01/09/2019
It was a raucous start to the 116th Congress. Fox’s Chad Pergram reports from today’s “Speaker’s Lobby.”
I’m Chad Pergram with the Speaker’s Lobby.
The 116th Congress began with prayer.
It ended in profanity.
Democratic Missouri Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, an ordained Methodist minister, opened the new Congress with a prayer from the House dais.
He beseeched the House to “attempt to become architects of a kinder nation.”
By nightfall, Democratic Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlai Tlaib captured more headlines than even fellow freshman New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Tlaib called the President of the United States a blankety-blank.
Tlaib’s broadside against the President upset Cleaver.
“There’s a fever among some that we need to impeach the President,” said Cleaver.
The Missouri Democrat observed that Mr. Trump’s own harsh rhetoric “has created a new kind of climate in Washington.”
He added that if Washington is to “heal the open sores infecting the entire country,” lawmakers will “have to rise above.”
Otherwise, Cleaver says, “This makes the sore nastier and increases the likelihood of contagion.”
And Cleaver worries that Tlaib may think that talk like that is okay in Congress.
With the Speaker’s Lobby, Chad Pergram. Fox News.
