FREMONT — U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, traded political views with protesters on the grounds of former President Rutherford B. Hayes’ house Monday.
Jordan was at the Hayes Presidential Library and Museums to ask trivia questions of children as part of a Presidents’ Day program.
About a dozen people carrying signs waited for Jordan and got about 5 minutes before his program and another 10 minutes when he was done.
Jennifer Harvey of Bowling Green wanted to know whether the Republicans would investigate President Donald Trump’s ties with Russia. She said Trump’s immigration policy amounts to a Muslim ban, which she believes is unconstitutional.
“I am horrified that there’s talk of repealing the health care plan without a replacement,” Harvey added.
Jordan told her that the House and Senate intelligence committees are both looking into Russian involvement with the Trump administration. He said he might eventually support a select committee, but warned that it could take two years to get started with such a committee.
“We can’t wait that long,” interrupted a man.
Abortion came up when Janet Garrett, of Oberlin, who was Jordan’s Democratic opponent in 2014 and 2016, accused him of telling her that a pregnancy caused by rape was “an act of God.”
“I did not say that,” Jordan responded, but said all life should be protected.
A man told Jordan that many women get abortions because they are “desperate and suffering by the hands of a man who abandoned them,” and that males want to make abortion illegal.
A lone Trump supporter intervened in the argument and told the man that he did not believe that most abortions were the result of male pressure, and speculated that in many cases the fathers did not know or did not want an abortion done.
Inside the museum, Jordan asked about 15 children historical questions that were provided by the Hayes Home staff. He awarded them tickets to horse and buggy rides around the estate. He then took a tour of the museum.
Jordan encountered a larger crowd of protesters in Marion, Ohio, earlier in the day when he held a similar event at the President Warren G. Harding home.
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