Why did Nancy Pelosi tear Trump’s SOTU speech? Speaker had expected some healthcare policy, claims biography
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sparked outrage when she tore a copy of then-President Donald Trump's State of the Union Address at a joint session of Congress in 2020. Now, the "real reason" why she tore up the speech has been revealed.
“I thought it was terrible,” Trump said of the act. “I thought it was very disrespectful to the chamber, to the country.” Meanwhile, then-Vice President Mike Pence accused Pelosi of planning the stunt in advance and condemned the action. “I wasn’t sure if she was ripping up the speech or ripping up the Constitution,” Pence said. “To have her stand up and tear up that speech really dishonored the moment.” A new biography titled, 'Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power' has now revealed why she had done it.
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Pelosi had told several publications in the aftermath of the backlash that she had "no intention” of tearing up the speech beforehand. “I had no intention of doing that when we went to the State of the Union,” she said in February 2020.
Pelosi told journalist Christian Amanpour that she wanted to “get attention” on the “objectionable” parts of the “terrible” SOTU address. Now it has emerged that one of those key "objectionable" parts relates directly to honoring late conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh, who died of lung cancer earlier this year.
The moment that reportedly set her over the top was the honoring of Limbaugh with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dramatically ripped up President Donald Trump‘s State of the Union speech last year because she had been promised a big announcement on healthcare or opioids,” the Daily Mail reported. “Instead, Trump gave Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
Author Susan Page said that then-Vice President Mike Pence had discussed the possibility of mentioning healthcare in the SOTU address. “Oh, you’re going to be very happy about what he says tonight,” Pence reportedly told Pelosi. However, Trump went on to brand Obamacare "socialist" and only briefly mentioned his administration's efforts to battle the nationwide opioid crisis.
Based on her interview with Pelosi, Page said that the California Democrat "felt her temperature rising" when Trump pivoted to honoring Limbaugh and First Lady Melania Trump put the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his neck. “I thought, ‘This page is so full of lies, I want to be able to come back to it,'” Pelosi told Page, per the book.
The Speaker continued making small tears in her copy of the speech as she had indeed forgotten her pen. “I should have probably had a pen in the drawer, but I didn’t have a pen right there,” Pelosi said.
“She made a little tear in the next page to mark another assertion she saw as untrue,” Page explained in her book. “And the next. By the time he was halfway through the speech, it occurred to her that she might just as well tear the whole thing in half, but she wasn’t ready to decide that yet.”
Pelosi also revealed how infuriated she and her colleagues were with Trump's address.
“My members were furious,” Pelosi said. "You could see steam coming out of the caucus. I’m not talking about the left-wing; I’m talking about all of the members. They were so offended. He used the Congress, the House chamber, as a reality-show set,” she continued. “And then he had no reality in his speech. People were just furious.”
Page described the Speaker's partisan outburst as the "most public display of disrespect in modern times" in US political history.
”It would be the most public display of disrespect in modern times from the leader of one branch of government to another, delivered almost face-to-face,” Page wrote.