'Shame!' Angry crowd boos Georgia Republican over Trump cuts
August 13-15, 2023 Congressional delegation Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) and Congressman Ed Case (D-HI) are meeting with Honorable Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen. Wikimedia commons/U.S. Embassy Dhaka
A Georgia Republican lawmaker was met with hundreds of angry constituents at a town hall in Roswell, Ga. Thursday night. Attendees slammed Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) over the Trump Administration’s drastic budget cuts to the federal government and layoffs of federal workers. He responded with condescension.
“Yell all you want. I can’t understand ten people let alone 100 people at once,” McCormick said in a video posted to X by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein.
Throughout the night, the crowd booed and chanted “shame.”
“We’re pissed,” someone yelled.
One attendee brought up two instances where federal workers were fired and then asked to come back. Employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention working on the bird flu response, as well as employees maintaining nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy, were fired, but then the decision was rescinded due to safety risks.
“Why is the supposedly conservative party taking such a radical, and extremist and sloppy approach to this?” the attendee asked. The audience clapped.
“A lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI,” McCormick said of the CDC. “I happen to be a doctor. I know a few things.”
READ MORE: 'They don’t have a clue': Ex-senator says Trump’s botched firings prove he’s 'incompetent'
The town hall took place near the CDC headquarters, an agency where almost 1,300 workers had been laid off.
Someone asked about Trump’s “unprecedented” overreach of power and how Congress was going to reign him in. Members of the crowd gave the questioner a standing ovation.
“When you talk about tyranny, when you talk about presidential power, I remember having the same discussion with Republicans when Biden was elected,” McCormick said as the audience booed, breaking out in chants of “shame, shame, shame.”
“I don’t want to see any president be too powerful,” he added.
READ MORE: 'Absolutely no knowledge': Arms expert slams DOGE as Trump reverses nuclear weapons layoffs
Congress should “control the budget, not the president. You are doing us a disservice to set that down and not stand up for us,” one constituent said at another point. The attendees cheered and applauded.
“You don’t think I’m going to stand for you?” he asked.
The crowd jeered. “Don’t bend over,” someone said.
“I’m going to stand in front of you and take your questions and try to answer them as honestly as I can,” he said. “Then let’s do that, okay? But if you’re going to just yell at me, that’s not going to be an effective counter.”
READ MORE: 'No one is calling me back': Trump USDA funding freeze causing farmers major hardship
Later in the conversation, he brought up proposed cuts to government services for low-income people, disabled people, and elderly people. “If you don’t do something with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — 75 percent of our budget is mandatory spending.”
“No it isn’t,” someone said.
“Google it right now… we have a 30 percent deficit. If you cut all of your military and all of your discretionary spending, you still have a shortfall. We’re heading towards a cliff where we will no longer be the economic standard of the world.”
According to the libertarian CATO Institute, mandatory spending makes up 73 percent of the budget.
READ MORE: 'Traitor': Trump-friendly union leader blasted for 'shameful' cozying up to GOP
McCormick also said that there is an “eventual economic collapse of the United States.”
“We want to work with someone better,” someone yelled.
Watch the video below or at this link.
