There was lots of commotion at the Capitol today because of the informal holiday that takes place on April 20th each year. Some activists for marijuana legalization were giving away free drugs to staffers over 21, and the Capitol police were not happy. Much commotion ensued and I know that at least seven arrests were made.
Anyway, a lot of cool things happened today. I got to go on the House floor, which was crazy. You can rarely access it, but today it happened to be open to staffers (perhaps to distract from the impromptu marijuana dispensary that was set up outside..?). I also stopped by the National Portrait Gallery.
News broke this morning that Exxon is applying to get a waiver to circumvent sanctions against Russia. I fielded dozens of concerned calls today about a conflict of interest that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (the former CEO of Exxon) might have when processing the waiver. I had to explain to lots of upset Americans that the application actually goes through the Department of Treasury, not the State Department. A lot of people completely thought I was making that up, so that was fun.
Anyway, tomorrow should be a pretty normal day but you never know what’ll happen. The office is getting quite busy as we’re preparing to go back in session next week.
Would you say that by fielding calls from constituents you and the other staffers spend more time answering questioned based off of misinformation and essentially defending Congressman Meadows against dissent or is your role hearing the concerns of informed voters who and has that affected how he votes?
It really just depends if PACs have bought robo-calls. If the calls are all organic, I would say that they’re 90% very informed voters. We usually don’t have to defend Congressman Meadows–people may disagree with his policies, but he’s never had any scandals or anything. But recently we’ve spent a lot of time informing people the Rex Tillerson has removed himself from the situation with Exxon and is not presiding over the case.