Infamous GOP rep: Rescind Biden’s State of the Union invitation

To the extent that Rep. Scott Perry is known to national audiences, the Pennsylvania Republican is generally recognized as the far-right congressman who played a notorious role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Remember the allegations that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows literally set fire to papers in his office after a meeting with a congressional Republican? The lawmaker in question was Perry. Remember when the public learned of radical text messages Meadows received from Republican allies in the runup to Jan. 6, including one House member who pushed unusually bonkers conspiracy theories about votes being changed by “Italian satellites”? That was Perry, too.

But three years later, the GOP lawmaker doesn’t just want to deny President Joe Biden the office he rightfully earned, Perry also wants to deny the Democrat an opportunity to deliver a State of the Union address. Politico reported:

The video of the on-air comments suggested that Perry wasn’t kidding.

In all likelihood, the House leadership will not take this seriously and Biden will deliver an address to a joint session of Congress, as planned, on March 7. But what struck me as especially notable about Perry’s rhetoric was the familiarity of the circumstances.

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

In early 1999, the political environment in Washington, D.C., bordered on surreal. President Bill Clinton had just been impeached. House Speaker Newt Gingrich had just been ousted from his leadership post, forced out by his own members. Gingrich’s apparent successor, Louisiana’s Bob Livingston, was soon after forced to resign in the wake of a sex scandal.

The U.S. Senate, meanwhile, was weighing the charges against Clinton, hearing arguments as to whether or not to remove the sitting president from office.

It was against this backdrop that the White House announced in mid-January that it was time for the annual State of the Union address. TV preacher Pat Robertson, an influential figure in Republican politics at the time, gave his GOP allies some stern advice: Don’t let Clinton speak. To give the president an august national platform, Robertson said, would allow Clinton to solidify his support and end the impeachment crusade. Congress isn’t required to host the speech, so there was nothing stopping Republicans from denying Clinton’s request.

At the White House, this was not idle chatter. In fact, Clinton aides were so concerned about GOP lawmakers blocking the then-president’s SOTU that they began exploring alternative venues for Clinton’s speech. (The National Archives was at the top of the list.)

Ultimately, Republicans allowed the Democrat to deliver his address, and the political world moved on — that is, until late 2014, when it happened again.

The idea of blocking President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address first started percolating with conservative media figures, including National Review’s Rich Lowry and Breitbart News. It wasn’t long, however, before several congressional Republicans endorsed the move and started lobbying their leaders to deny the Democrat a SOTU invitation.

Eventually, then-House Speaker John Boehner was forced to address the matter, and he rejected the far-right requests.

For the record, Congress isn’t required to welcome a sitting president onto the House floor to deliver an annual national address. According to the Constitution, the president “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union.” For much of American history, this led the White House to deliver a written report to lawmakers.

But with the advent of radio and television, nearly every president since Woodrow Wilson has taken advantage of the national platform a State of the Union address provides.

It’s a platform Republicans have tried, without success, to deny every recent Democratic president.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.