Protesters have interrupted town halls as Congressmen explained the future of healthcare and immigration under President Trump. Listen as Larry spoke with Rep. Dave Brat regarding the hecklers who interrupted his town hall.
Rep. Brat’s explained the mainstream media’s coverage of the town hall:
O’Connor: You just said something about these ‘rabble rousers’, as you call them, holding up cue cards. I’m looking at a photo that the Associated Press put out, and I can see a couple of individuals holding up red cards. Explain what happened. When one of the leaders of this group held up a red card, suddenly everybody started yelling?
Rep. Brat: Yeah, then a bunch of 20 other red cards are out, then they booed and shouted me down. One time I said, ‘hey we all want to help the kids on this kind of thing’ and they put up the red card. I said you’re booing me for that? So the room got a kick out of it.
O’Connor: Let me understand this clearly, it sounds to me, what you’re describing suggest, that these people are not just – the may be constituents who knows – but they didn’t randomly show up at this town hall, they organized. They had a plan. They came in and actually strategized on how they would disrupt.
Rep. Brat: Yeah, right. And the press was there, right. Washington Post was there, the don’t print one word on that. I asked the folks and they self-identified. They said, ‘yeah, we’re from Indivisible’. So that’s the leftist thing that that Soros funds and they have 15 million downloads of that document, Indivisible so far. And so yeah there’s still mystery to it. They self-identified, it’s all on tape, the press caught it all, they knew it but they won’t ever report the news. And so that’s why it’s called, fake news. My own paper did a good job this morning, my Richmond Times-Dispatch did a nice job today, Politico covered it did a great job, they were very honest. I don’t want people to agree with me but I just want reality presented. Just give both sides and give reality.
[…]
The only agenda they have that’s in that Indivisible document is resist, and make sure to take the microphone so you cannot conduct a civil or orderly town hall meeting. That’s the purpose of the group. So, you don’t get it both ways.
At the conclusion of the interview, Rep. Brat discussed the hold up with repealing Obamacare:
O’Connor: Is Congress sitting back a little bit too much and just waiting for the administration to take the lead? Shouldn’t you be doing more to bring forward the tax cuts that you ran on? To bring forward the Obamacare replacement that you’ve promised? What should be happening right now?
Rep. Brat: Well yeah we are sitting on our hands a little bit and that’s part of the tension in the room is that people don’t know and I couldn’t give them a specific healthcare plan and so that’s part of the anxiety. Yeah, you’re right. Part of the Freedom has taken a position, we want a full repeal. Our leadership is saying, ‘we’re going to repeal and replace’ but I don’t think they mean the word repeal when they say it. Because we’ve passed repeal legislation in 2015 through the House, it passed in the Senate. McConnell said, ‘This year, send that over to me. We’ll do it.’ But now we’re backing off of that and boy when the people find out we’re not keeping our promise and that we’re keeping the three legged stool of Obamacare in place with subsides, and regs and community rating etcetera that’s a federally run healthcare program and you don’t want the federal government building your car or building your house, I think people are over this. Let’s push it down to the states where you know the people better and down to the localities that give the money down there. I think it’s a much better system.
O’Connor: What’s going to happen when they hear that you’re basically, from what you’re describing, keeping the fundamentals of Obamacare intact?
Rep. Brat: Well yeah that’s the problem. We don’t have a consensus yet. But if that ends up being the consensus, oh boy the base is not going to be happy. We’re a little too worried about politics and sometimes we forget the basic politics, when you promise the American people something, you’ve got to keep your word.
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