Trump whines to Pelosi: 'It would be so very sad' if I can’t give SOTU

Trump’s desire to deliver a televised State of the Union to Congress has reached a new level of sad desperation.

The White House announced this week that Trump was making plans to address Congress next Tuesday, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling him he shouldn’t bother unless and until he ends his shutdown and reopens the government.

Now Trump has sent a rather pathetic letter to Pelosi, riddled with typically Trumpian phrases and questionable punctuation, insisting “it would be so very sad” if he could not have his big prime-time moment before Congress.

“Thank you for your letter of January 3, 2019, sent to me long after the Shutdown began, inviting me to address the Nation on January 29th as to the State of the Union,” Trump says,

Trump then insists that despite Pelosi’s concerns about the additional burden and cost of security in the midst of Trump’s shutdown — during which essential federal workers, including those tasked with protecting Trump and escorting him to such an event, are forced to work without pay — both the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service contacted him “to explain that there would be absolutely no problem” providing such security.

Trump of course does not bother to address the blatant cruelty of forcing those men and women to work without pay.

“Therefore,” he continues, “I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of the Union.”

Trump has no constitutional duty to deliver a prime-time speech in front of Congress. Simply writing a letter to Congress, to inform it of the state of the union — which is currently shut down, thanks to Trump — would suffice. It’s what presidents did before the existence of TV, and as Pelosi noted, it would be far more appropriate given Trump’s shutdown.

“It would be so very sad for our Country,” Trump concludes, “if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!”

It is quite obvious that the one person who is sad about the prospect of not holding a televised event before Congress is Trump.

Poll after poll after poll shows that the American people are far more sad that he has shut down the government, and taken the paychecks of nearly 1 million employees hostage — all to extort $5.7 billion for a wall most Americans don’t want.

Trump wants his TV time. That’s all he cares about. To publicly grovel for it is yet a further embarrassment to the office he holds.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.