CNN Guest Says Non-Republicans Learned a ‘Hard Lesson’ From the Tea Party, Vows to ‘Apply’ It To Trump Era
At town halls across America, representatives have been hearing from their constituents — really hearing from them. Attendees have been packing town halls in an effort to make their voices heard and they have not been throwing softball questions at their reps.
A great example of this can be found in Mike Carlson, who showed up to Representative Diane Black‘s town hall about the impending repeal of the Affordable Care Act in Tennessee last night, then was featured on CNN today.
Brooke Baldwin asked him during the interview if he thought that the new movement toward political participation on the left was anything like the Tea Party Movement on the right.
“Do you see this?” she questioned. “Do you see you all potentially as the Tea Party as 2017?”
“We non-Republicans ended up having to learn a hard lesson from what the Tea Party did. They moved from the grassroots area of the base and they motivated a lot of people,” Carlson said. “Unfortunately, they motivated a lot of people with misinformation in order to demonize — in this case, since we’re talking about the ACA — they did it to demonize a program that stood to help millions of Americans and has helped millions of Americans. What we have to do now is take that lesson and apply it and we are.”
He went on to say that organizers tried to keep the event Republican-centric last night and wanted to deny entry to the town hall to left-leaning participants. Baldwin asked if Carlson had seen that himself and revealed she’d heard no such accusations until that moment, but was always happy to hear the experiences of Americans.
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