WASHINGTON — Aides and allies close to former President Trump have discussed the former president giving the official Republican response to President Joe Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address, according to five people familiar with the talks.
Two of the sources said that Trump himself has discussed it, but both said he is leaning against the high-profile gig.
The decision on who will deliver the response rests with Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
A source familiar with the planning of the State of the Union address said there has been no outreach by the Trump campaign to those planning the GOP rebuttal.
Johnson and McConnell’s offices declined to comment.
“There are no plans at this time” for him to deliver the Republican response, one senior Trump aide said on the condition of anonymity because discussions on the topic have been private.
There’s no question the slot would solidify the public impression that Trump has locked down his party’s nomination. And it would give the former president valuable prime-time network coverage of a live speech that has been harder for him to come by in his third bid for the Oval Office.
But the risks are significant, and could outweigh the potential benefits.
“It just didn’t make any sense to me, and that’s what I told him,” said one Republican lawmaker. “I genuinely got the sense there was not a lot of interest there to begin with.”
Nothing smacks of Washington politics more than the official out-of-power party response to the State of the Union. That’s at odds with Trump’s message that, as much as he understands the nature of politics in the nation’s capital, he is not a creature of what he calls “The Swamp.”
Moreover, it has been hard for past speakers to match the pomp and energy of the State of the Union, where the president ascends the rostrum in the front of the House chamber and addresses lawmakers in both parties, Cabinet officials and members of the Supreme Court about the status of the nation. If Trump wants to go head-to-head with Biden, he could hardly pick turf that’s more of a home game for the sitting president.
“When was the last time a rebuttal went well?” a former Trump White House official said, pointing to the stumbles by then-Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2009 and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in 2013 as cautionary tales. “There’s a long history of these things being flops.”
As governor of South Carolina in 2016, Nikki Haley raised eyebrows in her own party by attacking the “angriest voices” in the GOP — a dig at Trump, in particular — during her turn as the Republican counterpoint to then-President Barack Obama. Haley would go on to serve as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, but she has failed to gain traction in her bid to take the nomination from him this year.
But at least one Trump ally on Capitol Hill said she would love to see Trump deliver the GOP response.
“Of course President Trump should do it,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told NBC News on Thursday, though she added that she hasn’t heard about any such plans.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller, the only member of the president’s team to speak on the record about the topic, said there’s no substance to chatter about Trump becoming the first former president to deliver an official response.
“This is complete bulls---, and proves the fake news will literally run anything based on their own imaginations,” Miller said.
Last year, Trump recorded a video response to Biden’s speech, issuing attacks on the president and his party in what he called “the real state of the union.”
The force of Trump’s dominance in the Republican primary will be on full display in Washington the night before the State of the Union, when more than 100 GOP lawmakers will co-host a fundraising event. An invitation to the gala lists Donald Trump Jr. as the featured guest, and it’s not clear yet whether the elder Trump will appear in person.
