It was heaven on earth for Donald Trump. A Fox News town hall with an all-women audience of mostly fans applauding his lunatic ideas. He alone can fix their problems, whatever they are, from the “worst inflation in our country’s history” to the high cost of childcare, which his daughter Ivanka schooled him about.
The pesky issue of abortion didn’t come up until almost fifty minutes into the hour, and then he spooled out his usual spiel about how six justices had the “courage” to send the issue to the states, where “some are going much more liberal.”
“Some are not,” injected interviewer Harris Faulkner, to which Trump agreed, “some are too tough,” but it’s “working its way through the system.”
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The audience seemed satisfied, reinforcing Trump’s strategy to dance around the one issue that could kill his chances to return to the White House. Trump won white women in 2016 and 2020, and Democrats are counting on the abortion issue to drive their vote in November.
To a question about IVF, Trump boasted, “I’m the father of IVF,” noting he has five children and taking credit for the Alabama legislature overturning a judge’s ruling that shut down IVF clinics after Roe was overturned.
A woman with nine grandchildren, six of them female and playing sports, said she was “very concerned for their safety on the field and in the locker room.”
“Such an easy answer,” Trump smiled, saying he would stop it.
“How do you stop it,” Faulkner asked, “Do you go to sports clubs?”
“The president bans it,” Trump declares, like it’s one and done. He gets a big round of applause.
Everything with Trump is one and done. He says it’s so, and that’s it. Immigration and the border are his strong suit. “I will end sanctuary cities.” Big round of applause.
Venezuelan gangs have taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, and the Democratic governor is afraid, Trump says, adding with a smirk, about the gangs, “They’re in the real estate business just like me.”
He loved every minute of this town hall, the adoration, the lack of any serious challenge, the chance to tout his “law and order” agenda. Told that Harris had called him “unhinged” and warned at her rally in Erie, Pa, that he is out for “unchecked power,” he returns the compliment.
“I think it was a nice presentation, I wasn’t unhinged. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists.”
Given a chance to retract his dark words about “the enemy within,” which initially seemed mainly directed to immigrants taking over, he now happily includes Adam Schiff, a likely next senator from California who led House investigations into Trump. “The Russia hoax,” Trump grumbles.
“If you have a smart president, you can handle these people,” he says, confirming that a second term for him would be an ongoing vendetta.
General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs under Trump, says if the former president returned to power, he expects to be recalled to service and court-martialed. Milley told author Bob Woodward that he prayed during his time in the Trump administration, fearful that with an erratic president we had come the closest to nuclear war since the 1962 missile crisis.
Trump dispenses lies, wild exaggerations and promises unrestrained by facts or any sense of shame, saying whatever will win applause, and these women in Georgia seemed to love it. Big Daddy will take care of them.
“Your energy bill will be down 50 percent if we win,” he declares, waxing nostalgic about how “we had a great election in 2020,” and that he would have increased U.S. energy output to double Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, boosting the economy.
“How does it trickle down?” Faulkner answered. “How does it actually happen?”
She didn’t get an answer, but she did stop him from going on about the last election.