GOP split on whether paid protesters are to blame for rowdy town halls The White House has lashed out at 'professional' audience members, but some lawmakers say there's no 'evidence' to back the claim.

A rift has opened up among Republicans over whether paid protesters are the root cause of raucous town halls, with the White House fueling the narrative that organized, disruptive sympathizers of Hillary Clinton are the culprits.

Republican members of Congress have taken different stances in the debate, with some, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), arguing there’s no “evidence” that paid protesters are disguising themselves as angry constituents.


But others have adopted a stance more in line with that of the White House. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who faced one of the earliest bruising town halls in a still-ongoing wave of them, has argued that Democrats were “bullying” in a “concerted effort” to create chaos. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) announced this week that he will not hold in-person town hall meetings in his district, at least for the time being, citing concerns of violence brought on by “violent strains of the leftist ideology” and invoking former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot at a constituent meeting in 2011.

The White House, however, has been firm that it’s disaffected troublemakers who are giving Republicans an earful over the potential repeal of Obamacare and other major Trump administration policies.

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said on Fox News on Thursday morning that Democrats are lashing out without offering any solutions. Democrats are without an effective message, she said, forcing them to draw from the same anti-Donald Trump playbook that Hillary Clinton relied on during her failed 2016 presidential bid.

“They bellyache and moan and complain about most things. I haven't heard any solutions. It's just like Hillary Clinton in the campaign,” she said.

While Conway stayed away from specifically suggesting that the crowds filling GOP town halls were paid to do so, White House press secretary Sean Spicer was more explicit on Wednesday, blaming professionals for the tense town halls.

“Some people are clearly upset, but there is a bit of professional protester, manufactured base in there,” he said at the daily news briefing. “But obviously, there are people who are upset, but I also think that when you look at some of these districts and some of these things, that it is not a representation of a member's district.”

Earlier this month, Spicer made a statement to Fox News, remarking that far from representing a grass-roots liberal uprising, the protests and backlash to Trump and the GOP is “a very paid, Astroturf-type movement.”

It’s not the first time the authenticity of grass-roots enthusiasm has been questioned. Democrats cried foul during the 2009-2010 fight over the health law, blaming the billionaire Koch brothers and a raft of conservative groups for sponsoring the tea party’s raucous opposition.

Perhaps seeking to push back against the Republican talking point, one woman at a contentious town hall hosted by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced herself by saying, “I'm from Fayetteville, and I'm not a paid protester." Cotton, who faced repeated tough questions from the raucous capacity crowd at a high school auditorium, responded that “I don't care if anybody here is paid or not. You're all Arkansans.”

Video of the impassioned questioners at Cotton’s event, which included a woman upset that her dying husband might be left without coverage if Obamacare is repealed and a young boy who complained that funds for PBS might be cut while a border wall is built, quickly surged on social media and cable news Wednesday night. Reflecting on the event Thursday morning with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, Cotton suggested that the national media has shone an extra-bright spotlight on critical town-hall questioners and “doesn’t present questions that are critical of the left.”

Like Grassley, who told Radio Iowa that upset constituents at his events were “just devoted citizens expressing their views,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) told CNN that the crowd at his most recent town hall event was comprised of “real people with real concerns in terms of what came next on health care.” Some, he said, had come to the event from outside his congressional district, but everyone in the crowd, to his knowledge, was from South Carolina.

“This wasn’t an artificial crowd,” Sanford said. "It wasn’t manufactured.”