“The best is yet to come,” Donald Trump had just said, when Nancy Pelosi provided it to him. Even before Trump turned to walk off the stage, the House Speaker made a show of tearing up his speech while the cameras were still pointed at the dais:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripped up her printed copy of President Trump’s State of the Union address as he concluded his remarks. #sotu https://t.co/lO6zVHAcxc pic.twitter.com/LWbPNuQEWd
— CNN (@CNN) February 5, 2020
To be fair, Trump had left Pelosi hanging when he first arrived on the dais, ignoring her outstretched hand after handing her the copy of the speech. Clearly there isn’t much love lost between these two; reportedly they haven’t spoken since October, when the impeachment push began in earnest. Both of them routinely slag the other in public, and probably have worse to say about each other in private.
This, however, is just petty beyond belief, and furthermore it’s not hers to rip up. The State of the Union message is a constitutional requirement, and his delivery to the Speaker is the official copy (as is the delivery to the Vice President as president of the Senate). Obviously, they’ll get another copy, but this is a disrespectful end to what had been a very good but straightforward SOTU.
I suspect that some on the Left will cheer this, but like the turnout in Iowa, they’ll be surprised when they find a lot of people they expect to laugh along haven’t materialized in anywhere near the numbers they predict.