By
John Wojcik
Two
of the women most in the news these days delivered blows to two of the nation’s
most powerful and increasingly unpopular men. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
actually pulled off on January 16 what might be the only good thing to result
from the government shutdown: the possible cancellation of President Trump’s
State of the Union address.
Pelosi
released copies of a letter she sent to the president saying that because of
the Trump shutdown, the annual State of the Union, scheduled for January 29,
should either be postponed or sent to Congress in written form.
One
can only imagine the president’s reaction when he found himself outmaneuvered
by the woman who had engineered passage of the Affordable Care Act and passage
of the biggest economic stimulus package in U.S. history—accomplishments that dwarf
Trump’s real estate deals.
Meanwhile,
New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez led four freshman congresswomen in a
nationally televised hunt all over the Capitol for Republican Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell. The GOP leader ran all over Capitol Hill to avoid the
women who were publicly holding him accountable for not acting to end the
government shutdown. They chased him from his office to the cloakroom and onto
the Senate floor from where he apparently fled on the Senate subway to another office
building in D.C.
“He
seems to be running away from us,” Ocasio-Cortez, 29, the youngest female
member of Congress in history, said live on national television. She represents
sections of Queens and the Bronx in New York City.
Though
the language Pelosi used in her letter to Trump was polite, her deputy leader,
Steny Hoyer, said on MSNBC yesterday that it was unquestionably a
“dis-invitation” to the president from giving the speech.
Stephen
Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant right-wing adviser, has been spending weeks
writing drafts of the Trump speech, which they had hoped would be a nationally
televised propaganda coup at what has become a solemn annual event—the State of
the Union held every January. The misogynist in the White House is reportedly none
too happy about being bested by a powerful female leader of the U.S. Congress.
Denying him TV time is just about the worst thing one can do to this president.
Accompanying
Ocasio-Cortez in the McConnell chase was Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, an
African American who was elected in a district that is 80 percent white, and
Reps. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut and Katie Hill of California. All of them
freshmen lawmakers, they said they would not sit by as the government shutdown
continues.
The
House, they noted, has passed Republican bills that would reopen the government
but McConnell has refused to present them to the Senate.
It
wasn’t just the powerful women of Congress giving Trump trouble yesterday. His
own lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, was also on television saying
things that must make Trump more than a bit uncomfortable.
Giuliani
made news when he claimed that he never denied the president’s campaign
colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election, only that the
president himself was not part of any collusion. He told CNN that he didn’t
know, for example, whether campaign manager Paul Manafort was working with the
Kremlin during the campaign!
The
Giuliani remarks were followed by almost all the networks showing at least ten
different tweets from Trump claiming that there was no collusion by him or his
campaign with the Russians.
After
a day like Wednesday, perhaps Trump and the Republicans will learn that things
like midterm elections and a free press are not things they can ignore forever.
But, of course, to expect that is probably hoping against hope. (IPA Service)
Courtesy:
People’s World
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