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Trump's promises to "unify" with his State of the Union didn't work on Democrats

Trump’s “open hand” fell on deaf ears among Democrats, who booed or stayed silent during his SOTU address.

President Donald Trump came to the U.S. Capitol with a bushel of olive branches Tuesday night as he delivered his first State of the Union address.

“I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties,” Trump said in a carefully scripted, often conventional speech that defied the “slobbering” that Rep. Nancy Pelosi had predicted from Trump.

But Trump’s “open hand” fell on deaf ears among Democrats, who booed, stayed silent, and even quietly criticized the president as a racist and a misogynist with their wardrobe choices. Members of Trump’s own party gave the president a thundering endorsement of his leadership with applause that culminated in a “USA” chant at the speech’s conclusion.

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Despite days of White House advisers emphasizing that the State of the Union would strike a unifying tone, the mostly standard, 80-minute speech could not heal the wounds from Trump’s politically contentious and racially fraught first year.

Democratic lawmakers of color, like Reps. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, wore colorful shawls and ties in solidarity with the countries Trump recently deemed “shitholes” in a meeting on immigration. Many black lawmakers, such as Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, also refused to stand for the president as he walked in.

Most Democratic women wore black in solidarity with the #metoo movement. That choice might seem apolitical — except that a long list of women have accused the president of sexual assault or misconduct.

And then there was the speech.

To start, Trump bragged about the booming economy, proposed an infrastructure package that neither side likes, described his administration’s recovery efforts in response to natural disasters, and provided the usual fodder about American exceptionalism. It was a professional politician’s speech crafted with care by a team in the West Wing with only a few Trumpian flourishes.

But the subject of race truly exposed the fault lines of the Trump presidency. When he bragged of the low unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans — a trend that began during the Obama presidency and has continued during Trump’s first year — at least twenty Democratic lawmakers of color, especially in the 49-member Congressional Black Caucus, sat stone-faced. Of the few who stood and applauded, such as Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, most were white.

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And the first audible boos came only when Trump began discussing immigration, the topic that helped initiate a brief government shutdown less than two weeks ago. Trump introduced two families whose daughters were killed by MS13 gang violence as a rationale for his proposal to crack down hard on undocumented immigration.

In the days leading up to the speech, Democrats had been openly calling Trump racist. Pelosi had called the administration's immigration framework an “unmistakable campaign to make America white again,” and Clyburn had suggested parallels between Trump and Nazi Germany.

Still, a few Democrats, especially those from more conservative states with elections coming up, like Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, applauded Trump more than their party colleagues.

Even if Trump truly wanted to shift from a race-baiting partisan to a deal-making pragmatist — and few signs suggest he does — most Democrats made clear that such efforts will be received with skepticism and resistance.

Cover image: President Donald Trump gestures as delivers his first State of the Union address in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2018, in Washington, as Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan applaud. (Win McNamee/Pool via AP)