Former President Donald Trump attempted to reach out to women voters with a Fox News town hall that aired Wednesday morning. Trump took questions from an all-women audience during the hour-long special.
Trump heard from a friendly crowd on a range of issues, including child care and transgender kids in sports. He talked about reproductive rights late in the town hall, conceding that some states have passed abortion laws that are “too tough” in the wake of the Dobbs decision. He also defended his comments to Maria Bartiromo over the weekend where he called some Democrats “the enemy from within” and said he’d use the military against them.
Trump recorded this town hall amid a wide gender gap among the American electorate. In the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, Vice President Harris led Trump among women by 15 points, 57 to 42%.
The crowd was overwhelmingly supportive of the former president, frequently bursting into loud cheers. Faulkner also was friendly — she was critical of Democratic efforts to “prebut” the town hall with a press call Tuesday and shook her head silently after playing a clip of Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock from that Democratic press call.
Trump promoted many of his campaign-trail promises, for example to drill more for oil, cut taxes for businesses and crack down on illegal immigration.
Focusing on immigration and the economy
On many questions, Trump did not give clear answers. When Faulkner pressed him on what he could realistically get done with Congress on immigration, he did not answer, but instead slammed Biden and Harris’ record on the border.
“There's no country that can sustain this,” he said. “We're a laughingstock all over the world. They're laughing at our president and our vice president.”
At other times, his answers left out key context.
After one question asking how he’d help with the costs of child care, Trump talked about growing the Child Tax Credit as president. He did do this, but much of the benefit went to high-income families. He was also unclear about how he would further help with the costs of raising children, saying he wants to “readjust things so that it's fair to everybody,” adding that he wants to bring down corporate taxes.
Faulkner pressed Trump on his comments to Bartiromo over the weekend, about using military force against political opponents.
"I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people that have come in and are destroying our country,” he said on Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures this week. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military."
Trump stood by those comments.
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous,” he repeated.
He insisted that that comment didn’t constitute a threat to his political opponents.
“I’m not threatening anybody. They’re the ones threatening,” he said. He added, “They’re the threat to democracy,” to loud cheers.
Addressing abortion
The topic of abortion came up about 50 minutes into the broadcast. One questioner asserted, “women are entitled to do what they want to and need to do with their bodies,” and then asked, “Why is the government involved in women’s basic rights?”
Trump answered with something he often says on the trail: that he simply sent the topic of abortion back to the states.
But he also implied that he sides with states that have chosen to make abortion laws less restrictive.
“The states are now voting for it,” Trump said. “And honestly, some of them are going much more liberal, like in Ohio, than I would have thought.”
“Some of them are not,” Faulkner interjected.
“And some are not, but it’s going to be redone,” Trump said, shortly adding that some state laws are now “too tough.”
Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, who all voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the federal protection of abortion rights.
The Harris campaign is continuing to hit Trump hard on the topic of reproductive rights. In that “prebuttal” call that they held before Trump’s town hall, the family of Amber Thurman, a woman who died waiting for reproductive care after taking abortion pills, emotionally talked about how Thurman’s death was preventable.
The Harris campaign also released an ad before Trump’s town hall aired, featuring Hadley Duvall, a woman who was impregnated by her stepfather at the age of 12. Several states with abortion bans do not make exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
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