House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) broke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Tuesday telling Fox’s Neil Cavuto “sure” when asked if he was open to having President Trump give his State of the Union address in person on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Cavuto followed up by asking Hoyer if he thought Pelosi would also allow Trump to give the address on the House floor Jan. 29, given that she suggested he postpone the address or deliver it in writing.
“I don’t know what the discussions have been, so I don’t want to say,” Hoyer replied.
Hoyer did point out that the State of the Union address is approved by a resolution from both chambers of Congress.
"The president comes here at the invitation of the Congress, and particularly the House, to address the Congress of the United States," he emphasized.
Earlier in the interview, Hoyer also seemed to disagree with Pelosi’s labeling walls as “immoral.”
“Look I think physical barriers are a part of the solution,” he acknowledged to Cavuto.
“You don’t share Nancy Pelosi’s view that a wall is immoral?” Cavuto asked.
“It depends probably on what a wall is used for whether it’s moral or immoral,” Hoyer replied. “If it’s protecting people it’s moral, if it’s imprisoning people it may well be immoral but that’s not the issue, the issue is we want border security. We want to make sure that people who come in to the United States of America are authorized to do so and we know that they’ve come in, we don’t want contraband.”
He claimed the Democrats are “for border security” but he criticized “the environment of hostage-taking i.e. not only the employees but people who rely on government,” caused by the government shutdown.
The now-32 day government shutdown shows no clear sign of ending as Democrats have largely rejected a compromise offer from President Trump that would have protected hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients from deportation in exchange for his desired $5 billion in border wall funding.
The Senate will vote on competing bills aimed at re-opening government Thursday. The GOP bill models Trump's proposal. The Democrats' bill, which was passed by the House, would re-open the government until February 8th and contains no money for wall funding.