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Trump Speech Tag

The hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh dominated the headlines this week, which means you may have forgotten that the government faces a possible shutdown if Congress cannot get legislation to fund the government. Trump threatened during the week to shut down the government if he doesn't get funding for the wall. His tune changed right before a rally in Billings, Montana, when he told Fox News that he doesn't want to do anything to harm the Republicans going into November.

President Trump gave a great speech at the NRA on Friday, and given the venue, his speech was primarily focused on our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.  Some of what he had to say, however, has ruffled some feathers in the UK and France. The speech is very campaign-esque and as such is fun to watch.  He covers everything from jobs, North Korea, Kanye, and Mueller to the focus of his speech: gun rights in America.

Tuesday, Trump announced he'd signed a memorandum, requesting the Department of Justice draft regulations that would ban bump stocks and any attachment that would turn a semi-automatic firearm into an automatic-like weapon. Trump has been open to regulating gun modifications like the bump stock since the Vegas shooting, which left 58 people dead. After the Vegas shooting, Trump asked the DOJ to review whether devices like the bump stock were legal under current law.

Here's my quick take on Trump's State of the Union address. I'm not going to catalog the speech, just my impressions. It wasn't a soaring speech. The speech was a catalog of accomplishments and promises of future success. It was very Bill Clintonian in that respect. You could sense Democrats fuming.

Tonight, President Trump will give his first State of the Union address; we'll have a live post on that later, so be sure to come back and share the fun.   In the meantime, the guest lists for both the president and the Democrats have been released. The contrast between those guests invited by the president and those invited by the tone-deaf Democrats is illuminating, speaking to the heart of the great political divide in our country.  President Trump's guests include law enforcement, first responders, and economists.  The Democrats are bringing a bunch of DREAMers and some representatives of the dwindling #MeToo movement.

A hot topic in the Legal Insurrection comment sections has been whether the insane/deranged/lunatic/vicious/malicious reaction of Democrats and the open-borders left to Trump's generous DACA/Dreamer amnesty framework was part of some three-dimensional chess play by Trump. In that scenario, Trump offered what he knew never would be accepted in order to make himself look good and his opposition unreasonable: Amnesty for 1.8 million 'Dreamers' plus immediate family reunification, in exchange for funding of border security and The Wall, and an end to extended family chain migration.

Rep. Maxine Waters of California has made an industry out of opposing Trump. Her constant calls for Trump's impeachment has earned her the nickname "Auntie Maxine" from hordes of progressive youngsters. She won't be offering the official Democratic Party response to Trump's state of the union address (more on that in a moment), but she will be offering her own response.

In the wake of Representative John Lewis (D-GA) announcing he would not attend President Trump's inauguration, more than 50 Democrats refused to attend.  Now three Democrats, so far, are refusing to attend the president's State of the Union (SOTU) address on January 30th. The first to announce his intention of skipping the President's first SOTU was Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).  His announcement was made early this month.

On Wednesday afternoon, President Donald Trump held a news conference on the White House lawn to celebrate the tax bill's passage through Congress. A group of GOP lawmakers joined him, including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Scott had a place right next to the president, which led HuffPo contributor Andy Ostroy to call him a prop used by Trump. Scott replied back that he helped write the bill and gather support for the bill. In other words, Scott's hard work is one reason why it passed.