Congressman Who Shouted ‘You Lie’ at Obama Hears the Same From Constituents
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Representative Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican who gained a measure of infamy after shouting “you lie” at President Barack Obama during a joint session of Congress in 2009, had that memorable catchphrase hurled back at him by a group of his constituents at a town hall event on Monday.
The audience at the event, held at Aiken Technical College in Graniteville, S.C., near the state’s Western border, was antagonistic from the start, booing audibly as he stepped to the lectern. But the conflict between Mr. Wilson and the crowd came to a head toward the end of the 40-minute question-and-answer period, when he responded to a question about Mr. Obama’s health care law.
After he said that the law was delaying and denying health services to its intended recipients, the rest of his comments were drowned out, as the crowd began to chant “You Lie” in unison. The cheer continued for about 20 seconds. A video of the event was posted on Facebook Live.
Leacy Burke, a spokeswoman for Mr. Wilson, 69, said in an email on Tuesday that the chant stood as “less than a minute of a positive event that lasted nearly two hours where the congressman engaged with his constituents both in a town hall format and one-on-one after the official program ended.”
But the chant was just one of many difficult stretches in what was overall looked to be a tough evening for Mr. Wilson, appearing in a county that President Trump won handily in November.
He was first overwhelmed by booing when he asserted his support for “right to work” laws. Mentions of Mr. Trump, his health and human services secretary, Tom Price, and the attempt to repeal and replace President Obama’s signature health care law prompted further jeers and taunts from the audience.
Mr. Wilson is among a handful of Republican lawmakers who have been involved in similarly contentious exchanges over the past several months. Some have been unwilling to hold such events at all, while others have reluctantly faced angry audiences.
Several of the protests at town halls have been spearheaded by Indivisible, a Tea-Party inspired Democratic grass-roots movement aimed at thwarting President Trump’s agenda. Julie Edwards, a pharmacist from the Aiken area and one of the founding members of a local Indivisible chapter, was one of the most vocal challengers of Mr. Wilson during the event.
She said that Monday’s event was one of the most contentious that she had attended and explained the crowd’s reaction by pointing back toward Mr. Wilson’s 2009 interruption of Mr. Obama.
“People feel really let down by Joe Wilson, and there’s a lot of really high emotion when it comes to him,” Ms. Edwards, 29, said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “A lot of it comes down to disrespecting President Barack Obama. Even a lot of Republicans in our state were facepalming over that.”
Ms. Edwards was referring to Mr. Wilson’s outburst in 2009 in response to Mr. Obama’s pledge to Congress that illegal immigrants would not be covered by his health plan. The eruption was seen by many as a nadir for bipartisanship, and the behavior of Mr. Wilson, who apologized to the president personally and in an official statement, was criticized by members of both parties.
Mr. Wilson seemed resigned to dealing with the criticism on Monday. He took pains to acknowledge and to state his tolerance for the dissent, remarking that he was “happy to be with you whether we agree or not.” As Ms. Burke noted, he took questions on “a wide range of issues, from national security and North Korea to immigration.”
But Ms. Edwards said that the congressman did not deserve “a participation trophy” for holding the event.
“I think it’s a shame that other senators and congressmen are not showing up,” she said. “But I’m not going to give him a gold star for showing up and doing his job.”
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