1. Trump read a teleprompter successfully. He did not fall over and his head did not blow up. So that’s a win.

2. As seen in the chamber, his supporters will be rapturous about the speech and his opponents will hate it. So there’s no political shift — except it probably ties Congressional Republicans even closer to Trump, despite his instability and the Russia investigation.

3. It was *not* bipartisan. That’s a bit of wishful headline-making in mainstream media. Careful viewers will have noticed the bragging about gutting ObamaCare (despite failure to get a bill to repeal it), linking immigrants to crime and terrorism, and swiping at those who raise social issues, including the Take the Knee movement.

4. There was not much on policy here except immigration and bravado over a $1.5 trillion infrastructure proposal — which somehow will be passed even though there still is no Federal Government budget and no idea how to pay for this on top of the $1.5 trillion tax changes.

5. On immigration, the sleight-of-hand is to present a hardline bill — setting aside the bipartisan legislation that had been the center of consideration — as a “compromise”. Dreamers get to stay but only if there is The Wall, end to immigrants bringing relatives to US, an end to visa diversity lottery, a lot more spending on border security and crackdown on the undocumented, and a sharp reduction in any more immigrants and refugees into the US.

6. Almost unnoticed, Trump fired a warning shot at the FBI and Justice Department, amid the attempts by the White House and its GOP allies in Congress to curb the Trump-Russia investigation:

Tonight I call on the Congress to empower every Cabinet secretary with the authority to reward good workers— and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people.

Trump has been blocked from dismissing Special Counsel Robert Mueller, but he has fired FBI Director James Comey and threatened the removal of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This week, pressure finally paid off with the resignation of the FBI’s Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

See TrumpWatch, Day 375: Trump’s War on the FBI Claims A Victim and Releases a Memo

Trump’s assurance to GOP Representative Jeff Duncan, calling on him to release a four-page memo by Trump ally Representative Devin Nunes, attacking the FBI and Justice Department: “Don’t worry. 100%.”

Melania Trump during a standing ovation by Republicans for her husband:

MELANIA TRUMP SOTU