Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) ignores advice not to meet voters
Credit NC-11 Rep. Chuck Edwards for actually holding a town hall meeting Thursday evening in Asheville. And for staying 90 minutes.
Beyond that, few of the 400 people who got into the tech school auditorium came away with much more than the satisfaction of heckling him. Local news reports that 2,000 outside Ferguson Auditorium [that number feels inflated] had to content themselves with holding an ad hoc rally.
In a preview earlier in the day in Canton, N.C., the former paper mill town flooded twice in recent years, Edwards dodged a shouted question about cuts to Medicaid harming local schoolchildren.
“I agree with a lot of what’s going on in Washington,” Edwards said early in his Asheville presentation. The comment elicited loud boos, as did criticisms of FEMA and mentions of Donald Trump, bureaucracy, etc.
Edwards was reading a prepared speech including a checklist of facts on what’s been accomplished with Helene relief efforts. The impatient crowd didn’t want to hear it, some shouting, “We know all that. We lived it. Listen to us now!”
After each outburst, Edwards returned to his speech. but at mention of Trump seeking American economic dominance and Edwards’ vote for the the Republican budget resolution, the crowd exploded. A veteran stood up and started cursing that Edwards didn’t “give a f@ck about me.” Edwards waved at sheriff’s deputies to have him escorted out.
Edwards hadn’t gotten to the Q&A part yet.
As the Associated Press reported it, the town hall got “rowdy”:
For about an hour and half, Edwards endured a constant barrage of jeers, expletives and searing questions on Trump administration policies. About 300 people crammed inside a college auditorium for the town hall, while the boos from more than a thousand people outside the building rumbled throughout the event.
Edwards attempted to answer submitted questions drawn randomly from a bin and for the most part gave answers expected from a Republican congressman.
What about plans to eliminate the Department of Education? The answer is block grants. And again later, block grants.
What about plans to cut Social Security benefits? Edwards won’t vote to abolish the system, which didn’t exactly answer the question.
“Are you willing to cut 25% of your staff like DOGE is doing with other agencies? Edwards praised his staff, then read off a familiar list of small contracts DOGE characterized as frivolous and waste, some from Trump’s speech to Congress. The audience jeered, calling them debunked.
A woman stood and shouted, all those things are great, but what do they have to do with people losing their jobs? Edwards replied with something about DOGE looking for efficiencies.
At some point it seemed Edwards was simply trolling the crowd by mentioning Trump and “the art of the deal,” knowing it would elicit an angry response.
In one answer that stood out as nonsensical, Edwards said (emphasis mine), “What my job is is to listen to the information that I hear coming out of the administration and then to look at how that might be affecting our district. And then go back to that administration and make a case for why some of those changes might not be in the best interest of NC-11.”
Seriously? Edwards is a legislator in the arm of Congress that sets the budget, but speaks as if he must go to Trump on his knees to beg for crumbs.
Asked how Trump can legally impound funds appropriated by Congress, cancel contracts, and fire workers, Edwards replies that there’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president has to spend every single dollar Congress appropriates. [Because that’s in statute, IIRC.]
The crowd outside is shouting and can be head through the exit door.
And so it went. Full video here for those interested.
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