WASHINGTON — Rep. John Rose may never give a more memorable speech in the House of Representatives.
It had nothing to do with what the Tennessee Republican said Monday. In fact, anyone watching probably wasn’t paying attention to barely a word. How could they do that with everything happening behind him?
It was the young boy sitting behind Rose who had done that C-SPAN viewers a double take on a rather boring legislative day full of appointing new post offices and other routine measures.
At first, the boy looked directly into the cameras, smiling from ear to ear. Then he got bored for a while and seemed to lose his train of thought. But not for long. The tongue came out. Then followed the rolling of the eyes and the shaking of the head, which told the world that he was not really impressed by the stiff decorum of the House of Representatives.
And then came the hand movements, a sign language full of silliness that could have sent him to the principal’s office if he were in school.
Before long, young Guy Rose, the congressman’s son, was a social media star and a new meme at the age of six. The youngster just graduated from kindergarten last week and has been with the congressman for a week. Rep. Rose’s youngest son, Sam, 3, and his wife, Chelsea, are back in Tennessee.
“He knows something,” Doug Andres, spokesman for Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, tweeted on X with a caption of the young Rose holding his hands in a triangular motion in front of his face.
“I’m sorry I was slow to respond to your email, I was tied up watching this over and over,” tweeted Aaron Fritschner, the communications director for Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va.
Meanwhile, an unsuspecting Rep. Rose went ahead with a speech — a serious attempt to denounce former President Donald Trump’s conviction in a New York courtroom last week. “As a lawyer, I can tell you that May 30 will be one of the most infamous dates in American history,” he said at one point.
After the speech, as the reviews poured in, the congressman didn’t seem perturbed. And he graciously took some responsibility.
“This is what I get for telling my son Guy to smile for the camera for his little brother,” Rose tweeted.
