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Trump and Pelosi Exchange Snubs at the State of the Union Address
He declined to shake her outstretched hand. She omitted his ceremonial introduction and ripped up her copy of his speech.
transcript
Trump and Pelosi: Snubs, Then a Torn-Up Speech
President Trump declined to shake the hand of Speaker Nancy Pelosi before his State of the Union Address. The speaker then omitted the customary laudatory words from her introduction of him. After his address, she ripped up her copy of his speech.
Members of Congress, the president of the United States.
WASHINGTON — For President Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday night, the State of the Union was hostile.
The mutual snubbing began the moment Mr. Trump walked into the House chamber and continued until he finished speaking, when Ms. Pelosi stood, an expression of vague disgust on her face, and tore up her printed copy of his speech — in full view of the television cameras, while Mr. Trump had his back turned.
The interaction between Mr. Trump and Ms. Pelosi, who had led the drive to impeach him, was one of the most anticipated moments of the president’s appearance at the Capitol the night before the Senate is expected to acquit him in his impeachment trial. The two had not seen each other since October, when Ms. Pelosi abruptly left a White House meeting after lecturing a scowling Mr. Trump.
On Tuesday night, the sour dynamic was on display from the start. When Mr. Trump stepped up to the rostrum in the House of Representatives and handed her his speech, Ms. Pelosi rose and extended her hand to shake his. Mr. Trump turned his back, and the speaker quickly withdrew her hand, appearing to shrug slightly and raise her eyebrows as if to say, “Well, I tried.”
Then Ms. Pelosi dealt Mr. Trump a slight of her own by omitting the customary laudatory words in her introduction of the president. Normally, she would have said, “I have the high privilege and distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the United States.”
Instead, she said simply, “Members of Congress, the president of the United States.”
But it was the flourish at the end — when Ms. Pelosi made a point of picking up her copy of the speech, ripping it in half and throwing the pieces on the table in front of her — that grabbed the attention of the public and drew the ire of Republicans. The gesture was particularly out of character for the speaker, who prides herself on exhibiting proper decorum.
Republicans seized on the speech-ripping as beyond the pale.
“@SpeakerPelosi had a tantrum, disgraced herself and dishonored the House,” Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, wrote on Twitter. “She is an embarrassment and unfit for office.”
Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, sounded almost gleeful. “Nancy & the Dems couldn’t stand what they were hearing because it was all good news for Americans!” he wrote on Twitter. “Rip up the speech, Nancy! You’ll want to rip up the election results in November too!”
Predictably, there were deep partisan divisions over who was behaving poorly to whom. Democrats were focused on Mr. Trump’s handshake snub, which Ms. Pelosi later spotlighted on Twitter, along with a photograph of the president turning his back.
“Democrats will never stop extending the hand of friendship to get the job done #ForThePeople,” she wrote, using the party’s campaign slogan. “We will work to find common ground where we can, but will stand our ground where we cannot. #SOTU”
During the address, as Mr. Trump read from the teleprompter, Ms. Pelosi, dressed in white — the color of the suffragists, worn by many of the Democratic women in the chamber — could be seen behind him, paging through his speech. Practiced at maintaining a stone face (she served as House speaker alongside another Republican president, George W. Bush), she kept her lips pursed and her eyes down, mostly remaining seated as Republicans rose to give Mr. Trump one standing ovation after another.
But when Mr. Trump made mention of the First Step Act, the bipartisan legislation that overhauled criminal justice reforms, Ms. Pelosi clapped and rose to her feet.
The relationship between Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Trump has long been one of the most closely watched in Washington — and it began going downhill even before Ms. Pelosi became House speaker. Mr. Trump tried to undercut her during an Oval Office meeting shortly after Democrats swept to the majority in 2018. Ms. Pelosi would have none of it.
“Mr. President,” she shot back, “please don’t characterize the strength that I bring to this meeting as the leader of the House Democrats, who just won a big victory.” When the meeting was over, images of Ms. Pelosi leaving the White House in a swingy red coat quickly went viral.
From there, their interactions seemed defined by a series of memes and public spats. Ms. Pelosi called off last year’s State of the Union address because of the government shutdown, enraging Mr. Trump and prompting him to cancel a flight she had scheduled overseas. When his speech was rescheduled, Ms. Pelosi was captured smirking and clapping at the president. When they met in October, a White House photographer snapped an image of the speaker standing up and wagging her finger at the seated president while she lectured him.
But none of that came close to the spectacle in the House chamber Tuesday night, on the eve of the president’s expected acquittal in the Republican-led Senate on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in connection with his campaign to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
Ms. Pelosi has said that regardless of the Senate outcome, Mr. Trump will be “impeached forever,” as she said in an interview on Monday. She also made a point of saying that she planned to treat the president at the State of the Union address “with the respect that he deserves,” though she added that she did not necessarily expect the same from him.
“We will treat him as a guest in our House — and we hope he will behave as a guest in our House,” she said. “But we never have that expectation.”
After her display of disdain on Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi told reporters that she had ripped up the speech “because it was a manifesto of mistruths.” Earlier, she had said that it was the “courteous thing to do, considering the alternatives.” She did not elaborate on what else she had considered.
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
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