Conservative grassroots leaders in the key battleground states of Ohio and Missouri have invited President Trump to deliver the State of the Union Address at local events sponsored by their groups.
Tom Zawistowski, president and founder of the We the People Convention based in Akron, Ohio, has invited the president to come to the Buckeye State to deliver next week’s address.
“While Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats don’t appear to be interested in the state of our union, we the people in Ohio want to hear from the president directly all the things that he has accomplished to date, and plans to accomplish over the next year,” Zawistowski told Breitbart News on Tuesday.
“We would be honored to host the president here in Ohio any time next week, and look forward to hearing if he will accept our invitation, which we are formally submitting to the White House today,” he added.
“You can be assured that he would have a very warm reception, despite the cold winter weather,” Zawistowski noted.
In the formal invitation sent to the president on Tuesday by the We the People convention to deliver the State of the Union Address in Ohio, Zawistoski wrote, “We have an excellent facility in the Celeste Center at the Ohio State Fair Grounds in Columbus which is centrally located so that citizens from all over Ohio could easily attend your address.”
Bill Hennessy, co-founder and president of the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition, told Breitbart News on Tuesday he has also invited the president to deliver next week’s address in the Show Me State.
“The St. Louis Tea Party Coalition would be tickled pink to host President Trump’s State of the Union Address, because the state of the union has never been better than under President Trump’s leadership,” Hennessy said.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that the president intends to deliver a State of the Union address next week, either to a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C. of at another location outside of the nation’s capital.
Both the Speaker of the North Carolina State House of Representatives and the Speaker of the Michigan State House of Representatives have formally invited the president to deliver the traditional annual address in their respective chambers.
The Constitution requires the president to deliver a written report on the State of the Union to Congress “from time to time.” By tradition, presidents since George Washington, our first president, have delivered that written address annually. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson began the tradition of presidents delivering the address in person, as well, to a joint session of Congress meeting in the chambers of the United States House of Representatives.
On January 3, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) formally invited President Trump to deliver the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the chambers of the U.S. House of Representatives on January 29. The president accepted that invitation.
However, on January 16, Speaker Pelosi withdrew that invitation and asked the president to postpone or reschedule his planned January 29 State of the Union Address, citing the partial federal shutdown. That partial shutdown began on December 22, 2018, 12 days before she became Speaker of the House.
Breitbart News reported on Tuesday, “The administration had sent a letter to the sergeant at arms of the House of Representatives to request access to the House chamber for security planning for the event.”
“It is unclear whether Speaker Nancy Pelosi will order the House Sergeant to deny them access,” Breitbart News noted.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany said on Breitbart News Saturday on Sirius XM that the president might forego delivering the State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., and instead deliver the address at a number of locations outside of the nation’s capital, which could include the southern border.
“Think about what’s really going on here. This is not about security concerns . . . What it’s about is her depriving the president of a national political stage where he can very adeptly showcase the number of Americans who are wronged by illegal immigration,” McEnany said of Speaker Pelosi’s decision to disinvite the president from delivering the January 29 State of the Union Address in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“The Speaker of the House of the State House in North Carolina and the Speaker of the House of the State House in Michigan, two different states . . . have all invited the president to go give the State of the Union there,” Breitbart News Saturday host and Breitbart Washington editor Matt Boyle noted.
“What do you think about that?” Boyle asked McEnaney.
“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” McEnany responded.
“I don’t want to get ahead of the president and what he plans to do, but what I did hear another commentator say, I thought it was a rather good idea, go give it on the southern border, invite all the Angel Moms and Dads,” she added.
Appearing on Fox Business News’s Trish Regan Prime Time program on Monday, former White House adviser Sebastian Gorka said that he expected the president would tweet about his State of the Union plans some time this week.