Letter To The Editor. The Greeneville Sun

Dear Sir:

I attended Representative Diana Harshbarger’s recent coffee in Blountville.  I was glad she upheld her responsibility to hear from her constituents.

During her opening comment and follow up question and answer session Harshbarger misrepresented the truth or outright lied many times. She:

• said if we didn’t believe what she was telling us we listened to propaganda news.

• promoted the idea that the attendees in opposition were paid to be there.  NOT TRUE!

• said Trump had a mandate. NOT TRUE! Trump received less than 50% of the vote. More people voted for someone else than Trump.  He received 1.5% more votes than Kamala Harris.  Hardly a landslide or a mandate.

• assured us all Musk’s hatchet boys were properly vetted. NOT TRUE! They may have security clearance, but with no background check.

• said Musk was not being paid, he was doing this out of the goodness of his heart and there was no conflict of interest. NOT TRUE! Musk has government contracts and now has access to his competitor’s information.  He has also decimated any agencies that had investigations into his company’s business.

• said Musk was doing a forensic audit and going through budgets line by line before making cuts.  NOT TRUE! He has no idea what the Government employees he fired do, as evidenced by his firing of employees who secured nuclear arms, scientists working on bird flu and Ebola, and air traffic controllers.  Those are obviously not firings based on duties, job performance or priorities.

• compared Musk to Hillary Clinton in the Obama Administration.  NOT TRUE! Musk was not elected nor is he a confirmed cabinet member. Clinton had to be confirmed by the Senate.  

• said there were States that allow women to have an abortion the day before the birth—NOT TRUE! This is a lie continually spread by anti-abortionists.

• said several times Medicaid was not going to be cut.  NOT TRUE! The budget framework states the specific committees the money for billionaire tax cut is to come from. One committee controls Medicaid, the other controls SNAP.  The budget of each of these committees will require money to be taken from these programs to make up the required amount.

• stated more than 200 pages of the J6 documentation was destroyed when asked about the J6 pardons.  NOT TRUE!  

When a coffee participant mentioned the fact, the current administration is following Project 2025, Representative Harshbarger said she never read Project 2025 and wasn’tfamiliar with it. Frankly, after all the news about Project 2025,now and prior to the election, she should be ashamed not to have familiarized herself with the document or, the alternative, she islying.

When asked about Trump saying Zelensky was a dictator, she said she had never heard those statements.  Once again, she is either lying or totally ill-informed.

If Representative Harshbarger is going to properly represent her constituents she needs to move from Republican talking points, study facts, stay attuned to current events, and quit being Trump’s lapdog.

Cheryl Summers

Greeneville, TN