<\/p>\n
United States President Donald Trump boasted on Tuesday of a \u201cturnaround for the ages\u201d in a State of the Union speech, seeking to reverse his dismal polls and see off mounting challenges at home and abroad ahead of crucial midterm elections.<\/p>\n
Addressing a joint session of Congress, Trump met repeated standing ovations from Republicans, while Democrats remained seated in protest \u2014 and sometimes heckled.<\/p>\n
As US naval and air forces massed<\/a> in the Middle East, Trump claimed Iran was seeking missiles able to hit US territory but said his \u201cpreference\u201d was for a diplomatic solution.<\/p>\n Trump began by painting an optimistic picture, declaring America was \u201cbigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cTonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before, and a turnaround for the ages,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n The 79-year-old hopes the primetime speech, broadcast across all major networks, will help him to sell that message to voters after a deeply divisive first year back in power.<\/p>\n In opinion polls, Trump fears his Republican Party will lose control over Congress in the November midterms, paralysing the rest of his second term and exposing him to a possible third impeachment.<\/p>\n He sought to seize on national enthusiasm over Team USA\u2019s gold medal-winning Olympic ice hockey performance by inviting the players to join him on the floor of the Chamber to massive cheers and chants of \u201cUSA\u201d. He then announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom \u2014 the highest civilian honour \u2014 to the team\u2019s goalie.<\/p>\n And he handed Medals of Honour \u2014 the highest military award \u2014 to a helicopter pilot wounded in January\u2019s attack to topple<\/a> the Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, and also to a 100-year-old Korean War veteran.<\/p>\n But at about the hour mark in what became a record-long State of the Union speech, Trump resumed his customary dark rhetoric against opponents and undocumented immigrants<\/a>.<\/p>\n The New York Times<\/em> said at least 40 Democratic lawmakers were boycotting the speech.<\/p>\n Trump claimed that Iran is seeking missiles that could reach the United States and repeated his insistence that the country would never be allowed to build a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n Iranians, he said, \u201care at this moment again pursuing their sinister nuclear ambitions.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trump left the door open for a peaceful resolution, noting that negotiations were continuing and said, \u201cmy preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy.\u201d He boasted that Venezuela was now shipping oil to the United States, and celebrated the killing<\/a> of a Mexican narco kingpin.<\/p>\n Trump became more aggressive midway through the speech, claiming Democrats \u201care destroying our country\u201d and that Somali \u201cpirates\u201d had \u201cransacked\u201d Minnesota.<\/p>\n The president told Congress to pass a law imposing additional ID requirements for Americans to vote, pushing his unprecedented and false claims<\/a> that US elections suffer from \u201crampant\u201d cheating.<\/p>\n Opponents to the proposed law say the stringent requirements for more documents would result in shutting huge numbers of legal voters from the polls.<\/p>\n The battle over the right to vote comes as Republicans are trying to avoid losing their narrow majority in the House of Representatives \u2014 and potentially the Senate.<\/p>\n A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos<\/em> poll published on Sunday showed Trump\u2019s approval rating at a lowly 39 per cent. Only 41pc approved of his handling of the economy overall, and just 32pc on inflation.<\/p>\n He has been battered by a series of blows, most recently with the Supreme Court\u2019s striking down<\/a> of his use of coercive trade tariffs against countries all over the world.<\/p>\n Trump, who earlier branded the court\u2019s justices \u201cfools and lapdogs\u201d over the tariff ruling, briefly shook hands with several of the justices in attendance but went on in his speech to declare their ruling \u201cvery unfortunate\u201d.<\/p>\n The billionaire has also been rocked by a backlash<\/a> by the killing of two US citizens in immigration raids in Minneapolis and the Jeffrey Epstein scandal<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" United States President Donald Trump boasted on Tuesday of a \u201cturnaround for the ages\u201d in a State of the Union speech, seeking to reverse his dismal polls and see off mounting challenges at home and abroad ahead of crucial midterm elections. Addressing a joint session of Congress, Trump met repeated standing ovations from Republicans, while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2026\/02\/25093325540f20a.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Iran\u2019s \u2018sinister nuclear ambitions\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Trump lashes out<\/h2>\n