March 4, 2025
President Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress of his second term was the longest such speech in history and it was eventful.
I’ve never seen this happen before but the house speaker threw a sitting member of the United States house of representative out of the chamber. Representative Al Green a Democrat from Texas was escorted out of the chamber by the sergeant at arms for disrupting president trump’s speech.
So what was the representative upset about? Well he started shouting when trump was talking about his election victory. Green stood in the aisle and raised his cane saying “no mandate” suggesting that trump’s victory was not as large as he suggested.
Representative Green is no fan of Trump. He filed impeachment articles against Trump during his first term and has said he plans to pursue impeachment against Trump again.
But outbursts during a presidential speech to Congress are not new. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green yelled “Laken Riley” at President Biden during his state of the union last year. The year before that she stood up shouting “liar” over and over at President Biden during his speech and in 2022 Representative Lauren Boebert shouted out at President Biden as he spoke about burn pits. For the record none of those members of the House were not thrown out of the chamber and President Biden continued to speak.
Besides that drama – a few other tidbits. Trump spoke for a whopping one hour and 40 minutes. Which makes this the longest speech a president has delivered to the joint session of congress or for a state of the union. The second longest speech was President Clinton’s state of the union in 2000 which clocked in at one hour and 29 minutes.
Congress applauded him more than 95 times. Though –the applause really only came from republicans. You can see democrats sitting down. Most of them in wearing pink. According to the chair of the Democratic women’s caucus they were wearing pink to protest what they say are trump’s actions that put their safety and security at risk.
There was one special moment that Democrats and Republicans did both applaud for. That’s when President Trump asked the US secret service to make a 13 year old cancer survivor who wants to be a police officer when he grows up — an honorary secret service agent.
Other tidbits — only four of the nine supreme court justices attended. Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were there.
You guys always want to know who the designated survivor is. This year it was the Veteran’s Affairs secretary Doug Collins. The designated survivor is a person in the presidential line of succession who is kept away from others in the line when they are gathered together in the same place. If there is some kind of catastrophic event and the entire line of succession is wiped out the designated survivor will become the leader of the country. Obviously, it’s never happened, but it’s just a precaution.
