Trump repeats many falsehoods and mocks sexual assault in CNN town hall
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He refused to acknowledge he lost the last election. He said he’d pardon rioters at the U.S. Capitol. He condoned sexual assault and smeared a victim. He wouldn’t rule out restoring a policy of separating immigrant families at the border or say if he wanted Ukraine to defeat Russia. He countenanced defaulting on the national debt. And he dodged repeated questions on abortion.
Former president Donald Trump used his highly anticipated return to mainstream cable television news to give a broader swath of Americans an unvarnished view of what he has been saying at rallies and in right-wing media. The televised CNN town hall kicked off with Trump repeatedly refusing to accept his defeat in the 2020 election and defending the mob of his supporters who disrupted the peaceful transfer of power.
“When you look at what happened during that election, unless you’re a very stupid person, you see what happened,” Trump said in response to CNN host Kaitlan Collins’s opening question asking him to accept the 2020 results. “That was a rigged election,” he added, making a false claim.
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He went on to call Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob of his supporters assaulted police and broke into the Capitol to disrupt the certification of his electoral defeat, a “beautiful day.” He said Ashli Babbitt, the rioter killed by police trying to break into the House chamber, should not have been shot; denied that then-Vice President Mike Pence, who was hiding from rioters chanting for his hanging, was in any danger; and repeated his promise to pardon participants in the insurrection.
Trump’s enduring popularity within the GOP was on display from the start of Wednesday’s town hall in Manchester, N.H., with a live studio audience of mostly Republicans and some undeclared voters likely to vote in the party’s 2024 presidential primary, the nation’s first. They gave Trump a standing ovation as he took the stage.
Mocking sexual assault
The town hall came just a day after a New York jury concluded that Trump was liable for sexually abusing and then defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, drawing criticism from some Republicans and leading others to renew questions about his electability. The news from the Carroll verdict did not dampen Trump’s enthusiasm for the town hall, with advisers saying he was excited and raring to go.
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He repeatedly insisted Wednesday night that he never knew Carroll, accusing her of lying and mocking her account that he attacked her in the 1990s in a dressing room of the department store Bergdorf Goodman. The former president, who did not testify at the trial, used the CNN town hall setting to try to debunk Carroll’s story point by point — drawing laughter and applause from some in the audience of Republican and independent voters.
Trump insisted that he rarely visits Bergdorf Goodman and tried to raise questions about Carroll’s account that he followed her to into a unlocked dressing room.
“What kind of a woman meets somebody and brings him up and within minutes you’re playing hanky panky in a dressing room,” Trump said as some in the audience laughed. “I don’t know if she was married then or not.”
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Trump noted that he was “very famous then” and owned the Plaza Hotel next door: “I’m not going into a dressing room of a crowded department store.” He also tried to discredit her account by noting that jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped — leading Collins to interject that they found him liable for sexual abuse.
“They said he didn’t rape her,” Trump retorted. “And I didn’t do anything else either. You know what, because I have no idea who the hell she is,” he added to laughter from the audience.“This is a fake story. A made-up story,” Trump said. “This is a rigged deal.”
Trump once again defended his infamous remarks on the set of “Access Hollywood” where he boasted about how men who are famous could carry out unwanted sexual advances. When the tape surfaced during the 2016 campaign, it rocked the final month of the contest. Those comments resurfaced in his videotaped deposition in the Carroll case and he stood by them again when Collins asked whether he would take them back.
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“It happens to be true. I said it’s been true for a million years, approximately a million years, perhaps a little bit longer,” Trump said.
“So you stand by those?” Collins asked.
“I don’t want to lie,” responded Trump, who has faced multiple other allegations of sexual misconduct over the years from named women with corroborating witnesses.
In response to questions about the federal spending and debt, Trump entertained the possibility of defaulting on government debt, which Collins pointed out economists warn could upend financial markets and trigger a recession. “You might as well do it now because you’ll do it later,” Trump said.
He rejected the apparent contradiction with his own presidency, when he repeatedly approved unconditional debt ceiling increases and said the limit shouldn’t be used as leverage to negotiate.
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“That’s when I was president,” Trump said.
“So why is it different now when you’re out of office?” Collins asked.
“Because now I’m not president,” Trump answered, to laughter and applause.
Dodging on abortion
Trump repeatedly dodged questions about the point at which he would ban abortion during pregnancy, deflecting by pointing to his record reshaping the courts and appointing the three Supreme Court justices who supplied the majority for overturning Roe v. Wade last year. He has shown some wariness of hard line antiabortion views as an electoral drag for Republicans and avoided the firm stances of some of his rivals.
Trump drew criticism in recent weeks from the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group after a campaign spokesman said in a statement to The Washington Post the issue of abortion “should be decided at the State level” and did not express support for a federal ban. But the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, spoke more positively of Trump after meeting with him, suggesting to the Associated Press this week that he supported a federal ban with exceptions for rape, incest and the mother’s life.
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Close ally Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who was present for the meeting with Dannenfelser and has proposed a national 15-week ban, declined to say whether Trump committed to sign his bill. “I’ll let him speak for himself but I was very pleased with the meeting,” Graham said in an interview in the Capitol on Tuesday.
In Wednesday’s town hall, Trump refused to clarify whether he would support a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks. “I’m looking at a solution that’s going to work,” Trump said.
Trump also declined to say whether he wanted Ukraine to win in their struggle against Russia, suggesting (as he often does, without evidence) that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded Ukraine if he had been in the White House. “I don’t think in terms of winning and losing, I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people,” Trump said.
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He also would not say whether he considered Putin a war criminal, describing him as “a smart guy.” Trump said: “If you say he’s a war criminal is going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to get this thing stopped.”
Despite some Republicans’ renewed concerns about Trump’s viability in a general election, in the Republican primary he has built up a formidable early polling lead and is gaining momentum with endorsements from elected officials, some of whom have begun calling his nomination “inevitable,” even as he faces growing legal peril. His leading rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is preparing to officially announce his candidacy soon, with electability expected to be core to his message.
Pardoning Jan. 6 rioters
Some audience members applauded for Trump’s repeated false claims about election fraud, though others appeared visibly annoyed, such as a young man who rolled his eyes when Trump went on about “illegal votes.” When an independent voter named Scott Dustin asked Trump whether he would suspend “polarizing” talk of election fraud during the 2024 election race, Trump demurred: “Yes, unless I see election fraud.”
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When asked whether he had any regrets about the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol, smashing windows and injuring police officers, he said: “They were there with love in their heart — that was unbelievable and it was a beautiful day.”
He insisted that he had called for the crowd to act peacefully, and at one point pulled out a white piece of paper that appeared to have a timeline of his remarks on social media printed on it. He continued to blame then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for lapses in security, suggesting that he had quickly offered “soldiers” to officials at the Capitol for their protection, even though no accounts of top officials have supported that claim.
Trump said he was inclined to pardon a “large portion” of the Jan. 6 protesters and would do so “early on” in his second administration, arguing that they are “living in hell” right now.
Democratic National Committee spokesman Ammar Moussa responded: “For twenty minutes straight, Donald Trump repeatedly lied about the 2020 election, undermining our democracy, and calling the violent attack on our Capitol and attempt to overthrow the results of the election ‘a beautiful day.’ This would be disgusting if it wasn’t so dangerous.”
Campaign aides discussed likely questions with the former president in advance, the advisers said, though in keeping with his past practice he did not extensively prepare for the appearance. The advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interactions. Throughout the town hall, the campaign blasted out emails emphasizing Trump’s policy proposals on energy, immigration, the economy and foreign policy.
Trump has recently taken spontaneous audience questions at campaign events and kept a busy clip of media interviews with conservative Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson (who has since left the network) to local outlets and less traditional sit-downs such as the Nelk Boys podcasters and far-right British politician Nigel Farage.
It has been years since Trump faced an independent TV moderator or interviewer such as CNN’s Collins. Collins covered the Trump White House for CNN, where she faced the ire of his officials. She at one point was barred from an open press event at the White House over her efforts to question the then-president in a prior setting.
Even as Trump has generally avoided televised interviews and town halls on networks not aligned with him, he has regularly done pull-aside and group interviews with mainstream reporters at his events and on his plane. Trump’s campaign has been deliberately seeking out encounters with supporters and reporters to draw a contrast with DeSantis, who shuns traditional media and is working to sharpen his retail skills.
During Trump’s 2016 campaign, Trump benefited from extended live coverage of his rallies on CNN, a decision the network’s president at the time later said he regretted. More recently, Trump has consistently singled out and vilified the network, inspiring one supporter to mail explosives to its headquarters as well as to prominent Democrats.
Trump took part in Wednesday’s town hall as he faces local, state and federal investigations, with his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election and raise money off false claims of election fraud coming under scrutiny from prosecutors, in addition to his handling of classified materials. Trump was indicted earlier this year in a hush-money scheme and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts.
When vigorously pressed on why he had kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump called Collins “a nasty person.”
Former president Donald Trump called CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins “a nasty person” during a town hall event in New Hampshire on May 10. The crowd cheered. (Video: CNN)
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Source: The Washington Post
