Trump’s sales mission begins now after the State of the Union

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump delivered the State of the Union address. His challenge now is to make that message stick.

His speech on Tuesday was a proud declaration of the accomplishments of his second term, boasting of economic renaissance at home while imposing a new world order abroad. Trump gets his first chance to test the midterm message later this week, when he travels to Texas, where Latino voters who turned toward Trump in his successful 2024 reelection campaign highlighted how the Republican coalition is being reshaped.

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The White House aims to promote this message to a broader audience of voters who are largely disappointed with Trump’s job performance, while the looming conflict in the Middle East threatens to shift focus away from his domestic priorities. Trump also has a tendency to go off script during political rallies, such as during a speech last week in Rome, Georgia, asserting an affordability “solution” when high prices remain a key concern for voters.

However, the themes of economic prosperity and a safer America that Trump emphasized in his 108-minute speech on Tuesday will reinforce the broader narrative that he and his fellow Republicans will seek to sell to voters next November. A slew of Cabinet officials — including Treasury Secretary Scott Besent and Agriculture Secretary Brock Rollins — covered the airwaves on Wednesday, promoting the highlights of Trump’s speech.

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“This will set the tone for the next year,” Sen. Markwayne Mullen, R-Oklahoma, who has close ties to Trump, told The Associated Press.

Trump is known as the master of “big moments.”

Presidents often travel immediately after delivering the State of the Union address to expand their agenda. For example, President Joe Biden went to swing states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania the day after his speech in the final two years of his term.

Vice President J.D. Vance will be the first to visit a Wisconsin plant on Thursday. Trump will not leave the Washington area until Friday, when he heads to Texas, to talk about economic and energy policies a few days before the state’s congressional primaries on March 3. The day after the State of the Union address, the president will spend most of his time participating in meetings at the White House, including policy sessions and a meeting with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

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But Trump — who wove a series of tailored social media surprises into his speech — is known for his ability to command attention in a fractured news environment, and will likely find other ways to break through than the usual post-State of the Union blitzkrieg.

“Donald Trump is a master of big moments, so he obviously cares a lot about how the speech goes, but what he cares a lot about are the clips that are replayed over and over again from the State of the Union address,” said Austin Cantrell, who served as assistant White House press secretary in Trump’s first term.

“I don’t expect this to be Aaron Sorkin-like or perfectly designed for a post-State of the Union media,” said Cantrell, who now works at Bridge Public Affairs in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Six years ago, it was Trump’s move to award conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, that caught the public by surprise. Tuesday’s speech – which broke the record in length – included similar attention-grabbing moments. He said he would give the same honor to Connor Hellebuyck, the U.S. men’s hockey team’s goalie, who just won the gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy. Trump invited Hellebuyck and his colleagues to the House floor, where they were welcomed with applause.

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Trump also used his speech to float new proposals to address affordability concerns, while criticizing Democrats for opposing policies that he said have led to a more prosperous and more secure America. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, in Democrats’ response, said costs remain high for many Americans, and families are still struggling under Trump’s policies.

Trump called on both parties to “protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” and pushed for measures to limit mail-in ballots and tighten voter identification rules, while warning of the dangers of unchecked illegal immigration.

“I think a lot of the success demonstrated in the State of the Union address will be part of the Republican message in the fall,” Sen. Eric Schmidt, another close Trump ally, told the AP, pointing to the GOP’s accomplishments on tax policy and border security. “As far as the president is concerned, I think he will be keen to get on the road and talk about success.”

Senior White House officials promised that Trump would travel to the country regularly until the midterm elections. So far he has hit battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina in his economic tour, but he has also traveled to conservative Iowa and former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district. He has boosted candidates — in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, he was joking with Republican Michael Whatley and promoting his Senate bid — while occasionally veering away from the economic points the trips are meant to emphasize.

The mere idea of ​​leaving Washington could help send a message to voters that the president cares about connecting with them. Herbert Hoover — an engineer, self-made millionaire and technocrat — believed he could solve the country’s problems by working with his staff in isolation and rarely leaving Washington, said Edward Frantz, a historian at the University of Indianapolis. This led to a perception among voters that Hoover simply did not care, because they did not see him communicating with Americans.

“If you think about a call and answering it…a call is a state of the union, and if you really care about staying connected with others, what is the answer?” Frantz said. “The best way to be able to see that is to get on the road.”

Americans’ feelings about Trump have remained relatively stable throughout his second term, making it unlikely that a single speech will meaningfully change the way he is viewed. His approval rating has changed very little during his second term, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, falling only slightly from 42% in March 2025 to 36% in early February.

However, the annual address offers Trump the opportunity to reframe his message, just as with presidents before him.

Presidential historian Timothy Naftali has noted that in 1996, Bill Clinton used his State of the Union address to define the themes of his Democratic re-election campaign. After George W. Bush’s defeat in the November 2006 midterm elections, the Republican struck a noticeably more conciliatory tone toward the new Democratic leadership who had just taken charge on Capitol Hill.

“The State of the Union is less important than it used to be because with a president like Trump, he’s always available,” said Naftali, a senior fellow at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. “But the State of the Union address represents an opportunity to reset or reaffirm the president’s agenda, and resetting the agenda in the age of social media is different from resetting it in previous times.”

Associated Press polling editor Amelia Thompson Defoe contributed to this report.