“I don’t see it happening,” said one senior White House official.

“There’s always an expectation that he can’t rise to the occasion, or that he will make an off-the-cuff remark or do something that takes away from the moment,” the official added, “but those predictions are always wrong and they will be this year too.”

Of course, the president will have plenty of grievances to air. But the White House wants Trump to do so in a manner that allows him to tout the least controversial achievements of his presidency, including low unemployment rates, steady job growth and the bipartisan trade pact with Canada and Mexico.

It’s a message aimed squarely at the American public — not a Congress riven by the worst partisan acrimony Washington has seen in decades.

The speech will come just hours after the first votes are cast for 2020 Democratic hopefuls, whom Trump has accused of promoting “the destruction of the American dream,” days after Trump’s Senate impeachment trial is expected to end in acquittal and weeks after the administration’s deadly strike against an Iranian general nearly drove American forces into war.

Trump is expected to speak generously about his prior actions, and focus less on legislative goals for a potential second term. A list of White House talking points circulated to Trump allies on Thursday previewed a dozen items that Trump is likely to weave into his speech. Each appeared specifically designed to energize traditional Republican voters — including his trade agreements with Mexico, Canada and China; border-security enhancements; judicial nominations and religious freedom protections.

Larry Kudlow, the president's top economic adviser, cited Trump’s recent appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as a roadmap for his third State of the Union. Trump’s speech at Davos marked a departure from campaign rallies, where the president often shames his political opponents by name and accuses them of patronizing his supporters. Instead, Trump’s remarks underscored the “stunning turnaround” of the U.S. economy that “foolish fortune-tellers” failed to predict.

“The time for skepticism is over. America’s newfound prosperity is undeniable, unprecedented and unmatched anywhere in the world,” Trump said.

Officials familiar with the speech said the president will also highlight his administration's efforts on criminal justice reform and the opioid epidemic in a bid to appeal to independent voters and conservatives who may disagree with his trade and immigration policies. In previous years, Trump included ambitious and seemingly out-of-the-blue promises — such as ending the HIV epidemic or confronting childhood cancer — that he rarely, if ever, mentioned in front of his base.

Notably, Trump is not expected to use the speech to outline his goals for a second term. To the extent that he will identify future targets, officials said health care reform, bilateral trade deals and a middle-class tax cut package would be it. President Barack Obama also leaned into his administration's achievements — as opposed to sketching out a second-term agenda — when he delivered his State of the Union while seeking re-election in 2012.

Kudlow said he expects that Trump will mention “tax cuts 2.0” and his desire to broker separate trade deals with the United Kingdom and European Union. But “in the main, it’s going to be about our achievements and the health of the economy.”

“I don’t see this as a blueprint for next year,” Kudlow told POLITICO.

Led by White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, White House speechwriters began working on the address after Trump returned from Davos last week. Two officials said Miller has kept the working draft under tight wraps — only sharing relevant excerpts with agency officials and Cabinet secretaries, instead of letting them view the draft themselves — for fear of it leaking before the president arrives at the Capitol Tuesday evening.

The White House is expected to brief reporters on the overall theme of Trump’s speech on Friday. As he’s done in past years, Trump has also solicited the input of outside stakeholders as he tinkers with the speech himself. Some conservative allies said they were invited to a White House strategy session on Friday, during which they can make suggestions related to the content of the speech.

With the Senate due to cast their verdict in Trump’s impeachment trial while the speech is still being drafted, officials cautioned that the current draft is fluid and could change based on what unfolds in the upper chamber. However, Kudlow said the president and his team are currently “working on one draft” instead of having separate speeches prepared in case the Senate trial bleeds into next week.

One Republican close to Trump said this year’s State of the Union address — potentially the last one the president will give if he loses in November — is more important than previous years because of the timing. Not only will it allow Trump to take his first victory lap after an expected Senate acquittal, it’s also an opportunity to speak to millions of voters who may not have followed wall-to-wall coverage of his impeachment trial. An estimated 9.3 million people watched live coverage of the Senate trial across six networks on Monday, according to Nielsen, compared to 46.8 million who tuned into the State of the Union last February.

Meanwhile, Democrats are planning to rebut the president’s address by contrasting their own policy agenda with his — focusing particularly on economic and trade policies they believe would contribute to greater growth and income equality in parts of the country that voted for Trump in 2016.

“I think what the people of our country are craving is a vision — a vision that actually improves their lives and that’s what I’m going to stay focused on,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who will deliver the official Democratic rebuttal along with Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), told a Detroit outlet on Thursday.

Nancy Cook and Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.