Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will be the designated survivor during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address to Congress on Tuesday evening.
Typically a cabinet official or a senior congressional leader does not attent the address and is instead sent to a remote location given the fact that the president and most of the presidential line of succession is in the US Capitol.
Not only is the President of the United States also speaking, but they are also typically flanked by the Speaker of the House and the Vice President, as well as many, if not all, Supreme Court Justices and multiple members of Congress.
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The procedure took on new resonance during the Cold War and became even more serious after the September 11 terrorist attacks. During President George W Bush’s joint address to Congress after the attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney did not attend.
Ms Raimondo, a Democrat, was previously governor of Rhode Island before Mr Biden nominated her to be Secretary of Commerce. She was the first female governor of Rhode Island and if she were to become president, would be the first woman president of the United States.
The Senate confirmed Ms Raimondo with 84 votes last year, with even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell voting to confirm her.
President Joe Biden will use Tuesday’s State of the Union address to call out Russian “dictator” Vladimir Putin for launching an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and underestimating the effectiveness of American diplomacy and the Nato alliance.
Mr Biden will compare Mr Putin’s actions to aggression demonstrated by other authoritarians in years past while tying his war on Ukraine to the reason for Nato’s creation after the Second World War.
Mr Biden will also stress that both US diplomacy and the 29-member alliance “matter” even in today’s post-Cold War world, and condemn Mr Putin’s attack on Ukraine as “premeditated and unprovoked”.
He will tell the joint session of Congress that Mr Putin “thought the West and NATO wouldn’t respond” and believed he could divide Americans “here at home”.
“Putin was wrong,” Mr Biden will say. “We were ready.”
