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Angus King: ‘I cannot in good conscience’ attend Trump’s State of the Union
U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he “cannot in good conscience” attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech Tuesday.
King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, shared the update Monday after his office only said last week that he had not yet decided whether to attend the annual speech the president is delivering Tuesday evening to Congress.
U.S. Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree, both Democrats, have said they also will not attend Trump’s speech, though Golden said he plans to watch it from home in Lewiston. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, the lone Republican in Maine’s congressional delegation, will attend.
King said in a statement Monday that since Trump returned to the White House last year, he “has shown no respect for the principles upon which this country is based — the Constitutional separation of powers, the rule of law and the rights guaranteed to every person under the Constitution.”
“His actions have done tremendous harm to the American people, to our standing among nations and to our institutions of government,” King said. “For this reason, I cannot in good conscience participate in a function with this President at its center. To do so would require me to ignore all that has gone before and to pay him a measure of respect which he has not earned.”
King, a Brunswick resident and former Maine governor who first won election to the Senate in 2012, will likely watch or listen to Trump’s address elsewhere, his office said Monday, while noting King has also missed several previous State of the Union speeches from presidents of both parties.
Pingree, the progressive 1st District representative, plans to join more than a dozen other Democratic lawmakers at a counterrally Tuesday evening on the National Mall hosted by MoveOn and other progressive groups. In response, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said it was “not a surprise that they refuse to celebrate and honor the Americans who have benefited from the commonsense policies Republicans have governed with.”