Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, believes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would be making a big mistake by postponing or disinviting President Trump from delivering the expected State of the Union address on Jan. 29, calling the move a terrible precedent to set.
“That’s silly,” Crenshaw said in an interview Wednesday. “Stop with the political stone-throwing and posturing. The president … has every right to make his case just as they have every right to make their case.”
Pelosi, D-Calif., sent a letter to Trump Wednesday morning calling for a delay in the annual address, citing “security concerns” as neither the Secret Service nor the Department of Homeland Security is funded due to the ongoing partial government shutdown.
“Everybody should go up and make their points and see which one is more convincing, and I think their side is far less convincing,” Crenshaw said. “It’s a terrible precedent to set to disinvite the president from the State of the Union.”
The newly minted Texas congressman, 34, a former Navy SEAL who was seriously wounded in Iraq in 2012, said the move “turns the State of the Union into even more of a political charade than it already is every year, and that’s not a good place to be.”
In her letter, Pelosi suggested she and the president work together to choose a new date or the president could submit the address in writing on Jan. 29.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen shot back at Pelosi later Wednesday, saying that the department and the Secret Service are “fully prepared” to staff the address.
Historically, the State of the Union has not always been delivered in a public speech before Congress. President George Washington did deliver an annual speech, but that was discontinued by President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 then renewed under President Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Some presidents have forgone a public address even after Wilson’s move: President Jimmy Carter was the last to do so in 1981.
