MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
From NPR News, this is Special Coverage of President Trump's State of the Union. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. A few minutes from now, the president will enter the already packed House chamber. He'll walk up to the podium and address Congress and the nation. Right after that, we will hear the Democratic response, delivered this year by former candidate for governor of Georgia Stacey Abrams, the first African-American woman to deliver that speech.
Now, what we are not sure of is quite how long all this is going to take. Last year, Trump delivered the third-longest spoken State of the Union in history, clocking in at an hour and 20 minutes. The record, by the way - Bill Clinton, an hour and 29 minutes. That was back in the year 2000. Bill Clinton also holds the No. 2 spot. Well, as we await tonight's State of the Union, here is who is with me in the studio for analysis and fact-checking - my colleague and NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson is going to be here all night. Hi, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Hi there.
KELLY: Also Antonia Ferrier - she worked in Republican congressional leadership for years, most recently with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Welcome.
ANTONIA FERRIER: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: And Nadeam Elshami, who has worked for many top Democrats, so the other side of the aisle, most recently as chief of staff to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Welcome to you.
NADEAM ELSHAMI: Thank you so much.
KELLY: One more to welcome to our crew, our merry band tonight, and that is NPR congressional correspondent Susan Davis, who has the best seat of all of us because she is inside the House chamber tonight. Hi, Sue.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: Hey, great to be with you.
KELLY: Great to have you. You get the first word. Describe the scene that you are looking at out.
DAVIS: You know, the most striking image in the chamber tonight, of course, is the House Democratic women who are using the opportunity to make a statement. And they're making a statement with their clothes - an effort by Lois Frankel, who's a Democrat from Florida, encouraged women to wear white tonight. It's an honor to the suffragette white, but it's also, you know, intent to send a message to the president, I think not just about their issues, but it's also a reminder tonight that he's facing a very different Congress. Democrats are in control of the House now. They have used a lot of the positioning leading up to this speech to remind the president that he now has a check on his power in Washington, and they intend to use it.
And I think one of the things that we are listening for tonight is how the president approaches this room. And does he extend a hand to Democrats? Or are we expecting to see more confrontation, which is what, quite frankly, we're pretty used to up here.
KELLY: Yeah, there is going to be some interesting body language going on tonight between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. Speaking of which, a reminder that all of this was supposed to happen last Tuesday, but Pelosi disinvited the president during the 35-day government shutdown. That shutdown is over for now for at least 10 more days. But a distinct chill, I think it's fair to say, lingers. The president has called negotiations over border funding a waste of time. Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, says she has been pretty clear - no money for the border wall that the president wants to build. Well, let's bring in Antonia Ferrier and Nadeam Elshami and get your quick take on what you're expecting to hear. You're both veterans of these evenings. What are you listening for?
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
PAUL IRVING: Madam Speaker, the president of the United States.
KELLY: Oh, and I'll hold on before you answer. We are just watching. They've just swung open the doors. House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving has just entered the chamber and announced that the president is going to be right behind him, Vice President Pence and Nancy Pelosi already up at the podium, applauding politely, the whole House on its feet. And we can keep talking for a moment because it's going to take the president a moment to move his way down the aisle and shake hands with the several hundred people waiting to shake his hand. Nadeam, you were about to tell me what you're going to be listening for when he starts in a moment.
ELSHAMI: Sure. I think I'm going to be listening to three things. And the president's going to be speaking to really three audiences here. And I think the first one is Democrats. What's he going to tell Democrats? Is there any hope of any type of bipartisanship agreement, whether on infrastructure or other issues? I think that's No. 1. Is he going to have any specifics there? No. 2, what is he going to tell his Republicans in the House and in the Senate, some of whom left him during the shutdown? How is he going to reassure them that, yes, I am here and I will govern? Stick with me. My agenda will help you win the majority back in the House and keep the Senate.
KELLY: So what will he say to Democrats? What will he say to his own party. What's No. 3?
ELSHAMI: And then No. 3 is what's he going to say across the country to these suburban women, especially those who voted for Democrats and brought Democrats to the majority this time around? How is he going to reassure them in terms of their economic agenda, in terms of, you know, why did you leave and now you should come back to the Republican Party? I think I'm going to be listening to those three things.
KELLY: Antonia, your quick take on what you're listening to.
FERRIER: Well, I think from a bipartisan perspective, I'm curious to see how Democrats respond to him, whether it is the politics of the personal - and the president - it's no shock - he is a very polarizing figure - if Democrats can actually hear him out, give him a fair shake on some issues that they ostensibly should be for. For example, his position on a lot of the foreign entanglements, as he likes to say, is frankly a lot more comfortable with a lot of Democrats than with a lot of Republicans. As you've seen in the Senate, there was a bill passed with an amendment by Senate Majority Leader McConnell on Syria and on Afghanistan troops.
KELLY: Widely seen as a rebuke.
FERRIER: Widely seen as a rebuke and in some ways one could argue much more closely affiliated with traditional views of the Democratic Party on trade. He is much more hawkish than traditional Republicans. That should be an area where, if it were not for the president, that Democrats should be able to give him a fair shake. And on things like drug pricing is another area.
KELLY: I'm going to pause there. We are just listening as the president has stepped up to the podium from which he will be speaking. He is shaking hands with Nancy Pelosi, Vice President Pence, nodding at the crowd. And let's pause for a second. The president - he is not speaking yet. He's looking around, working the room. Mara Liasson, let me get you in here quickly just while we await the president. We should mention who's - who else is in the chamber tonight? All the members of Congress.
LIASSON: All the members of Congress. There is one person who's not in the chamber tonight - the designated survivor, Rick Perry, the energy secretary. Every State of the Union address, one person, as people who watch television know...
KELLY: Yes.
LIASSON: ...Gets to not be there because if everybody is blown up by an asteroid, he will become the president.
KELLY: There's four members of the Supreme Court, four justices of the Supreme Court, there tonight - Brett Kavanaugh there for his first State of the Union as a Supreme Court justice. And then talk a little bit briefly about the guests who have been invited, people invited both for who they are and the message that they might send.
LIASSON: Well, the guests are all message guests and from the...
KELLY: And we'll pause. Here we go, the president.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
KELLY: And that's a wrap in an address that ran just over an hour and 20 minutes. President Trump has finished speaking here in Washington tonight. I'm Mary Louise Kelly with NPR News Special Coverage of the president's State of the Union. The president is just about to start making his way out of the House chamber now. He'll shake hands with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with Vice President Mike Pence and then make his way out the way he came. And just a few minutes after that, we will hear the Democratic rebuttal, delivered this year by Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost the race for governor of Georgia last year. We are also going to be hearing from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. He will be delivering the Spanish-language response to the State of the Union.
So while we await those next round of speeches, we've got some quick analysis and fact-checking on what the president had to say. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson is right here. And, Mara, we should note, the White House had promised a speech of unity. A lot of Democrats were skeptical. They thought the president would take some partisan shots. In the end, we did hear nods to bipartisanship.
LIASSON: And some partisan shots (laughter).
KELLY: Yeah, we heard both.
LIASSON: Yeah, we heard both.
KELLY: We heard some nice oratory about victory being not just winning for your party, about winning for your country but also ridiculous partisan investigations where he was clearly referring to the Russia investigations underway. And then, of course, he talked about the wall and the border. What did you hear?
LIASSON: Right. He said we - he actually said we can't have economic progress if we have investigations, which I thought was an - was a really interesting formulation. You know, we can have the politics of revenge, resistance and retribution or we can go forward and, you know, have progress and forge new solutions. So he clearly is saying that if Democrats investigate him, that is the opposite of national unity. So he defines it in a very personal way, as he is wont to do. But I do - yes, he went on about the wall and about immigration in very, very familiar terms. But he also did suggest a couple areas where perhaps he could compromise with the Democrats on prescription drug prices and on infrastructure - didn't go into much details on those, but he did offer those two things as potential.
KELLY: Let me pause you there because I want to get a quick check-in from Sue Davis, who has been watching all this unfold from inside the House chamber. Sue, what was the reception for the president's speech there?
DAVIS: I think there was a lot of pretty anticipated moments of the usual partisan divides. There was also a couple really unique moments. We saw members of Congress burst into "Happy Birthday" during the State of the Union, which I...
KELLY: That was not expected.
DAVIS: Which I'm certain is the first that that has ever happened. There were certainly some nice moments, unexpected moments also when the president honored the women elected to Congress this year - a historic number of women, many of which were women who ran as a backlash to the president - so not necessarily anticipating them cheering him there.
KELLY: Not something anybody expected to see, Democrats - Democratic women on their feet and cheering the president in that State of the Union.
DAVIS: Exactly. I agree with exactly what Mara said on infrastructure, on prescription drugs. There may be rooms for bipartisanship. But I think his comments tonight on immigration were really notable. This was - the comments that we've heard from the president on the campaign trail, this was not a message that reached out to Democrats in any way and I think will only serve to escalate the tension we have ongoing as they try to reach a deal coming up on February 15 on how to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
KELLY: Sue, I'm going to let you sneak out and try to waylay some of those lawmakers as they make their way out. Susan Davis on Capitol Hill, thank you.
DAVIS: You're welcome.
KELLY: A reminder to everybody joining us tonight - we are annotating tonight's speeches at npr.org. Believe me when I tell you that we have got an army of NPR editors and reporters combing through the speech and fact-checking - same is going to go for Stacey Abrams' response in a few minutes. But speaking of fact-checking, we have our fact-checker in chief, Scott Horsley, in the studio. Hey, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: Good to be with you.
KELLY: Go to the wall and the border. This was the big issue hanging over this speech tonight. The president called what is happening at the southern border an urgent national crisis. What did you hear?
HORSLEY: Well, he did try to paint this in moral terms. He said this is a moral challenge for the Congress to deal with this, kind of playing against Nancy Pelosi's statement that his proposed border wall is immoral. And as he often does, the president sort of exaggerates the security threat that is posed by immigrants living in this country illegally. Studies are pretty clear that those immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than people who were born here in the United States. Although that's not the impression you would have gotten from the president's speech tonight.
Trump's own former chief of staff, John Kelly, who also served as Homeland Security secretary, has acknowledged in an interview with NPR that most of the immigrants crossing the border illegally do not pose a threat. They're not criminals, Kelly said. They're not MS-13, the gang that Trump likes to talk about. So that was not a new message from the president. It's sort of some of the familiar tropes that we've heard from Donald Trump as he's tried to make the push for his wall.
KELLY: And then, meanwhile, on the economy, the president touted the success of the U.S. economy. I think we've actually got that tape. Let's take a quick listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This is a moral issue.
The U.S. economy is growing almost twice as fast today as when I took office, and we are considered far and away the hottest economy anywhere in the world - not even close.
KELLY: And a little bit of tape confusion there. The moral issue was not referring to the economy but to the border. But on the economy, is he right, that we have the hottest economy anywhere in the world right here in the USA (ph)?
HORSLEY: Certainly a morale boost on the economy. The president has a really strong story to tell there. Now, the U.S. economy is not growing as fast as some developing countries, but there's no question that among developed countries, the U.S. economy is doing great as exemplified by last Friday's blockbuster jobs report - 304,000 new jobs added. The president's got a really good story to tell here. Since Trump took office, the U.S. has added nearly 4.9 million jobs. That is a little below the 5.1 million jobs that were added in the previous 24-month period. But job growth appears to be accelerating, which is really unusual, you know, this late in an expansion when unemployment is hovering around 4 percent. So Trump has a good story to tell there.
KELLY: All right. That is NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley with the first fact-check of the night of the president's speech. As I mentioned, we are doing it all night on our website. And, Scott, I know you're going to be back in here later, so we will look forward to that as our coverage continues. Thank you, Scott.
I want to bring in two of our other guests, who are in the studio tonight. Both of whom have listened to a lot of State of the Union addresses, longtime observers of Capitol Hill - Antonia Ferrier, who was a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Republican Mitch McConnell, and from across the aisle, Nadeam Elshami. He was Speaker Nancy Pelosi's chief of staff, and he's worked for a bunch of other Democrats in the House and Senate. I will apologize in advance. We will have to cut if Stacey Abrams starts speaking, but so far, she's not. So let me see if we can get a quick top-line response in from each of you. Antonia, what did you hear?
FERRIER: I thought it was a remarkable address. You know, the president took a lot of credit for the jobs and the economy. I frankly wish he would do much more of that. And I think a lot of Republicans felt that way the last two years. I did think he actually extended an olive branch to Democrats on a lot of policy - paid family leave, for example, is a very big priority for Democrats, drug pricing, again, on the wars that is actually more traditionally a Democrat space than a Republican space And I also think he laid out some pretty strong markers on some of these Trumpian priorities and laying out some distinct differences. I think he very effectively used the people in the audience to highlight - his guests to highlight different policy priorities, the - immigration being the most obvious. I also thought it was punctuated with some really remarkable moments, as Sue Davis mentioned, the "Happy Birthday," the applause of the women, noting the 100 years. So I really thought it was one of the more remarkable addresses I've actually seen in my life. And so it was very unexpected from my perspective.
KELLY: A few surprises tucked in there.
FERRIER: Absolutely.
KELLY: Nadeam, how about you? What was your reaction?
ELSHAMI: Sure. I mean, it was a traditional address in many ways. And the president, throughout his speech, one of the themes was about opportunity. And he said he wanted a new opportunity in American politics. I felt it was a lost opportunity. He spent a third of the speech talking about immigration in stark terms, in terms that really isolate Democrats, that he wasn't speaking to finding a way forward on this issue. And he - you know, he spent a paragraph perhaps on infrastructure, some on health care. But, really, one of the main crux of the speech was immigration and national security.
And then he was talking about his success on the economy. And, unfortunately, I do see it as a lost opportunity because he also had, you know, a very interesting phrase in his speech that says he wants to build new coalitions. This is something that President Trump could have actually - this is how he won the election.
KELLY: Right. Right. Right.
ELSHAMI: So...
KELLY: I'm going to pause you there because I think we're about to hear any second from Stacey Abrams with the Democratic rebuttal. We have been talking with Nadeam Elshami, former chief of staff for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also with Antonia Ferrier, a senior communications adviser and strategist for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. We have also had NPR's Mara Liasson in the studio, NPR's Scott Horsley. And here we go. Here's Stacey Abrams.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO 2019 SOTU)
KELLY: Stacey Abrams wrapping up the Democratic response to tonight's State of the Union. This is Special Coverage from NPR News.
I'm Mary Louise Kelly. And we have got quite a lineup of people ready to put everything we just heard into context - lawmakers from both parties who have just stepped out of the House chamber on Capitol Hill. NPR's Mara Liasson is here. NPR's Scott Horsley is here and Antonia Ferrier, veteran Republican staffer on the Hill, and from the other side of the aisle, Nadeam Elshami, who has played that role for many Democratic lawmakers. So, Nadeam, you start. Stacey Abrams - rising Democratic star, an unconventional choice for this speaking role in that she doesn't currently hold elected office, although she is being encouraged to maybe throw her hat...
ELSHAMI: Yeah. yeah.
KELLY: ...Into the ring against Republican David Perdue for U.S. Senate. She says she will wait until the spring - later in the spring to see how that goes. But what did you make of her performance tonight?
ELSHAMI: You know, it's a tough place to be, you know, to follow the president. But she was - delivered a message of economic justice. And I felt there was a continuation of the campaign that took place that just finished - you know, the same arguments that were made. She didn't go point by point. We knew what the president was going to say, generally. But the Democrats had a message they wanted to deliver. And they wanted her to deliver it. You know, I mean, if you look at the voters who are most supportive of Democrats - African-American women. They turned out in droves. And having her deliver the Democratic response was a very important signal that was sent to them.
KELLY: Antonia, what are Republicans going to take from the Stacey Abrams speech?
FERRIER: Well, I agree with Nadeam. It's very difficult to follow the majesty of the State of the Union in the Hall. I would say, you know, she did as good as she could do given the circumstances. She doesn't have the august surroundings. But for a woman from Georgia, it really struck me that the policies of Democrats today are pretty extreme. And they're driven by the politics of San Francisco and not that of Georgia. I would note that a lot of the issues that she highlighted are those that are, in, frankly, my view, out of step with a lot of those states that Democrats will need to win and carry in 2020. It is states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the Rust Belt, Ohio. I know people in the Rust Belt don't like being called that - but a lot of those states.
And so, frankly, while she did as good a job as she could, I think when you look at the record of the president and Republicans and what they've done for the economy, I think they're pretty out of step. And the more we hear from Democrats and their message, I think it's going to turn more and more voters who Democrats need to carry in 2020.
KELLY: We're going to go to lawmakers on the Hill who are standing by in just a second. But, Mara Liasson, I want you to jump in here just for a second and put into context - did you hear from either the president or Stacey Abrams anything that suggests that either party is blossoming with the spirit of bipartisanship and looking forward to compromise in all kinds of areas tonight?
LIASSON: I heard a little bit from the president. Maybe he's willing to make a deal on infrastructure and drug prices. I think that Stacey Abrams was not representing Democrats in Congress, so she's not going to make a deal with the president. I - you know, these response speeches are kind of cursed. Most people who give them are panned. And they don't end up helping themselves. I think this could end up being the exception to that. I think this was one of the strongest ones I've ever seen. She seemed happy as she was giving it. She is being courted hard to run again in Georgia. And I thought she gave a pretty good, you know, summation of what the Democratic Party stands for. She said, border security does not mean open borders. You know, and she went on to talk about values that she believes in. I don't - I think she was smart not to spend the - her entire speech bashing the president, and she didn't.
KELLY: All right. I want to take us back over to Capitol Hill, where we have New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. He is standing by in Statuary Hall, which is just outside the House chamber. Congressman Jeffries is chair of the House Democratic Caucus, which means he is part of the Democratic leadership and a key part of whatever team might want to work with the White House on any bipartisan legislation going forward.
Congressman Jeffries, welcome.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Great to be with you.
KELLY: Glad to have you with us - I will start with the border. Did anything you heard from the president or Stacey Abrams lead you to believe that on this issue, which has shut down the government and may be poised to shut down the government again 10 days from now, that a breakthrough is imminent?
JEFFRIES: Well, we've made our position pretty clear, which is first, we do not plan on wasting billions of dollars in taxpayer money on a medieval border war that is a 5th-century solution to a 21st-century problem. At the same time, we will support 21st-century border security. And we are willing to find a bipartisan agreement in that regard. We're willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in additional infrastructure, particularly as it relates to our legal ports of entries. We're willing to invest in additional immigration judges, additional personnel, particularly as it relates to customs agents. And we're willing to invest in technology, like satellite, sensors, drones...
KELLY: Right.
JEFFRIES: ...And things of that nature.
KELLY: To the question of what you heard tonight, did you hear anything new from the president that suggests an opening for all of those things you say Democrats want to be able to work with him?
JEFFRIES: It appeared to me that the president doubled and tripled down on his desire for an ineffective and unnecessary border wall. And that's unfortunate.
KELLY: We heard the president taking a little bit of a jab at investigations that are underway - partisan investigations, he called them - so, basically, taking a jab at your party, which will be conducting those investigations in the House. Some of your colleagues are already pushing for impeachment. Did you hear any openings, aside from the wall, on areas of bipartisan cooperation?
JEFFRIES: Well, with respect to the investigations, it seems to me, first and foremost, that the House of Representatives is a separate and coequal branch of government. And we have an Article 1 responsibility to serve as a check and balance on a potentially out-of-control executive branch. That's what James Madison and the founding fathers created in terms of our system of government. That said, we're not going to overreach. We're not going to over-politicize. And we're not going to over-investigate. We're going to allow the Mueller investigation to run its course. And when it's completed, he can report his findings to the American people. And we can all figure out, where do we go from there?
In terms of issues, the president did indicate that he wanted to protect people with pre-existing conditions and lower health care costs. Those are high-priority issues for the House Democratic Caucus as part of our "For The People" (ph) agenda. He also indicated that he wanted a infrastructure plan to fix our crumbling bridges, roads, tunnels, airports and mass transportation system.
KELLY: This is something he's highlighted in his past State of the Union address.
JEFFRIES: And that is something that we highlighted in our closing argument to the American people in advance of the midterm elections last year. And it's one of our highest priorities as part of our "For The People" agenda. So it's possible that we can find some bipartisan consensus in that regard.
KELLY: I want to play you a little bit of what the president said. He was - we were told to expect that there would be some overtures to unity. And here's one moment where he seemed to be speaking to the partisan divide that has paralyzed Washington.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: The decision is ours to make. We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction. Tonight I ask you to choose greatness.
KELLY: He asks you to choose greatness - all of us to choose greatness, Hakeem Jeffries. And I wonder what was going through your head as you listened to some of those moments that did seem designed to extend some sort of olive branch.
JEFFRIES: Well, the notion of choosing greatness seemed, to me, to be a continuation of his political applause lines and his campaign theme of 2016, which in his view, was to make America great again.
KELLY: So you heard an applause line there not a sincere overture.
JEFFRIES: Well, my hope is certainly that he is sincere and authentic in his desire to reach, you know, across to the other side of the aisle so we can work together. The American people chose divided government. And because divided government exists, in order for something to happen, we're going to have to try to find common ground. If he's sincere in that regard, I know that Speaker Pelosi and the entire House Democratic team is willing to work together to get things done for the American people.
KELLY: Last thing - I just want to ask what it was like to be in that chamber at the moment that the president gave a shoutout to the record number of women in Congress. That was quite something.
JEFFRIES: That was an important moment. And I think it was an acknowledgement of all of the progress that we've made, as he indicated. It was just 100 years ago in terms of women being able to fully pursue the right to vote. And now we've got a record number of women in the United States House of Representatives. And it's an example of our continued long, necessary and majestic march toward a more perfect union.
KELLY: That is Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York. Thanks so much for joining us on the State of the Union night.
JEFFRIES: Thank you very much.
KELLY: And I want to remind everyone listening. Please follow along. Our fact-checkers are going through both speeches that we just heard from Stacey Abrams and from the president. And you are listening right now to Special Coverage from NPR News.
I'm Mary Louise Kelly. And we are going to turn now to a Republican voice from the chamber. This is Idaho Republican Senator James Risch, who is the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - so responsible for oversight of the president and his administration's foreign policy.
Senator Risch, welcome to Special Coverage here at NPR News.
JAMES RISCH: Thank you - glad to be here.
KELLY: He is also joining us from Statuary Hall, so that's a little bit of the noise we hear behind you. It sounds like it's been quite a night. I want to focus you on the foreign policy. The president hit on a number of areas. He confirmed a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, taking place February 27 and 28, he said - so two days in Vietnam. The president also talked Venezuela. He talked Afghanistan. He talked NATO. What struck you?
RISCH: Well, I talk pretty regularly with the president. So I wasn't really struck by anything other than the fact that he was very clear and articulate about his policies and where he wanted to go in that regard. I met with the ambassador from South Korea today. We talked about the same things the president talked about - an optimism for the upcoming summit. I met with the Venezuelan ambassador today. And we also met with Venezuelans earlier in the week and last week. And we're quite happy with the way things are going there. The president's got a handle on it. He's working with it. And we want to support the new government of Juan Guaido. And the Venezuelan people are acting exactly according to their constitutional law.
KELLY: And...
RISCH: We support him and encourage him.
KELLY: And what about - how much support are you willing to lend President Trump on other areas of his foreign policy? I'm asking because you were one of the senators who voted with this bipartisan group for an amendment that rebukes the president for plans to draw down troops in Syria, in Afghanistan. He talked a little bit tonight about Afghanistan and wanting to bring the troops home. Is that rebuke a sign of what's to come in 2019?
RISCH: Please, please, please, stop using the word rebuke. Some national person coined that word. The word does not appear in anything that we passed.
KELLY: What would you call an overwhelming...
RISCH: Nobody has used it other than the...
KELLY: ...Vote against the president's policy?
RISCH: This was not an overwhelming vote against the president's policy. What happened was the president, correctly, as the commander in chief and as the leader, said what he wanted to do in keeping the campaign promise he made. And that is getting us at a much lower level in Afghanistan and in Syria. He, like a lot of us, believe that after 17 years in Afghanistan, it's time to re-evaluate our policies there. And we've not been successful as far as nation building. We were very successful after World War II in Japan and in Germany, after the Korean War in South Korea. But we have not been successful in the Middle East at all.
KELLY: So...
RISCH: And what he wants to do is to ratchet that back and focus on counterterrorism. You heard him say that.
KELLY: We did. Are you...
RISCH: The document that you're talking about that you said was a rebuke...
KELLY: Are you...
RISCH: ...Was not a rebuke. Indeed, it was exactly the way the system works. When he lays it out, it came to the Congress. The Congress refined it and, indeed, embraced the kinds of things he was talking about about reviewing...
KELLY: Let's set aside, Senator, the word rebuke. And let me ask you this. Are you prepared to support the national security agenda that the president laid out tonight?
RISCH: I liked what I heard from the president. But again, it wasn't a surprise to me. I've worked with him for - regularly for a long, long time. I've been on a committee 10 years. I know what he wants to do. I know where he's going. Look. I can tell you there is no one more committed to the security of the United States of America than this president. And, of course, our foreign policy plays heavily into that.
KELLY: Let me turn you then to the southern border and what the president had to say about the wall. Does it give you pause to hear the president emphasizing the crisis, as he called it again tonight, on the U.S.-Mexico border over the threats that his own intelligence chiefs outlined in testimony before senators last week?
RISCH: Well, I'm on the Intelligence Committee. So I hear...
KELLY: Yeah.
RISCH: ...The same things that he hears. And I believe there is a crisis at the southern border. And I think that he, today, laid out, I think, a very level and evenhanded and - olive branch, if you would, to the Democrats. You just heard my - the gentleman here before me say they wanted to work together and have a compromise. And he laid out about, oh, I don't know six, eight things that they wanted. Hey, we're in. But what about the wall? The last four presidents built 654 miles of wall. These Democrats voted for that. There were Republican and Democrat presidents - two of each. But more importantly, the money was...
KELLY: Right.
RISCH: ...Voted for on a bipartisan basis. So let's get together. I mean, this is - we - instead of talking about, oh, you know, the president this, and the president wants that, how about if we all get together and decide what is best for the southern border security? They say they want it. We say we want it. They have a way of wanting to do it. We want a way of wanting to do it.
KELLY: And...
RISCH: So why not come together and compromise? Look. I led our state...
KELLY: And you've got 10 days to figure it out before the next shutdown.
RISCH: I led our state Senate for over 20 years. And we didn't have these kinds of problems because we sat down. And we resolved them. And it - as the president started out tonight, this is a give-and-take proposition. Nobody can get their way entirely. And so I hope that the people can get together and do it. I know the president's got other things that he's got on his mind if they don't. But he is committed to securing the southern border.
KELLY: And we will watch how that give and take plays out tomorrow and in the days to come. That's Idaho Republican and the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee James Risch. Thanks so much, Senator Risch.
RISCH: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
KELLY: All right. We are going to turn now to some further fact-checking from our fact-checker in chief, as I've dubbed him, NPR White House correspondent Scott Horsley. You have now heard the president. You've now heard Stacey Abrams. Where do you want to start?
HORSLEY: (Laughter).
KELLY: What's the top thing jumping out at you?
HORSLEY: Well, we could talk a little about the wall and, as Senator Risch was just talking about, the president's push for additional border wall funding - worth noting, as Senator Risch points out, about a third of the 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico already has a wall or fencing or some sort of border barrier. The president talked a little about the wall in San Diego. I lived in San Diego for a long time. That wall's been there since the early '90s (laughter).
KELLY: And I want to hear - we've got a little bit of the president actually talking about the wall. Let's see if we can listen now.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: It includes humanitarian assistance, more law enforcement, drug detection at our ports, closing loopholes that enable child smuggling and plans for a new physical barrier or wall to secure the vast areas between our ports of entry. In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall. But the proper wall never got built. I will get it built.
HORSLEY: So, in fact, a good deal of wall has been built. What the Democrats would say is the wall's been built where it needs to be. And where it hasn't been built, it doesn't need to be.
KELLY: The president also talked about some of the trade battles he is currently waging, including the ongoing trade battle with China. Here's a little bit of what he had to say on that.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: Therefore, we recently imposed tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese goods. And now our treasury is receiving billions and billions of dollars.
KELLY: Billions and billions of dollars - is that true Scott Horsley?
HORSLEY: It is. The most recent month for which we got good data was October. That's when the China tariffs fully kicked in. It was $2.2 billion that month alone. October was the most heavily tariffed month in U.S. history. Now, that money flowing into the Treasury is, in large part, flowing from U.S. businesses and consumers. But we do hear the president say he's making a push on trade with a number of countries, including China. And, of course, we expect him to meet with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi, perhaps later this month.
KELLY: Perhaps when he's heading to Asia anyway to meet with Kim Jong Un...
HORSLEY: Back in the neighborhood.
KELLY: ...In Vietnam. We shall see. OK. Let me turn you to prescription drug prices. This is an area that both parties are saying they might have a little bit of room to work together. And the president did some boasting there about his record.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: Already, as a result of my administration's efforts in 2018, drug prices experienced their single largest decline in 46 years.
KELLY: Single largest decline in 46 years.
HORSLEY: Well, drug prices don't usually decline at all. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps tabs on inflation, did clock a small drop in prescription drug prices in December compared to a year ago. There have been other periods when there was a drop over 12 months. But that was the first calendar year in a long time that we've seen that. And the administration has been pushing to try to get a handle on drug prices. One of the things they've done is to accelerate the approval of generic drugs as competition for brand-name pharmaceuticals.
And there was a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the fall that suggested that might've contributed somewhat larger savings on the generic front. The president has also jawboned the pharmaceutical companies a lot just urging them to keep trices (ph) down. That seems to have been less effective. The Associated Press did a study last year where they found that for every one price cut by a pharmaceutical company, there were 96 price increases.
KELLY: Let me turn you back to foreign policy. We mentioned this summit that now seems to be set for later this month with Kim Jong Un. And in speaking about North Korea, the president suggested that his diplomacy - that nuclear diplomacy is working.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: Our hostages have come home. Nuclear testing has stopped. And there has not been a missile launch in more than 15 months. If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea.
HORSLEY: This is a line the president has used before. And I think you can hear what sounds like some pushback from, presumably, the Democrats in the chamber. I don't think a lot of people thought, before Donald Trump came into office, that we were imminently facing a nuclear threat. And, certainly, his own intelligence experts have questioned the idea that the president's nuclear diplomacy has substantially reduced that threat. In fact, the intelligence chiefs told the Senate Intelligence Committee just last week that they don't really believe North Korea is prepared to give up its nuclear weapons.
KELLY: The president also talked about war and ending what he called endless wars. Here's a part of what he had to say about that.
(SOUNDBITE OF 2019 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS)
TRUMP: When I took office, ISIS controlled more than 20,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria just two years ago. Today, we have liberated virtually all of the territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty monsters.
KELLY: Scott, what do we make of that?
HORSLEY: I know Senator Risch insists that the Senate Republicans were not rebuking the president last week. But it was pretty clear that they wanted to at least tap the brakes on his plan to pull troops out of Syria and to pull about half the troops out of Afghanistan. And, of course, the president's defense secretary, Jim Mattis, resigned in December in protest of the Syria move. The president does plan to leave a contingent of U.S. forces in Iraq. And he said over the weekend that those troops could be used to be a rapid response force elsewhere in the neighborhood and also to keep an eye on Iran. That idea of using an Iraqi military base to keep eyes on Iran has created some political pushback in Baghdad.
KELLY: And I want to briefly check the facts before we let you go, Scott - the facts from Stacey Abrams, who we just heard deliver the Democratic rebuttal. Abrams, who narrowly lost her bid for governor of Georgia, was talking about border security.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO 2019 SOTU)
STACEY ABRAMS: We know bipartisanship could craft a 21st-century immigration plan. But this administration chooses to cage children and tear families apart. Compassionate treatment at the border is not the same as open borders. President Reagan understood this. President Obama understood this. Americans understand this.
KELLY: Scott.
HORSLEY: A reminder there that the last big immigration overhaul in this country was passed in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was the president - and also, as Mara said earlier, a pretty strong pushback that despite what the president says, Democrats' opposition to a border wall does not mean support for open borders.
KELLY: NPR's Scott Horsley checking all the facts tonight. We shall release you so you can continue checking and typing. Thanks so much.
HORSLEY: Thanks very much.
KELLY: And we're going to get a quick final thought from each of our guests who have been here with us all night, listening to and tracking the State of the Union and the Democratic response - Antonia Ferrier, who worked for Mitch McConnell and other Republicans on the Hill, your parting thought as we close out the night.
FERRIER: Since there was so much discussion of national security and we had the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, I would just note something that I felt was a tension in the president's speech. He reflected back on the Americans' role in World War II, what we did around the world, our optimism, hope for the globe. He mentioned the USS Cole survivors and that we would always defeat terrorism. And yet, he's also - was talking about pulling back from some of these areas, like Afghanistan.
A lot of Republicans remember 9/11. I think, obviously, all Americans remember 9/11. And I think for a lot of these Republicans, they remember that it was a failed state in Afghanistan, which is where al-Qaida flourished and launched the attacks on the United States. So I really do feel like there was a duality in what the president was saying won this - what we did as a country in liberating the world from Nazi tyranny and how we can be a force of good. And yet, at the same time, he was talking about pulling back from that role. And I think that's an interesting juxtaposition.
KELLY: A tension in the speech and in the country. Nadeam Elshami, what did you hear? - parting thought.
ELSHAMI: Well, really, that nothing has changed before the speech. And nothing has changed after the speech. Where we are today is Democrats are opposed to the president's policies when it comes to the wall and immigration. The president is still demanding his wall. And we are 10 days away from a shutdown. Additionally, what I saw is that the president talked very briefly about the Affordable Care Act and that is an issue that is of vital importance to the Democrats. They won the majority in 2018 running on that issue and on pre-existing conditions. And the president, they see him as the main obstacle to getting anything done in shoring up the ACA going forward. So let's just - I just don't see anything new. Nothing has changed with his speech.
KELLY: Mara, final thought from you - your big takeaway now that we've heard both the Republican - President Donald Trump delivering his address and Stacey Abrams delivering the Democratic rebuttal live from Atlanta.
LIASSON: Yeah. I mean, it reinforced to me how central the president's views on immigration - his restrictionist views on immigration - and his devotion to the wall as kind of the symbol of his administration is. But I did hear some defensive notes. I don't know if they're really notes that mean he's going to start moving to compromise with the Democrats. But the fact that he said he was for pre-existing conditions, that is what cost so many Republican seats.
KELLY: Right.
LIASSON: And he's in court to this day trying to get that part of the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. The fact that he was - said he was for legal immigration even though he has proposed to cut legal immigration by about 44 percent - and, to me, the most incredible moment in the speech was when he said, we also have more women serving in Congress than ever before - got a big applause. But, of course, there are more Democratic women in Congress. There are actually fewer Republican women in Congress now than there were before.
KELLY: All right. I want to, first of all, thank everybody who's been in the studio here with us tonight, covering the State of the Union address. Nadeam Elshami, who worked for top Democrats in Congress, including, most recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thank you so much.
ELSHAMI: Thank you.
KELLY: Also Antonia Ferrier, a longtime Republican strategist, worked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, thank you for spending the evening with us.
FERRIER: Thank you.
KELLY: We have also been joined by NPR's Susan Davis, by NPR's Scott Horsley. And I do want to note before we conclude our coverage tonight, we're going to play a quick clip of the Democrat's Spanish-language response. This is just in from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPANISH-LANGUAGE DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO 2019 SOTU)
XAVIER BECERRA: (Speaking Spanish).
KELLY: I'll jump in and start translating. He is saying, "the idea of declaring a nonexistent state of emergency on the border in order to justify robbing funds that belong to the victims of fires, floods, hurricanes and droughts to pay for the wall is not only immoral, it is illegal. We are ready to reject this foolish proposal in court the moment it touches the ground." That is the Spanish-language response to tonight's events from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. And with that, I'm going to thank you, Mara Liasson, NPR national political correspondent, for being here all night. Thank you. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. We are just wrapping up live coverage from NPR News of the president's State of the Union - lots more to come on Morning Edition. This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.