GOP Legislators Keep Winning Hearts And Minds At Town Halls

Yep.

Mar 20, 2025

A member of the audience holds up a Canadian flag at Rep. Michael Baumgartner’s (R) town hall in Spokane, Washington. Video Screenshot, CNN on YouTube

Wonkette wishes to encourage good behavior by Republicans whenever possible, so we would like to offer a nice chocolate chip cookie to the few GOP congressmembers who are still meeting their constituents in town halls, even after being told by party leaders they should avoid holding them.

It’s a rather small cookie, because at those town halls, the Pubs tend to be their usual selves, which is anticookieworthy. But they made the effort, and what’s more, generated content for this post of them getting yelled at by angry constituents, which is is definitely a service to democracy. The constituents calling them out is, at least.

Spokane: Let Canada Be Canada, Because Ew, Liberals!

Let’s start in Spokane, in the GOP-py eastern part of Washington, where first-term Rep. Mike Baumgartner held a pair of town halls in two venues Monday. At one, he got an earful from a constituent who wanted to see Donald Trump impeached over his insane threats to take over Canada, Panama, and Greenland, a comment that inspired another member of the audience to hold up a big Canadian flag.

After the flag got a standing ovation, Baumgartner did not, but he did try to turn it into a funny joke about how he opposes taking over Canada (audience member: “Thank you!”) because it’s “much more liberal and left-wing than the United States,” which didn’t go over very well.

“Taking Canada would be like taking another California, it would tilt things toward the Democrats. [boos, catcalls] If we took Canada, the Republicans would never have control again. So we don’t want that to happen.”

The audience cheered loudly at the prospect of Republicans never having control again.

Then Baumgartner weirdly defended the idea of seizing Canada and Greenland because we’re in an “arms race versus China on artificial intelligence.”

“ The AI stuff takes an immense amount of power … much more than we can supply now,” Baumgartner said. “ And so what I think is the reason that Donald Trump is so interested in talking about Greenland and Canada is because it’s with an eye on the immense amount of power that’s going to happen to all highways and to the hydro resources.”

Oh, well that’s a perfectly cromulent reason for invading and subjugating our allies, thank you sir. Very good understanding of foreign policy, at least maybe in some role-playing game where actual humans or basic morality might muddy the point.

Then a reporter asked him if seizing Greenland wouldn’t be “the return of Imperial America,” and why would we want that? Baumgartner then explained, without irony,

I think it would be America’s strategic benefit if we had Greenland. America has had strategic benefit from being imperialistic in the past. That’s how we had Western expansion.

Oh, but then the reporter had to go and point out that was “also how we had white nationalism,” and he cut her off because how silly is it to “[weave] white nationalism into a question about Greenland?” Never mind that white nationalism was intrinsic to US imperialism, but he changed the topic to Greenland, ha ha, dumb libs.

In other highlights, Baumgartner said Russia defeating Ukraine would be a bad thing, but also that Americans shouldn’t be “naive about the Ukrainian government,” adding “I don’t think Zelenskyy is doing a great job,” which drew boos from the crowd. Baumgartner was among other Republicans calling on Zelenskyy to resign last month after the Ukrainian president rudely didn’t lick Donald Trump’s shoes in the Oval Office.

He also said Donald Trump had every right under the Constitution to send Elon Musk to slash federal agencies that were established by Congress, because Joe Biden was a tyrant who forgave student loans, you see. Baumgartner left out the bit where Congress authorized the Education Department to forgive loans, but that was a minor detail.

On Tuesday, Baumgartner said on a local right-wing radio show that the town hall audiences had been full of people organized by “far-left groups” who “snatched up all the tickets” online, excluding the legitimate constituents who really wanted to hear him. He insisted that those awful radicals “want to create the perception that Republicans and what we’re doing in Washington is not popular, or the American people are angry, which is actually not the truth.”

So stop believing your lying eyes, ears, and opinion polls, OK?

WY Voters: ‘Deport Elon! Deport Elon!’ Rep. Hageman (R): ‘You’re Being Hysterical’

Rep. Harriet Hageman (R), Wyoming’s sole member of the House, held a town hall in Laramie last night, where she was met by a very, umm, high spirited crowd. Raucous, even. She was booed almost constantly by constituents, especially when she downplayed voters’ concerns about the Trump administration’s war on democracy, which she is quite sure isn’t happening, and why are You People so “obsessed with the federal government” anyway? Hageman, who took Liz Cheney’s seat after Cheney also showed excessive concern for the Constitution, just didn’t see the big deal.

Here’s a brief sample.

Hageman proclaimed that “DOGE is not dismantling Social Security,” which is sort of true because it’s simply gutting the Social Security workforce, closing Social Security offices and also ending phone assistance for people filing for their benefits, forcing them to go online if they can, or to try to get an in-person appointment at whatever local offices remain. (So far. We don’t know what Big Balls has planned for tomorrow, or later tonight.)

A woman who’d been fired from the Department of Agriculture asked what Hageman would do to help farmers who’ll be harmed by coming cuts to agriculture funding and the harm from tariffs, and Hageman explained, “I disagree,” to loud boos, adding that

“I haven’t seen it and I don’t think that we will see it,” Hageman said. “I think that our small businesses, our ranchers and our farmers are going to be able to actually thrive in an environment where they are not so overregulated by the federal government.”

In a followup, Hageman told the Cowboy State Daily she hadn’t heard the woman say she’d been laid off, but Joe Biden canceled a gas pipeline and that killed lots of Wyoming jobs, OK?

In one of the weirdest moments, Hageman berated the crowd for being so het up over DOGE anyway, because, apparently nobody should care about entire agencies being unconstitutionally shut down:

"It’s so bizarre to me how obsessed you are with federal government," Hageman told attendees, prompting more outbursts from the crowd.
"You guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down," she added. "I’m sorry, your hysteria is just really over the top."

A Hageman spokesperson, Tim Murtaugh, said without evidence that the disruptions were “pre-planned and organized partisan disruptions” and “an embarrassing spectacle of manufactured political theater,” which is the only possible explanation for Americans being outraged. Laramie residents told NBC News they found the accusations insulting, but that’s what you’d expect from people being paid by George Soros, isn’t it?

Nebraska: Mike Flood All Wet

Moving ever eastward, we reach Columbus, Nebraska, where Rep. Mike Flood’s Tuesday town hall was also full of angry constituents, which probably proved to him that everyone not in attendance loves Trump and MAGA. Hundreds of voters showed up to boo him for more than an hour, with audience members jeering Flood for calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy “disrespectful” to Great Leader, and like other crowds, making clear that they can’t stand Elon Musk either.

Here’s the reaction when Flood said he supports Musk and the Dogeboys, completely ignoring a constituent’s question about Musk’s many conflicts of interest, since he has so many government contracts.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: What makes you think that … [Musk] has no conflict of interest? Do you think he would cut that before he would cut our Medicare or our Social Security, or our jobs?
MIKE FLOOD: I support Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency …

Flood also brushed off several questions about cuts to Medicare and Medicaid — virtually guaranteed under the GOP budget plan Flood voted for — by insisting we gotta do something about the national debt, there’s simply no other choice! Flood had a screen counting up the debt above him on the stage, for emphasis. One woman asked Flood how he “stomach his decision to support Trump’s cuts to cancer research,” especially considering that his wife is a cancer survivor. The woman noted that she’d lost a sister to breast cancer, and noted that her 20-year-old daughter may someday be harmed by the research that won’t be done.

Flood sidestepped the question by saying he supports medical research, but those smart DOGE boys know what they’re doing and are only going to cut out waste and abuse, and what we really need is a balanced budget.

“Ultimately, where we need to go is to a balanced budget,” Flood said, asking, “How can you be against a balanced budget?”

Unfortunately, the CNN video cuts off just after the viral moment when the crowd started chanting “Tax the rich! Tax the rich!” so here’s what followed.

Pointing to the debt sign and its big scary number, Flood said, mockingly, “OK, let’s talk about this. So your proposal to solve this is to tax the rich?” The crowd roared its approval, and the viral clip ends there. We were curious what Flood followed that with, so we found this Washington Examiner video that chops out the part where the crowd cheers taxing the rich, but does include what Flood clearly thought was a real gotcha. Prepare to be underwhelmed.

Flood triumphantly explained that Joe Biden’s proposed “millionaires tax” from his final year in office, and said it would only raise $50 billion a year, which wouldn’t be enough to wipe out the debt, SO THERE, and it would also “hurt growth.” Of course, Flood is lying, because 1) Biden actually proposed a minimum tax on billionaires, not millionaires, and 2) it was only one of a suite of proposals to make rich people pay their fair share, including higher corporate and top marginal tax rates, plus raising capital gains taxes, and much more. So no, Biden never claimed the one tax would wipe out the debt (or that the overall package would, either, though it’s more responsible than endless tax cuts), and why did we even bother thinking more “context” was even needed here? Then again, it’s just more proof Flood’s a lying schmuck, so fuck him, the end.

OPEN THREAD.