Why I Am Not Holding In-Person Town Hall Meetings In February of this year, I kicked off a two-day, four town hall trip, including Baker City, La Grande, Pendleton, and the Boardman. In previous years, we were drawing between 40 and 100 people to these Town Hall meetings. This year, we had about 250 in Baker City, 450-500 in La Grande, 300 in Pendleton, and 180 in the Boardman. Unlike previous years, many of those attending followed us from town hall meeting to town hall meeting, so that they could pack the house. When given the opportunity to ask a question, many of those following along engaged in intentionally disruptive, repetitive, practiced, rude, and demeaning behavior. Catcalls, profane language, derisive and accusatory comments, canned questions, and reading from scripts of screed written and distributed by the anti-Trump gang, “Indivisible”, constituted the majority of the new attendee’s “questions”. The intent of Indivisible, a left-wing group initially formed in opposition to President Trump, is to disrupt, intimidate, and threaten. Everyone has the right, under the First Amendment, to express themselves at public town halls in ways that are as crude, rude, nasty, and obnoxious as they might want. But Indivisible cannot be forgiven for delivering a message that is false and intended to scare the most vulnerable people in my district. Much of what they offered was designed to do just that. What was abundantly clear is that by holding live in person Town Hall meetings, I was not learning what I could do to make lives better, but instead was providing Indivisible with a forum to spread misinformation, create a false sense of opposition, and drive away local people who are disgusted with meetings that are taken over by the loud and obnoxious. This is why I have shifted, for the time being, to telephone town halls.
#RepCliffBentz issues cowardly statement "Why I Am Not Holding In-Person Town Hall Meetings"
"When given the opportunity to ask a question, many of those following along engaged in intentionally disruptive, repetitive, practiced, rude, and demeaning behavior."
Cliff people want to keep medicaid.
