2017 was without a doubt an unprecedentedly crazy year from a rise in natural disasters, to mass shootings, to sexual harassment scandals, to Trump’s nutty politics. To mark the beginning of 2018, President Donald Trump gave a rocky State of the Union speech that failed to unify Democrats and Republicans, disenchanting Democrats so much, at multiple parts of the address, they jeered and booed at the president, while their Republican counterparts gave a standing ovation.

After watching my first State of the Union address, I was shocked by the visual division in congress and the narcissistic attitude of the speech. However, I soon learned that these two observations were normal for this special speech. First, we should begin with what I truly did like about Trump’s speech.

First of all, I did enjoy most of the first part of the address. I thought that Trump properly addressed the strength of the American people despite the immense amount of natural disasters that ripped through 2017. There was not much to complain about Trump’s view on the economy. Like most past presidents, he boasted his accomplishments and what they believe has benefited the nation. So, he did just that going through a list of statistics (although not all completely fact-checked) supporting why the economy and taxes were better. Furthermore, I thought Trump’s shoutout to Michigan and Detroit was important due to the fact that we live here. We can all agree that his goal to reduce prices of prescription drugs is good, there isn’t much I can say against that. Lastly, Trump delivered the speech pretty well for his standards. He did sound very presidential, he did articulate, he did bring enthusiasm to his speech, and he did have good intentions.

Trump’s goal of his entire address, as usual for a State of the Union speech, was to promote unity the nation and with that lighten division on both political parties. I personally do not believe he executed this goal to the slightest. For starters, I believe that his speech was very partisan favoring his party. He even faced the Republican said of the room for a majority of the time. When Trump did mean to call for bipartisan efforts, he missed the mark on constructing compromises. In his immigration plan, he misconstrued one Democratic goal and called for three Republican goals with it. The president also mainly focused on immigrants being gang members and terrorists, which I thought was a very partisan approach to the topic. Although I thought the guests invited by Trump did strengthen his points, I think that most were used as pawns to prove a point of his and not to unify the nation or accentuate American values. To me, they seemed more like propaganda than the stories of Americans. The president also brought up topics that I believe he should have left alone. He made a comment about standing for the national anthem and staying loyal to him and his administration. I think that in all, the speech was very long and unappealing to a young American like me. However, I do believe it was uncalled for the way many Democrats behaved. Although, they had the right to do so, I think it was inappropriate for many representatives to rush out of the room after the speech concluded and to boo the president, it just breaks the proper customs of the State of the Union Address.

For the future, I can only hope for more unity and civility in our nation to have a nicer State of the Union Address. It would be nice for the president to mention education and reducing the wage gap rather than growing our nuclear arsenal and criticizing our allies for not agreeing with us. But for this to happen in our country, we need to put aside our differences for once and work together.