Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) was warned by CNN host Audie Cornish after he tried to dismiss angry voters barraging Republicans at town halls as paid agitators.
During an interview about the controversies surrounding Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, Harrigan said he wasn't concerned about the angry backlash that Musk has received as he's fired tens of thousands of federal employees and shuttered regional Social Security offices.
"These things have become unbelievably chaotic," he said of the protesters. "These folks, many of them are actually paid protesters, about half of the protesters we were able to track to outside of our district, they didn't even they're not even constituents of ours."
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However, Cornish warned Harrigan that Democrats once made similar dismissals of the Tea Party movement 15 years ago only to pay massively for it at the ballot box.
"I recall Democrats going through the same thing with the Tea Party movement, also calling them astroturf, also saying that they were paid agitators and later finding out that they became part of a movement that really helped change the government," she said.
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