s doing to be a lot of Republican support. Democrats, I can’t image, will be enthusiastic about anything. So it could be very dramatic. People will be looking for boos and cheers.”
Dan Cluchey, former senior speechwriter for then-President Joe Biden, had his own advice for Trump.
“What Donald Trump ‘should’ do is turn his focus outward on the American people rather than inward towards himself,” Cluchey told Fox News Digital.
He argued that “Americans deserve an explanation as to why he is failing to address record egg prices, slashing vital funding for everything from cancer research to weather forecasting, threatening to decimate Medicaid and the Social Security Administration, torching our hard-earned heritage as the world’s chief defender of democracy, and speeding the strong economy he inherited toward an utterly unnecessary collapse.”
However, Cluchey predicted that “what Donald Trump *will* do, instead, is what he always does: fabricate the record and fixate on Donald Trump.”
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