President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address may have been a hit among many Republicans, but for some, it fell flat.
Ann Coulter, a conservative writer who was once a hardline Trumpster, mocked the speech on Twitter:
Coulter, still outraged over the Trump’s failure to secure the $5.7 billion he demanded for the border wall, was irked that more of the SOTU wasn’t spent on the matter:
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) also dinged the speech in a CNN interview Tuesday.
“This was probably the worst delivered speech I’ve heard Donald Trump give,” Santorum said. “He ran over his lines...he didn’t deliver his punchlines, he would deliver a line and go to the next issue and I don’t think he even realized he was moving onto the next issue.”
Santorum, like Coulter, speculated that Trump’s speechwriter may have done a subpar job.
Even diehard Trump supporter Bill Mitchell disagreed with the tone of the address:
Trump’s speech, delivered Tuesday evening, began with an uncharacteristically bipartisan tone. Later he pivoted to fear-mongering on immigration, knocking special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and patting himself on the back for the state of the economy and unemployment numbers.
Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal shortly after, flaying Trump for having “engineered” the shutdown and using federal workers as “a pawn for political games.”