Why Trump isn't hitting the road after his speech: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, we examine why Donald Trump isn’t taking the usual tour of the country that recent presidents have after major speeches to Congress. Plus, Andrea Mitchell dives into what’s next for Ukraine and its European allies as the United States continues to scale back assistance.

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— Adam Wollner

Why Trump isn't hitting the road after his speech

A go-to move for presidents who’ve just delivered prime-time speeches before joint sessions of Congress is to quickly travel outside of Washington to start selling the glut of proposals they’ve laid out before the biggest televised audiences they might attract all year.

Donald Trump did just that as a new president eight years ago, but this time he appears to be staying put, Peter Nicholas, Olympia Sonnier and Yamiche Alcindor report.

Coming off his address Tuesday night, Trump had no post-speech travel in the offing, a senior administration official said. He remained at the White House on Wednesday, meeting with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to discuss government funding.

No place like home: Trump has kept presidential travel to a minimum in his second term.

Apart from a whirlwind two-day trip that included stops in North Carolina, California and Nevada in the first week of his new term and a stop in New Orleans last month for the Super Bowl, Trump’s only travel outside Washington has been to South Florida, where he has a home and ready access to his golf clubs.

The reason appears to be twofold. One, Trump has long been a bit of a homebody, relishing the gilded comforts of his Palm Beach and northern New Jersey resorts, along with his namesake Manhattan tower.

“He likes sleeping in his own bed,” a White House official in Trump’s first term said in an interview. “He doesn’t like hotels. He was more than happy to give a speech somewhere as long as he could fly out the same day and sleep in his own bed.”

Two, in terms of raw politics, Trump’s name won’t be on the ballot again, meaning there’s no compelling need to blanket the swing states. A person involved in Trump’s political operation said the next time he has to travel for political reasons “will be for the midterms to sell candidates.”

Delegating tasks: Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance has been eager to hit the road, visiting the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Texas, today.

Read more →

As the U.S. rolls more assistance back, Ukraine scrambles on next steps

By Andrea Mitchell

You rarely, if ever, see a CIA director reveal on national television that the United States is stopping intelligence-sharing with a wartime ally, on top of halting weapons shipments, as John Ratcliffe did today on Fox Business.

The message to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: There are consequences for not obeying the will of the American president. European NATO partners are scrambling to backfill for what the United States isn’t providing, but they don’t have the air defenses or intelligence assets that only the United States can offer.

Now, French President Emmanuel Macron is proposing a partial ceasefire. Zelenskyy is doing verbal backflips, repeatedly apologizing for challenging President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Friday. And Trump signaled in his speech to Congress that he might be open to resume negotiations with Ukraine while declaring he has received “strong signals the Russians are ready for peace.”

“Wouldn’t that be beautiful?” he added.

Indeed, if Russian leader Vladimir Putin were ready for peace, other than on his terms, it would be “beautiful.” But there is no U.S. intelligence assessment or evidence from the tempo of Russian attacks against Ukraine indicating that’s true.

Still, even some of Ukraine’s strongest European supporters tell me they wish Zelenskyy had found a way to be more diplomatic and flatter Trump last week. Although they understand that the leader of a besieged nation can’t easily ignore that 20,000 Ukrainian children have been kidnapped by Russia and given new names and identities when he hears Trump extol Putin as a partner in peace.

For decades, U.S. presidents of both parties have supported NATO as a multilateral bulwark against the former Soviet Union and now Russia. This administration’s sudden reversal of that bipartisan foreign policy is shocking enough. But since Friday’s Oval Office showdown with Zelenskyy, the transformation of lifelong cold warriors is truly head-spinning.

A few stalwarts are beginning to speak up. Asked last night about the halt in U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said: “Look, if I am Putin, I’m loving a pause, I’m plussing up troops at the border, I’m trying to get more drones from Iran, I’m trying to get more crap from North Korea, I’m getting the illicit money coming from China, and I’m loving a pause and I’m loving a cessation of a resupply to Ukraine.”

What’s Tillis’ message to the administration?

He said, “Putin’s a liar and a murderer. Let’s get it right with Ukraine.”

Poll result

Yesterday, we asked you how long you thought Trump’s speech to Congress would last. The most common answer was 90 minutes — not far off from the roughly 100 minutes he ended up going for.

Trump set a record for the longest speech to a joint session of Congress or State of the Union address, besting Bill Clinton, who spoke for nearly 89 minutes in 2000, according to the University of California-Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project.

🗞️ Today's other top stories

• 🚗 Off-ramp? Trump continued to send mixed signals about his tariffs plan, granting U.S. automakers a one-month reprieve on new 25% duties imposed on Canada and Mexico, while continuing to deem Canada's efforts to tackle drug and migrant flows insufficient. Read more →

• ➡️ Hostage negotiations: The Trump administration is engaging in direct talks with Hamas over the release of U.S. hostages still held in the Gaza Strip. Trump issued a “last warning” to Hamas on Truth Social. Read more →

• ⚖️ SCOTUS watch: The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to avoid paying USAID contractors in a 5-4 decision. Read more →

• 🤔 On second thought: The Trump administration is rethinking its immigrant detention plans for Guantánamo Bay amid cost issues and power struggles. Read more →

• 🗣️ Musk's musings: Elon Musk suggested that the U.S. government should privatize "as much as possible," name-checking Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service. Musk also met with Senate Republicans to discuss DOGE’s spending cuts, providing members with his personal cellphone number. Read more →

• 💬 On the record: A new court filing quotes Trump’s address to Congress to argue the administration has affirmed Musk is the head of DOGE, despite court filings claiming the contrary. Read more →

• 🪧 Protest fallout: House Republicans teed up a vote to censure Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, after he disrupted Trump’s speech. Read more →

• ⚫ RIP: First-term Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, died after a medical emergency. He was 70. Read more →

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Ben Kamisar.

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This article was originally published on NBCNews.com