GOP congressman blames town hall outburst on 'outside agitators' who 'wanted to do me harm'
Ever since centibillionaire Elon Musk was tasked by President Donald Trump to identify wasteful spending in federal agencies, the tech entrepreneur and his team have been busy making sweeping cuts throughout multiple federal agencies — including money already appropriated by Congress. House Republicans have lately been facing the ire of constituents demanding they oppose Musk and stop the mass firings of federal workers.
One of those Republicans is Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.), who recently had a tense town hall meeting with his constituents at a coffee shop. In a Monday night interview with CNN host Kaitlan Collins, Alford acknowledged that he represents Republicans, Democrats and others in his district and that he welcomes disagreement. However, he suggested that the bulk of those who showed up to disagree with him were not actually from his district.
"This was brought about outside agitators and some people from outside of our district, not our constituents who came there to make their voices heard," Alford said. "And I respect that they have every right to be there. We did not prohibit them, even though they did not live in our district."
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Collins pushed back on his characterization of angry constituents as transplants from outside of his Kansas City-area district. Alford responded by acknowledging that "some were" indeed from the district," though they "clearly were not in line with my way of thinking and they did not vote for Trump." He then suggested that the detractors at the meeting harbored ill will.
"This is serious business we're talking about. And that's why I went in and faced the people who who don't want me in office and some who want to, I think, to do me harm," Alford continued. "That's why we had a swat team and many police there. And I can take that. But I take this serious because this is the survival of our nation."
Alford defended the recent wave of layoffs as necessary to address the national debt, and said he would vote in favor of the House Republican budget bill that would cut roughly $800 billion across all federal agencies. Collins then asked Alford if that included cuts in federal support to state Medicaid programs, which provide health insurance to low-income Americans. He framed the cuts as "savings" for Medicaid, and that he aimed to make sure that he would seek to have some Americans kicked off of Medicaid rolls in order to reach the savings goal.
"There is waste, abuse and fraud in Medicaid. We are finding out through DOGE and through the access to this data that there is waste, abuse and fraud in just about every government program. We knew that," he said. "I don't think we wanted to admit that it was this bad. but in the medicaid system, we've got to make sure that that's eliminated and that we also have to make sure that able-bodied adults with no dependent children are not on Medicaid."
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Watch the full segment below, or by clicking this link.
