Support truly
independent journalism
Donald Trump admitted he had no idea he would be taking part in a Wisconsin town hall event with Tulsi Gabbard as he stood on stage with the former Democrat.
The former president told the crowd in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, that he actually thought he would be delivering a prepared campaign speech for his supporters on Thursday night.
“I figured I was going to come here and we’re going to make a speech. I have a speech all set for you. I was ready. [And they said, you’re] doing a town hall. I said, ‘Oh, nobody told me that.’ I said, ‘Who’s doing this? Tulsi?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s at least good news.’
“She’s been, I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time, after, so, so, I didn’t even know. I’m in the plane, and looking over some material, and we’re going to give you a hell of a speech tonight. We were set to give you one hell of a speech. They said, ‘No, sir, it’s a town hall.’ I said, ‘Why doesn’t somebody tell me this stuff?’”
As Gabbard sat by, a rambling Trump talked about establishing government-funded IVF and his desire to increase the US birth rate, detouring into a slew of other subjects before telling attendees that he “sort of announced” his IVF plan at a Michigan rally earlier in the day.
“I just felt that it would be a good place to announce it,” Trump went on. “And we did sort of the announcement there a little bit. And now we do the big announcement tonight in front of all of these television stations, all of the fake news. They’re all over the place. I don’t know what’s going on. We don’t even know, I was saying, because we’re doing this.”
Trump also admitted he had no idea which TV stations were covering the event.
“And I don’t even have any idea who we’re doing it for,” he continues. “I don’t know, is it for a network or what? I see a lot of television all over the place, so maybe it’s on all of them.”
At the beginning of the town hall, Trump didn’t even wait for the first question to be asked before he preemptively brought up crowd size.
“And it’s really, this is some crowd,” Trump said almost immediately upon picking up his mic. “And you can duplicate the crowd outside. So if anybody would like to give up your seat, that would be okay. No, no, let’s have a good time. Thank you very much, everybody.”
The sit-down between the Republican presidential candidate and Gabbard, who left the party in 2022, started more than an hour behind schedule, nearly putting it in direct conflict with Vice-President Kamala Harris’ first televised interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, planned for 9pm EDT.
During the long wait for the two to appear, members of the audience stood up and started dancing along to the recorded music playing over the sound system — a mixed bag that included such tracks as “Hall of Fame” by The Script and will.i.am, “More Than a Feeling” by Boston, and “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd — with one dad lifting his MAGA-hatted toddler up to sway along with him.
After Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” played, and a local teen sang the national anthem, Gabbard, who endorsed Trump earlier this week, trotted out in a teal pantsuit. The mawkish “Proud to be an American” served as Trump’s walk-on music, as attendees lofted cellphones into the air to capture the moment.
Trump duly ran through a recitation of his greatest hits, insisting, untruthfully, that undocumented immigrants took “107 percent” of all new jobs created last month, and that Americans have stopped eating bacon thanks to inflation.
Trump won Wisconsin in 2016; Biden carried it in 2020. It was Trump’s first visit to the state since the Republican National Convention in July. On Friday, Trump is scheduled to appear in Pennsylvania, where he was shot in the ear last month.
