“IN MANY ways,” said one pundit after Donald Trump’s maiden address to Congress nearly 11 months ago, “it was the long-awaited pivot that Trump has always promised…He was disciplined, didn’t veer much at all from the script and hit his marks.” Two things stand out about this assessment. First, it did not last long: just four days later Mr Trump took to Twitter to falsely accuse Barack Obama of masterminding a plot to “tapp my phones during the very sacred election process.” Second, it reflects how low Candidate Trump had set the behavioural bar: simply reading from a teleprompter while not boasting about the size of his genitalia or belittling anyone was enough to get critics to call him “presidential”.

This year, like last, Mr Trump mostly stuck to his script. And, as is customary, he made some feints toward unity, urging politicians to “seek out common ground” and restating his “righteous mission—to make America great again for all Americans.” But those appeals were brief and superficial. Mr Trump’s first State of the Union, much like his presidency, was aimed narrowly and directly at his base. It told Americans that the world is violent and frightening—that they should be scared, and trust him to keep them safe.

Thematically, the speech was more like a rally than a normal State of the Union: almost entirely devoid of concrete new policies, it was instead a recitation of his past year’s successes, along with some deeply improbable goals for a Congress heading towards midterm elections. He began by touting America’s booming economy: rising wages, declining unemployment and a booming stockmarket (though it just suffered its biggest two-day drop since 2016). He boasted that African-American unemployment is at its lowest rate ever; the cutaway shot to the Congressional Black Caucus looking deeply unimpressed was perhaps the night’s niftiest camera work.

How much credit Mr Trump deserves for these trends remains unclear. The markets are probably higher than they would have been without the corporate tax cuts Mr Trump passed, but America’s labour-market strength is the culmination of a trend that started well before he took office.

He sounded familiar themes on trade—particularly that other countries have taken advantage of America, and that “the era of economic surrender is over”. He promised “strong enforcement of our trade rules”, which is how he characterised his administration’s slapping hefty tariffs on imported washing machines and solar panels. He claims this will save American solar-cell manufacturers, though there aren’t many of those; according to an industry trade group the solar tariffs could actually cost 23,000 jobs. His insistence that trade deals be “fair” and “reciprocal” reflects his mercantilist belief that exporting is winning and importing is losing. By that logic, all bilateral trade must balance to be “fair”.

Infrastructure made yet another gauzily vague appearance. Mr Trump urged Congress to “produce a bill that generates at least $1.5trn for the new infrastructure investment that we need.” Quite what this means in practice—what new infrastructure Mr Trump wants, where the money will come from or how a congressional bill “generates”, rather than appropriates, funds—is anyone’s guess. Equally unclear is why spending should go to new construction rather than repair, and how he will convince a Republican-controlled Congress to cough up the money.

What is clear is that Mr Trump has a habit of overpromising on infrastructure. He promised to have a plan finalised during his first 100 days in office. In last year’s speech to Congress he vowed to produce legislation for a $1trn infrastructure plan. Members of his cabinet and Republican congressmen promised a plan by late spring; last April Mr Trump said he would have one in a few weeks. Just this month a White House aide said Mr Trump would present a concrete plan in two to four weeks. Treat that vow with the scepticism it deserves. Infrastructure seems less a policy priority than a shiny bauble this White House dangles when it craves plaudits.

Mr Trump veered hardest towards his base when he turned to immigration. In September Mr Trump ended Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era executive order that shielded undocumented immigrants brought to America as children from deportation and let them work legally. At its height, DACA brought around 700,000 young Americans-in-all-but-name out of the shadows; as of March 5th, they will all be subject to deportation. Mr Trump’s homeland-security department insists that the “Dreamers”, as they are known (after the DREAM Act, a legislative DACA fix) will not be a priority. The actions of America’s immigration police suggest otherwise. And even without mass deportations, they will be forced back into the shadows.

In theory, this should be an easy problem to solve: polls show most Americans in both parties think the Dreamers should be allowed to stay. But Mr Trump’s base disagrees, and last night’s speech was for them. The job of elected officials, said Mr Trump, is to “defend Americans…and their right to the American dream. Because Americans are dreamers too.” This was a nasty little rhetorical shiv, reminding people that Dreamers are not Americans, and insinuating that politicians owe them nothing.

He proposed a deal: full citizenship for 1.8m DACA-eligible immigrants in exchange for building a wall on the Mexican border; hiring more immigration police; ending the Diversity Visa lottery, which gives visas to immigrants from countries that send few people to America; and restricting family-reunification visas, which Mr Trump falsely claimed allow “a single immigrant [to] bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives”. (In fact, immigrants can sponsor only children, spouses, brothers and sisters, and then just in strictly capped amounts.) To bolster his case, Mr Trump said that terrorists entered on family-reunification and diversity visas, and that violent gang members entered America as “unaccompanied alien minors”. He called his trade “a down-the-middle compromise”, which is utterly disingenuous: it is a restrictionist’s wish list, and one that Democrats will never support.

But it hews to Mr Trump’s view of the world as violent and Hobbesian. He called for making America’s nuclear arsenal “so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression”. Just before the speech he signed an order to keep open America’s military prison at Guantánamo Bay, which as a candidate he vowed to fill with “bad dudes”. He touted his “campaign of maximum pressure” to keep North Korea from acquiring missiles capable of hitting America. Throughout the speech he praised policemen and the army; teachers, students and entrepreneurs did not rate a mention.

The irony, of course, is that by disengaging from the world, Mr Trump risks making it more unstable. And by viewing trade as a zero-sum game he risks making America, particularly the rural states that rely on agricultural exports and voted for him overwhelmingly, poorer.