CNN’s The Point notes that Speaker Pelosi is refusing to bring the necessary resolution to the floor of the House which would permit President Trump to deliver the traditional State of the Union speech to Congress (reportedly Majority Leader Senator McConnell has also failed to do so for the Senate), purportedly (according to other sources) because the shutdown has made security for the President a more difficult matter. Cillizza wonders if Pelosi’s taking a chance:
But the question is whether voters who may not like Trump but who just want the government to reopen and politicians to get back to working for the people who voted them into office will see Pelosi’s move to effectively cancel the State of the Union as an unnecessary provocation. And whether Trump, who is desperately in search of a life preserver in this whole mess, can seize on Pelosi’s decision as evidence that the left is trying to silence him.
My guess is he’s going to try like hell to make that case.
I really don’t see it. President Trump is in full possession of the “bully pulpit,” as President T. Roosevelt called it, and all he need do is announce that he’s going to give the State of the Union speech from the Oval Office, or in front of a campfire out in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, and the media will cover it. It’s not statutorily required that he deliver a speech to Congress, only that he deliver a description of the State of the Union to them. [Ten hours later, I see Pelosi actually said as much, if somewhat more temperately.]
Hell, I’ll just whisper it: He could deliver the whole damn thing via Twitter and it’d almost certainly be legal.
So I think Cillizza is worrying over something that’s irrelevant. He also quotes Presidential son Donald Trump, Jr.:
“Speaker Pelosi is clearly attempting to block my father from giving his State of the Union speech, not because 20% of the government is shut down, but because she is terrified of him having another opportunity to speak directly to the American people about her party’s obstruction, unfiltered and without her friends in the media running interference for her.”
Jr. is clearly off the rails. Anytime Trump wants to give a speech, it’ll get out on the media “unfiltered,” and there’s not a damn thing Speaker Pelosi can do but respond.
The real trouble for the President is that his ammunition is so wet, his position & character so weak, his failure to retain the House so obvious to everyone that gives a damn, that everyone outside of his completely committed base knows better than to take him in the least seriously. They’ll wait for their favorite fact-checking service to correct any fact or figure before evaluating, and their evaluations will, in the main, run against the President.
So I take Pelosi’s move as another quiet jab of disrespect from one co-equal branch of the government to another. Pelosi’s reportedly trying to reform the House, repairing the damage done to its processes and institutions by GOP leadership dating back to Gingrich’s days, and by implication she’s setting a very high bar.
And I think she’s telling Trump and McConnell that they’re expected to make it over that bar. They won’t. Trump won’t try, he’ll sit on the ground and cry about it, because that’s his style, and McConnell won’t bother, because he won’t do anything without Trump’s permission.
Pelosi’s brandishing a whip. Will Trump dance to her tune? Trump, Jr.’s first response suggests they know there’s a danger here, and they need to obviate it. The Trump problem? They have a history of fouling this sort of thing up.
