House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) committed not to tear up President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, taking a dig at the stunt from his predecessor, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), during the 2020 address.
McCarthy said he will be “respectful” during the speech Tuesday night, telling reporters on the eve of the event that his reverence for the office of the president overrides his frustrations with Biden. During former President Donald Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, Pelosi tore up her copy of his remarks at the end of the speech.
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“I won’t tear up the speech. I won’t play games. I’m very respectful,” McCarthy told reporters. “I think it’s an important night in all aspects. … I want to treat the office itself with the honor and dignity that it deserves.”
The speaker of the House is highly visible during the State of the Union address, sitting behind the president and next to the vice president. Pelosi told USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page that she did so out of frustration with apparent falsehoods in Trump’s speech.
“So, she made a tiny tear in the margin of the paper so that she could find this untruth,” Page told CNN. “Then she found another thing she thought was untrue, and another, and another. She said by the time he was through speaking, the whole speech had little tears along the margins of things he had said that she said she thought were false. That’s when she decided, ‘I might as well tear this up.'”
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McCarthy and Biden met last week to discuss the debt ceiling problem as the Republican-controlled House fights the Democratic Senate and White House for spending cuts to go along with any increase to the borrowing limit.
