WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) announced today that he will not attend the State of the Union address by President Trump on Tuesday night, just as he has refrained from attending prior Trump State of the Union addresses and his inauguration.

Congressman Cohen made the following statement:

“I have not attended prior Trump State of the Union addresses, and won’t attend Tuesday night’s, because I don’t believe the President has the character or veracity necessary to address Congress from that august podium and is not worthy of the dignity and respect accorded to his predecessors. The House chamber has hosted the likes of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. I didn’t attend his first State of the Union after he told the country that there had been ‘very fine people on both sides’ of the right-wing extremist rally in Charlottesville in August 2017 that featured the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. That spurred me to introduce articles of impeachment later that year. Last year, he promised to end the AIDS epidemic and cure childhood cancer ‘very shortly.’ Mexico still hasn’t paid for his border wall. At this point, according to The Washington Post, Donald Trump has told more than 16,000 lies.

“It is clear that the President committed the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for which he was impeached. Senator Lamar Alexander called this conduct ‘inappropriate.’ I call it illegal and impeachable. When the Senate votes on Wednesday not to convict the President, we will all see the prediction Russian leader Nikita Khruschev made in 1956 – ‘we will destroy you from within’ – come to pass. Trump continues to pitch Khruschev’s successor Vladimir Putin’s propaganda CrowdStrike conspiracy canard. Senate Republicans did not want witnesses at the impeachment trial. I will not be a witness to puffery and prevarication flowing while our Constitution and our laws are disrespectfully and dangerously flouted. While I will always respect the office of the President, its current inhabitant demonstrates daily that he does not.”

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