While protesters demonstrated outside, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was confronted by some tough questions inside a town hall event outside of Lexington, Ky., on Tuesday. One particular constituent shared her concerns about issues pertaining to veterans and coal miners and left the lawmaker largely speechless.
A woman who said she was hard of hearing stood up and in a raised voice began to talk about the demise of coal jobs, which she admitted is partly due to mechanization and competition from natural gas.
Though she professed to “love” McConnell and thanked him for his decades of public service, she said, “you have to acknowledge, we’ve got too damn many people on food stamps in Kentucky.”
“Last I heard, we’re the leader, and that is not where we want to be the leader,” she added. It’s unclear what data she was referring to. A report from last year didn’t put Kentucky in the list of the top seven (which included the District of Columbia) states with the highest number of people on food stamps, using 2015 data. She may have been referring to nearby Beattyville, Ky., where 57 percent of households get food stamps, according to a CNN report earlier this month.
She continued: “And the last I heard, these coal jobs are not coming back and now these people don’t have the insurance they need ‘cuz they’re poor. And they worked those coal miners, and they’re sick, the veterans are sick, the veterans are broken down.”
“They’re not getting what they need. If you can answer any of that I’ll sit down and shut up like Elizabeth Warren,” she concluded, which elicited a round of laughs. She was likely referring to when Warren, a Massachusetts senator, was shut out of a Senate floor debate earlier this month over then-Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions when reading a letter from Coretta Scott King.
McConnell’s only reply was a short quip with a smile: “I hope you feel better now,” before moving on to another question.
The senator was later asked by a WHAS11 reporter why he didn’t respond to a number of questions during the town hall.
“There’s a difference between making a speech and asking questions,” McConnell replied.
