Donald Trump’s first State of the Union (SOTU) address of his second term is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 24, and Democrats are already working on how they’ll respond.
The New York Times reports that many Democratic members of Congress are planning to boycott it.
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“We cannot normalize this moment when Trump is marching our country toward fascism,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-CT), who has been one of the administration’s sharpest critics in Congress, told the New York Times. “I refuse to be a prop in the chamber as Donald Trump shreds our Constitution and attacks our democracy.”
“He’s made a mockery of the State of the Union speech, and he doesn’t deserve an audience. He’s going to tell 40 different lies, call Democrats names; he’s going to paper over his corruption; and I don’t feel like what he’s doing dignifies having Democrats there to cloak the speech in a veneer of respectability,” Van Hollen added.
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Trans ally Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is also going to skip the SOTU, as well as out Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who is the mother of a trans child. Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Reps. Greg Casar (D-TX) and Delia Ramirez (D-IL) also said they aren’t going.
Instead, they’re planning to attend a separate rally that’s being organized by the progressive organization MoveOn and the left-leaning media outlet MeidasTouch.
Members of the party that’s out of power almost always attend the State of the Union address. Congressional Democrats attended all of Trump’s SOTUs during his first term in office, and most attended last year’s address to a joint session of Congress (a SOTU-esque speech for a first year in office).
According to the Times, there is no precedent for a large part of the opposition party to boycott the SOTU.
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