His Fort Madison town meeting revealed just how useless the nation’s longest serving U.S. Senator has become.
First, I give Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) credit for this much: he holds town hall meetings. Not a lot of them, but some. That’s more than most of his Republican colleagues are willing to do so far in the Trump 2.0 presidency. They are so afraid of their constituents, and what those voters (and employers, by the way) might ask them, that most of them skip town meetings altogether, preferring to remain silent while President Trump is busy demolishing America’s democracy and selling it for parts, all with their quiet – silent even – acquiescence.
So, at age 91 – yes – I give Chuck Grassley credit for doing what the vast majority of his younger Republican colleagues are not willing to do. Hold a town meeting.
While I give Grassley credit for holding a town meeting, that is not the same as saying he does them well. He does not.
“If there is a constitutional crisis it is not being caused by President Trump,” was one of the gems that came out of Senator Grassley’s mouth at his Fort Madison town hall meeting this past week.
Another classic was his answer to the question from one attendee, “We would like to know what you as the people, the Congress, who are supposed to rein in this dictator, what are you going to do about these people who have been sentenced to life in prison in a foreign country with no due process?”
That question was followed by a shouted demand from another Iowan in the audience: “Bring back the guy from El Salvador!”
Grassley’s response was that he isn’t going to do anything to bring the aforementioned “guy in El Salvador” – Kilmar Abrego Garcia – back and had nothing to say about preventing future abductions and deportations without due process.
Garcia committed no crime, much less been convicted of one. He was snatched off the street here in America and flown to El Salvador to spend the rest of his life in hell hole prison, without so much as a single court appearance. …
Read more: Barry Piatt on Politics: – Behind the Curtains