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Netanyahu’s speech has become the latest rage in town. There is a huge demand for seats on the Congress floor to witness the historic speech personally.
Eight Senators and 49 Congressmen decided to boycott Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address to a special session of Congress on the Iranian threat on Tuesday, possibly showing solidarity with US President Barack Obama. However, there has been a race to fill those vacant seats.
“The tickets are hotter than fresh latkes,” declared Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY).
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Netanyahu’s speech has become the latest rage in town, and that there is a great demand for seats on the Congress floor to witness the historic speech personally.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told the Times that the only ticket more popular than a seat inside the House chamber to view Netanyahu’s address to Congress would be “if it was [country music star] Garth Brooks — maybe.”
“If I had 100 tickets, I’d be the most popular guy in town,” he added.
Most Popular Event in Washington
Graham said that Obama’s opposition to the speech has “made it the most-talked-about thing in Washington, and I think it blew up in their face. Everything he [Netanyahu] says, people want to hear, and people want to be in that room to listen, they want to be in person. It’s become a historic speech.”
The Times quotes House Speaker John Boehner’s office as saying that it has received requests for “10 times as many tickets as there are available seats in the gallery,” and both the House and the Senate have set up alternate viewing locations that will also require tickets.
Celebrities vs. Netanyahu
Taylor Swift in concert. (Steve Vas/Shutterstock)
“If [singer/songwriters] Taylor Swift and Katy Perry did a joint concert at Madison Square Garden wearing white-and-gold and black-and-blue dresses, accompanied by dancing sharks and llamas, that’s the only way you’d have a tougher ticket,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for Boehner, who initiated Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
Representative Lee Zeldin (R-NY) added: “If I was solely responsible for filling the gallery, it would have been filled up in a New York minute.”
“I have people all day, every day, contacting me as if there’s a hundred thousand seats just vacant,” he said. “It’s a historic time for Israel, for America, for the stability of the Middle East, and I think that people see that historic moment on March 3 and want to be part of it,” he told the Times.
The newspaper added that even Democrats “are hanging on to their tickets, distributing them as if they were a form of valuable currency.”
