Miller-Meeks Rigs Her Own Tele-Town Hall / Iowa May Day Events
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A story of how an unpopular MAGA tried to avoid real constituents)
https://blogforiowa.com/2025/05/01/miller-meeks-rigs-her-own-tele-town-hall/
Miller-Meeks Rigs Her Own Tele-Town Hall / Iowa May Day Events
Posted on May 1, 2025 by Trish Nelson
This post has been updated. Scroll doown.
Happy May Day! I hope you can get out today to attend a local event. Here is a link to May Day events in Iowa.
Just for the record the photo to the left is a screenshot and yes MMM did actually wear a “6” mask around on the floor of congress after she was elected to congress by six votes.
So it turns out IA-01 Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks held a tele- town hall this week on Tuesday. Who knew?
An Americans for Prosperity (Koch brothers) group in Bettendorf knew.
I stopped reading MMM’s weekly newsletter awhile back but Paul Deaton who is a regular contributor and sometimes editor here and has his own blog, told me he reads her newsletter every week and saw no mention of a town hall this week. I’ve asked around and so far I have not talked to anyone who knew about the call in advance except for one person who said, “It was in my feed but she ignored me and didn’t send me the number.” I found out late last night the tele-town hall was posted on Facebook the same day.
UPDATE: This morning I got this from someone on a Facebook group I’m in.
The link to RSVP for the town hall was posted same day. After completing the form, there was a message stating that you would receive a call shortly ahead of the start time. There was another FB post 20 minutes prior to the call stating the number YOU had to call to enter the town hall. I called in once I discovered that, and based on the questions posed, it was beyond evident that most callers were either straight-up plants or simply provided with the call-in info well in advance so they could get in the queue ahead of “democrats.” I heard only one “difficult” question from someone saying it’s mathematically impossible to pass the GOP budget without cutting Medicaid, etc., and she was blatantly disrespectful to the gentleman in her response.
There was a poll question during the call, something along the lines of: Is the border more secure now under Trump? At the end, she said poll results said 70% said yes, which is a good indicator of who actually knew about the call.
Here is an excerpt from The Cedar Rapids Gazette‘s coverage of Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ tele-town hall Tuesday night.
During a private event with Americans For Prosperity on April 23, Miller-Meeks urged the group to attend her tele-town hall and get on the call early.
“Jump on early,” Miller-Meeks told the group. “Our last telephone town hall, the Democrats shared the number … Every caller, every person for the first 35 minutes … were all Democrats with questions.”
First, bravo, Democrats! I was on that February call and yes the first several questions she assumed were from Democrats because they all asked about Elon Musk. But I don’t think anyone was asked or said what their party affiliation was. She just assumed.
But the point is she tried to rig the call by (1) not informing Democrats about the call except for a last minute FB notification and (2) nudging out any accidental Democrats by actively recruiting Republicans to come early to give her an unfair advantage on the call.
Because why would she want to take a bunch of questions from Democrats? In her mind she doesn’t represent us. She represents Trump and her conservative donors. See Iowa Starting Line’s story on her first quarter fund raising. Zachary Oren Smith dug through the records and found less than 8% came from Iowa donors.
“[Miller-Meeks] was “thrilled” to announce she raised just over $1 million during the first quarter of the year, according to a campaign finance report covering fundraising and spending between Jan. 1 and March 31.
But a look through the report reveals that out-of-state money is inflating her numbers.
Iowa donors gave Miller-Meeks a total of $73,430 — that’s just over 7% of her first quarter total.
In contrast, Washington D.C. donors contributed $234,094 (23% of her total). Virginia donors contributed another 230,123 (23%). In other words, her campaign committee received six times as much money from D.C. and Virginia donors as Iowa donors.
Here is the link to the FEC site.
Back to the call. According to the Gazette:
On Medicaid Cuts
“A Republican-proposed budget resolution adopted by the U.S. House last week directs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find at least $880 billion in savings over 10 years. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office shows the resolution can’t reach its savings goals without reductions to Medicaid spending.
“Miller-Meeks denied that cuts to the program would happen and reiterated her support for Medicaid work requirements, highlighting legislation she introduced to mandate state Medicaid programs regularly verify beneficiary address information.
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