North Carolina Democrat Jeff Jackson has gone viral on TikTok for calling out his colleagues in Congress who are producing “fake anger” for the cameras on Capitol Hill.
“It’s really clear from working there for just a few months that most of the really angry voices in Congress are totally faking it,” he said in a TikTok video that recently hit 1 million likes and over 22,000 comments. “The same people who act like maniacs during the open meetings are suddenly calm and rational during the closed ones. Why? Because there aren’t any cameras in the closed meetings, so they’re incentives are different. What I’ve seen is that members of Congress are surrounded by negative incentives. There are rewards for bad behavior.”
Jackson, who just assumed office in January 2023, appeared on “CNN This Morning” on Friday to talk about his observations. While he acknowledged that fake anger is “not unique to either party” in Congress, the “incentive structure to win a Republican primary right now is basically to try and be the angriest voice in the room.”
“The reason I did the video is because as the new guy you have a special brand of credibility and being able to show up to a place and look around and then sort of report back to everyone what they need to know. And I thought people needed to know,” he said. “I don’t think it was a newsflash to you or a lot of people who follow politics closely, but a lot of America doesn’t know that this anger is fake, that you’ve got a group of people in Congress who are on Team Outrage and what they’re doing is auditioning every day to be the captain.”
When asked if he could reveal specific lawmakers on his list who produce such fake anger for the cameras, Jackson demurred, saying simply it’s “the folks who are always angry.”
“They’re the ones who are auditioning. They’re looking for the media outlets who are trying to keep their audience angry,” he said. “And so if you can get access to those media outlets, it’s a huge win for these folks. They’re up there not to do public service, but just to get as much access to those outlets as possible.”
He emphasized that there is way more consensus and compromise behind closed doors compared to the “song and dance” when lawmakers step out in public.
“What I can tell you is that I had an assumption before I got to Congress about what percentage of people in Congress were serious and what percentage were basically Team Outrage. I thought Team Outrage was going to be about a third of the people who were there,” he added. “It’s not, it’s less than 10%. And that’s the good news I try to give to my constituents when I report back about first impressions here.”
Watch the full “CNN This Morning” segment in the video above.
