Although it has been a year since Trump´s last State of the Union speech, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi let it be known that she had other thoughts concerning the speech, which led to her ripping it up. Recently, Pelosi has begun to open up about what made her decide to tear the speech up in the first place. She admitted that the reason was due to Trump´s failure to address the current state of the nation´s healthcare system or even the reality of a crisis occurring with opioids. Instead, Trump chose to make a highlight Rush Limbaugh and his earning of the highest civilian award by rewarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom and not the more important issues facing the United States.
As she sat behind the former president and on the side of former vice president Mike Pense, the cameras were able to catch every moment of her making tiny tears into the pages of the speech. Mainly, the tearing occurred because Pelosi had no pen on her to make little notes of all lies that Trump spoke. This juicy information about Pelosi’s response to Trump’s speech was made public after Daily Mail obtained excerpts from the new book about Pelosi titled Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power. The speech was made at the beginning of February 2020, prior to the pandemic being declared. At that time, aides had informed Pelosi of Trump´s intention to make a specific statement concerning the current crisis surrounding opioids and how they keep killing thousands of Americans, and the status of the healthcare system. The news about healthcare was even told to Pence by Pelosi, who had stated that she would be happy to hear what Trump mentions during the speech.
However, according to the book, it was made clear that everything that Trump spoke about shocked Pelosi, especially when he decided not to keep the promise he had made. In fact, Trump opted to mock the proposals Senator Sanders had suggested. Trump even went further by claiming that he had the opioid emergency under control, regardless of the countless many other lives that would succumb to it by overdose. It was also shocking for Pelosi to hear Trump select Rush Limbaugh with the Medal of Freedom award and not other important issues that plagued the nation, like healthcare. As she listened, she could feel her anger building. That was when Pelosi noticed Trump had no plans to keep the promise he had made to Pelosi while reading the speech that was prepared. Pelosi had thought to herself that the page Trump had read was nothing but lies, and had to be able to mark them as they were found. however, that was when Pelosi saw that she had no pen to do so. Pelosi had mentioned how she should have had a pen available, although none was there. Instead, she made the small tears in all of the spots marking each lie that was made. As the speech dragged on, Pelosi made tears on every page of the speech where she saw each untrue fact until the speech was complete. The speech that Pelosi made tears in was so torn that it did not seem viable to keep the speech whole anymore, although she decided not to at the moment. Eventually, though, the speech was torn in two by Pelosi, which vice president Pence pretended not to see.
