Rep. Jason Smith Gets his Mad On

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

My congressman, a Republican by the name of Jason Smith, has a history of being a rubber stamp for the outrages and excesses of the Trump administration.  It wasn't surprising, therefore, to find Jason shedding bitter tears in his current weekly email report to the folks back home.  The lead in the most recent edition of his "Weekly Capitol Report" was a story about how awful House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is being to Congressman Smith's beloved Donald Trump.  The piece, which was purportedly written by Smith but had the smell of a product that was banged out by a group of chained interns working under the whip of House Republican leadership, opened with an attack on Pelosi and the terrible way that she has been picking on the four-hundred-pound gorilla in the White House:

"This week the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Pelosi’s leadership reached a new low. The obstruction to President Trump has threatened the livelihoods of the men and women who protect us, left our border unsecure, and now resulted in the postponement of a right given to our President in the U.S. Constitution – the State of the Union address."

That's fairly heady stuff, and at first glance one might assume that the entire government shutdown fiasco was the result of evil machinations by Nancy Pelosi.  What Congressman Smith fails to emphasize, however, is that when the shutdown began, Paul Ryan, a Republican, was the Speaker of the House, and that the force which brought the shutdown into being was Donald Trump's refusal to sign a spending bill that had been overwhelmingly passed by both houses of Congress.  Trump started the shutdown, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell enabled it, and it took a new Speaker, one named Nancy Pelosi, to come along and end it.

Jason then began the second paragraph of his newsletter with this bonehead statement:

"This week, Speaker Pelosi became the first Speaker of the House in history to prevent the President of the United States from delivering the State of the Union address."

The truth of the matter is this:  Nancy Pelosi outplayed Trump at every turn.  After she realized that Donald Trump had neither the intention nor the desire to end the shutdown under any terms other than his own, she adroitly suggested that he postpone his State of the Union speech or hold it somewhere other than in the House of Representatives, a government space that she and her political party now controlled.  Trump pushed back by preparing to deliver the speech in the House anyway, and at that point Pelosi pulled the plug and told him that would not be happening - at least not until after the shutdown ended.  Trump blinked.  A few days later he blinked again when he agreed to end the shutdown - at least temporarily - without his vanity wall.

Pelosi had won, bigly.

At no time did Nancy Pelosi deny Donald John Trump the right to report the "state of the union" to Congress.  He could have put it into a letter, as many Presidents historically have done in meeting their Constitutional obligation, or he could have held it in the Senate Chamber, or in any other government building, or in one of many state capitols where his presence would have been welcomed.  Heck, he could have even given his speech on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago!  However, the one place where Trump would not be giving his State of the Union speech was in the House of Representatives.  On that point Speaker Pelosi was exceedingly clear.

Now, back to Congressman Smith's opening remark:  "This week the U.S. House of Representatives under Speaker Pelosi's leadership reached a new low."  Technically, I would have to agree with that.  The House did reach a new low, but not due to any actions by Nancy Pelosi - or even Donald Trump.  The House reached a new low when a large and loud group of representatives began getting mouthy with each other one afternoon on the floor of the House, and one Republican member of Congress yelled at a group of Democratic lawmakers that they should "go back to Puerto Rico!"  And just where did that nasty bit of race-baiting come from?  Why it came from the mouth of my congressman, Representative Jason Smith of Missouri's 8th district.

Congressman Smith, your sanctimony and self-righteousness are astounding.  You should definitely look at getting your own "house" in order before you go after Speaker Pelosi!  You may disagree with her intentions, but she, at least, is well mannered.  You could learn from her leadership.