Frelinghuysen: ‘We Need to Give This President the Opportunity to Do His Job’
NEWTON – Criticized for not holding actual town halls to answer for the trajectory of government in Washington, D.C. in the era of President Donald J. Trump, U.S. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) stood by his decision in the name of decorum in the face of political anger and disappointment.
“I do telephone town hall meetings and reach six or seven thousand people and you have civil discussion,” he told InsiderNJ this morning at the Norman Silbert Medical Arts Building. “I think a lot of what we’re seeing here – some of it is spontaneous – a lot of it is orchestrated.”
InsiderNJ asked the veteran Republican congressman about Trump’s contribution to the uncivil tone, with his tweets, with his public comments. Is the President not setting the angry tone?
“We have a very polarized society and we obviously have a lot of people who are unhappy about the election results,” Frelinghuysen said. “They want to reverse it, and this is their way of reversing it. They have a right to free speech, but we need to give this president the opportunity to do his job, both as president and commander in chief.”
But Trump tweeted over the weekend an unsubstantiated charge that former President Barack Obama bugged Trump Tower.
“I think he ought to leave his tweets at home,” Frelinghuysen said of Trump.
The congressman – a veteran of the Vietnam War – was here playing the lead role in the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Sussex Veterans’ Community Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC).
I am so very sorry that my worries about my son’s health insurance feels “orchestrated” to Representative Frelinghuysen. I assure you, it is not “orchestrated” to my family. When my son graduates college this May, will the repeal of the ACA means he will get tossed off of my health insurance? Since he had asthma as a child, will I have to put him into a high risk pool just to get insurance? Can he go to grad school or do an internship, or will he be forced to get a job just for insurance? I am sorry that Representative Frelinghuysen attributes my “honest-to-god” issues to my dislike of Trump? If I call him about my worries, I’m trying to reverse the election? Wow, just wow. How out of touch can he be?
What are you calling ‘orchestrated’, Congressman Frelinghuysen? The several hundred residents from NJ11th For Change who visit your district office each Friday? We do talk to one another and schedule handicapped accessible venues that we invite you to appear at. But, if by orchestrated you mean paid, I can assure you that if George Soros or anyone else paid any of the millions of people who are petitioning for redress, you would see them one block over from your office in bankruptcy court.
Please explain that charge and offer some substantiation for it.
I am one of those “orchestrated” constituents who comes to your office every Friday to discuss my concerns with you. While your staff is terrific, they are no replacement for speaking with you face-to-face. I worry for the future of our planet and the future of our democracy. If you think these are trivial matters, you are mistaken. My son is a scientist who studies abroad. I don’t think he’ll come home to seek a job because our government no longer believes in funding science. Our loss. I have another son who is 23 and a freelancer. He cannot afford his own health insurance so when he is no longer on mine, will he be able to afford the “new” plan? Tax breaks will be meaningless to him. What I think is orchestrated is the Republican plan to screw the middle class and give tax breaks to the wealthy.
Dear Representative Frelinghuysen –
I am scared. No, I am abjectly terrified. Yesterday Donald Trump announced a budget that will increase ICE deportation centers by 550% percent. He will increase the military budget, increase prisons, but slash everything else. In effect, his budget creates a military state with actual concentration camps for people who have done non-violent crimes, with state-run slavery.
And you are perfectly fine with that.
The rollback of the Affordable Care Act will cost the country and states billions in dollars, leave millions uninsured and lead to millions of job losses.
And you are perfectly fine with that.
You have signed on with a madman who is supported and advised by white supremacist hate groups, a man who has sold this country to Russia for his own self-aggrandizement.
And you are perfectly fine with that.
You are losing support in your constituency not because of fictitious paid protesters, but because when we needed support and leadership, you were literally nowhere to be seen. Who do you represent, exactly, Representative Frelinghuysen? Not me. Not the people of Morris County who ask you to have the decency of facing us directly to answer our questions. We need you and you have failed us. In your desire to die ten dollars richer, you have sold your entire constituency out.
We are not fine with any of this.
Sincerely but without regard or respect,
That is like saying we need to give Hitler a chance, or we need to give the KKK a chance. No we don’t need to give him a chance. We gave him one and he’s using executive orders to create a dictatorship that bypasses congress, not that any republican cares about anything but partisan politics. In the end it will be the voters who out all republican members of congress that stop the tyranny of trump.
We will remember this in the polls, you will remember this when we vote you out.
Why give someone a chance that you know their only goal is to destroy our country? Why would anyone give him a chance to do that? We already know by his cabinet picks that in a year from now, if he gets his way, nothing will look like it did and nothing will be as we remember it. His goal was never to Make American Great Again, because it was already great!! What he meant by Make American Great Again, was to bring our country back to the days of no regulations for the environment, the economy, the working class, etc. So people like trump and his friends can pillage it all over again. If you need an example, go back to the days of the Landlords, the factory owners, and all big business. They made all the money and rest of the population were nothing but slaves. They ruined the environment, lives, there was only one economy and it was all theirs for the taking. This is what trump means when he says Make American Great Again.
Why should we give a chance someone who continually lies to the public? The congress should be holding him to the truth, even the Repungnent party doesn’t have a plank where they call for lies.
Mr Frelinghuysen needs to come home and meet with his constituents FACE TO FACE, not hiding behind a phone line. We are calling for you the locally elected official to hold him to truth. To hold him to the ideals of Life Liberty and pursuit of happiness.