“I think he should avoid being acerbic — kind of taking shots at people — and be aspirational,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), who’s among the members retiring from Congress next year. “He’s at his best when he’s being aspirational.”

Trump speaks to the public virtually every day in Truth Social posts and remarks to reporters. But his annual speech before Congress, slated for Feb. 24, will mark one of the few remaining opportunities ahead of the midterm elections to speak to a wide audience of the public.

If the president fails to drive home the party’s tax cuts from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year to instead “spend time talking about how we solve the war in Africa, and the little one in Asia, and we’re almost done with the one in Europe, and we’re — it just won’t work for the average person,” said a GOP member of Congress who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“Trump ain’t on the ballot, so he’s going to have to get out there and try to pull people across the goal line, because I think people are going to be held accountable for us — we ain’t done anything since July,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who’s running for Alabama governor this fall, said in reference to the GOP tax law. “We haven’t gotten anything done.”

Trump used his 2025 address to Congress in the months after his return to office to take a defiant victory lap on combating illegal immigration and temper expectations that cost-of-living increases could be reversed. The president’s greatest achievement more than a year into his second term is his mega tax law, but his speech will come amid fallout from his administration’s aggressive deportation tactics that he’s vowing to approach with a “softer touch.”

“He’s still committed to removing illegals from this country, especially starting with illegals who’ve committed crimes in this country,” Lummis said. “But acknowledging that the lighter touch is doable — I think that’s important.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, the White House said Trump had an election mandate to focus on illegal immigration and the economy and that the president would continue to do so.

“Nearly 80 million Americans gave President Trump a resounding Election Day mandate to end Joe Biden’s economic disaster and immigration crisis,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “The Trump administration remains laser-focused on continuing to cool inflation, accelerate economic growth, secure our border, and mass deport criminal illegal aliens.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has a populist streak similar to Trump, but it sometimes lands him in Democrats’ corner on affordability troubles such as expired Obamacare subsidies and government benefits for lower-income people. He’s hoping to hear Trump stand firm on the administration’s desire to tackle housing costs by barring large investors from gobbling up homes, promote a bipartisan credit card cap proposal, and expound on how to stop data centers from driving up electricity prices.  

“I just think that his economic agenda that he outlined recently is really good,” Hawley said. “I hope he’ll talk about that.”

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) is predicting a “forward looking, optimistic speech.” But he countered that the president is neither pivoting on his immigration enforcement strategy nor does he need to.

SENATE DEMOCRATS WEIGH SKIPPING TRUMP STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

Despite how GOP lawmakers may prefer Trump navigates his address in an election year that Republicans fear Democrats could dominate, there’s the reminder that — as put by Tuberville — “President Trump’s going to be President Trump.”

“Thank God he got elected and we got everything going in the right direction,” Tuberville said. “But now we’re just coming out of the block, so we got three more years. The problem is if [Democrats] win the House and possibly the Senate, I mean, he’s going to be fighting for his life.”