Three cheers for Texas Democratic Congressman Al Green for standing up for his constituents and disrupting Trump’s address to Congress.
Green stood up, waved his walking stick, and shouted at the president that he doesn’t have a mandate at Trump’s March 4 speech. He ignored multiple calls from the House speaker to stop. At 77 years old, he started singing “We Shall Overcome” in the well of the chamber and was joined by fellow Democrats.
He refused an order from Johnson to “take your seat, sir!” Green said, “I heard the speaker, and when he said that I should cease. I did not, and I did not with intentionality. It was not done out of burst of emotion,” he said.
Green, an 11-term Democrat representing the Houston area, stood up and pointed his cane as he shouted, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid.”
A screaming match broke out between House Democrats and Republicans. At one point, Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley yelled back, “Shame on you!” Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib also shouted at Republicans.
Unrepentant, Green defended his actions, saying, “I would do it again. I did disrupt, and I did so because the president indicated he had a mandate, and I wanted him to know he didn’t have a mandate to cut Medicaid,” Green said.
Of course, the impotent Republicans ejected and censured him – a mark of honor! He briefly stopped the sewage flowing out of Trump’s mouth.
Senators Gallego and Kelly Denounce Trump
Sen. Ruben Gallego and Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Phoenix, left halfway through an address that lasted 99 minutes – Trump’s longest speech to Congress and the longest by any president in at least 60 years.
Gallego booed as Trump depicted migrants as “murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and people from mental institutions and insane asylums.”
Ansari said she intended to listen to the whole speech but just couldn’t take it anymore. She left after Trump described gender-affirming care as “child abuse.”
“I’m absolutely devastated by the bull— that I just heard,” she said in a video she posted shortly after leaving, adding later in a statement that “the vitriol against so many of us, from immigrants to trans people, was too much.”
Gallego posted on X that Trump was lying by promising to eliminate income tax on tips and overtime, noting that neither proposal is part of the House GOP budget: “The only thing they’re fighting for is cutting YOUR benefits to hand billionaires another tax break,” he said in the post.
“I think Al Green was telling the truth,” said Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif. He was among the dozens of Democrats who held up signs that said “False” and displayed other protest slogans throughout Trump’s speech.
The Republican draft budget would cut $1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade with cuts to healthcare. The budget would cut Medicaid, which covers around 70 million low-income people, or one in five Americans, while Medicare provides health coverage for 66 million seniors over 65.
Speaking truth to power
US Senator Mark Kelly attacked Trump’s speech in a Facebook video: “I just left Donald Trump’s speech over in the House chamber, had to listen to him for an hour and 40 minutes. It was way too long. There were too many things that weren’t true there. He never talked about how tariffs will lower costs for the American people because they’re not. They’re going to raise costs for your family.”
“He also went directly at the Chips and Science Act. I worked on this legislation. It has brought thousands of jobs to Arizona and other states. Increasing our national security. It’s been great bipartisan legislation.”
“He said he wanted to kill it. And on national security, last week was a disaster for our relationship with Ukraine and our allies. Donald Trump needs to fix this. He tried to look like a tough guy last week. He made our entire country look weak. So I’m going to get back to work first thing tomorrow.”
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Old men shouting and waving their canes is always a good look, especially with young voters. Although, it brought back a memory of my childhood when Old Man Smith did the same thing when my baseball went into his backyard.
What was a bad look was all the Democrats sitting down and looking mean while Trump made a young child with brain cancer an honorary Secret Service agent and announced to another whose father was a veteran who had died that he’d be going to West Point. Can anyone tell me why the Democrats wouldn’t stand up and applaud those two kind gestures?
No John, Green standing up for Medicare patients is a very good look.
What’s a very bad look is the world’s richest man dancing with a chainsaw while your party cheers people with families losing their jobs.
And what’s even worse is you cheering cutting government spending while YOU colllect multiple taxpayer funded government checks.
The rest of your comment is the usual childish trolling. F’ off.
What! No comments? Even from Sharpie? Did I hit a nerve?
Johnny Boy, the Sharpster replied to your inane comment at 5:47PM. Apparently you need to update your glasses prescription. You being an elected official belongs in the David Letterman Museum of the Hard to Believe.
@WileyBud – don’t bother citing facts at JGCK. They’re irrelevant to his talking points. He’ll ignore them.
@Sen. Kavanagh -an old man on a cane resisting authoritarianism makes for better optics than a huckster using the WH to sell cars.
You’re right Craig, my comment was meant for lurkers.
Johnny Boy is the epitome of what John Cleese referred to when he opined there are people who are so stupid they have no idea of how stupid they really are. Or as right wing hero Dirty Harry Callahan once said “A man’s got to know his limitations”, a philosophy that’s evidently lost on our Johnny Boy.
There are a couple of funny things in John Who Feeds at the Government Trough While Somehow Driving an Expensive Luxury Car and is no Way Korrupt Kavanagh’s comment about me.
First, and I’ve tried to explain this to him before, we are not little tiny people living inside his computer, on call, waiting for him to pwn us. LOL!
And second, his comment is literally the internet version of an old man shaking his cane and yelling, the thing he’s mocking Green for doing IRL.
These are also very sad things in his comment.
He’s clearly become addicted to the rush of getting replies to his trolling.
Not saying that as a headshrinker because I am not, this is a known phenomenon in the tech world. It’s what drives social media and makes Zuckerberg so many billions.
He’s not getting the “rush” of making libs mad in a timely manner, so he scratches his arm. sweats, fidgets like a junkie, and shouts into the interwebs “hey, look at me”!
Silicon Valley got Johnny the Blog Troll addicted but he doesn’t know it.
Another sad thing is he’s a prime example of our political leadership being too old and having no idea how the world actually works in 2025.
Kavanagh’s out there mentally with Schumer and Pelosi.
They’re just way more successful than him.
(Note, now that’s how you troll a mother****er!)