Written by Steve Cickay

Originally published in The Bucks County Herald

Constituents in red states, outraged by the horrors of this administration, have flocked to their Republican Congressional town halls. The public outcries have been so great GOP leaders have advised GOP legislators not to have any more town halls.

If only they had followed the wisdom of our Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, who in almost 10 years on the job, has had only one. Brian was well ahead of the “avoid your constituent questions” game.

So Democratic leaders, who had no fear of facing their own constituents, were making a national commitment to do town halls in districts where their Republican leaders were hiding.

I guess Brian got nervous because he went to his tried-and-true Plan B. I was suddenly called last Tuesday to attend one of his surprise and rare telephone (I call them telephony) “town halls” where he tightly controls the time and agenda. After wasting time with a guest speaker who shoveled out the typical GOP fear and crime agenda, he then droned on about his media outlets and attesting to his sincere desire to hear the voices of his constituents. But by then there was less time for questions and only eight callers were allowed to raise their concerns.

At first I was surprised and glad that the eight questions were not the usual softball ones, but ones that reflected the anger that the administration’s actions had generated in so many people. But when I heard Brian’s answers (or should I say non-answers), where he said he agreed wholeheartedly with the concern raised, but had done nothing to solve the problem so far, I knew exactly what he was doing. Let me give you one example.

Brian agreed with a constituent who was outraged by the administration’s security team use of the unsecure SIGNAL application to discuss imminent battle plans and also inexplicably included a journalist on the chat. Brian wholeheartedly agreed with the constituent and said “anyone with half a brain knows you can’t use Signal for secure info. It is a failure. A SCIF should have been used.”

Brian, who is on the Intelligence Committee, then promised an investigation.

But on the very next day, at the Intelligence Committee hearing, he failed to raise the issue and ask tough questions of Tulsi Gabbard. Instead he asked a question about an ordinary security issue.

What he did in the small telephony town hall was say one thing to show the voters he was a good guy on their side and the very next day, in a very public venue, he did the exact opposite: absolutely nothing. Then, the next day, he even titled his newsletter “Fitzpatrick Asks Pressing Question In House Intelligence Committee Hearing.” Shameless!

Yes, Brian is a master dissembler, a sophist who is expert at not revealing the truth of what he believes and what he does. I commend him for his expertise in deception.