Nancy Pelosi Invites President Trump To Give The State of the Union on February 4, 2020

From the Washington Times:

President Trump quickly accepted an invitation Friday from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver the annual State of the Union address on Feb. 4.

White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley confirmed that the president will give the traditional address on that date — a day after the Iowa caucuses.

The prime-time speech will place Mr. Trump on the Speaker’s rostrum to confront House Democrats just two months after they voted to impeach him over his dealings with Ukraine.

Mrs. Pelosi, in a letter to the president sent two days after the impeachment vote, said her invitation was “in the spirit of respecting our Constitution.”

The timing of the annual prime-time speech could conflict with a Senate trial over Mr. Trump’s impeachment, which Republicans are hoping to start sometime in January. Mrs. Pelosi is refusing to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate until she’s convinced that the GOP will hold a fair trial.

Bloomberg reports:

President Donald Trump accepted an invitation from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver his annual State of the Union address to a joint meeting of Congress, two days after she oversaw his impeachment. 

The Feb. 4 speech may fall in the middle of Trump’s Senate trial for alleged high crimes and misdemeanors, or it may give Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell extra incentive to wrap up the proceedings.

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McConnell, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are wrangling over the contours of the trial, its length and whether witnesses will be called. 

Pelosi’s invitation reflects the political reality that the chances Trump will be removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate, either by February or later, are remote.

Checks and Balances 

“In their great wisdom, our founders crafted a Constitution based on a system of separation of powers: three co-equal branches acting as checks on each other,” Pelosi said in her letter to Trump on Friday. 

“In the spirit of respecting our Constitution, I invite you to deliver your State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2020, in the chamber of the House of Representatives,” Pelosi wrote.

In a scathing letter to Pelosi on Tuesday, Trump said that “do-nothing” Democrats were committing an unconstitutional abuse of power in impeaching him. 

Trial Standoff

“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem witch trials,” Trump wrote.

The State of the Union will put Trump in the same room with the House Democrats who made him the third president to be impeached in U.S. history. 

A State of the Union address during an impeachment trial is not without precedent. In 1999, President Bill Clinton gave his address during his Senate impeachment trial.

The House voted on a nearly party-line basis with 229 Democrats and one independent voting to impeach him for allegedly abusing his power by withholding financial aid and a White House meeting as a way to pressure Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. No Republicans voted for that article and two Democrats voted against it.

Three Democrats voted against the second article, which alleges that Trump obstructed Congress’s investigation into the Ukraine situation.