Donald Trump lobbed his usual insults and accusations at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz during a town hall aired on Fox News and then falsely claimed that immigrants from around the world were pouring into the US.
The pre-taped interview aired on Wednesday evening. The former president walked onto the stage in a Pennsylvania arena to cheers, applause and chants of “USA” from his supporters.
The town hall, hosted by Sean Hannity, comes less than a week before Trump and Kamala Harris meet on the debate stage and as both presidential candidates’ campaigns have drilled down on the US’s six so-called battleground states: Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. The election forecaster Nate Silver predicted that Pennsylvania is more likely than any other state to be the “tipping point” for the election.
It also aired hours after two students and two teachers were shot and killed at Apalachee high school in Georgia. When asked about the shooting, Trump said: “It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we’re going to make it better. We’re going to heal our world. We’re going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetence … We’re going to make it better.”
As he often does, Trump spent time lambasting the Biden-Harris administration over crime, immigration and the intersection of the two issues. Calling the vice-president the “border czar”, he falsely claimed that 20 million people – many of whom he claims have come straight out of prisons and “insane asylums” – have “poured into our country”. He also made mention of reports about an apartment in Aurora, Colorado, being taken over by gang members. Harris was never given the title of border czar.
Trump also made reference to family members of the vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz posting a photo with “Nebraska Walz’s for Trump” T-shirts and thanked them for endorsing him. The photo is reportedly of distant cousins of Walz’s who are related to the Minnesota governor on his father’s side, the Associated Press reports.
After incorrectly thanking Walz’s father for his endorsement, he called Walz “weird” in an ongoing attempt to turn the tables on Walz, who began calling Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, weird during stops and interviews for Harris’s campaign.
Fox News also played out-of-context, seconds-long news clips of Harris in an effort to support Trump’s claims that policies from the Biden-Harris administration have caused inflation and to call out her alleged flip-flopping on implementing a fracking ban.
On Thursday Fox News will air part two of the town hall with Trump and Hannity.
