Sen. Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the surprise cancellation of the town hall meeting in the West Virginia, which was scheduled on Monday morning and was to be filmed for an MSNBC special. In a statement, Sanders said that the National Guard armory which had been booked for the town hall had canceled without explanation, and that the network was unable to find a new venue on the short notice.
In a statement Sanders said that, “if anyone in the West Virginia government thinks that I will be intimidated from going to McDowell County, West Virginia, to hold a town meeting, they are dead wrong. If they do not allow us to use the local armory, we’ll find another building. If we can’t find another building, we’ll hold the meeting out in the streets. That town meeting will be held. Poverty in America will be discussed. Solutions will be found.”
The town hall meeting was set to be held in the McDowell County, the poorest part of the West Virginia, with the highest rate of drug overdose in the state and the lowest life expectancy of any county in the United States — 64 years. In the November, President Donald Trump won 74.1 percent of the votes in the county, but in the Democratic primary six months earlier, Sanders won 55.2 percent of the votes. On the Friday night, as it was first reported by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, MSNBC and Sanders learned that the armory would not be available for the town hall meeting, which was to be moderated by the host Chris Hayes. While the state National Guard and the new Gov. Jim Justice (D-W.Va.) have not talked about the cancellation, people with knowledge of the event say it had been planned for weeks, and they were told belatedly that the venue could not host the political event.
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Sanders said that “hundreds” of locals had signed up to attend the town hall meeting.
He also said that, “I want people to see, firsthand, how the poverty leads to terrible despair and that, in reality, how it is a death sentence for many. In the McDowell County, one of the poorest areas in one of our poorest states, people are now living shorter lives than their parents. Unemployment is sky high, drug addiction is at an epidemic rate, and the schools lack adequate funding. It is high time that we, as a nation, heard from the people who are impacted by this crisis and determined the best ways forward.”
Sanders was to be in the state on Sunday and Monday, and MSNBC said it would look for the another time to film an event with Sanders. It scored a ratings hit in January with a Sanders town hall meeting in the Kenosha, Wis., a county that had voted Democratic for decades but flipped to Donald Trump in the last year.
Hayes said that. “I’m disappointed, but I hope we can make it work in the future.”
By Mrudula.
