Who were they trying to deceive with this performance? These strategies are designed to create an illusion of unanimity. Who were they trying to persuade? The audience was filled with like-minded people. The crowd would have been content to drown me out all night. I was not their target audience. So, who was?
The Indivisible Guide offers this advice: record everything. “. . . unfavorable exchanges caught on video can be devastating for MoCs [Members of Congress]. These clips can be shared through social media and picked up by local and national media.”
There is the answer. The whole thing was intended to be political theater for a national news audience. It was a show—a highly choreographed, carefully orchestrated, nationally directed pageant for coastal elites to feast upon, comfort for the broken souls of the progressive left.
Both in and outside the venue, people were supporting extreme left-wing positions that actual Utah 3rd Congressional District voters resoundingly rejected by large majorities. For example, the most vociferous, visceral reaction of the night came when I said Mike Pence was a good person. This audience exploded with catcalls and jeers.
Who were these people? Even allowing for the fact that this town hall was in a more moderate area of my district, the unified trigger response to the mention of the vice president’s name was notable. The voters of my district may have had some concerns about Donald Trump, but they love Mike Pence. This crowd was triggered by him.
According to the guide, questions were scripted, with each supporter choosing from the same list of questions provided by organizers. Attendees were encouraged to “Look friendly or neutral so that staffers will call on you.” Then, “Don’t give up the mic until you’re satisfied with the answer,” because staffers might try to “limit your ability to follow up” by taking the mic back. The guide tells them to hold firm “because no staffer in their right mind wants to look like they’re physically intimidating a constituent, so they will back off.”
The guide further instructs, “If they object, then say politely but loudly: ‘I’m not finished. The Congressman/woman is dodging my question. Why are you trying to stop me from following up?’” We had done enough research to know what this advice looked like in practice. They wouldn’t just use the microphone for follow-up questions. They would use it to wrest control of the meeting and essentially hijack the event, hoping it would descend into chaos. Any answer to a question that was not the progressive answer would be rejected and would trigger a follow-up with an allegation of dodging the question. Fortunately, we were prepared for that. All this instruction on how to dominate the microphone and use it to disrupt and intimidate would turn out to be wasted effort.
Had the crowd been actual constituents who had attended our past town halls, they would have known this tactic was a dead end. I’ve never set up more than one microphone at a town hall meeting, and that one was for me. I always take a lot of questions but insist that the audience allow questions to be heard without a mic. I’m very aware that people come to hear me explain why I voted the way I did. They don’t come to listen to someone “ask questions” that sound a lot more like a Senate filibuster or a courtroom interrogation.
My constituents have never appreciated the person who tried to take over the meeting. So, I have always called on people myself, had them ask their questions without a mic, then repeated their questions for the broader audience if the volume was a problem.
The protestors, having never been to our town halls, did not expect to be unamplified. It messed up their chi, so to speak. They complained bitterly during and after the town hall, angry that their plans had been thwarted. They could cry foul all they wanted; it was the right decision. Maintaining control of the microphone allowed me to turn down the temperature when the crowd got aggressive, ensuring the safety and security of everyone there. I hate to think what might have happened had things gotten any more heated than they already were.
Who Will Resist the Resistance?
Why are they destroying the town hall as an American institution? To save democracy, of course! It is the story of the post-2016 political left. As the succeeding chapters will demonstrate, political theater has become a substitute for public policy.
This is a book about what happens when one political party decides that to save democracy they must subvert it. To protect free speech, they must silence it. To fend off fascism, they must practice it. To promote good public policy, they must resist it. In the end, it appears that to uphold the rule of law, some felt they must violate it.
Throughout this book, we’ll explore two emerging patterns in American politics. The first is the left’s deliberate substitution of political theater in place of any real policy agenda. The second and more disturbing pattern is the use of authoritarian tactics to defeat perceived authoritarianism. We will look at which side poses the real authoritarian threat. We consistently get this conflict wrong. We misunderstand what politicians are doing, and the media misinterprets the reasons they’re doing it. The hysteria sweeping the left is shaping our country in ways we’ve failed to appreciate, and with results that may matter more to our future than anything President Trump has accomplished.
The resistance talks so much about saving democracy that they’ve obscured the extent to which they threaten it. Sure, they sought to overturn a free and fair election, but it wasn’t clear at first that they didn’t intend to stop there. They want to manipulate our election process to permanently tilt the playing field in their favor. All in the name of protecting freedom and fairness, naturally.
In the chapters that follow, I’ll show why we’re still not taking this threat seriously enough. The Democrats are playing a high-stakes game, gambling with the most prosperous economy and the most stable government in the history of the world. For what? Power.
I would argue we don’t see the approaching crisis clearly enough. Should we lose our prized institutions, we may never see them restored. Seemingly small procedural changes could have far-reaching repercussions in the life of every American. Show trials, ballot fraud, quiet rule changes, political donation laundering—the list of outrages is long and growing longer. But the main puzzle remains: why do the Democrats think they are the good guys here?
The Escape
Back at the town hall, the tension was peaking. “It was definitely a powder keg just waiting for one little spark,” Jex said, adding, “Honestly, the spark was almost there. Had it gone on another ten–fifteen minutes, it would have erupted.”
We had known ahead of time that my exit from the event might prove challenging. We were prepared. Even during the program, my security detail was on high alert at all times. I stood alone on the front of a stage, backed by curtains. On either side, hidden from view, two beefy, athletic off-duty cops (who are my friends) stood like guard dogs at the ready on both sides. A third officer mostly waited directly behind me, hidden by the curtains. Had someone rushed the stage, the reaction would have been swift and physical. Though unarmed, the assailant would have been quickly subdued, and I’d have been whisked out the back. I hoped nothing like that would happen, but we were ready if something did.
That still left the matter of leaving the venue. A group at another event had mobbed a congressman’s car as he exited the hall. In that case, the car had been some distance away, forcing the congressman to run the gauntlet on foot through a crowd of rowdy protestors. “There’s no winning on that,” Russo said, so an evasion plan took shape.