Graham J Noble
Chief political correspondent and satirist.
Several GOP officeholders have met with protests and vocal critics at recent town hall events, and the situation was bad enough for congressional Republican Party leadership to discourage the practice of hosting these gatherings. But are these town hall protests a sign that many conservative-leaning voters are suffering from “buyer’s remorse” after electing President Donald Trump? When one looks at the tactics these protesters are employing – and especially the concerns and complaints they are raising – it looks obvious that they aren’t Trump supporters at all, but left-wing activists looking to disrupt Republican outreach to constituents.
The impression the organizers behind these supposedly spontaneous demonstrations are hoping to create is one of disharmony within the Republican voter base and disillusionment with the Trump agenda. Given the 47th president’s high approval ratings, the narrative doesn’t appear to match reality.
Trump himself has alleged that the town hall protests are staged affairs, with paid agitators disrupting the meetings. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) makes the same claim. The left-wing media pushes back that they have provided no evidence to back up the accusations. To be fair, it is true that no one has shown proof that paid leftists are causing all the brouhaha, but, whether the rabble-rousers are being paid or not, a look at what was said and done during town hall protests seems to give the game away.
A Closer Look at the Town Hall Protests
Trump supporters are not generally known to shout down speakers, chant in unison, or complain about things like Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts, healthcare, and threats to democracy. Except for the Jan 6, 2021, protest in Washington, DC, conservatives in general are not given to showing up at events with hand-painted signs. These are all known tactics of the left.
A recent town hall in deep-blue Asheville, NC, hosted by Rep Chuck Edwards (R), provided evidence that vocal “Trump supporters” were almost certainly not who they claimed to be – or who they were portrayed to be by establishment media.
One elderly gentleman asked Edwards, “Do you support Trump on annexing Canada or Greenland, and do you like the way he treats [Prime Minister Justin Trudeau], calling him ‘governor’? Is that the way you do, as a diplomat?” He went on, “Is that the way the United States should act to our closest neighbors?” These aren’t things that bother Trump supporters. In particular, the US president’s loyal voters don’t shed tears when he mocks Trudeau, whom they see as either a communist or a fascist and a wannabe tyrant.
Perhaps this one man wasn’t pretending to be a supporter of the president or even someone who had voted for him and now regrets it. It’s hard to tell. He wore a red baseball cap, though it may not have been one of the now iconic Make America Great Again hats. But he certainly reeled off several of the anti-Trump talking points used by left-leaning media outlets.
Trump Voters Don’t Speak or Act This Way
At the same event – attended by 2,000 town hall protesters, so it’s unlikely all or even half of them were locals – more evidence of staged opposition was on display. One man, who claimed to be a veteran, raged against Edwards’ support of Trump’s cuts to the federal government workforce and had to be removed from the room after threatening to punch someone. Many attendees constantly yelled over their host, to the point where he had to ask his audience to allow him to answer the questions.
The booing and foul language were constant. This isn’t how Trump supporters – or even Republican voters who don’t much care for the current president – behave at public gatherings. “‘Listen to us now!’ several people screamed from various parts of the room,” the Associated Press reported. The left does like its protest statements and chants, repeated verbatim by its activists. One could certainly be forgiven for suspecting that these “several people” were coached beforehand.
The subject matter of the questions Edwards fielded ran the gamut of progressive anti-Trump talking points, from supposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to the firing of government workers to concerns about support for Ukraine and the “threat to democracy.” These are not the questions Trump voters are currently asking in the real world.
GOP constituent events across the country have been besieged by supposedly concerned citizens who, oddly enough, are concerned only with the very same things about which elected Democrats and left-wing pundits claim to be concerned.
Media reports confirm that many – and perhaps most – of these town hall protests have been organized by local branches of Indivisible, a national activist organization that claims “a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.” So, paid or not, the people doing all the screaming and shouting about Trump and Elon Musk at these events are indeed progressive activists and not disappointed and angry Republicans.
This article was originally published by Liberty Nation News.
