A stream of Saturday’s Jack Bergman town hall event, hosted by Traverse Indivisible and Leelanau Indivisible at Milliken Auditorium, can now be viewed in full on YouTube. Traverse Indivisible announced in a press release that the event drew roughly 400 in-person attendees and 700 viewers on the livestream. The playback on YouTube had amassed nearly 3,000 views as of Monday morning.

Bergman, who represents Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties – and the rest of Michigan’s First District – in the United States House of Representatives, did not attend the town hall. In lieu of the Congressman’s presence, the local Indivisible chapters had a cardboard cutout of Bergman made and placed it center stage for Saturday’s event (pictured). Local attorney Grant Parsons moderated the 90-minute town hall, which gave local constituents a chance to address cardboard Bergman and voice concerns about the direction the federal government is taking under President Donald Trump.

“Bergman has announced through his intermediaries that he does not plan to meet with us today,” Traverse Indivisible’s John DeSpelder said at the start of the town hall. “Laughably, they said that Jack wasn’t going to attend ‘any George Soros-funded town hall.’”

That comment was a reference to a story published by The Ticker on March 13. In that story, James Hogge, Bergman’s communications director, said his boss would not be in attendance for the Milliken town hall and suggested that all Indivisible programming was bought and paid for by Soros, a billionaire and philanthropist known for his left-leaning advocacy. While Open Society Foundations, a grantmaking network founded by Soros, has made several donations to the national Indivisible Project organization over the years, Traverse and Leelanau Indivisible issued a statement noting that most of their efforts are actually funded by local donors – Saturday’s town hall included.

The Bergman camp’s Soros accusation has since gone viral far beyond Traverse City, with MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow sharing The Ticker’s report on her Bluesky page last Thursday.

“To be clear, Jack, we are residents of your district,” DeSpelder said at the Milliken town hall. “You are supposed to represent us. All of us. The people of the First District are being harmed by the reckless and illegal actions of the new administration. These actions threaten our safety, our security, the economy, and the very rule of law. We are frustrated and angry, Jack, because you are not listening to us.”

After DeSpelder’s introduction, dozens of local residents lined up for their chance at the microphone to address Bergman and share stories about how the actions of the second Trump administration have already impacted their lives. One constituent noted that she had been furloughed from her job due to federal cuts. Another told a story about his 19-year-old brother with special needs, raising concerns about how Trump’s proposed elimination of the Department of Education would jeopardize opportunities and accommodations for individuals with disabilities to learn and thrive. A third asked Bergman to think about the “people on the other ends of these decisions,” such as cuts to medical research.

Other attendees spoke on behalf of their children. One young mother begged Bergamn to consider her kids “who learn from PBS, who frequent the library all the time, and who are now growing up in a world where they have less rights than the people who came before them.”

Several speakers even called Bergman’s military bona-fides into question. A retired lieutenant general in the United States Marine Corps, the Congressman touts on his website that he is “the highest ranking combat Veteran to have ever served in the U.S. House.”

“With your military background, I would like to know what you have to say – and what you will do – about this administration’s total disregard for our long-held allies,” one constituent asked.

Others were blunter in their delivery.

“My son is a veteran. I am a veteran. My father is a veteran. My grandfather is a veteran. And my great-grandfather is a veteran,” one woman said, to cheers from the crowd. “Jack Bergman, you are a veteran. You’re a jarhead like my dad… and like my father, like my entire family, you took a vow; a very important vow. You vowed to defend the Constitution and the Republic against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Where the [expletive] are your vows, Jack? You are a disgrace to the uniform. You are a disgrace to the office that you hold. You are a disgrace to this country. And Jack, if you are too feeble and too afraid to stand up for what is right and to fulfill your vows, then it is time for you to step aside and let somebody else do it. Semper Fi.”

Callie Barr, a Democrat who ran against Bergman in last November’s election, earned a standing ovation when she took the mic, and used her time to critique her one-time political opponent’s refusal to attend this town hall or any other similar events throughout the First District.

“Jack Bergman said that he wasn’t going to attend these town halls throughout this district because he said, I quote, ‘I don’t do drama,’” Barr said. “I’d like to agree with Jack Bergman that this is pretty dramatic. What I’d also like to say is that when you have someone wielding a chainsaw who looks like he’s never held one in his life, that’s also pretty dramatic. And when he decides to take it against the United States government, that’s also pretty dramatic. When you have the United States government making friends with Putin, a dictator, against our ally, Ukraine, that’s pretty dramatic. When our European allies no longer trust us and say they don’t want to share intelligence with us, that is pretty dramatic. Here in our own backyard, when our Great Lakes are at risk – our trout, our whitefish; when our National Parks are threatened with the summer coming and our tourism economy at risk; when we have the Department of Education and our children, our special needs kids, wondering if they’re going to get the services they need; when we have folks worried about Medicaid and Social Security; when we have 1,400 people cut from the VA and our veterans are already struggling to get services, I would submit that yes, that is pretty dramatic.”

“But what I will say is that that type of ‘drama’ invites leadership, and not cowardice,” Barr continued. “And for every single people that showed up here today, that’s what it means to be a leader for your community: showing up. And this is the type of 'drama' that’s not going anywhere.”

Despite his absence at Saturday’s town hall, Bergman actually was back in-district this past week. “Great to be back in Menominee County yesterday,” he posted on Facebook on Wednesday, referring to an Upper Peninsula county near the Wisconsin border. “I enjoyed getting the opportunity to meet with the team at Advanced Blending Solutions and learn more about the work they are doing. Small businesses are the lifeblood of Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula and I’m proud to represent the hardest working people in our country.”

Traverse Indivisible has criticized Bergman’s meeting at Advanced Blending Solutions, a manufacturer, as a “managed photo-op.”