Andy Harris, Maryland’s lone Republican Congressman, defended the President, Elon Musk and federal budget cuts during a one hour telephone town hall Tuesday night.
It was Harris’s first town hall since President Trump took office in January.
He took phone calls from more than a dozen people and according to his office there were about 10,000 listening in.
Callers did not give their last names. Gardener from Havre de Grace told Harris he is a therapist and that fired federal employees are struggling with mental health issues.
Gardener said, “You need to do your job and protect the people that voted for you and the ones who didn’t.”
But Harris disagreed, saying protecting the entire federal workforce is not his job.
“If people were satisfied with the federal government they wouldn’t have elected Donald Trump who promised to come in and increase the efficiency of the federal government,” Harris said.
Several callers criticized Musk, but Harris said the president is fortunate to have him leading the effort to cut government spending.
Lindsay, a teacher in Wicomico County, said the dismantling of the department of education is very troubling.
“Losing Title 1 funding and losing oversight of special education services will be detrimental to all children, not just those receiving it, all children because kids learn together,” Lindsay told the congressman.
Harris said Title 1 funding will not be cut, but he did not address special education oversight.
Harris said spending decisions are best made at the local level.
“I don’t believe that dictating education from an office building in Washington, D.C. has made that any better,” Harris said.
While Harris spent the hour defending Trump, he admitted the president’s call for Canada to be the 51st state was going too far.
“As I think most Americans have become accustomed to, you don’t actually listen and believe every word the president says,” Harris said.
Maryland Democrats have been mocking Harris, saying he has been ducking his constituents by not holding town halls.
Last weekend, Rep. Jamie Raskin held an in-person town hall in Cambridge on the Eastern Shore, which is in Harris’s district.
According to the Baltimore Banner, there was a photo of Harris on a giant cardboard milk carton at the Raskin town hall. The word “MISSING” was written above Harris’s face.
Raskin said, “If your name is on the ballot, your face should not be on the milk carton.”
Republican representatives across the country have been confronted by hostile audiences who have disapproved of the Trump administration’s slashing of the federal government.
House Speaker Mike Johnson advised his fellow Republicans to skip in person town halls and hold telephone town halls instead.
According to Anna Adamian, Harris’s communications director, the Congressman last held in-person town halls in 2023. She added that Harris does several telephone town halls each year and that they allow him to reach thousands of his constituents.
