Bulwark Takes - Americans Are Furious And It’s Freaking Out GOP Reps At Their Town Halls

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Americans are furious, and GOP reps are feeling the heat at their own town halls! Senator Roger Marshall faced a backlash in Kansas as voters grilled him on job cuts and veterans’ benefits.

Bettering your business takes working with the best. With the James Hardy Alliance, you gain access to leads, training, networking, and support from the number one brand of siding in North America. Achieve new levels of success by joining the James Hardy Alliance today. Hey guys, me Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark, back again. I'm joined by Lauren Egan and Andrew Egger, and we are going to talk town halls and what exactly is happening at them. Andrew, Lauren, thanks for joining.

Let's start with you, Andrew, because it was in Morning Shots. This clip from over the weekend, Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, he's out, and I guess it's a fairly Republican part of the state, and he's just being kind of like, I don't want to say heckled. I don't think it's a heckling. Although, how do you define heckling? I think he was just being sort of like pushed by constituents to not be okay with firing a bunch of federal employees, many of whom happen to be veterans. And he gets a little prickly. Describe what happened. And then we could address the conspiracies surrounding these town halls.

Yeah, so the whole thing is a bit of a Rorschach because what happens is Roger Marshall shows up, and immediately he gets there. There are a number of people who are not from that town. They're still from Kansas. How do they know? They're not from there. Say again? How do they know they're not from the town? Local media talked to a lot of them after.

A lot of people drove four or five hours from Kansas City, that kind of thing. Damn. I've talked to a lot of them after. Like a lot of people drove four or five hours from Kansas City, that kind of thing. But – and they boo him when he first shows up, and they kind of never really stop. It's a very kind of prickly environment the whole time, but it is like a question and answer environment. It's not like they're not letting him talk. They're not chanting or anything like that. It's – they are here to kind of make their opinions heard and ask you know, ask him questions. And he's there to, he obviously just kind of wants to be talking to the Republicans from this very Republican area that he has showed up at and is kind of mad that anybody else is there. So it's this, it's this

very testy environment all the way through. He calls them rude. He says they've been fed misinformation, which is kind of funny. And, and then at the end, these are still his constituents. Like, let's just be clear. He's the center of the state. Right, right, right. But there's a reason why he didn't show up in Kansas City to do a town hall. Right. But but at the very end, there's this clip that has gone very viral and we can watch it. What government is doing right now as far as cutting out those jobs, a huge percentage of those people, and I know you care about the veterans. The veterans. Yes.

And that is a damn shame. Yes. That is a damn shame. I'm not a Democrat, but I'm worried about the veterans, man. Well, I yielded to one of my elders, and I appreciate his comments. I think it's a great—I'm not going to—we don't have time for everyone to stand up.

I do got two more commitments today. Appreciate everybody making the drive out, and God bless America. Thank you. All right. You're not going to stand up. You're not going to stand up. You're not going to stand up. You're not going to stand up.

We're going to take pictures with you, buddy, right? And what you see here is is like not a very good look for him because this is not one of those people. Right. This is a local man who has stood up to kind of very just sort of politely and sort of sorrowfully talk about how how cut up he is about the fact that Doge is firing veterans. And he thinks it's, you know, he sees it as an unintended consequence. He thinks it's the wrong way to cut costs. Do we know if this guy's a local or a transplant? We know that local media has identified him as a local. I was not able to track him down myself, but, but, but he was, he was a local guy according to Kansas News Service which was on the ground there here's the things like if this was a one-off like I could see why they would be

like oh this is a bunch of people from Kansas City the radical Kansas City poppies but this is happening all over the country well I'm gonna say all of them just happening a lot of Republican districts obviously we saw it a couple of weeks ago down in Georgia, but it's been happening everywhere. So like what do they say about that, Andrew? So this is the really interesting thing, right, is like when these news reports have cropped up, Republicans have settled into kind of a stock response here, which is that these are basically fake protesters. These are these are Democratic activists or people who have been called up to it. Right. Say again. It's called Astro to it right say again it's called astroturf right right right right they've been astroturfed in put

up to it by do you get it groups do you understand what astroturf is the physical thing that they make fake do you understand the phrase out of it sam really is like on one today it's not what's going on yeah we know what's's not grass familiar with god it's familiar with the the artificial turf and the political term yeah i used it in morning shots this morning are you okay did you get eight hours of sleep okay i did not get my eight hours to for for what it's worth maybe try it okay yeah i will but anyway this is what this is what roger marshall says himself like right the next the next or that that same day, his office puts out a statement that basically says these are a bunch of Democratic activists who got bussed in. They couldn't have put Oakley, Kansas, where this town hall was on a map.

And he says real Kansans are super into the Doge stuff like they're they're all about it. They're cheerleading. They would certainly never, never yell at me about it at a town hall. And in fact, I ought to be commended for saying as long as I did. Are they are we seeing any more Republicans like limit their town hall availabilities now? I know that was a thing. I think that's the thing that remains to be seen, right? It's like these things are not going very well for them. And they have this kind of stock response of like, well, you know, why would we do this when they're just going to get snowed under by these activists anyway? All right. So

then, Lauren, this comes to you because you've been looking into this, like, is this, is this actually AstroTurf, right? I mean, Democrats certainly are organizing around this stuff. I know. Yeah. Like the groups always organize on both sides around these kinds of town halls. So like you're indivisible, move on. They have been showing up at some of these events, but like, you know, it's kind of like a combo. You have some groups organizing, but there is also like real organic frustration from actual constituents with some of what's going on. I think what Republicans are starting to see is like the federal workforce is big. There are federal employees around the country, not just in the DC area. Some of them are starting to lose their jobs and they're pissed about it. I just talked to like one woman the other day who lives

in Mississippi and she just lost her job. She's a federal employee. Her husband was a Trump voter and he was kind of like, what the hell? Like I didn't vote for this. And they're pissed off because like, they're like, how are we going to pay our mortgage now? So, you know, it's Republicans, it's like a cop out. They're trying to just say it's all dead. How does this work operationally? Like Indivisible or MoveOn or whoever figures out where these people are going to be and then tells activists to go show up there? Yeah, well, like the town halls are, you know, they're public events. You have the address.

I mean, do you? I feel like they're not doing i feel like they're not doing town halls or they're hiding the information around okay well in theory town halls are supposed to be public events where you can show up to them right but yeah like these groups have well you know on their websites they'll like kind of blast it out to their like chapters around the country um so they're they're definitely organizing to get people to go, but like, it's not just, first of all, also like one of the accusations that these are like paid, paid people that are showing up, which they are not. Go ahead. Sorry. I am on today.

I'm so glad you can admit it. That's gross. Real gross for you. They're not paid. But yeah, they help chapters across the country figure out where these events are. And even when they don't have events too. Because what? The next recess is coming up in two weeks. And even the last recess, some of the... Typically during a recess, you hold a town town hall. Right. Some members are starting to pull back on those. And so, you know, you've got

your indivisible move on. They'd show up in those districts and kind of like make a big show out of the fact that so-and-so isn't hosting a town hall because they're afraid of answering tough questions on Doge. So it just occurred to me that Joe Biden in his first year, no Democrats held town halls because of COVID, right? Like it was just you didn't have those types of gatherings. And I think maybe to a degree now, I'm trying to remember this, but things really started to fall apart that summer for Biden because of the reemergence of COVID. And then, of course, the Afghanistan drawdown. But maybe they could have benefited from having town halls, right? Like getting a sense of where the voter anger was or the voter sentiment was. And certainly this was the case with Obama, right? Like the town halls were an early indication that things were going to go

sideways. Didn't prevent them from suffering humiliating defeats in the midterms. But I don't know. To me, it seems like if you're a member of Congress, you kind of want those town halls to at least give you some insight into where the voter sentiment really lies, right? Totally. Well, I guess in 2021 and 2022, we did have like the school board stuff. Do you remember? Right. Yeah. Loudoun County School Boards. Yeah. stuff do you remember right yeah laden county school boards yeah yeah so there was that i mean and that was a perfect example to your point of like an early indication of like the dei backlash that we're going to see if you are an elected member of congress who is you know supposed to be responsive to your constituents you would think you would want to like you know gauge where they're out on certain things so what's good so then the next thing andrews they have the the trump speech

tomorrow night can't call it a state of the union i guess not because it's not technically a state of the union i don't know why the first one isn't i don't know why they do it this way it's still the state of the union right more so than ever yes Yes. I don't know what that means, but sure. And then Democrats are all bringing guests. I think the new fad is bring a fired federal worker with you to the State of the Union. I don't know. Is that going to move the needle? Who knows?

But I guess this idea is active confrontation with Republicans over the fired federal workforce and the employees. And I agree with Lauren. I feel like it's underappreciated how widespread the workforce actually is. Like, there's a reason that one of these protests was outside of Atlanta. The CDC is in Atlanta. A thousand people were laid off at the CDC. Like, that's going to matter for that region. So is this thing just going to grow, is my guess? Probably. And there's just going to be more confrontations? Probably. I don't know. What do you think, Andrew? Well, that's the crazy thing about it is like, yes, it doesn't seem like there's any reason to believe this is going to slow down. The firings certainly are not slowing

down. But at the same time, Republicans seem to be actively trying to kind of like cut themselves off from any possibility of of like taking any of this to heart. Right. Because they're selling themselves this narrative is like Republicans favorite thing to do in recent years is to act like, like kind of signals that are coming in are actually sort of like planted there by Democrats. You don't have to pay attention to them. But like here, there is a very real possibility that what they are doing is cutting themselves off from the ability to flinch away from real political pain, right? Because if Republicans were to get it through their heads right now, that some of this Doge stuff is third rail stuff that's going to come back to bite them.

I mean, if they were to pivot away from that. Do though, right? Like, because we had that story where they were privately sending letters to their constituents being like, we're going to protect your privacy. Like, I know this is happening really fast, but publicly they can't do it. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that, I mean, publicly is a big part of it, right? I mean, that's the reason why a lot of these guys are mad is that they're not standing up. It's not like Roger Marshall has all that much to do with Doge right now. Doge is completely, you know, unconstrained by anything Congress is doing, by anything the other agencies are doing. Like what these people are looking for is for someone to stand up and like at least sort of make the case for them publicly, push back publicly and things like that. And so like if they were to pivot, right, if they were to start doing that kind of thing now, if they were to somehow end this sort of indiscriminate pillaging of the federal

workforce, well, it's 20 months to the next election, right? That's a lot of time to put this political pain to rest. But because they don't seem like they're able to feel that political pain because they're selling themselves this sort of anesthetic story that it's not real. It's all astroturf. It really kind of raises the question whether they will be able to do that. Well, maybe or maybe they just think it's short term pain. And eventually the populace will get used to this new reality and it will turn around within that 20 months.

Right. Like maybe that's just it. Like, get it done with rip the bandaid off. And then it's pretty wishful thinking. You're out of a job. Like, I don't know how that, yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It also just assumes that everything that's going to break is like, is just these fired people and not all the things they were doing before.

I know. Like all the pain that we, yeah. He's not a buy. He's obviously a bias source, but one story that popped up in my feed today that I thought, if it came to fruition, would be really shocking was Martin O'Malley, who used to administer the Social Security Administration. He said, he's like, look, if these cuts continue as is, they're going to have to miss a paycheck. Like, we're going to have to see Social Security miss a paycheck. Never has happened before. And it's not because they don't have the funds.

There's a separate debate over whether social security self-sustaining, I don't want to get into it. Don't worry about it. It's because operationally they don't have the people to administer the paychecks. And if that happens, boy, I mean,

people are going to be fucking livid. So pissed. Yeah. So pissed. Yeah. So pissed. Imagine just elderly voters being like, wait a second. I need this to literally buy food. That's bad. Can't imagine.

All right. We'll leave it on that. Andrew, Lauren, I'm sorry for my bad attitude. I'm going to work on that. Just get a good night's sleep. That's hard. We're going to cut all that out. The viewers won't even know how you were cascading and

parading us. No, they deserve the unvarnished sand. I'm not like a Republican lawmaker. I don't hide from these things. They deserve it. Thank you guys and thank you to the viewers for tuning in. Appreciate it. Take care.