Free from the annoyance of having to listen directly to the voters he works for, Republican Congressman Dave Reichert (R-Auburn) settled in comfortably for a live Q&A with KCTS 9's Enrique Cerna this afternoon.
Reichert has been avoiding the type of real, in-person town hall meetings that have been blowing up in the faces of Republicans across the country. Instead, he offered today's interview—which was not open to other reporters or the public—as an alternative. That has pissed off some of his constituents, who've been holding their own events, including an "empty chair town hall" in Cashmere that drew 400 people and a rally outside Reichert's Issaquah office today. KCTS said it received more than 2,000 questions.
The KCTS interview today, which you can watch below, covered President Donald Trump's immigration policies, Republican promises to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and and Reichert's vote against requesting Trump's tax returns. But it started with the obvious question: Why is he refusing to hold a town hall meeting?
Reichert said he had watched footage from other town halls across the country and seen members of Congress "show up and immediately be shouted down." He said he will host meetings with small groups instead of a large event.
“I will not do a town hall with [400] or 500 people," Reichert said. "They’re not productive. It’s just a moment that people—some people, not all, but some people—want to use to voice their opinions sometimes in a very loud, very rude, and obscene way."
As opposition to Trump's agenda has heated up, Reichert claims staff working in his office have experienced threats and physical confrontations. "We've had to call the police," he said. "We've had people arrested. We've had people placed into a mental institution. I don't want to do that."
On the issues, Reichert used the interview to distance himself from Trump, saying he didn't vote for him in November and criticizing the rollout of the travel ban as "destructive." On the Affordable Care Act, Reichert pledged not to vote for a repeal that didn't include a replacement, but was largely vague on what a replacement should look like. On immigration, he called generally for "reform" and expressed support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and a "pathway to citizenship."
But Reichert didn't reject Trump's agenda wholesale. On the travel ban, he said, "We need to do this legislatively [rather than through an executive order]. He needs to work with Congress to get this accomplished."
Reichert defended his own vote against requesting Trump's tax returns, likening it to requesting an average citizen's tax returns ("we can't do that"), and his vote to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, saying the office didn't offer enough "due process" to members of Congress accused of wrongdoing.
When asked about the Trump administration's recent repeal of protections for trans students, Reichert shrugged it off as a transfer of power back to the states, allowing states to decide “whether or not they want to accommodate transgenders in a specific way.”
And on a question about whether he approved of Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon to the National Security Council, Reichert dodged, saying he'd "never heard of" Bannon until he was appointed. When Cerna pushed Reichert on Bannon's ties to Breitbart and white nationalism, Reichert said, "I don’t think you can ignore those things. I’m aware of those—that past history, but, you know, people change. I don’t know Mr. Bannon. I don’t know what he’s like today. I’ve never met him."
Near the end of the interview, Cerna lobbed Reichert a softball about America's partisan divide. Reichert said today's divisions sadden him and that he's "ready and willing to talk."
"GReat," wrote one commenter on the live Facebook feed. "Then lets have a town hall."
Watch the full interview here:
