House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday derailed President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, forcing the president to put his views before the nation another way. She said he can’t have access to the House chamber for the speech until the government reopens.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday derailed President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, forcing the president to put his views before the nation another way. She said he can’t have access to the House chamber for the speech until the government reopens.
Trump shot back that her decision was “a great blotch on the country that we all love” as the snub confronted him with the need for a backup plan. “We’ll do something in the alternative,” he said, while branding Democrats “radicalized.”
It was the latest round of brinkmanship between the president and Pelosi as they remain locked in an increasingly personal standoff over Trump’s demand for border wall money that has forced a partial government shutdown, now in its second month.
Pelosi asked Trump last week to make other plans but stopped short of denying him the chamber for his address. She issued that denial Wednesday after Trump told her he wanted to go ahead with it — in essence, calling her bluff.
In a letter to Pelosi earlier Wednesday, Trump dismissed her suggestion last week that the speech be postponed or delivered in writing due to security issues related to the partial government shutdown.
