Angry Americans Confront “Empty Chair Town Halls” As Republicans Hide From Voters

A few Republicans have been brave enough to hold town hall events where angry voters got to voice their concerns to their faces, but for the most part, the Party has been avoiding their constituents at all costs. This has led to voters holding “empty chair” town halls where they are yelling and expressing their anger at either empty chairs or just cardboard cutouts of their representatives. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening and what it could mean for next year’s midterms.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

This past weekend in the states of New York, Indiana, Montana, Alaska, Ohio, Maryland, Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Dakota, in all of those states, activists held town halls for their Republican either representatives or senators. And in none of those areas did a Republican politician show up. But to be perfectly honest, that was kind of the plan, because the activist groups that put on these events, these so-called empty chair town halls, which I think is brilliant, they knew that these Republican politicians would not accept their offer to come to these events. So instead, what happened was that you had thousands of people across the country show up to various different town halls to yell at either an empty chair or a cardboard cutout of their representative. And the reason they had to do that is because Republicans are too terrified to show up and face their own constituents for the horrible decisions that they are making each week. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. But instead, Republicans are saying, no, we're just not gonna deal with the people who you know have to vote for us every two years. We know they're off. We know they don't like what we're doing, so we're just gonna stop talking to them.

I can't tell you, and I probably don't even need to tell you how dumb that is. First of all, again, full kudos to the activist groups that are putting on these empty chair town halls. It's brilliant. It gets the message across. But most importantly, it speaks to the local community of how little your elected Republican thinks of you. That is what the Democrats have been needing to do for decades. But these independent left-wing groups, and yes, they are left-wing groups doing this, they figured it out, and they're doing it in a way that the DNC should have been doing it starting 20 years ago. But you know, at least somebody's doing it because that's what these voters have to understand. It's that when the Republicans have the opportunity to come and explain themselves or answer the tough questions, they run and hide, that's what's happening here across the country. And all of these events, by the way, were either held in red states or in red districts. So these people showing up to these events are not paid protestors from the left. These are their actual constituents. These are Republican voters, Republican voters who just like liberal voters,

Have real concerns about their future because of the policies coming outta Washington DC and when the going got tough, the Republicans ran and hid. That is the message that the voters are receiving right now. I'm worried about social security. I want to talk to my representative. They were on a recess this past weekend. By the way, there was no excuse for that. Every single member of Congress should have shown up and they didn't. So voters, if you needed any more evidence that Republicans don't care about you, and most importantly, that Republicans know their policies are hurting you, this is it. They showed it this past weekend. They don't care what you think. They don't care what they do to you, but I promise you, a year and a half from now, they will come back to you begging for your vote, telling you they've been fighting for you the whole time. No, they haven't been fighting for you. They've been hiding from you.