Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Feb. 6, 2017, Sacramento Bee.
 
President Trump’s chaotic first weeks have generated wide disapproval, and not all the protests have been placid. But Rep. Tom McClintock needs to stop insisting that the seniors, families and middle-aged picketers at his town hall this past weekend were an “anarchist element.”

As the Sacramento Bee’s Angela Hart reported Saturday, the unhappy crowd that greeted the Sierra Nevada’s man in Congress was anti-Trump and noisy. But McClintock’s claims to outside media afterward that “anarchists” had gathered to “disrupt” his meeting was true only if by “anarchists” you mean “neighbors and grandparents.”

Interviews revealed a lot of gray-haired retirees worried about Medicare and workers fearful of the Republican plan to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. Some said they had driven hours through the Sierra to hear the congressman speak in downtown Roseville; others said they had never demonstrated before, but wanted to register their dismay at Trump’s ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and his efforts to roll back environmental rules.

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