Marsha Blackburn Met With Protests at Town Hall

When Fairview, Tenn., an around 8,000 person community 30 minutes south of Nashville, is trending on Twitter, it might make you wonder if Kellyanne Conway made up another rural massacre.

But alas it was U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who on Tuesday afternoon attracted a couple hundred protestors to a town hall she held in Fairview's city center, that caused folks to tune in to the small community. Just like a recent town hall at Middle Tennessee State University where Rep. Diane Black faced protestors, the town hall in Fairview had only brought out around 30 people in its previous iteration. The room at Tuesday's town hall seated around 100 people, and upward of 20 local and national media members packed in behind the audience.

While Blackburn had some trouble answering Wolf Blitzer Monday about whether she agrees with President Donald Trump that certain media outlets are "enemies of the American people," she did pull away from her normal full endorsement of the Trump administration, saying at the town hall that the roll out of Trump's initial immigration executive order was done "very haphazardly."

"I think that we would've been well served to have looked at the legislation that Sen. [Jeff] Sessions and I had done, which just simply paused the Syrian refugee program until such time as a vetting process could be confirmed by the secretary of HHS — until we knew what the cost was going to be to that program. That would have been my preference," Blackburn said, not answering the initial question about whether she supported religions vetting. The closest she got to answering the question was: ""I think Christians have faced incredible persecution."

When an audience member asked whether she supported Steve Bannon taking a role on the National Security Council, Blackburn responded by saying that she doesn't speak for Trump and that her "interactions with [Bannon] have all been fine." Audience members gasped as she also claimed she was unaware of Bannon taking on an NSC role.

"I have heard reports, but I have not talked to him nor have I seen anything that he actually has done," Blackburn told the crowd.

Blackburn, who's in her eighth term in Congress, also refused to answer a question about whether she supports instituting term limits for members of Congress, instead saying that she's in favor of setting term limits for "Washington bureaucrats." After the audience member who asked the question about creating term limits followed up and said he was only wondering when she might settle into a gig in the private sector, Blackburn laughed and said: "That's just a nice way of telling me you want me fired."

Blackburn also fielded several questions about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and demands that Blackburn make Trump release his tax returns.

"As a member of the House, we don't have an ability to make that a requirement," Blackburn said, adding that Trump has submitted necessary paperwork to run.

Patti Caroll, Fairview's mayor who also served as Rep. Jeremy Durham's campaign treasurer, moderated the event. Blackburn spoke to protestors outside the event for about a minute, but did not take questions from reporters.