Pelosi Cites Safety Concerns in Request for Trump to Delay SOTU Speech: ‘The Point Is Security’

EXCERPT:

PELOSI: “It’s a event of special security. And so these people are not working. And we've never really had a state of the union when government has been in shutdown since the budget act in the 70s. So this is — this is respectfully and sadly -- proudly I invited to come, privileged to invite him to come. Government is shutdown. The people who are — we would have the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the entire Congress of the United States House and Senate, the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the cabinet of the United States, did I say that? And the diplomatic core, all in the same room. This requires hundreds of people working on the logistics and the security of it. Most of those people are either furloughed or victims of the president's shutdown. But that isn’t the point, the point is security. And I — I haven’t been in leadership in a long time. Maybe before you were all here, where they have — we have so prepared in advance for something happening in that chamber, actually, this room, HR 5. You look back at the history of it rather than my giving it to you was turned into sort of a safe haven while they bring us down here if something happened in the chamber. This is a very big deal. It is a special security event."

(h/t Mediaite)