American Herald Tribune|Daniel Haiphong: The corporate media has consistently portrayed Donald Trump as unfit to be the President of the United States. Trump's combative nature toward the media�has supposedly�disqualified him from holding the�highest position in the White House. Yet after just one speech to Congress, the media's hostility toward Trump has softened. A number of pundits have responded to�Trump's speech with applause, calling his performance "Presidential." However, such�focus on foolish optics clouds the contradictions and concerns that should matter the most to workers and oppressed people worldwide.

Trump's speech was simultaneously tailored to his base and his opposition. He attempted to clear the air about his history of "hate speech" by condemning recent attacks on Jewish cemeteries. Trump described the United States as a nation under siege from immigrants and refugees. He took the time to introduce his plan to create an agency within the Department of Homeland Security called VOICE that will publicize crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. The 45th President of the US guaranteed the development of a "Great Wall" along the US-Mexico border and an increase in military spending by 45 billion dollars.

Left and progressive activists and thinkers have good reason to be concerned about Trump's policy commitments regarding immigration and military spending. However, the speech also raised contradictions that have been suppressed under the corporate media's superficial coverage of Trump's ascendancy to the White House. Trump mentioned the word "poverty" in the speech when he described the conditions of workers in the US. This is a word Obama and the Democrats have fought hard to avoid for over two-decades. Trump also promised once again to replace the expensive Affordable Care Act with an affordable option and invest trillions in infrastructure development.

These policy proposals are not without with contradictions. The Affordable Care Act gave health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations even more control over the US healthcare system. Any tinkers or reforms to the current plan will only reinforce the machinations of for-profit healthcare. This is what the ACA cemented. Furthermore, in the age of austerity and capitalist crisis, any attempt to develop infrastructure must inevitably confront the real estate and finance capitalist enterprises that currently dominate the landscape of "infrastructure development." That means Medicare for all and publicly financed federal infrastructure programs are the only viable solutions for working class people. Neither of these policies are feasible exist under the current full spectrum rule of corporate and finance capital that exists in the United States.

An equally perilous state of affairs is evident in the realm of war and foreign policy. Trump's State of the Union Address mixed together a language of peace with calls for war. The US-Israeli partnership was reaffirmed. In contrast, Trump bemoaned US wars in the Middle East as a waste of six trillion US dollars and declared "America is friends today with former enemies." This was followed up with a theatrical moment of applause for the wife of the US Navy Seal who died in a US commando raid in Yemen in January. The scene won Trump points with the ruling class. Yet Trump made no mention of Russia or China, even though these countries have been deemed "enemies" of the United States by the prior administration.

Donald Trump's first State of the Union address embodied the crisis of US imperialism in every way. It attempted to do the impossible: genuinely appeal to both ruling class and working class sentiments. Trump appealed to the ruling class by calling for unity with Congress even as the Democrats sat through the vast majority of his speech in silent protest. He placed so-called victims of immigrant crime and the wife of the murdered US Navy Seal on display as proof of the validity of his agenda. The latter was deemed a "Presidential" act according to Democratic Party surrogate Van Jones.

But the former was not well received, and for good reason. Trump's speech reinforced the deep connection between the War on Terror and the war on undocumented people that began in the Clinton era. However, Democrats in Congress appeared to oppose Trump's appeals to the working class even more than his immigration policy. Democrats were visibly displeased when Trump declared that the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) was forever dead. Even fewer Democrats applauded when Trump spoke about poverty and unemployment. In this period, Democratic Party "opposition" is not defined by the intractable problems facing the working class and oppressed in the US. For Democrats, Trump is an acceptable President as long as he doesn't expose the mythical image of the US and distances his Administration from the promise to ease relations with Russia. The subsequent corporate media attack on Jeff Sessions for alleged conversations with a Russian Ambassador is case and point.

Trump's first State of the Union address exemplified what his Administration represents in this period of US imperialist crisis. His call to "Make America Great Again" directly speaks to the foundation of US imperialism. US imperialism was founded upon a cross-class alliance of whiteness. White workers have historically been ardent defenders of their favorable position to Black workers in the United States. This condition is fully justified by the dehumanization of all Black people and those deemed "non-white. The crisis of US imperialism has deeply eroded the material conditions for all workers over the course of four decades. Trump's speech, and his entire Presidency, is a reflection of these conditions. And the ruling class is so desperate to hide this fact that it has resorted to the most repugnant form of anti-Russian attacks on the Trump Administration, hoping to keep the current President in line.

*(Donald Trump speaking in the Congress. Screenshot Courtesy of abcNEWS/�YouTube).