Constituents Yell ‘You Lie’ At Rep. Joe Wilson
Republican Congressman Joe Wilson was slammed Monday by an angry crowd in South Carolina with his own infamous line that he used against former President Barack Obama during his speech to Congress in 2009. The crowd shouted "you lie" after he was confronted on the issue of Obamacare.
Wilson was addressing the crowd at the Aiken Technical College in Graniteville for nearly 40 minutes when he was questioned on Obama's signature health care law. His response was eventually drowned with a 20-second chant of the same accusation he hurled at Obama when the latter had said the health reforms he was proposing would not apply to those in the country illegally.
Read: What's Next For Obamacare?
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,” a spokesperson for Wilson told the New York Times on Tuesday. A video of the event was posted on Facebook Live.
At the town hall meeting, members of the crowd held red signs with "you lie" on them and shouted the phrase.
“I’ve also supported the local solicitor here, and the solicitor in Lexington all efforts to make sure that violence against women is fully enforced,” was one of Wilson's comments that received the "you lie" chanting from protesters in reference to Wilson’s vote against extending the Violence Against Women Act in 2013.
He was also booed when he tried to express support for President Donald Trump’s missile strikes against Syria.
“I would have supported the prior president if he had acted, but he didn’t. Where chemical weapons are used, there should be immediate action. Because if we don’t, sadly it’s an opportunity for chemical weapons to be used around the world and, we know, ultimately, within the United States,” he said.
Julie Edwards, one of the most vocal challengers of Wilson during the event, told the Times on Tuesday: "People feel really let down by Joe Wilson, and there’s a lot of really high emotion when it comes to him. A lot of it comes down to disrespecting President Barack Obama. Even a lot of Republicans in our state were facepalming over that.”
Wilson said after the meeting that he is still committed to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
"My concern about Obamacare is we've already seen skyrocketing premiums, we've seen deductibles become unapproachable to work with," Wilson told NBC station WAGT of Augusta, Georgia. "People have lost their doctors, they've lost insurance, lost their jobs. We can do better."
More than 24 million people are likely to lose their health insurance by 2026 with the Republican plan to repeal and replace the ACA, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last month.
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