Trump avoided self-harm in his State of the Union speech. He also missed self-help.

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was defined in many respects not by what he said but by what he avoided saying.

There were the mistakes he avoided making: Trump did not attack the Supreme Court. He did not blitz members of his own party who have criticized him. He avoided rambling, angry digressions from the script.

Then there were the issues he avoided addressing: Trump offered no new ideas on housing or health care, two defining issues of the midterm campaign. He made no mention of the Jeffrey Epstein scandals consuming politics in Washington and far beyond. He did not clarify his policy toward Iran, even as he masses air and naval forces in the region.

It was, for better or worse, a speech not likely to change the political trajectory of Trump’s second term. The historically long address was, in some ways, nearly indistinguishable from Trump’s daily patter in the Oval Office, on Air Force One or in the White House driveway.

For some leaders in the president’s party, mindful of his capacity for political self-harm, that might be cause for relief. Republicans wake up on Wednesday morning with no political problems they did not have the day before.

Yet the status quo of the midterm campaign does not favor the GOP: Trump is on the defensive on many of the issues driving the election cycle so far. That, too, did not change.

“In some ways, this was Trump’s finest — it was a full patriotic projection,” said GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett, who served in Trump’s first administration. “It was aspirational, emotive. Yet in terms of a political speech there was no policy prescription that will guide Republicans towards safer ground in the midterms.”

Another Republican operative, granted anonymity to discuss the president’s performance, expressed concern that the speech didn’t do enough to look forward.

“It’s all look behind, as great as it all is,” the operative said. “I wish we had more detailed steps to take, directing Congress to do more for people who are hurting.”

For some, Trump did exactly what he needed to do — offering plenty of red meat to a base hungry for the president to call out Democrats for their hypocrisy about inflation, blame former President Joe Biden and talk tough on illegal immigration.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said talking to so-called persuadable voters is a losing strategy that failed in 2018.

“Tonight changes that,” he said. “The president is not reaching out , he’s leading forward—game now on!”

The speech was replete with Trump’s usual flourishes — braggadocio, hyperbole, unscripted asides and anecdotes. He talked about the wars he stopped, the prices he has helped bring down and the “hundreds of billions of dollars” he’s brought in from foreign investments through tariffs and negotiations.

“We’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it,” Trump said. “People are asking me, ‘please, please please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore. We’re not used to winning in our country until you came along. We were just always losing.’”

Still, 13 months into a second term defined largely by the president’s outsized ambition and focus on personal prerogatives, be it his quest for a Nobel Peace Prize or determination to remodel and redecorate the White House complex, the remarks were also notable for their uncharacteristic restraint. The president remained disciplined even as he broke his own record for the longest State of the Union ever.

There was no mention of owning or annexing Greenland, which caused international chaos and strained the transatlantic alliance, just last month. In fact, foreign policy made up a relatively small part of his remarks given what a huge part of his agenda it has been.

With his approval rating stuck around 40 percent and Republicans increasingly nervous about the possibility of a midterm tsunami, Trump stuck to politically safer ground. He interspersed his remarks with several feel-good set-pieces, diverting the audience’s attention to the House balcony in an effort to rise above partisan politics: he cheered the gold-medal olympic hockey team; praised the Coast Guard rescue swimmer who saved an 11-year from the central Texas flooding, pinned medals and ribbons on war heroes and servicemen and prayed for a woman trying to conceive through IVF, whose drugs were cheaper because of TrumpRX.

That last point, a focus on economic issues and affordability, was an effort to shore up a growing liability.

Trump outlined the tax cuts enacted by Republicans last year and outlined additional policy proposals for Congress, urging lawmakers to aid prospective homeowners by preventing private equity firms from buying up single-family homes and to lower prescription drug costs for seniors.

But with the GOP holding such slim legislative majorities and the focus quickly turning to the campaign trail, the prospects for major legislative action this year are slim.

Asserting that consumer prices are coming down, Trump continued to attack Democrats as hypocrites for “suddenly” emphasizing affordability issues.

“You caused that problem,” Trump said to the Democratic side of the aisle. “Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them.”

His hectoring, especially when he turned to immigration issues, provoked a stronger reaction from a few Democratic lawmakers who weren’t able to stay quiet.

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Trump said to Democrats, over their refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats are demanding changes to how federal agents operate in the wake of the deadly shootings of protesters by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers carrying out raids in Minneapolis and several other cities.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — both frequent targets of the president’s attacks — shouted back.

“You have killed Americans,” Omar shouted, referencing Alex Pretti, the nurse who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis last month. “Alex wasn’t a criminal,” she said.

When some Democrats didn’t heed Trump’s call for lawmakers to stand at various points to show support for crime victims attacked by undocumented immigrants or parents seeking to prevent their children’s sexual transition, the president dismissed the entire party.

“These people are crazy,” he said. “They’re crazy.”

Trump looked to frame his dizzying return to the Oval Office — the upheaval caused by his predatory foreign policy, his punishing, unpredictable tariff regime and even the violence sparked by his immigration enforcement efforts — as a modern corollary to America’s original revolution, filling his speech with references to 1776 and the milestone 250th anniversary the country will mark in July.

“These first 250 years were just the beginning,” Trump said as he wrapped his speech. “The golden age of America is upon us. The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues because the flame of liberty and Independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot. And our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before.”

Lisa Kashinsky, Dasha Burns, Megan Messerly and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.