Bulwark Takes - The People Are Pissed. This Georgia Townhall Shows The Trump Backlash Is Here

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

GOP Rep. McCormick faces a raucous crowd at his townhall after a packed house pushes back against the Trump administration.

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bullwark here with Managing Editor Sam Stein. Subscribe to the feed. We're starting to see the ramifications of the Trump administration's choices over the past month come to reality for Republican elected officials. And I think maybe the first, what would you say, inflection point of regular people pushing back that we've really seen is uh at this town hall that uh georgia republican rich mccormick held last night he represents georgia's seventh district which is northeast of atlanta but like excerpts excerpts northeast of stone mountain

like north norcross if and uh people know the area he won with 64 of the votes this is not a swing district it's not the suburbs. Right, it's not suburbs. Yeah. And so he got some big pushback last night. We're going to play a couple of the clubs. But Sam, I'm curious, just kind of your top line thoughts before we play a club. So we kind of, the reason I find this interesting is we got a little inkling when we did that story about how the congressmen and women were responding to their constituent complaints,

right? They were writing these letters. They were posturing like, oh, I support Elon, but I'm making sure that he's not going too far. And I have all these protections. And that kind of, when we did that piece, my lip all went off. I was like, oh, that's interesting. They're getting some pushback. This, to me, is much more visceral. Obviously, every time you see something in footage, it's more visceral than if you are reading it in text. And when I saw this last night, my instinct was, and I'm not the only one who had this, this reminds me of 2009, 2010, and the Tea Party stuff. And it was specifically the Obamacare town halls. And then also, if I'm another Republican in Congress, I see that. And that kind of spooks me a little bit. You were on the White House beat during those Obamacare town halls?

So back in 2009, 2010, I was covering the Obama White House for HuffPost. And, you know, basically the context was they were pursuing this incredibly ambitious health care policy. And it was the third rail, right? Like Clinton had touched it and lived to regret it. But no one else really wanted to do health care because, well, they wanted to do it, but they knew it was going to be problematic. And the first taste of just how problematic it was, was in these town halls. Now, some of the Tea Party stuff was about the bailouts and the economic recovery program. But really, it was people coming and being like, you are going to take away my health insurance. You're not going to let me go see my doctor. I like people were freaking out. And Democrats just were completely ill equipped and ill prepared to handle. They just didn't know what to do. And it overwhelmed

the town halls. And it almost killed Obamacare, frankly. Yeah. Well, here's, I think, our first taste about how Republicans are going to handle it. Rich McCormick telling an angry, a mob of righteously angry constituents who are upset about what is happening and the firings and the impact on their community, telling them that they are the same as January 6th insurrectionists. Let's watch. Tyranny is rising in the White House, and a man has declared himself our king. So I would like to know, rather, the people would like to know what you, Congressman, and your fellow congressmen

are going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House. When you talk about tyranny, when you talk about presidential power, I remember having the same discussion with Republicans when Biden was elected. The funny thing is, the funny thing is, the funny thing is, you're sitting here and a lot of you would probably say those January 6s who are yelling just as loud as you, who are upset just like you.

You know, maybe not the talking point you're going to go for. Let me finesse that one a little bit. Workshopping. In the mega context where these people are heroes and get to perform at the Kennedy Center, maybe he could spin it as I was trying to compliment you. Have you booked your tickets for the J6 Choir at the Kennedy Center? I'm waiting. I've never been to the Kennedy Center for a show, so it'll be my first one. This is going to be great. I'm going to recommend you. Have you booked your tickets for the J6 Choir at the Kennedy Center? I'm waiting. I've never been to the Kennedy Center for a show, so it'll be my first one.

This is going to be great. Yeah. I'm going to pregame. No, I would have taken a different approach to that one. But look, that question was interesting because it had nothing to do with Doge, although some other people asked about Doge, right? And it didn't really have to do with the cuts although it was related to because it was trump's acting tyrannical and

like please rein him in and that is just like you know if you're a republican in congress that's even tougher than doge right because doge you can be like look i don't want elon to do this either we're trying to make some you know guardrails. I want to make sure he's not getting your privacy information, yada, yada, yada. This, this is different. This is your hero, Donald Trump, has taken it too far. Please rein him in. And he doesn't have a response. Yeah.

We also see a little bit on the Doge stuff itself. And a Bullwark super fan, Maggie Goldman, who's running for office down there in Georgia, was there at the, uh, at the town hall and has a couple of videos on show here, but, uh, he is getting pressed specifically about the cuts. Right. Um, because I, you know, again, this is, it's not just touching DC, it's touching all of these. And this is C, just to be clear.

So this is near Atlanta again. That's the home of the CDC. Yeah yeah uh the center for disease control prevention they've cut like i think like a thousand people they want to cut there it's crazy so this is hitting close on but this is everywhere like the cuts are national what's not reasonable is taking this chainsaw approach which they obviously admit when they fire these people and and decided, oh, we fired the wrong people. We've got to bring them back in. Why is this being jammed down the pipe so rushed and sloppily? So...

The understanding is when you say you have this many employees that you have to cut, that organization decides who they're going to cut. Now, they make me... this many employees that you have to cut that organization decides who they're going to cut i just i don't know that he got what he's signing up for here uh you know and the place is packed uh yeah and and you know there's been kind of this discussion um we've been having it ever it's everybody's been having it of like it felt different than 2016. there was an apathy uh there was a nihilism. People were beaten down.

They're like, people wanted to check out. You didn't see the big protests. There've been some protests here and there, but like this, the energy here is palpable in these, in these clips. And Tim, you talk, I think you were talking about this online or maybe you were tweeting someone else talking about it,

but Democrats don't seem to be harnessing it, right? Like Democrats almost might get engulfed by it too, which is – Democratic politicians, you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their people want something in terms of a reaction to this stuff. And I'm not sure what the politicians can give them. And that's like – that's a bad place for the democrats too because they might come for the democrats and say you're not doing enough i mean they can do stuff they can fire and brimstone uh

they can block some of these stuff on the hill they can you know what i mean like that that's they should show more yeah they got to channel the energy i i mean i i don't uh it was it was i was talking about this on the pod yesterday i don't have the poll in front of me right now but it was an overwhelming majority of democrats i think in the area of 70 percent like when asked are democratic elected officials doing enough to fight trump they're doing too much or too little it's like 70 was too little right like it was supposed to just the right amount and it was a it's overwhelming majority and so i do think that democrats could get um could get swept up in this obviously Obviously, the anger is pointed towards

Elon and Musk, but the anger is also pointed to just kind of a lack of, you know, anything happening to slow them down. And to me, it's also an opportunity for some Democrats actually to like really get famous and like and become a leader and, you know, channel. Exactly. If I were a young up and coming Democrat, like that's something you could tap into. It's very interesting because you're exactly right. In 2017, all of them were tapping into it. I mean, you watched them fundraising on Facebook. The numbers were astronomical.

Now, less so. Quickly, back to the Republicans, though, because it wasn't, I just want to be clear, this was not an isolated town hall. First of all, members don't really do town halls that much anymore because they want to avoid this stuff. But this is not isolated. So there's like a couple clips just this morning. CNN has a story out about how Republicans and state officials are worried about Trump's FEMA cuts.

So that was one that I thought was interesting. Politico has a piece out. Of course, the headline makes your eyes roll, but the private GOP panic, private GOP panic over the slash and burn doge firings. Like, come on, folks, you can speak up. to be in a new era of meritocracy, not the indiscriminate firing of people, blah, blah, blah, blah. But this one is on the record. Representative Troy Balderson, he's of Ohio. He described President Donald Trump's flurry of executive orders as, quote, getting out of control at an event at a Westerville area chamber business luncheon on Thursday. So you're starting to see, like, little bits and pieces here and there of anxiety, of, you know, worry from Republicans.

We'll see where it goes. Yeah, and they haven't done anything to kill Republicans. This is, like, I think the other interesting thing. Like, the idea of them being able to govern could completely crumble before they even actually get anything out the door. Was there an idea that they were able to? Well, I mean, this was part of the suggestion. Not to get too wonky, but I did an interview with Liam Donovan a while back,

and it was like a hill watcher, and there was this debate happening internally in Republican circles. Do we do one big thing out of the gate that's like fund a bunch of, I think it was mostly immigration, right? Like fund a bunch of security, new ICE officials and like just get a bill out the door to like have something that Trump signs and to have some momentum in the first 100 days. And then there were some technical reasons why they decided not to do that. They're going to do this kind of big omnibus thing that does some immigration and some tax cuts and doge and everything. And, I mean, it's just like initially I was –

I just, as an outsider who has no interest in them succeeding, was like, well, obviously they should do the first option, right, and try to get something done. Because this big bill seems like a total clusterfuck. And I mean if you have random dudes like Troy Balderson, how do you worry? The idea you do a huge bill when you have a two-seat majority. Oh, I'm going to have to squeeze that one in. No.

And then keep in mind, they've got to fund the government in like a month, right? I mean it's just you're absolutely right like this stuff that we've seen in the first month has not required any congressional republican involvement whatsoever yes they've had to confirm yeah the confirmations but at some point they're gonna have to put their you know pencils to paper i think and we'll see what happens there but uh maybe King Trump has other ideas. All right. Well, good on the people that showed up to Rich McCormick's town hall last night.

Folks, if you're watching this, folks, and you're at a town hall, and you're at a town hall and you see something, video it and send it to us, please. Video it and send it to us. Be our eyes and ears. Yeah, please. TheBullock.com slash tips. Send it on in. Some great articles today on The Bullock today about people who have reached out to us firing.

I'm sure we have the video up on YouTube of the FEMA chief of staff who is a veteran, 32-year naval veteran who was fired. And then another article about all of the insanity at the nuclear. Los Alamos. The firings and unfirings at Los Alamos. We're going to have a separate video of that on the YouTube later today, but you should read that piece. More on that to come. Go to theblog.com.

Subscribe to the feed. That's Sam Stein. I'm Tim Miller. We'll see you all soon. Peace.