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Ohio Tea Partiers Send a Letter to President Trump Objecting to His Attack on the Freedom Caucus

Tom Zawistowski says the tea party is at a crossroads.
M.L. SCHULTZE
/
WKSU
Tom Zawistowski says the tea party is at a crossroads.
Tom Zawistowski says the tea party is at a crossroads.
Credit M.L. SCHULTZE / WKSU
/
WKSU
Zawistowski says the letter was respectful but pointed and that Trump and the Freedom Caucus need each other.

Nearly two dozen representatives of Ohio’s tea party have written a letter to President Donald Trump. WKSU’s M.L. Schultze reports it chides Trump for tweeting out a threat directed at the House Freedom Caucus after the GOP healthcare bill collapsed last week.

The letter calls on President Trump “to stand with our conservative heroes,” as personified by Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan and the other House Republicans who make up the Freedom Caucus. It’s in response to the president’s tweet that indicated he would work to defeat caucus members in the 2018 midterms.

Tom Zawistowski of the Portage County TEA party says he objects to the us-vs.-them tone of the tweet.

“We’re not them. We’re us. If you think the Freedom Caucus is them, well then, Mr. President, you don’t have any support because the people who elected the Freedom Caucus elected you.”

Zawistowski says caucus members were close to getting what he calls a true free-market alternative to the Affordable Care Act, and he believes a compromise on a new bill is imminent.

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M.L. Schultze
M.L. Schultze came to WKSU as news director in July 2007 after 25 years at The Repository in Canton, where she was managing editor for nearly a decade. She’s now the digital editor and an award-winning reporter and analyst who has appeared on NPR, Here and Now and the TakeAway, as well as being a regular panelist on Ideas, the WVIZ public television's reporter roundtable.