NBC NEWS
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…
