Somebody probably should have warned him about the high risk of blowback. Now he’s learning it the hard way.
Over the past 12 hours, hundreds if not thousands of Elizabeth Warren’s supporters have swarmed Rep. Patrick McHenry’s (R-NC) Facebook page and excoriated him for mistreating her on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
As the contentious Oversight Committee hearing drew to a recess, Warren claimed she had arranged with McHenry’s staff to be excused from the panel at 2:15 p.m. — and that the arrangement was only necessary because the committee made multiple scheduling changes before settling on an early-afternoon start time.
McHenry said she was making the whole thing up. Then later, in a prepared statement, he attacked her sense of entitlement.
“I was shocked by Ms. Warren’s blatant sense of entitlement,” he said. “She was apparently under the assumption that she could dictate a one hour time limit for her testimony to Congress and that we were there at her behest instead of the other way around. This is just further example of her disregard for congressional oversight.”
The exact details of the scheduling imbriglio are not yet clear.
Here’s the key exchange:
That touched off a viral trend of Warren supporters knocking McHenry on his website. Check out a sampling of the comments in the screen grab below.
(Click to enlarge)
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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