WATCH: Iowa Republican walks out of interview when asked about accepting contributions outside of his district

Blum insisted on screening his town hall meeting attendees but got upset when his potential hypocrisy was exposed

By Matthew Rozsa

Staff Writer

Published May 9, 2017 11:27AM (EDT)

Republican Rep. Rod Blum of Iowa walked out of an interview with a local reporter after he persisted with an uncomfortable line of questioning.

The interview started out friendly enough. Josh Scheinblum of the ABC affiliate KCRG pointed out to Blum that the people attending his recent town hall meeting needed to provide identification to prove that they were residents of the his district. After Blum replied that he only wanted people from his district to attend, Scheinblum pointed out that "some would make the case that you represent all Iowans. The decisions that you make impact all Iowans. So shouldn't all Iowans have a voice at the table, or at least have the option to?"

Blum laughed and replied, "I don't represent all Iowans. I represent only the first district of Iowa. That would be like saying, Shouldn't I be able to, even though I live in Dubuque, go vote in Iowa City during the election, because I'd like to vote in that district instead?"

"Would you still take donations from a Republican in Iowa City?" Scheinblum then asked, causing lum to walk out after only two minutes.

As Blum stood up and unclipped his microphone, Scheinblum seemed genuinely surprised that the interview was being cut off. Blum, on the other hand, denounced the line of questioning as "ridiculous" and accused Scheinblum of wanting to "badger him" with his questions.

Despite Blum's efforts to weed out trouble from both his town hall meetings and journalistic interviews, he still had a very eventful event at his town hall, where he was peppered with hostile questions over his support of the American Health Care Act.

This also isn't the first time that Blum has been hostile with journalists. Despite campaigning on the promise to donate half of his salary to charities in his congressional district, in April of last year Blum snapped at a reporter who confronted him about failing to follow through on that promise.

"I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. End of story," Blum told the Telegraph Herald. "You know how many people have asked me about that in the last 600 days? ... Zero. Zero people care about that."

[jwplayer file="http://media.salon.com/2017/05/4671618edf0dadf14bae74d3e6f661b2.mp4" image="http://media.salon.com/2017/05/7bc93be5ddb9dbb1fd3a7a01a632cacc-1280x720.png"][/jwplayer]


By Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a staff writer at Salon. He received a Master's Degree in History from Rutgers-Newark in 2012 and was awarded a science journalism fellowship from the Metcalf Institute in 2022.

MORE FROM Matthew Rozsa