Republican House leaders have reportedly issued urgent advice to GOP lawmakers on how to deal with furious constituents at ugly town hall meeting raging about the power-hungry president and his DOGE henchman Elon Musk: Skip the meetings.
The leaders have told representatives to stop holding public events, NBC News reported, citing sources.
If Republican lawmakers can’t avoid interacting face-to-face with their own constituents, they should switch to “tele-town halls,” which would avoid press coverage, or they should at least vet attendees and block those opposed to the policies they’re supporting, they have been instructed, according to NBC.
House members’ raucous meetings on their home turf with angry constituents have gone viral, with voters shouting and screaming at their elected representatives, and it’s not a good look for Republicans.
“Obviously we’re very aware of those headlines” about the town halls, a Republican National Committee official told NBC.
Many voters have complained about the thousands of arbitrary layoffs of federal workers by unelected tech billionaire Musk, and have attacked President Donald Trump for overstepping his authority.
Last week, Georgia Rep. Rich McCormick — who recently insisted children should have to work to earn school lunches — was loudly booed at a town hall meeting over his support for Musk and Trump’s behavior.
At a town hall meeting in Missouri on Monday, GOP Representative Mark Alford triggered a chorus of angry shouts as he tried to defend Trump’s sweeping government cutbacks, telling the crowd that “God has a plan” for federal workers who have been summarily dismissed.
“We don’t want your god!” shouted one voter, and another fired back: “Our god is Christian!”
Alford scolded his constituents at the town hall just outside Kansas City: “Just because you have a government job, doesn’t mean it’s a lifetime appointment like a Supreme Court,” the local St. Joseph News-Press recounted.
In Idaho last Saturday a meeting descended into chaos when a protester shouting questions was yanked from her seat, wrestled to the ground and dragged out of a packed auditorium by three private security guards.
Ugly confrontations between representatives and their voters have reportedly also occurred in Alaska, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Wisconsin, and beyond.
When pressed about the tactic to turn tail and run, Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser at the Republican National Committee, told NBC: “The president’s policies are incredibly popular, and the American people applaud his success in cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”
