For the first time in more than eight years, Rep. Doug LaMalfa came face to face with his constituents at a town hall, and things didn’t exactly go great for the seventh-term California Republican. During the event, LaMalfa was repeatedly booed and jeered as he tried to defend Donald Trump’s massive budget bill, which slashed funding for Medicaid.
Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders Townsend, co-hosts of “The Weeknight,” said Monday’s town hall was yet another example of Americans expressing their unhappiness with Republicans rubber-stamping the president’s agenda.
“Look, I think these town halls demonstrate that the people are, in fact, paying attention,” Sanders Townsend said. “Oftentimes, we talk about like, ‘Well, what is breaking through? Is it breaking through?’ The Medicaid cuts have broken through, because this is real for folks.”
“The Republicans are not going to get away with this,” the veteran Democratic campaign operative predicted. “If I was a strategist working on 2026, I would be like, ‘Well, what we gonna do?’”
Menendez said that she gave LaMalfa credit for holding a face-to-face meeting with voters, “especially given that his own party leadership is telling him, is telling members, not to have these types of town halls.” She added: “I think he’s doing his job.”
Menendez also agreed with her co-host that the turnout at town halls across the country showed voters are keeping up with the failures of the Trump administration. “I agree with you that these are meaningful, because sometimes you’ll be like, ‘Well, it’s so far from midterms. How do you keep this pressure up?’ If nothing else, this tells you, to your point, that people are paying attention,” Menendez said. She said that it was a hopeful sign for Democrats, and that the frustration should make it easier for the party to raise money and “recruit legitimate challengers in some of these districts.” Menendez urged the party to seize the opportunity ahead of the midterm elections: “The fact that there is energy and there is a built-in narrative, which Democrats are now figuring out how to make cohesive, begins to set the stage for those midterms, no matter how far away they are.” You can watch Sanders Townsend and Menendez’s analysis in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW.
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