Rep. Al Green was escorted from the House chamber just minutes after President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday night for holding a sign that read, “Black People Are Not Apes!”
“I wanted the president to see that, and he saw that, and I told him that black people are not apes, and that doing what he did was racist, and he knows that. But sometimes we have to tell him to the public that we know that,” the 78-year-old Democrat told CNN shortly after he was taken out.
Greene, a prominent member of the party, is staunchly anti-Trump and is known for his repeated attempts to impeach the president, as well as his previous disruption of one of Trump’s speeches at the US Capitol.
Democrats were expecting some kind of public outcry from Greene, given that he is only a week away from a tough primary battle, in which he faces a rank-and-file race.
House Democratic leaders made their clearest demands and pleas to their base in any major speech from the president to date: Remain quiet in the House chamber or skip Trump’s speech altogether, according to Democratic members familiar with the conversations.
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Democratic leaders fear the sight of one of their own members will shift the focus away from the president at a time when he is experiencing his weakest political moment in years, and instead badly divide Democrats.
They have told their members that they do not want them to bring signs that could create embarrassing moments that could become a scene.
“There was an understanding that members would either plan to attend, and those who wouldn’t attend would boycott the event and express opposition to Donald Trump and a variety of other different things that would happen,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier Tuesday, adding that he was “not concerned” that anyone would challenge his wishes.
Asked if he had defied the instructions of his party leaders, Green said: “I’m not challenging the leadership. What I’m doing is getting a point across to the president.”
“At some point, you can’t allow racism to continue,” he said. “If you tolerate it, you perpetuate it. I refuse to tolerate racism. The president needs to know that black people are not monkeys, and he should have apologized for what he did.”
Earlier this month, Trump shared and then deleted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys in the jungle. The boss refused to apologize for the Truth Social post, insisting he had not seen the final frames containing the offensive content and blaming a staff member for the error.