Washington Post editorial board rips Trump’s State of the Union as divisive

The Washington Post’s editorial board accused President Trump on Tuesday of doing little in his State of the Union address to ease a gaping divide in American society that they say he has helped widen.

The board delivered a scathing review of Trump’s address, saying he gave little indication that the second year of his presidency would be different than the first and claiming the president contradicted his own calls for unity.

“In his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Trump spoke of ‘what kind of nation we are going to be. All of us, together, as one team, one people and one American family,'” the editorial board wrote.

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“Yet Mr. Trump could not avoid, even for an hour, lacing his address with divisive references to hot-button issues and graceless attacks on his predecessors: to ‘disastrous Obamacare,’ ‘the mistakes of past administrations,’ ‘the era of economic surrender’ and more.”

In his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Trump issued a broad call for unity and bipartisanship before a joint session of Congress. But the speech was also criticized by Democrats, who said it offered little in the way of compromise and maintained the nationalist tone they say is characteristic of this president.

The Post released an image of its planned front page for Wednesday late Tuesday night, displaying the headline “A call for bipartisanship.”

Here’s the front page of tomorrow’s Washington Post: pic.twitter.com/5HQmDNoa4r

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 30, 2018

That headline changed in a later edition, however, doing away with the emphasis on Trump’s call for unity. The new headline – “A ‘new American moment'” – drew on a direct quote from the president’s speech, instead.

This page was updated after the first edition. Here is the final front page. pic.twitter.com/nfR7p2wEPB

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) January 31, 2018