GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Rep. Justin Amash is a lonely man in Congress, the sole Republican to back Donald Trump’s removal from the Oval Office. But back home on Tuesday night, the Michigan lawmaker got the red-carpet treatment in his first face-to-face encounter with voters since his call for impeachment.

During a packed town hall in Grand Rapids, attendees in the mostly friendly audience gave Amash several standing ovations and heaps of praise for his solo rebellion against Trump.


“I don’t agree with many of your stances, but I applaud your courage and your morality that seems to be lacking in [Washington]. So, thank you,” one woman in the crowd said, drawing cheers.

Tuesday’s town hall marked Amash’s first public appearance since he declared on Twitter earlier this month that Trump committed impeachable offenses and obstructed justice — a remarkable act of defiance, even for a longtime Trump critic, that has put his congressional career on the line while provoking Trump and the GOP.

It was unclear how many audience members planned to vote for Amash. Several former Amash supporters stood up to denounce the five-term congressman and express their ire over his constant rebukes of Trump, reflecting a broader frustration in the GOP.

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Amash has drawn two primary challengers, including state Rep. Jim Lower, a pro-Trump candidate who vowed to use his support of the president as a key issue in the campaign.


But Amash is swatting down concerns about the potential effects on his political future, telling the crowd he “has a duty to keep the president in check.”

“It doesn’t matter to me that some people won’t support me," he said. "You have to do the right thing regardless."

Amash, who explains all his congressional votes on social media, said he felt it was important to explain his pro-impeachment stance to his constituents. It took the 39-year-old attorney a month to read and analyze the Mueller report before he came to that conclusion.

On Tuesday, hundreds of people packed into a high school auditorium, where one person wore a red Amash campaign T-shirt and another sported a “Mueller Time” T-shirt. Some audience members snapped selfies and shook hands with Amash before the event.


Amash, who has largely avoided the media spotlight over the past week and a half, spent two hours — an hour longer than the town hall was supposed to last — reiterating his support for impeachment, defending his conservative record and taking shots at the president and congressional leaders of both parties.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI - MAY 28: U.S. Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) holds a Town Hall Meeting on May 28, 2019 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Amash was the first Republican member of Congress to say that President Donald Trump engaged in impeachable conduct. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) | Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

He also explained why he is still a Republican — it’s harder to get on the ballot as an independent — and fielded several questions on other issues, such as infrastructure, the opioid crisis and climate change.

Not everyone in the crowd was happy with Amash. At one point, a woman wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat told Amash she was disappointed in the lawmaker and could no longer support him. The audience tried to boo her down, with some members in the crowd growing rowdy, forcing Amash to ask people to be respectful.

In another testy exchange, a woman who said she once volunteered for Amash’s campaign accused the lawmaker of political grandstanding and abandoning his district.

“I’ve changed my position on you," the woman, Anna Timmer, said. "You’ve spent the last two years failing to do your job, which is to directly represent the popular will of your constituents.”

“That’s not my job. … My job is to uphold the Constitution,” Amash responded.

“Those are not mutually exclusive,” she shot back.

Amash is no stranger to bucking his party. The Michigan lawmaker rode the 2010 tea party wave to Congress, where the libertarian and fiscal conservative has built a political brand as being a thorn in the side of GOP leadership and has made protecting civil liberties his chief priority.


Amash helped found the hard-line Freedom Caucus as a way to challenge the party’s establishment. And he has become famous in Washington for his “no” votes, opposing everything from massive spending bills to routine measures.

Amash once lost a coveted seat on the House Budget Committee for bucking Republicans.

“If you go against the speaker of the House, and you’re in the majority, you’re toast. And that’s why people don’t do it,” Amash said.

But his penchant for crossing party lines has taken on new meaning in the era of Trump — and potentially put his congressional career in jeopardy.

Lower, who was already planning on running against Amash, accelerated his announcement after the Amash’s impeachment comments. Now, Lower plans to make his support of Trump a central part of his campaign.

“It will probably be the No. 1 issue, whether I wanted it to or not,” Lower told POLITICO.

While Amash beat back a primary challenge from an establishment candidate in 2014, he faces a far more uncertain political future in the age of Trump, in which fealty to the president has often become a litmus test in the GOP.

Amash has been frustrated that his Republican colleagues have moved in lockstep with Trump, even on positions once anathema to the GOP, such as supporting executive orders to shape immigration policy or legislation that adds to the ballooning federal deficit.

“Under the current administration, spending has skyrocketed. And Republicans, unfortunately, haven’t said that much about it,” he said. “I haven’t changed. … I’m a principled, constitutional conservative who has stayed consistent, regardless of whether we’ve had President Obama in office or President Trump.”


Amash also said some of his GOP colleagues agree with his view on the Mueller report but haven’t had the courage to speak out against Trump.

“A lot of people think I’m right about the Mueller report. They just won’t say it. A lot of Republicans,” Amash said.

Amash has repeatedly defied Trump, voting against the president’s declaration of a national emergency to secure funding for a wall on the southern border, opposing Trump’s travel ban and questioning Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen in a public hearing instead of attacking him like his GOP colleagues did.

But backlash in GOP circles over his impeachment comments has been swift and fierce. Trump ripped into Amash on Twitter, calling him a “lightweight” and a “loser,” while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused Amash of seeking attention.

And the DeVos family, who are well-known and powerful megadonors in Michigan, ended their support for the lawmaker.

Not even Amash’s fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus have come to his defense. The group decided to uniformly oppose his impeachment stance, though it stopped short of kicking him out of the caucus.

Amash, who stopped showing up to House Freedom Caucus meetings this year, threatened to quit the caucus last year because it wouldn’t stand up to Trump, even when the president attacked one of its members. Another GOP Trump critic, former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, lost his primary race to a pro-Trump challenger last year after Trump got involved in the race.

It’s unclear whether the president will get involved in Amash’s race, though some Republicans think it’s likely.


But others think Amash has his eyes set on running for higher office — and his impeachment comments have only further fueled rampant speculation.

Libertarian groups have been trying to draft Amash to mount a third-party challenge against Trump in 2020, which could draw votes from Trump in Michigan, a key battleground state that Trump barely won in 2016.

Amash kept his options open Tuesday.

“I’ve said many times, I don’t rule things like that out,” Amash said. “If you’re fighting to defend the Constitution, if you find a way to do that that’s different and maybe more effective, then you have to think about that.”

