February 08, 2017 11:17 AM UTC

Gardner Faces Hostile Tele-Town Hall Audience

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• by: Colorado Pols

On Monday, Sen. Cory Gardner conducted an unannounced “tele-town hall” phone conference with a select group of Coloradans contacted by the campaign to participate. The call was held in the mid-morning hours local time, which further limited the rate of participation.

Nonetheless, as you can hear in the recording above, Gardner got much more than he bargained for. Question after question from the audience expressed nervousness about the future, and condemnation of President Donald Trump’s various excesses since taking office. Notably, Gardner doesn’t make an attempt to defend Trump’s cozying up to Russia, and pays solid lip service to the idea that Russia is not America’s friend or partner–even referring to Russia as a “thugocracy.” Gardner also said in the abstract that it’s wrong to attack individual judges, clearly putting distance between himself and Trump’s haranguing of the federal judge who halted his Muslim travel ban.

What Gardner has great difficulty doing is specifically condemning what Trump has said and done. Nearly all of his statements are in the abstract, as if he is having a theoretical discussion instead of responding to the very real actions and statements of the President of the United States.

The unofficial recording above starts about ten minutes into the call. Gardner keeps his cool throughout the session, but the gap between what Gardner had to offer worried constituents and what participants wanted was painfully large. This was especially evident in Gardner’s responses on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Gardner encouraged callers to look into the “details” of plans offered by Speaker Paul Ryan and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, but didn’t divulge which of those plans he actually supports. That’s important since Ryan’s plan in particular directly relies on cutting benefits and privatizing the Medicare system, things Gardner has repeatedly promised wouldn’t happen.

You can definitely understand from this recording, which we feel confident Gardner never wants the public to hear, why Republicans like himself and Rep. Mike Coffman are so nervous about holding public events right now. Even in the case of this surprise conference call, which gave usual-suspect political opponents no time to organize a response, Gardner overwhelmingly faced blowback for his and his party’s actions.

The moral of the story? Faking constituent engagement isn’t going to cut it anymore.