A voter took an opportunity during an event to confront Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-HI) over her refusal to stand during President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address when he challenged lawmakers to stand if they agreed that the main purpose of the federal government was to make the safety of the country’s citizens its top priority.
Just like all of her Democratic colleagues, Tokuda, who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, stayed glued to her seat for well over a minute as Republicans proudly stood for a minute and a half, applauding vigorously in agreement with President Trump’s statement. The voter, Arline, asked Tokuda, “The statement was: ‘The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.’ I noticed you did not stand.”
“I’d like to know your reasoning why you did not stand,” she added. After some brief applause from the audience attending the event, Tokuda thanked Arline for asking a tough question, noting that lawmakers don’t always get asked easy questions during town halls. “But that decision was easy for me,” Tokuda replied.
According to Fox News, she went on to state that her reaction was based on her belief that the president did not intend to seek support for the statement from Democrats, but that it was simply material to use in campaign ads during the midterm elections later this year. She then said that if the question was genuine, she would have stood.
“If it had been a genuine question, a true question — not a ploy to be able to put on some commercial later on to say ‘look at all those Democrats who don’t believe in protecting Americans’ — I absolutely would have stood,” Tokuda responded. The Hawaii Democrat didn’t bother to reference the moment in her immediate reaction following the address.
Instead, in a post published on her official website, Tokuda focused on tariffs. “If you consider tariffs and the hundreds of billions of dollars that tariffs have taxed on everyday Americans … the hundreds of billions of dollars he’s collecting in tariffs have been a tax on everyday people,” Tokuda went on to say, shining a spotlight on comments made to a local outlet.
Tokuda has been critical of President Trump and his crackdown on illegal immigration in the past. “We’re all one degree of separation from knowing somebody who is right now living in fear, worried that they could be picked up off the streets, or they could be deported, even if they have no grounds to,” Tokuda said in an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2025.
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The Democratic congresswoman then discussed illegal aliens looking over their shoulders in fear of being apprehended and deported to their countries of origin. “There [are] too many looking over their shoulder and fearing for their lives right now,” Tokuda said. Fox News reached out to Tokuda’s office, but there was no immediate response.
Watch the lawmaker get totally called out for her anti-American stance here:
Featured Image: a screenshot from embedded video