President Donald Trump has said in his State of the Union address tonight, who will be calling for unity and an end to the partisan bickering that forced the most extended government shutdown in history.
Dispute Trump’s plans to make a plea for cooperation and pledge to find common ground with Democratic lawmakers, judging by a look at the Left’s guest list, they aren’t buying it.
According to Fox News, the Democrats are planning to “troll” Trump by bringing a guest to the State of the Union that are bound to stick in the craw of the president.
A Guest List of Left-Wing Activists and Immigrants
For example, flaky new democratic congresswoman, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.), said she would be bringing Ana Maria Archila, the activist who made headlines protesting against now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, by cornering then-Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator.
While Ocasio-Cortez has chosen to highlight the controversy surrounding Kavanaugh with her guest, other Democrats have guests who should be equally thorny to the president, such as individuals who they claim have been “directly affected” by the ongoing immigration debate and the recent partial government shutdown.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D- N.J., invited Victoria Morales, a Guatemalan woman living in the U.S. illegally, who reportedly was fired from the Trump National Golf Club.
Sandra Diaz, a native of Costa Rica who worked at Trump’s club from 2010 to 2013, also will be attending the State of the Union as a guest of Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California.
Diaz was also hired without legal papers. She is now a legal permanent U.S. resident and said she decided to speak out because she is angry about the president describing some immigrants as violent.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., invited a mother and daughter from Guatemala who was denied asylum in the U.S. and eventually was separated for two months last spring after they were caught illegally crossing the southern border.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who is running for president in 2020, invited Trisha Pesiri-Dybvik, an air traffic controller who lost her home in the 2017 Thomas Fire in Southern California and was one of the 800,000 federal workers who missed paychecks during the shutdown.
“Trisha Pesiri-Dybvik was one of the more than 800,000 federal workers whose paychecks were withheld during the shutdown — and it happened while her family was still recovering from losing their home in the Thomas Fire,” Harris wrote on Twitter. “I’m honored she will join me at the State of the Union.”
Democrats have also guests affected by gun violence, high drug, and insurance costs and the Trump administration’s changes to rules on transgender people in the military.
Democrats, however, do not have a monopoly on using the State of the Union guest list to score points and foster a political narrative.
Republicans are bringing guests ranging from survivors of sexual slavery in the Middle East to survivors of the opioid epidemic and Border Patrol agents.
However, despite both sides playing politics with the guest list, the official White House theme for the speech is “Choosing Greatness,” and the plan for the president’s second State-of-the-Union, is to pitch a message of political togetherness and reset relations with Democrats who took control of the lower house of Congress in the midterm elections and have made it their goal to stymie anything on the White House’s agenda.
But, will Trump stay on script, or lash out at a crowd that was intentionally seeded with hostile guests? That remains to be seen.
