House Democrat patron Nancy Pelosi dramatically voiced disagreement with Donald Trump on Tuesday, tearing up her copy of her speech to Congress. The institutional meeting had started with the president's avoidance of the hand extended by Nancy Pelosi.

As the President of the United States had just finished his State of the Union address, Nancy Pelosi, who was traditionally standing behind him next to Vice President Mike Pence, ostensibly took the document before her and tore it apart. At the exit, asked by a journalist to say why she had made this gesture, she launched a cryptic response: "Because it was the most courteous thing to do, compared to the alternatives".

BREAKING: Speaker Pelosi tears up President Trump's speech as the president ends his State of the Union address. # SOTUpic.twitter.com / orCEobjqAp

- MSNBC (@MSNBC) February 5, 2020

The White House reacted by deploring the fact that Nancy Pelosi had thus symbolically "torn apart" a veteran of the Second World War, a baby who survived after being born premature at only 21 weeks of pregnancy, or the family of Kayla Mueller, killed by the jihadists of the Islamic State group in Syria, as many guests who were in the spans of Congress and whom Donald Trump had mentioned in his speech.

Division in the American political class

The annual institutional meeting in front of the House of Representatives and the full Senate had started with another scene which sums up the division of the American political class: Donald Trump had avoided the outstretched hand of Nancy Pelosi, breaking with customs. And the Speaker of the House shook her head several times to express her disapproval during the speech, while the Democratic camp remained seated and marble in the face of standing Republican standing ovations.

Democrats will never stop extending the hand of friendship to get the job done #ForThePeople. We will work to find common ground where we can, but will stand our ground where we cannot. # SOTUpic.twitter.com / ELJqR9q4xD

- Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) February 5, 2020

Nine months before the presidential election, Donald Trump touted his "kept" promises and a "roaring" economy before Congress, without saying a word about his impeachment trial on the eve of an almost certain acquittal. The division which reigns in the political class as in the country was therefore palpable during the traditional speech. Opposition politicians have most often refrained from applauding, while previous speeches on the state of the Union may have been punctuated by more consensual parentheses.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, youngest member of the Congress and rising figure of the Democratic Left, is one of the elected officials who boycotted this institutional meeting so as not to "legitimize" a president who, according to her, does not respect the laws or the Constitution. Others left in the middle, denouncing his "lies".