Trump Quarantined
by tristero
Good:
In her historic letter Wednesday morning, Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially disinvited Trump from delivering his address as planned on January 29. By way of explanation, her letter cited concerns about security stemming from the government shutdown.
The Politico article provides the obvious two other reasons Pelosi would disinvite Trump: (1) that certain new House members (you know who they are) wouldn't be nice to Trump and that would ultimately backfire for Democrats; and (2) a certain president would use the occasion to be very un-nice to Democrats and blame them for the shutdown.
But speaking personally, there are two far more compelling additional reasons.
First, and foremost, SOTU's are not that informative. If we really care to learn the state of the Union, we need a carefully researched, quite long, and non-partisan written document of some length that goes into detail on the state of our economy, our infrastructure, our foreign relations, our health (physical, mental, and cultural), and our environment. That can't be addressed in a serious manner with the kind of a partisan stunt that the SOTU has devolved into.
The related second reason is that the SOTU is unbearably boring. The standing ovations, the ritualized joking, the partisan commercialism...please. It's a total snooze fest, literally.
I'm not sure the Speaker had these reasons in mind, but I suspect that ultimately Pelosi may be playing a longer game with Trump of which this disinvite is but one example. She is seeking to quarantine him, refusing to provide him even the slightest opportunity to grandstand, preen, and provoke.
As Pelosi said: if he, all alone, wants to deliver the speech from the White House...whatever. But there is no reason that a separate branch of the government that is not beholden to Trump should lift a finger to promote the Trump brand or pretend the Trump/Putin presidency is normal.
Good for Pelosi.