Kirsten Gillibrand is bringing one of Trump's favorite Twitter targets to the State of the Union

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 29 January 2018

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is bringing a very special guest to President Trump's first State of the Union address: Carmen Yulín Cruz, the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In announcement on Twitter aimed at no one in particular, Gillibrand said Monday that "Mayor Cruz has shown extraordinary leadership and fearless advocacy for her city."

Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address Tuesday. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which left most of Puerto Rico without running water for almost two months, Cruz was a frequent guest on TV news networks, where she criticized the U.S. government's slow response to the hurricane. Trump did not appreciate the criticism and took to Twitter to attack Cruz's "poor leadership ability," calling her behavior "nasty."

Gillibrand, like Cruz, has been attacked by the president on Twitter; in December, Trump tweeted that the senator "would do anything" for political donations, which many took to have unsavory implications. Gillibrand has called for Trump to resign over the various allegations that he has sexually assaulted women.

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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.