Hakeem Jeffries attempted to present a united opposition party at Tuesday’s address to a joint session of Congress.
The House Democratic leader laid out his reasoning for attending, while urging as many as possible in his party to do so, in a dear colleagues letter this week.
“[I]t is important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber,” wrote Jeffries on Monday. “The House as an institution belongs to the American people, and as their representatives we will not be run off the block or bullied.”
But in return, those Democrats who attended Tuesday night’s address by the president of the United States were subjected to public humiliation. They could do very little to respond.
Some held up signs reading, “false,” or “Musk steals,” referring to the Tesla, Twitter and now “DOGE” baron. A few, including Al Green and Maxwell Frost, left the chamber (Green only after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson ordered the sergeant-at-arms to remove him).
Others unleashed on reporters after the speech concluded.
“I don’t even know why we’re fighting with Greenland,” declared Rep. Jasmine Crockett in an interview after the president said that the territory would become part of the U.S. “one way or the other.”
“Why’re we fighting with Greenland, Canada, and Mexico — yet we’re in love with Putin?” she continued. “This is not America […] Somebody slap me and wake me the f**k up.”
But the question remains: why did Democrats subject themselves to this?
A number of them didn’t, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Chris Murphy, who rightly called the address a “MAGA pep rally.”
But those who did could do little as Donald Trump repeatedly rubbed victory in their faces and picked individual members to mock.
One particularly notable moment occurred as the president singled out Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential candidate, calling her the racist nickname “Pocahontas” from behind the speaker’s lectern.
Warren only stood and clapped in response, her face barely concealing the senator’s rage.
On Wednesday, Rep. Katherine Clark echoed the fury of her entire party as she was confronted by a question about whether Democrats met the standards for decorum during Tuesday’s speech from a journalist who noted that Republicans were “angry” after some Democrats did not stand and clap when the president acknowledged his guests to the event, which included a teenage cancer survivor.
“I am angry today. I am angry [at] what I saw,” the minority whip told reporters, adding that she did not want to “talk about decorum” while the Trump administration was celebrating DOGE’s wide-reaching cuts to medical research and other federal investments.
Jeffries, too, was forced to defend the conduct of members of his party — a surreal choice of focus by Hill reporters after a night of insults hurled by the president of the United States during an address meant to lay out his agenda and speak directly to the American public.
“The overwhelming majority of House Democrats approached the speech with the seriousness that it deserved on behalf of the American people,” he argued.
There were many opportunities for Democrats to avoid a one-sided examination of “decorum” standards by the beltway press — including by exiting the chamber at any one of the many moments when Trump, breaking all precedent and ignoring the rules the chamber imposes on its own members, targeted individual members for personal insult and mockery.
Instead, America bore witness to an opposition party that, once again, came up with an ineffective response to a president and a party unified in their willingness to weaponize every lever of power against it.
