“Wasting Time”: GOP Rep Reamed by Furious Voters as Town Hall Derails

Republican Representative Rob Wittman of Virginia held a virtual town hall Wednesday night, but he couldn’t escape his angry constituents in the comments.

Opting for an hour-long “tele-townhall” on Facebook allowed Wittman to avoid facing his constituents in person, but commenters suggested that he had manipulated the format to only allow certain participants to ask questions, according to RawStory.

Upon signing up for the town hall, some attendees had received a phone number so they could ask questions. But it seems not everyone was invited to participate.

“I am very frustrated to have signed up for both of the last telephone town hall and not to have received a call to participate. Because you aren’t taking questions via the livestream, that means I cannot fully engage as a constituent,” wrote a person named Brittany Rose.

“You’re a fake. You only answer questions you have pre screened. You are not looking out for all the people who depend on you to stand up for them,” wrote a woman named Dr. Susan Hundley.

“Wow so you have pre-screened all of us who call you daily so you don’t actually have a townhall,” wrote constituent Lynsey Miller.

“This isn’t a clean bill, you all are perfectly fine bankrupting Americans over Healthcare and you’re not even trying to negotiate with them,” Miller continued. “How he paid the military was illegal, it’s a misappropriation of funds and you have put our service members (including my spouse) in an absolutely crappy position.”

The questions that did make their way to Wittman highlighted Republicans’ do-nothing strategy to the ongoing government shutdown. One caller named Greg asked why the government wasn’t reopening if Republicans had control of Congress and the White House.

Another caller named Charles asked why the House had not been called back to session to “participate in any negotiations that might be useful to getting to an agreement to open the government.”

Wittman claimed that Republicans were continuing to work while at home in their districts, but also insisted that House Republicans had already done their jobs by voting for a continuing resolution to keep the government open.

In answering callers’ questions, Wittman repeatedly read quotes from Democratic leaders such as former President Barack Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer speaking about the importance of government. His constituents didn’t seem to appreciate it.

“You are wasting time reading quotes instead of answering constituents questions this is only an hour,” wrote voter Rita Mullaly Lysher, who also said she never received a call to ask questions.

Wittman took some heat in the comments for supporting Donald Trump’s behemoth budget and tax bill in July, which would cut nearly one trillion from Medicaid funding over the next 10 years, putting rural hospitals at risk.

“Republicans do not want to take responsibility for the horrendous increase in health care premiums,” wrote a constituent named Erin Rose, adding in another comment: “You took away $150 billion from hospitals!!”

Wittman voted to reduce his own taxes by as much as $59,300, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Donald Trump is planning to throw himself another “vanity parade”—and this time, it might include Navy warships hurtling missiles toward the state of California.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is considering whether to shut down sections of Interstate 5 on Friday and Saturday, as reports circulate that the White House intends to shoot live ordnance over the highway at Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, MeidasTouch Network reported Wednesday.

Newsom’s office told the Los Angeles Times that it had “received little information about the event or safety plans.”

Neither the White House or the Marine Corps responded to questions from either publication.

The show of force is intended to commemorate the Marine Corps’s 250th anniversary and will run counter to the nationwide No Kings protests, which uses the visuals of millions of protesters to ideologically challenge Trump’s unopposed rule.

The event, called “Sea to Shore—A Review of Amphibious Strength,” will be led by Vice President JD Vance.

The potential highway closure would affect a portion of the interstate between Orange and San Diego counties, and is expected to affect more than 80,000 daily commuters and could suspend nearly $100 million in freight traffic per day, reported MeidasTouch. That could result in a massive gridlock from Dana Point to below Del Mar, about 20 minutes north of San Diego, with a nearly eight-hour delay in both directions.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance think that shutting down the I-5 to shoot out missiles from ships is how you respect the military,” Newsom posted on X Wednesday.

The California governor told MeidasTouch that his office is working to minimize what would be “a massive disruption, and reckless disregard for California’s infrastructure and communities.”

The president’s dangerous intimidation display for the military anniversary will also occur during the government shutdown, forcing thousands of Marines and federal employees to work for free as they support Trump’s vision.

“California always honors our Marines—but this isn’t the right way to go about it,” a Newsom spokesperson told the L.A. Times. “The White House should focus on paying their military, lowering grocery prices and honoring these soldiers for their service instead of pompous displays of power. The lack of coordination and communication from the federal government on this event—and the overall impact to our society and economy—is evident of the larger disarray that is the Trump Administration.”

President Donald Trump seemed to acknowledge the ghoulishness of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller in a joke during a Wednesday press conference about crime.

“I want to thank Stephen Miller, who is right back in the audience right there,” Trump said. “I’d love to have him—I love watching him on television. I’d love to have him come up and explain his true feelings. Maybe not his truest feelings. That might be going a little too far.”

Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s cruel immigration agenda, is known for his cruel policies, like family separation—as well as rhetoric so rabid that it’s been reasonably compared to that of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

The White House aide has called the Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization,” immigration a “mass invasion of our country,” and judges who rule against Trump “communist” and “Marxist.” He has suggested suspending habeas corpus for immigrants and claimed the president has “plenary authority” to send the National Guard to American cities.

Miller’s white nationalist sympathies, if not evident in his public statements and apparent espousal of the “great replacement” theory, were revealed in leaked emails he sent to the staff at the far-right site Breitbart back in 2015–16, in which he shared content from white supremacist websites and elevated a book that’s popular among white nationalists for its xenophobic portrayal of a refugee invasion.

So, while a joke, Trump’s remark Wednesday hinged on the fact that he knows Miller to be an extremist through and through.

Trump has once again called for anyone who ever investigated him to be politically attacked, referencing his power as “chief law enforcement officer.”

“I’m the one that had to suffer through [investigations] and ultimately win. But what they did was criminal. Deranged Jack Smith, in my opinion, is a criminal. And I noticed his interviewer, I think that was [former federal prosecutor Andrew] Weissman. And I hope they’re gonna look into Weissman too, Weissman’s a bad guy, and he had somebody in [former Deputy Attorney General] Lisa [Monaco] who was his puppet, worked in the office really as the top person,” Trump said during a press conference Wednesday with FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I think that she should be looked at very strongly. It was tremendous criminal activity.”  

He then went on to ramble about how fair elections, fair press, and borders are the most important issues in America right now, before moving back to his political enemies. 

“They have committed massive political crime. I hope they’re looking at Shifty [Adam] Schiff, I hope they’re looking at all these people. And I’m allowed to find out, I’m allowed, in theory, the ‘chief law enforcement officer.’ … I hope they’re looking at political crime, because there’s never been so much political crime against a political opponent as what I had to go through.” 

These so-called “criminals” Trump is referring to—Jack Smith, Lisa Monaco, Andrew Weissman, and Adam Schiff—are all people who rightfully and legally investigated a variety of alleged crimes, including Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, Trump’s role in instigating January 6 insurrection, and Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

And for what it’s worth, Trump is very much not the chief law enforcement officer of the United States—the attorney general is (although Bondi has proven willing to agree with the president). Not only is Trump continuing to attack people on baseless accusations of crime, he is misrepresenting the power he has to do so.  

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani gave a strong interview on Fox News Wednesday—but the same can’t be said for the host, Martha MacCallum.

During the interview on Fox’s The Story, MacCallum posed a variety of questions echoing far-right talking points. But if MacCallum was hoping to catch Mamdani out on his leftist policies, she got something else entirely. 

While asking Mamdani whether his socialist politics were at odds with New York City’s reputation as the finance capital of the world, MacCallum revealed that she’d gotten a little help with her interview prep from AI. 

“Last night, I ChatGPT’d, ‘Where is the capitalist and global finance center of the world?’ and it said New York City, which made me feel good as someone who loves New York City,” MacCallum said. “Is that a moniker you’re proud of, and one that you want to continue for this city?”

“Well, you should be proud of it. And, that is one thing you have in common with Andrew Cuomo, because he also uses ChatGPT to answer many questions, including how to actually resolve the housing crisis in this city,” Mamdani said, referring to Cuomo’s April housing plan that had clearly been made with the help of a large language model.  

He added that he hoped to make NYC the capital of “where working people could afford to live in this city.”

MacCallum then noted that Mamdani had no experience as a businessperson—though why that would be necessary for a civil servant is unclear—and asked him what experience gave him the “confidence” to run for mayor. 

Mamdani cited his nearly six years as a New York state assemblymember, representing 130,000 residents in Queens. “I’ve not only delivered more than $100 million in increased bus and subway service, I’ve also secured half a billion dollars in debt relief for working-class taxi drivers,” he said.

MacCallum’s condescending question seems to echo President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday had criticized Mamdani, claiming he had “never worked a day in his life.”

The Fox News host appeared uncomfortable while pressing Mamdani on his view on law enforcement, and when she challenged him to publicly apologize for calling the New York City Police Department racist and corrupt, he launched into an apology—which MacCallum quickly interrupted. In fact, she interrupted Mamdani several times throughout the interview.

The interview also opened with a lengthy segment where McCallum probed Mamdani for his opinions about Hamas, following the tenuous peace agreement with Israel. Mamdani, whose potential position has little to do with foreign affairs, refused to take the bait.

Mamdani has previously faced wildly racist comments from right-wing media and lawmakers, including Trump, who accused Mamdani of being in the country “illegally” and promised to have the local lawmaker arrested if he should follow through on defying ICE.