Sen. Bernie Sanders was defiant in reaction to an abruptly cancelled town hall scheduled to be held Monday morning in West Virginia.
The event, which would have been hosted by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and aired on his show, was scheduled to take place at a National Guard armory in Welch, West Virginia. Sanders learned late on Friday that it had been cancelled, the Charleston Gazette-Mail first reported Saturday.
“If anyone in 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,” Sanders said in a statement emailed to TPM. “If they don’t 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.”
Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told the Gazette-Mail on Saturday that the event had been cancelled after “weeks” of planning, including coordinating with the West Virginia National Guard.
In a statement Sunday to the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Lawrence Messina, director of communications with the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs & Public Safety, said “[o]nce the details of the proposed event were shared with the Adjutant General’s office on Friday afternoon, it became apparent that it would run afoul of DOD and State Armory Board policy” of not hosting political events.
“MSNBC was very much looking forward to the event and are planning on rescheduling as soon as possible, and details will be released as soon as we have them,” Kristen Osborne, an MSNBC spokeswoman, told TPM. “Bernie Sanders will be a guest on ‘All In’ tonight, and he will be addressing it.”
McDowell County has the highest rate of drug overdose in West Virginia and the lowest life expectancy in the country, 64 years, the Washington Post reported Sunday.
Sanders said in his statement that he had wanted to highlight the impacts of poverty in the town hall.
“In 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,” he said. “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.”
