Suffice it to say that a town hall hosted by Fox’s Sean Hannity and featuring the GOP’s former President Donald Trump was bound to be a hit, appearing as it did in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Residents in the state capital area turned out at the New Holland Arena that is part of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Arena to see the two in person, with ticket holders lining up to ask questions of the former president.
Since the area is home base for me, I was able to attend and observe.
Hannity, as the host for his Fox News show, was the first to take the stage, with his star guest quickly following.
As noted here at Fox News, Trump:
• Began by vowing to “heal the world” when the show began with Hannity noting the Georgia school shooting that had killed four and wounded nine others.
• Said in response to Hannity that: “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.”
• Trump added that “We’re headed into World War III territory.” He said of the Biden–Harris administration’s foreign policy: “We’re heading into World War III territory, and because of the power of weapons, nuclear weapons in particular, but other weapons also, and I know the weapons better than anybody because I’m the one that bought them.”
• He said: “We won’t have World War III when I’m elected. But with these clowns that you have in there now, you’re going to end up having World War III, and it’s going to be a war … like no other.”
• Trump noted — correctly in my view — that the wars in Ukraine and Israel would not have happened were he still in the White House.
• He said: “We have things going on in the world right now with Israel and with the Middle East.… It’s blowing up. We have Ukraine and Russia. That would never happen. That would have never happened. Oct. 7 would have never happened if I were the president. It would have never happened. And everybody knows it. Iran was broke. They didn’t have the money for Hamas and for Hezbollah. They didn’t have the money for anybody. They wanted to get by, and we would have made a fair deal with them.”
Hannity asked the audience the famous question posed by then-candidate Ronald Reagan in his 1980 race against the Democrats President Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off then you were four years ago?” The audience, in unison, roared a thunderous “NO!!” in response.
Unsurprisingly, Trump zeroed in on the Biden–Harris mess that has been made of the border. Fox has reported that illegal immigration is the second most important issue to Americans, following right behind the economy. Trump said:
They want open borders. She (Harris) wants open borders. Now she’s all of a sudden said, oh, I think we’re closing the borders. She was the border czar, whether you like it or not, but even if you don’t want to use that term. She was in charge of the border….
It’s the worst border in the history of the world, not just here. There’s never been a country that allowed 21 million people to come in over a three-year period. There’s never been. And 21 million people, many of whom are from prisons, many of whom are murderers and drug dealers and child traffickers.
While still on the subject, Trump noted:
And, by the way, women traffickers, you know, women trafficking is the biggest, and they’re traffickers in women. And they’re coming in now and they’re putting them in our Social Security accounts, and they’re putting them in Medicare. And just one thing, if you take a look, take a look. Over the last week, I said this was going to happen. And it’s happening because these people are tougher than our criminals are, our criminals are nice people by comparison.
And speaking of the No, 1 issue, the economy, Trump predicted that if Harris got her way with her economic agenda — which includes a capital gains tax, price controls, and attacks on what Harris calls “price gouging” (which amusingly, she constantly refers to as “price gagging”) — there will be serious economic consequences. He said:
This country will end up in a depression if she becomes president. Like 1929, this will be a 1929 depression. She has no idea what the hell she’s doing….I gave you the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country. If you let them. If you let the Trump tax cuts expire, which she wants to do, she wants to terminate them. If you do that, you will suffer the biggest tax increase in history. There’s never been a tax increase like it, on top of which she wants to add a lot of tax.
Notably, Trump referred to Harris’ father, reported by Fox News as “Donald J. Harris … a retired Stanford University professor of economics, whose economics background is steeped in Marxist theory.” Which is to say, Trump believes the father’s Marxism has carried on with the daughter’s policy proposals.
When audience questioners raised foreign policy as a topic, the former president said that when he was in the White House, he had been “the toughest on Russia,” citing his opposition to the Nord Stream pipeline. Trump said of Russia’s leader, “Putin would even say, you know, if you’re not the toughest guy, you are, you’re killing us…. This was the biggest job they’ve ever had and I stopped it.”
There was more, to be sure. But for those in the arena’s audience watching the town hall unfold in person, the support for Trump, not to mention the popularity of host Hannity, was vividly in evidence.
And unlike a lot of what goes on these days, the importance of this town hall, and most importantly its warm reception from a large audience in the middle of Pennsylvania, is a serious snapshot of what is happening in the Commonwealth.
As crack Pennsylvania journalist Salena Zito, who reports for the Washington Examiner, observed in an appearance on Hannity’s radio show, the Pennsylvania election will not be won in the Democrat cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It will be won in places like Erie, which is to say counties that don’t get the attention of the state’s two megacities. It will be won in the northwest, southwest, northeast, and central parts of the state.
The bottom line? The Hannity town hall with former President Donald Trump was a hit, a success all the way around. With its considerably savvy host getting the most out of his guest star.
It’s hard to get any better than that.
But stay tuned. There’s two months to go.
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