Republican Rep. Mike Flood had to fend off waves of jeers and boos while trying to defend the Trump administration from irate voters in his home state.
The Nebraska congressman met with a barrage of questions on everything from the Epstein Files and the war with Iran to the Justice Department’s new “anti-weaponization” fund and Trump’s architectural vanity projects in Washington, D.C.
Flood made headlines last year for a similarly bruising series of town halls. He remains an outlier among House Republicans, many of whom have stopped holding open town halls specifically to avoid this kind of footage going viral.
“Iran war, White House ballroom, security for the White House ballroom, immigration enforcement, Trump arch, the Reflecting Pool renovation, slush fund for crooks, and the farm bill,” as one person in the audience summed up their collective gripes.
“How do we pay for all this?” they added, to waves of applause.
Voters at the Tuesday event in Norfolk, Flood’s hometown, were particularly unhappy about how Trump has now set up an almost $1.8 billion slush fund for political allies who claim they were unfairly prosecuted under the Joe Biden administration.
The Justice Department announced the fund as part of a bid to resolve the legal conundrum posed by a president suing his own administration for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns during his first term. Previous presidents have volunteered such information.
Many people have raised concerns that payouts could be made to participants in the 2021 Capitol Riots, including offenders who assaulted police officers trying to quell the violence.
Flood insisted he neither had nor wanted any involvement in the fund. “I have never approved that. I do not think one penny of any fund should ever go to any Jan. 6 insurrectionist that was in the Capitol,” he said.
“I want to be very clear,” he went on. “I do not think we should be creating a fund for people that commit physical violence against law enforcement.”
His comments earned a faint patter of applause from the audience—only for the barrage to then continue.
One person in the audience put questions to flood about the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein Files saga.
Trump, once a close friend of the late pedophile, pledged full transparency on the notorious sex trafficking conspiracy throughout his 2024 campaign.
He then backpedaled on those promises after retaking the White House, only releasing a portion of the documents after a bipartisan campaign of pressure in both Congress and the Senate.
His administration has published what is thought to be half of the DOJ’s total case files. Many of the documents contain significant redactions. Critics have slammed the omissions for doing more to protect Epstein’s co-conspirators than his victims.
Flood, facing an uproar over the controversy, clung to the party line that if there was any dirt on Trump in the files, the Biden administration would have gleefully trumpeted it.
“If President Trump was in the Epstein files, it would have been released,” he said over jeers from the audience.
Trump features extensively in the released documents. His presence in the unreleased files and what those files may say remain subject to intense speculation.
Angry voters also took Flood to task over the president’s war with Iran, which Trump has framed, among other things, as an effort to prevent the Islamist regime from obtaining a nuclear bomb. The conflict has sent shockwaves rippling across the global economy, particularly in the energy sector.
During Trump’s war, the national average gas price has skyrocketed to $4.46 per gallon after the Islamic Republic shuttered the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. attacks. The strait is a vital waterway, and one-fifth of the world’s global oil supply passes through it each year.
Flood struggled to argue with the impact those costs are having on everyday Americans. “I’ll be the first to tell you, prices are too high right now,” he conceded. “It costs too much when you go to the grocery store, it costs too much when you try to buy a new car.”
“Everything costs too much, and I don’t want to hide that one bit,” Flood went on, before hastily adding: “I also don’t want Iran with a nuclear weapon.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Flood’s office for comment.
