You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

These rowdy town halls are really getting under Donald Trump’s skin.

The president last night embraced the GOP’s message for voters who are angry about the party’s plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act: The popular outrage is artificial.

Mitch McConnell similarly brushed off the protesters by declaring they “did not like the results of the election,” and that “winners make policy and the losers go home.” This was an attitude starkly absent from McConnell’s approach in the Obama years, when he very early on spearheaded a strategy of mass GOP opposition.

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley—who infamously said in 2009 that health care reform would have government “decide when to pull the plug on grandma”—saw that kind of talk come right back around. As a constituent told him: “With all due respect, sir, you’re the man that talked about the death panel. We’re gonna create one big death panel in this country—the people who can’t afford to get insurance.”

Elsewhere in Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst faced a hostile crowd, which booed loudly when she left the forum:

And Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA), who became a living symbol of Tea Party uprisings when he defeated former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary back in 2014, got his own taste of the new wave of liberal political resistance: