U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick said he sympathized with Pennsylvanians who are fearful of the economic impact of tariffs, and he acknowledged that the Trump administration had made some missteps in its first few months. But during a telephone town hall Wednesday night, he largely defended the administration’s record and asked voters to give the White House more time before evaluating the results.
Trump is “pretty much doing what he said he was going to do,” McCormick said during the nearly hour-long call. “The American people elected him to carry out an agenda that he’s largely doing.”
“If I thought President Trump was doing something that was inconsistent with his executive priorities, then I would speak out,” he added. “I’m elected by the American people. I am not elected by President Trump, even though I agree with many of his policies.”
McCormick did offer muted criticism of controversial billionaire Elon Musk’s often chaotic disruptions of government through the newly minted “Department of Government Efficiency.” McCormick reflected that they’ve “made some mistakes in things that they’ve said should be cut, which in retrospect shouldn’t have been. It’s going to happen when you’re making big changes.” (He identified the firings of disease researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture — in the midst of a bird flu outbreak that threatens the poultry industry — as one example.)
He said, too, that while “we’re gonna have to … eliminate a bunch of positions” in federal government, “I think it’s important we treat [workers] with respect.”
Still, he defended the broader project, saying that, “When you’re moving that fast and trying to identify big cost savings in a radical way, you’re going to make mistakes.”
And in response to a concern about whether Musk is obtaining access to Social Security numbers and other private information, McCormick said “key people have testified that … personal privacy has been protected.”
“We’ll continue to ask,” he said, “But as of this moment, I have no reason to believe it’s not.”
McCormick was also asked about Trump’s trade policies, which have resulted in confusion and drastic drops in stock market indexes — tumult that eased after Trump partially paused some of the tariffs yesterday. He largely repeated an answer he gave to reporters outside of Pittsburgh earlier this week: that the tariffs were part of a broader effort to strengthen the economy, and that they were “designed to fix a problem, which is the global trading system’s not entirely fair,” due large to “the unfair trading practices of China and elsewhere.”
(In the call, he also cited the example of Canada, which he accused of “blocking our dairy farmers … from selling into Canada. That’s the behavior we want to stop.”)
McCormick said he “supported reciprocal tariffs with the idea of creating fairness” — though the tariff rates Trump set were not related to actual tariffs or other policies set by other countries. But he acknowledged “there’s a lot of uncertainty around that” and “markets don’t like uncertainty.”
He said he sympathized with older Pennsylvanians whose retirement funds had been weakened by recent market gyrations but urged people not to panic: Reprising earlier remarks to reporters, he said, “Over the long term ... if we put those pro-growth policies in place, the economy’s gonna take off, [and] the stock market’s gonna be just fine.”
In response to a call about Republican budget negotiations — in which observers say some budgetary assumptions make large-scale cuts to social safety-net programs all but inevitable — McCormick reiterated a pledge that he would “not be stopping benefits for Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. We don’t want to take benefits in Medicaid’s case in particular … from the vulnerable people that those programs are designed to protect.”
Savings could be found by eliminating fraud and waste in the system, he added.
The call proceeded largely without rancor, though one caller — who apparently told call screeners that he had a query about inflation — asked what the use of Congress was “if the Republicans … have handed over your authority to make the laws and appropriate funds to the Russian asset that’s currently running the White House.”
“Well, you might imagine I’m not in agreement on the premise of the question,” McCormick began, before asserting he would be a check on Trump, if needed.
McCormick did strike a hardline note on immigration, responding to a question about “sanctuary cities” — local governments that pledge not to voluntarily cooperate with federal immigration efforts — by saying those officials will face a legal “showdown, which ultimately they’re gonna lose.”
But he largely eschewed partisan attacks, praising the work of former U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, on Alzheimer’s disease research, and hailed his bipartisan work on anti-fentanyl legislation with U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, also a Democrat.
The call was the second such event McCormick has held in recent weeks, and while the first one was held with only a half-hour’s notice, McCormick advertised Wednesday’s call on his Senate Facebook page a day in advance.
The structure of a telephone town hall, which was also used by former Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, offers some advantages to incumbents: The logistics can be handled quickly, allowing the official to schedule them around other obligations while making it harder for foes to organize a response, and disruptions can easily be cut off even if callers sometimes evade a screener.
Still, McCormick has held two such events, a faster clip than either his Democratic predecessor or his current colleague. And he pledged to hold “regular” calls with voters going forward.
“I’m responsible for every single Pennsylvanian … whether they voted for me or not,” he said. “I take these calls very seriously.”
