DARTMOUTH — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren continued her town hall tour of Massachusetts on Wednesday night at UMass Dartmouth.

Warren took the stage in front of a packed auditorium totaling about 350 people at the university’s Campus Center. The stop at UMass was the first of three town halls planned for the Senator this week.

Warren came out to a standing ovation following an introduction from State Representative Chris Markey. Before she began taking questions from the audience, Warren started off with a shot at President Donald Trump. “The last seven months have been like seven years, I mean what can I say,” she said as the audience erupted in laughter.

The U.S. Senator then shifted focus and moved from the President to Republican Congressmen in the ongoing healthcare battle. Warren expanded on her support of the Affordable Healthcare Act and admonished the efforts of Republicans to repeal and replace it. Warren also proclaimed victory for House and Senate Democrats for striking down the GOP’s latest healthcare bill last month.

“They [Republicans] voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act a total of 67 times. So think about where we were in November when they had the majority in the House, majority in the Senate, and they have the White House,” Warren said.  “We won the healthcare debate in this country last month,” she said.

The senator answered questions from the audience for the remainder of the event, the majority of which focused on healthcare, student loans, and the president.

When asked how to battle the rising costs of attending college and the privatization of student loans, Warren blamed the student loan interest rate as well as lawmakers in Washington that are going “in the opposite direction.”

“It’s a real problem because right now in Washington, they’re heading as fast as they can in the opposite direction,” Warren said. “Job number one is oversight of what’s going on in Washington, and to just keep banging on this. Job number two is to change the student loan interest rate and to get more resources into colleges so that we can bring down the cost of college,” she said.

Warren was also asked a personal question from a curious member of the audience. She was asked to describe her motivation to join the U.S. Senate and to become the first female senator from Massachusetts.

“I was going to spend my whole life as a teacher, I really love that work. Then I started getting into what was happening to our working class families,” Warren explained. “So when I got out there and ran, one of the things I did was every time, I met a girl what I would say is, ‘Hi my name is Elizabeth, and I’m running for United States Senate, because that’s what girls do.”

Town Hall-style events are not a new thing for Warren. The Senator has hosted 10 town halls throughout the state over the course of the year. Warren continues her town hall tour tomorrow in Marshfield at the Furnace Brook Middle School. She’ll wrap up the week with a town hall event at the Concord-Carlisle Regional High School on Friday.

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