KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Trump Gives GOP Blueprint for Midterms in Soaring SOTU Address. “After he wrapped up, I posted in the liveblog that this speech didn’t have the meandering bridge section near the middle that so many of his longer speeches do. It came in at just about two hours and brilliantly hit every note that there was to hit. It may seem weird to say it about a speech of that length, but there was an economy to it that made it effective.”

Much of the speech was more like a conversation — with the American people, with heroes in attendance, and even at times with surly Dems — that made the two hours fly.