3 Arizona members of Congress on Trump speech: ‘very powerful,’ ‘divisive,’ ‘rather boring’

PHOENIX – President Donald Trump’s record-long State of the Union address was a hot discussion topic the next morning.

Three Arizona members of Congress – Republican Rep. David Schweikert and two Democrats, Rep. Greg Stanton and Sen. Mark Kelly — gave their views on the speech during interviews with KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Arizona’s Morning News on Wednesday, Feb. 25.

Schweikert said the State of the Union address felt like three different speeches, the first covering the administration’s accomplishments. He described the second part as a “cantankerous” airing of grievances against Democrats.

“The last third was actually just, I think, emotionally very powerful. Here’s heroes, here’s people who’ve sacrificed life and limb, here’s people who’ve gone through tragedies,” Schweikert said.

“So, it was an interesting evening just from sort of the roller coaster of the different stories being told.”

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As could be expected, Democrats didn’t share Schweikert’s optimism.

Stanton was unimpressed other than when Trump awarded to two war heroes with the Medal of Honor and honored the Olympic gold medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team.

The East Valley Democrat called it the “most divisive, tone deaf State of the Union address” he’d ever seen.

“The president’s poll numbers are way underwater. Instead of addressing that, and he had a chance for a reset to explain to the American people what his policies would do to lower costs, he totally blew that off,” Stanton said.

“He refused to actually address anything that really mattered to the American people on the issue — the most important issue — and that’s the issue of affordability, how to make life easier, how to lower costs for the American people.”

Kelly echoed Stanton’s sentiments about the military veterans and hockey team getting their due. He also said it resonated with him when Trump talked about banning congressional insider stock trading and the issue of the energy demand for data centers.

“But what really stood out for me was this was … nearly two hours of a lot of grievances,” Kelly said.

The senator and possible 2028 presidential candidate said Trump spent only seven minutes on the topic of costs on things like health care.

“And the rest was a bunch of grievance. … I gotta say, I was there for the whole thing. … I thought the speech was rather boring,” Kelly said.

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