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SOTU Tag

President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Fox News Radio that the president will release House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes' memo soon. From Fox News:
In a radio exclusive, White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly, joined Brian Kilmeade at the White House to talk about President Trump's first State of the Union address. Kelly discussed President Trump taking the handcuffs off of the military in Afghanistan, working on a bipartisan solution on DACA, why his heart breaks over identity politics in America and President Trump releasing the Nunes memo "pretty quick and the whole world can see it."

Tonight, President Trump will give his first State of the Union address; we'll have a live post on that later, so be sure to come back and share the fun.   In the meantime, the guest lists for both the president and the Democrats have been released. The contrast between those guests invited by the president and those invited by the tone-deaf Democrats is illuminating, speaking to the heart of the great political divide in our country.  President Trump's guests include law enforcement, first responders, and economists.  The Democrats are bringing a bunch of DREAMers and some representatives of the dwindling #MeToo movement.

A hot topic in the Legal Insurrection comment sections has been whether the insane/deranged/lunatic/vicious/malicious reaction of Democrats and the open-borders left to Trump's generous DACA/Dreamer amnesty framework was part of some three-dimensional chess play by Trump. In that scenario, Trump offered what he knew never would be accepted in order to make himself look good and his opposition unreasonable: Amnesty for 1.8 million 'Dreamers' plus immediate family reunification, in exchange for funding of border security and The Wall, and an end to extended family chain migration.

Rep. Maxine Waters of California has made an industry out of opposing Trump. Her constant calls for Trump's impeachment has earned her the nickname "Auntie Maxine" from hordes of progressive youngsters. She won't be offering the official Democratic Party response to Trump's state of the union address (more on that in a moment), but she will be offering her own response.

In the wake of Representative John Lewis (D-GA) announcing he would not attend President Trump's inauguration, more than 50 Democrats refused to attend.  Now three Democrats, so far, are refusing to attend the president's State of the Union (SOTU) address on January 30th. The first to announce his intention of skipping the President's first SOTU was Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).  His announcement was made early this month.

In order to honor President's Day, I thought I would share five of my favorite presidential moments. I'll present them in historical, rather than "top" or favorite, order.

Abraham Lincoln: "Gettysburg Address"

Like many conservatives, I have serious reservations about much that Lincoln did, but this speech is a winner from beginning to end.

Legal Insurrection readers are part of a small community of people outside the inner-city of Chicago who may be familiar with Joe Watkins, who passed away this week after a battle with cancer. We've published a few videos and interviews with Joe on this site, including Rebel Pundit's "Chicago Unchained," which reached more than 1 million views after it was first published in 2014: But readers may not realize that Watkins's outspoken denunciation of Democrat rule over the poor, black inner-city communities may have paved the way for enormous changes in the way our political landscape unfolds.

First Lady Michelle Obama asked Anthony Mendez to attend the 2015 State of the Union with her since he overcame a tough childhood to advance to college. However, he never told her or anyone else that he didn't even make a 1.0 GPA at the University of Hartford and faced expulsion. Mendez admitted in a Vox op-ed that he accepted the invitation despite knowing the university would not accept him back for the spring semester. Unfortunately, though, his op-ed sounds like he wants to place some of the blame on the White House and the media that hounded him after the White House announced the invitations.

Shortly after Obama's state of the union address last night, Ted Cruz appeared on the Kelly File and mercilessly lambasted the president for omitting recent developments in Iran as well as terror attacks like the one in San Bernardino. The FOX News Insider reports:
'State of Denial': Ted Cruz Bashes Obama's State of the Union Address President Obama's final State of the Union address was more like "a state of denial," Ted Cruz said on "The Kelly File" tonight. The Republican presidential contender told Megyn Kelly that he's not surprised that the president didn't mention ten U.S. sailors held by Iran during his speech.

South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is delivering the GOP response to Obama's SOTU address tonight. Haley is a good choice. She's an effective and successful governor and has been rumored to be on the short list for VP.

Her speech:

Gearing up for the State of the Union lecture he is preparing to treat us to this year, President Obama wanted to put a positive spin on the results of his many years in the Oval Office. It is a chilling testament to his myriad of failures as Commander-in-Chief that one positive he reaches for, amid his many delusions, is that the Americans are not facing "existential threats".
In an interview with NBC’s Today on the morning of his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama told interviewer Matt Lauer that the United States didn’t face a single existential threat as his presidency approached its end. “It is sometimes important for people to step back and measure how far we’ve come,” Obama argued. “The economy right now is better than any other economy in the world by a significant margin. We remain the strongest nation on earth by far and there are no existential threats facing us.”

We've already talked about how Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stole the show at this year's State of the Union address---mostly because the entire internet was 90% sure they caught her during the action: As it turns out, she wasn't merely napping---she was fighting back the effects of a fine California vino. From TPM:
"The audience for the most part is awake because they're bobbing up and down all the time. And we sit there, stone faced, the sober judges," Ginsburg said. "But we're not, at least I was not, 100 percent sober." She explained that the justices have dinner together before the annual speech, which she said Scalia hadn't attended in several years, and that Justice Anthony Kennedy brought along a bottle of California wine that was just too good to resist. "I vowed this year -- just sparkling water, stay away from the wine -- but in the end the dinner was so delicious it needed wine to accompany it."
Watch:

Remember Rebekah Erler, President Obama's premiere "everywoman" success story from last night's State of the Union address? The one whose family inspired the leader of the free world to stand up for the common man by...raising their taxes, or something? As it turns out, Rebekah isn't just an inspiration. She's an operative. Rebekah has been used before by the White House to tout its controversial fiscal policies. Last summer, President Obama spent a well-publicized day with her, taking in "real America" and picking up talking points about the excessively nice people up in Minnesota. Though all of this, the White House failed to mention one important detail: Rebekah is a former Democratic campaign operative. She worked for Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) as a field organizer. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Reuter's revealed Erler's affiliations after her day spent with Obama; Republicans fought back, accusing Obama of being out of touch with average Minnesotans. The real scandal here isn't that the White House fabricated a success story; that's old news. The scandal is that internationally-read publications have revealed this woman's affiliations and bias, and the White House trotted her out anyway. They really don't care, do they?

In last night's State of the Union address, President Obama made a lot of promises. From free community college, to middle class tax breaks, to massive tax hikes on the wealthy and investors, the President served up a bill of goods that, given a Republican-controlled Congress, will take a miracle to become reality. This is nothing new for Obama, who has a pretty poor record of delivering on his most high-profile promises. He hasn't allowed Congress to address our broken immigration system; he hasn't eliminated the threat of al-Qaeda; he hasn't closed the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay; and he certainly hasn't brought the kind of "change" that America wants or deserves. Based on an informal tally, President Obama has broken a whopping 112 SOTU promises during his time as President. I don't think any reasonable person would argue that no president has ever added aspirational policy goals to his annual address to the nation, but coming from a man who came into office claiming revolutionary status, the number seems...high? Grabien compiled a video montage of all 112 broken promises. Click below the fold for an all-too-long list of bullet points highlighting all the ways Obama has failed to live up to his promises. 112, and counting. I wonder how long this list will be come 2016?