Republicans who back Trump get an earful at raucous town halls

WASHINGTON – Jeering crowds, a man jabbing his finger and swearing – it is not easy these days for some Republican members of Congress as they face their constituents in town halls dominated by rage over US President Donald Trump’s radical cost-cutting policies.

While Republican politicians risk running into loud and angry voters, Democratic lawmakers have found themselves getting berated in public for not doing enough to oppose Mr Trump.

The ill-tempered landscape reflects the level of polarisation in the US just two months into Mr Trump’s second presidency.

At one such town hall gathering in March in Asheville, North Carolina, Representative Chuck Edwards was jeered by people demanding he explain his support for Mr Trump, who has fired off multiple executive orders to shrink the federal government and

axed legions of civil servants

.

At one point, a man in the crowd stood up, pointed his finger at Mr Edwards and screamed, berating him over some of the many spending cuts Republicans plan to carry out in the coming months.

“You’re lying. I’m a veteran, and you don’t give a f*** about me. You don’t get to take away our rights,” the man yelled.

Mr Edwards signalled for security to escort him out of the meeting.

In Wyoming, a conservative pro-Trump state in the West, Republican lawmaker Harriet Hageman also had a rough time as she met constituents in her district.

As people whistled at her and held up hostile signs, Ms Hageman said she got the message. According to the local outlet Wyofile, one man at the meeting then said to her: “F*** you! That’s what we’re saying.”

In recent weeks, these town hall meetings – meant for lawmakers in congressional recess to confer with the people who put them in office – have become echo chambers of angst.

They have emerged as a key way for Americans to express opposition to Mr Trump as he also enacts his anti-immigrant, anti-trans, nationalist and right-wing agenda.

At the start of his first term from 2017 to 2021, Mr Trump faced huge demonstrations against him.

But this time around, since he returned to office, America’s streets have been relatively quiet.

Mr Trump has made clear he wants to move quickly and aggressively with all his executive orders, aimed among other things at gutting or even eliminating some departments altogether as part of a small-government, laissez-faire conservative theory of governance.

So many town hall meetings are turning into anti-Trump shouting matches that Republican Party officials are telling their lawmakers to just stop holding them, US media have reported.

On March 23, Mr Trump embraced a theory first advanced by his press team that people who speak out against him at these meetings are “agitators” paid by the Democrats.

Referring to the Edwards meeting, Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: “The room was ‘littered’ with radical left lunatics, mostly Democrats, and all they did was scream, shout and use filthy language. They were largely paid agitators, with fake signs and slogans, and were only there to make trouble!”

‘Fighting oligarchy’

After Republicans put out the word to stop holding such meetings, Democrats swooped in to hold town halls of their own in Republican districts.

“While Republicans continue to run and hide from their constituents, Democrats are stepping up and meeting them face to face, to ensure they know it’s Trump, Elon Musk and their Maga minions in Congress making their lives harder,” the Democratic National Committee said on March 24, referring to Mr Trump’s ever-present billionaire adviser and the slogan Make America Great Again.

But Democrats are also facing angry constituents who complain their party has been too quiet and passive as Mr Trump and Mr Musk carry out what critics call a lawless rampage through the federal bureaucracy.

“They should try actually fighting for once. They should try to actually be the opposition party,” one man told CNN as he attended a town hall on March 21 called by Democratic Representative Sean Casten in Illinois.

With so many people livid with the Democratic Party and its leaders, some on the American left are trying to step up and lead the opposition to Mr Trump.

Senator Bernie Sanders, 83, has embarked on a nationwide “fighting oligarchy tour”.

He has been joined by another prominent progressive, the much younger Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

They have drawn tens of thousands of people eager to fight Mr Trump and the Republican agenda.

It remains to be seen if this opposition energy will eat away at Mr Trump and help the Democrats in isolated special elections on April 1. AFP