Marianne Dunavant takes a photo of Tipton County Sheriff Pancho Chumley and Sen. Marsha Blackburn during Blackburn's visit to Covington last week.
About 50 people showed up last Thursday morning at Covington City Hall to listen to U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) cover various issues, including the military, impeachment, immigration and judges, and how local and federal government can work together.
It was part of a tour of several cities in West Tennessee that Blackburn’s camp called “town hall meetings.”
“It’s about sitting down with locals and asking, ‘How do we best help you?’” Blackburn said. “It takes a local and federal partnership to get anything done.”
Blackburn made some jokes, which drew laughter from the crowd assembled, about “green” people.
“Some people don’t want gas cars, fertilizer or concrete,” she said.
When Blackburn talked about legislation requiring immigrants bringing children into the country to take DNA tests and the confirmation of 155 federal judges, the crowd applauded.
Sen. Paul Rose (R-Covington) asked Blackburn the following: “Why is the national media so heck-bent on destroying the president? Do you see an end to that before the election?”
Blackburn referred to that as “politics of personal destruction” and said she is working with Democrats on healthcare issues.
“That doesn’t get any (media) attention,” she said. “We’ve tried writing joint op-eds with Democrats and Republicans, but some (media) will not take them.”
Blackburn said a media member once asked her if it was hypocritical of her to complain about the media endlessly criticizing President Trump considering Republicans were very critical of Barack Obama when he was in office.
“I told him, ‘I prayed for Barack Obama and our country on a regular basis.”
As far as local and federal government working together, she encouraged local officials to apply for grants at grants.gov.
“The good thing,” Blackburn said, “is even if they tell you no they’ll tell you why so you can fix it the next time.”
