WASHINGTON — President Trump is to deliver what aides called a message of bipartisan unity on Tuesday night in his first address to Congress in the new era of divided government, but any hope of harmony was dispelled long before he left the White House. The president and Democrats spent the hours before his State of the Union address exchanging political fire, making clear that whatever ritualistic calls for across-the-aisle cooperation he would issue later in the evening were unlikely to transform an environment that has turned increasingly toxic. Still stung by his failure to use a partial government shutdown to pressure Congress into paying for his border wall, Mr. Trump has hardly been in the mood for collaboration with the other party, anyway. As he and his team have drafted his address in recent days, he has groused about the text, complaining that it is too gentle on Democrats, according to people briefed on the matter. Ms. Pelosi has been his most frustrating antagonist since the start of the new year, at one point even disinviting him from delivering the State of the Union address unless he reopened the government, which he then did.

Source: New York Times February 05, 2019 22:47 UTC