Updated Jan 31, 2018

What Trump talked about in the State of the Union

Here's a look at the topics President Trump covered in his first State of the Union speech, and how it compared to his address to Congress last year.

Data: Analysis of the State of the Union and Joint Session speeches. Get the data.
Data: Analysis of the State of the Union and Joint Session speeches. Get the data.

The big picture: The president stuck mostly to prepared remarks in a speech that came in just over 75 minutes—about 15 minutes longer than last year's speech before a joint session of Congress. He took credit for tax reform and touched on issues of immigration, infrastructure spending and foreign policy.

On immigration: The president spoke at length about the need for immigration reform and used examples of violent crime, terrorism and threats to American jobs to make his case. Last year's speech referenced crime and economic security, but not as squarely in the context of immigration.

On infrastructure: He said he wants Congress to approve $1.5 trillion in public and private sector spending. Last year's speech called for $1 trillion.

On foreign policy: He made a hardline case for strengthening the military and modernizing the country's nuclear arsenal. He announced an executive order to keep the Guantanamo Bay prison open.

On the economy: The president trumpeted the historically-low unemployment rate and praised the tax cuts passed by Congress at the end of 2017.

About the data: We looked at the prepared text of this year's State of the Union and the delivered text of last year's joint session address and categorized the subject of each sentence. You can see the underlying data for this visualization here.

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