The priorities President Trump laid out earlier. That is live at 8 00 a. M. On cspan2. Newsbobternoon, cbs schieffer joins a panel to break down the president s address. We looked at the history of the state of the union. President Donald Trumps first state of the Union Address will begin in about an hour. The democratic response will follow. President and mrs. Trump will depart. Cspan cameras will show you the departure. Tonight our goal is to provide a , behind the scenes look at the state of the union, live coverage of the address, interviews with members of congress, political analysis, and most importantly, your reaction to the president s speech. But first off, to help us with the nuts and bolts of tonights speech, we are pleased that wilson bill livingood and Longtime Senate historian donald a. Ritchie are here with us. Mr. Ritchie, if we could begin with the u. S. Constitution. This is article to, Section Three article two, Section Three. Of those the words from the constitution that bring us to this t are those the words from the constitution that bring us to this table tonight . Donald very short. The constitution was more like an outline for the government to fill in. It doesnt say what do you mean from time to time . Over time, president s have done Different Things with the state of the union. Seeing what would work and what fit them. But we today think of it as a ritual. It is the same every time. It has changed very dramatically. George washington came and gave a message in person. When it got to Thomas Jefferson, he did not like being in public, so he sent a message. It has changed very dramatically. All of the president s in the 19th century sent a message. He also wanted to do something that Theodore Roosevelt had not thought of doing it, because he knew it would irritate roosevelt quite a bit. Since wilson, each president has come up at least once, several times usually during their administration to give this remark. Why not hoover . Hoover did not like to speak in public anymore than Thomas Jefferson did. He basically did not think it was necessary. He tried to work with congress as little as possible. Host how did we get from George Washington to today where we are talking about an hour or an hour and a half speech. Donald the idea that the president is going to state his goals for the year means that a lot needs to be put into the speech. And so, inside every administration, there is a lot of tugofwar between various cabinet secretaries to make sure that they are looking for in the speech. Efforts to cut the speech down are usually defeated. You need to make sure they talk about their accomplishments and Say Something good about this or that, so these speeches tend to grow. They were actually longer when they were written. Most of the speeches are over within an hour with the exception of president clinton. An hour and 29 minutes, the longest speech on record. Do you know what the longest written one was . Im not sure. In the 19th century, some were like textbooks. Host William Howard taft, 20,000 words. We want to show you a little bit of video from 2000. Here in this. Here it is. Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States. [applause] host besides saying those eight words on the house floor, what other responsibilities did you have when you are sergeant at when you were sergeant at arms . Bill the sergeant at arms is responsible for the security and safety, among other things, of the house side of the capital and then sits on the police board which encompasses the entire capital. That is direction to the Capitol Police and supervision of the chief, and making recommendations for security. Host how was it that you were the one who introduced the president as he came in . Bill because he was in the House Chambers. Host automatically that is part of your job . Bill yes. Host on this night, what else did you and your staff have responsibility for . Bill we do have a responsibility every day, we have all the tickets, the protocol of all the different people that come in, and where they are sitting, that situation. We have the parking. There is quite a few other things that are going on. Host would you greet the president when he arrives at the capital . Bill no, not really. Buts briefed prior to that, we would brief him and tell him where we are going. Where do we go after the first stop . Host when the president arrives, who greets him and brings him into the capital . Bill the house sergeant at arms, the Senate Sergeant at arms and the architect of the capitol. Host how did you know when to say those 8 words. Was there a signal, did you look at your watch, was there a button to push . Bill it was the president and the sergeant at arms would walk into the House Chamber. The speaker would hit the gavel. I would walk up about two to three seats, and then i would start. Mr. President , or mr. Speaker, the president of the United States. Host if the speaker did not hit the gavel, would you have waited for him to hit it or would you have bill i wouldve waited just a few minutes just to see. I would be looking at him. This, whatnight like is the role of the speaker and the senate. . Bill they meet at the House Chamber because it is larger. They march in procession through the capital and they are led by their leadership. They then arrive at the chamber and there is a section that will say reserved for senators and a section reserved for the Supreme Court and Cabinet Offices. And they get announced as they come into the chamber. So the senate is also part of this leadership, but it is a House Chamber. So the sergeant at arms of the house is in charge. Host when did planning for this begin . Bill it started about four or five months ago. There is quite a bit of planning ahead of time, not as much planning of the inauguration because that is a bigger function, but it is all nuts and bolts getting everything ready for this night. Host and was it planning with the Speakers Office or white house . Bill planning the Speakers Office, the leadership on both sides, both sergeant at arms, the white house, the secret service, the Capitol Police. It is a multitude of agencies and entities. We actually, on the house side and senate side, we talked to almost every entity within our sides about the state of the union and tell them what is going on and what is to be expected. We have to notify them when they can come or if they can come, etc. Host the president of the senate is the Vice President , when does he arrive and does he have a formal role in this process . Donald because the Vice President follows in procession, he is the president of the senate. If the Vice President is not there, the leaders of the senate and house will take their seats behind the there has been a number of times in recent years senators have presided in place of the Vice President. The Vice President of the united role is totitutional be the president of the senate. Once upon a time, the Vice President used to spend all of their time in the Senate Chamber presiding over the senate. It was quite natural for them to leave the profession. Host following news about tonights event, is greta. Greta we know the president has done a couple of runthroughs practicing tonights speech. He was supposedly heavily involved with the drafting of it. Heres video sent out by the white house. The president making his way to the map room for another run through. Nbc with the headline about the themes of tonights speech. It will be about a safe, strong, and proud america. He will be touching on the economy, of course, immigration, infrastructure, all of his domestic priorities as well as his foreignpolicy priorities. According to cnn, the president could be delivering eye opening remarks on north korea tonight. In the state of the union, this president is expected to lay out a strategy to win the war in afghanistan. He will be the third president to do so. Who else will be in the chamber tonight, because of course, besides the president and the lawmakers, the president invites special guests. And so the white house has a list of 15 people that the president has invited. These people that sit in the president s box highlight the policy priorities that he will be talking about in his speech. One of them is an agent that spent his tenure working for the u. S. Immigration. He dismantled criminal organizations resulting in more than 100 arrests of ms13. That transnational gained gang, the president is expected to talk about that tonight as well as immigration issues. Lawmakers, in order to get into the chamber, have to have a ticket. Look at tonights ticket. Do you see the spelling error . Addressed to congress on the state of the uniom. Members of congress get to invite one guest each. Many democrats are bringing socalled dreamers, undocumented youth that were brought to this country by their parents to highlight the issue. She tweeted she will be having the mayor of san juan with her. Also this evening, democratic lawmakers plan to have a protest of sorts wearing black as part of the Metoo Movement against sexual harassment. Heres a picture of them posing in their black outfits. Some also even plan not to attend. Some were even thinking about staging a walkout during the state of the union. One tweeted that at a Democratic Caucus meeting behind closed doors today, the leader of the party and the house, nancy pelosi advised them not to attend the state of the union to walkout. Ey plan she told him to let trump be his slobbery self. Also who will not be in attendance tonight, as we said, 13 democrats will be boycotting tonight over the president s remarks on daca participants, the socalled dreamers and also what he said about immigrants from south american and african countries. Senator john mccain will not be there this evening. Justices will not be in attendance. Also, cnn reporting that a minority of the Supreme Court is expected to attend President Trumps first state of the Union Address. Chief justice john roberts, neilnew Gorsuch Gorsuch will be in attendance. Of course, there is always a designated survivor. Should there be some sort of attack, there is one member of the president s cabinet who sits out the state of the union. Tonight, that is agriculture secretary sonny perdue. Host statuary hall is right outside the House Chamber. In fact, it is the old house of representatives and that is where the media gathers. Setting up for the media in that room, do you get a lot of requests from media organizations to have cameras in there . Bill oh my goodness, yes. Host how do you handle them all . Bill we work with the press secretaries of various members, and decide who gets where. Donald they have added space now in the capital visitors center. So theres a whole room of cameras. That is where the overflow goes. Host we will be in there after the speech tonight interviewing members of congress. Before we get too far from what greta was talking about, misprint on the official ticket, what do youunion think the current sergeant at arms is thinking about that right now . Bill when it happened, he was probably the same way i would be, very upset and trying to find out what happened. I do know that they instantly found out about it. And it was only a small number. So they got the printer, reprinted those in a hurry and just took out the other ones and put those in. Host that is quite a collectors item to get one of those. Bill oh sure. Host they are all numbered, correct . Bill yes. Host how do you know someone is coming in or out . Bill we keep a list. The Capitol Police does. Host greta was also talking about potential protests or walkouts. Historically, has that been a threat or an action that is taken . Donald unlike parliaments where members heckle each other regularly, decorum has always been a requirement in the senate and house, especially when they meet in joint session. A few years ago when president obama was speaking, one of the house members yelled out you lie he was censured by the house of representatives for that. The house and the senate do not appreciate people making a staging of some kind of event. Not going is very different. A lot of members dont go. A lot of the senior members have been there, done that and dont show up. Some do it deliberately. They let people know they are not coming deliberately. Some of the Supreme Court justices for several years have not been coming because they are supposed to sit quietly and not applaud and not get caught up in partisanship that is going on. They dont particularly relish that role of sitting down. Some just say im not going to come. The idea of trying to cause a scene has not been accepted by the congress. Host you were sergeant at arms at that time. Were you shocked, surprised . Bill i was very surprised. I had thought about it many times what we would do, and i sent someone over from my chambers to tell the individual if he or she, whoever it was, does that again they will be moved out of the chamber. The individual stopped right away. Host the sergeant of arms has that authority over members of congress . Bill yes. He could have. Host often we see members come down early, sit on the aisle so that they can greet the president. Is there any issue with that . Bill oh yes there was. And people have been doing it for years. They want the aisle seat so they can shake hands with the president. And then some of them got upset about it, and put their clothing down to hold their seat. We stopped allowing them to do that because how are you going to look at everything they have . There has to be a lot of material there. So what i did at that time, i let them come down and then i had my Chamber Security people make a list of who was sitting where. I cleared the hall while we were doing the sweep, searching. I put those individuals at the head of the line and let them come back in first. That solved it. Host in a historical sense, what makes for a effective state of the union speech . Donald the circumstances probably. The speeches themselves for the most part are not memorable speeches. About half of them stand out. Monroe issues his monroe doctrineit as part as part of his. Franklin roosevelt the four freedoms during his speech. Most of the speeches are not as stirring as the inaugural addresses. They are meant to promote legislation and they get pretty matter of fact at times. I spoke to some people who worked in the nixon white house. That you could always tell when the president was actually interested in something because he would look up and he would engage. When he got to the part of the state of the union, he put his head down and he would read it. They are long speeches. Theres a lot of references that are geared to excite the president s party. They will all jump up to applaud and the other party will stay seated. But when it is all over, it is hard for anybody to remember any particular line. The circumstances, however, are memorable. For instance, bill clinton gave a speech, state of the Union Message in 1998 just after the scandal that appeared in newspapers. A lot of people thought that maybe he wouldnt come in person to do this. Even more remarkable, he came the next year while he was being subject to an impeachment trial. I think that really shocked a lot of people, particularly the people who were impeaching the president that he just came and did his job. He was going to continue on in this process. The moment actually amounted to more than he actually said in the speeches. Host richard nixon, january 1974 right before watergate, right before he resigned, we had the vietnam war, we had the iraq war and 9 11 bill turned out it wasnt enough. Donald there are certain things the president is trying to do. Theyre trying to get the legislative body to think their way to pass their legislation. To at least address the issues that they are raising. That goes right back to the beginning and that is what the constitution does. Before there were congressional committees, the senate used to actually cut up the state of the Union Message into paragraphs and have special committees for each paragraph to address those issues. This is the one time where the president has the attention of congress and can try to direct where they will spend or what they will do that year. There is no guarantee they will actually follow his direction, but this is his moment to lay out his plan. Host how did 9 11 change state of the Union Speeches . Bill increased security significantly. I think it increased the concern a lot of people had, toward the capital. It changed, some of the tourists were a little apprehensive about being there. But the key was there wasnt really the capital that was the target. But that was not found out for a year or so. Its forever changed the security of the capital. Host the president is about to depart the white house, this is the south side of the white house with the limousine sitting out front. Would you be in contact at this point with the white house, you knew exactly when he was going to depart . Where were you at this point . Bill at this point i would be at the house door with the Senate Sergeant at arms and the architect of the capitol. We would be relayed from the secret service and the