CBC chairman ponders boycott, demonstration during State of the Union

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) said on Wednesday the group is pondering a potential boycott or demonstration of President Trump’s State of the Union address to Congress at the end of the month. 

“We will decide in that meeting and discuss how we want to respond to the president’s State of the Union. We could go, we could go and walk out, we could go and hold up fists … or we could not go, or we could hold our own State of the Union,” Richmond told BuzzFeed News’s “AM to DM.” 

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“So there’s a million options we could do, but I think the most important part is to let people out there know that we’re still here, we’re still fighting, we really don’t care what he thinks about us.”

Richmond told the news organization the CBC was scheduled to meet at noon on Wednesday to discuss what course of action they would take as a group. 

Trump has faced fierce backlash in recent days for reportedly calling African nations, Haiti and El Salvador “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting on immigration with a bipartisan group of senators. 

Various congressional Democrats, including CBC members, have announced they will not attend the president’s annual address. 

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) have all said they will not attend the speech. 

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Monday became the fifth Democrat to announce she would not attend Trump’s address, saying Trump was “fueling the flames of divisiveness across our country.”