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‘Safe space’: Trump again pushes some of his most divisive claims in Fox’s women town hall

Donald Trump with Fox News broadcaster Harris Faulkner for a townhall event in Cumming, Georgia (AFP)
David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement
October 16, 2024

In what is being called a "safe space," Donald Trump in a Fox News town hall for women voters revisited some of his most divisive claims and lies as host Harris Faulkner presented some selective edits of his highly-controversial remarks.

"If you want to know why this Fox News town hall focusing on women voters is so over-the-top Trump-friendly, it's because only Republicans were invited to attend. Fox and Harris Faulkner went out of their way to give him a safe space," observed Zeteo News media columnist Justin Baragona.

"This is a Trump campaign event with an audience of his supporters and a moderator who is doing everything possible to help him out, which makes sense since Fox News is a Republican propaganda outlet," noted Media Matters' senior fellow Matthew Gertz. He added, "Fox's women voters town hall is very obviously packed with Donald Trump supporters, opens with a standing cheering ovation for him."

"The hackwork is unbelievably obvious, you've got attendees asking questions while wearing Trump merch and talking about how they support him."

Emily Harris, the vice president of the Republican Women of Forsyth, told The Independent: “We got a personal invitation from Fox News.”

“We were ecstatic," she said. "We were we were all very, very excited.”

“I feel like when he when he came out, everybody was so excited to see him and his enthusiasm,” Harris added. “It was just great to be in the room with him.”

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The Independent noted that when "Trump arrived in the rustic barn with its wood panels, he received rapturous applause," and the "questioners seemed enraptured by him."

Trump appeared unaware of or unconcerned by his recent scandal, threatening the U.S. Armed Forces should be used against Democrats or anyone who does not support him on Election Day.

"Vice President Kamala Harris is playing some comments that you made to Maria Bartiromo on Sunday," Faulkner told Trump. "I don't know if you've seen this."

"They're using your words to say that you are not for crime and keeping particularly women safe in ads," she said as the highly-edited clip began to play.

"We have to have two enemies, we have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within," Trump says in the playback video. "And the enemy from within, in my opinion is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries, because if you have a smart president, he can handle them pretty easily."

"But the thing that's tougher to handle are these lunatics that we have inside, like Adam Schiff, I call him the enemy from within," Trump says in the clip.

"Mr. President," Faulkner began, "Kamala Harris has said you sounded unhinged and unchecked power is in our future. What what what do you say?"

"I thought it was a nice presentation, I wasn't, I wasn't unhinged," Trump insisted. "Know you know what they are? They're a party of sound bites. They're — somebody asked me, can they be brought together, you know, it was very, I never thought really, I wasn't thinking like they could, because they are they're very very different, and it is the enemy from within, and they're very dangerous."

"They're Marxists and communists and fascists, and they say, I use a guy like Adam Schiff because they made up the Russia Russia Russia hoax. It took two years to solve the problem, absolutely nothing was done wrong, et cetera, etc. They're dangerous for our country. We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries."

"If you have a smart president, they can all be handled, the more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they're so sick and they're so evil, if they would spend their time trying to make America great again, we would have it would be so easy to make this country great. But when I heard about that they were saying, I was like threatening. I'm not threatening anybody. They're the ones doing they're threatening. They do phony investigations. I've been investigated more than Alphonse Capone was the greatest guy."

As Faulkner tried to bring Trump back, he insisted on continuing.

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"No, it's true. We don't think of it. It's called weaponization of government. It's a terrible thing. They're the threat to democracy. This is a question. I'm glad I got that out."

Trump also walked right into his disastrous and highly-criticized remarks falsely claiming Haitian immigrants were eating the cats and dogs of residents in Springfield, Ohio.

"You know the word is 'probation'," Trump told Faulkner.

The discussion had been about immigrants using a federal program called "humanitarian parole" to pay their own way to enter into the United States, where they must have a sponsor. These immigrants are fleeing violence and other threatening situations in countries including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and are here under temporary, not permanent, status.

Trump falsely suggested they were prisoners, before once again making false and dangerous claims about the Haitian community and Springfield.

"They use a word, 'probation'," Trump said. "In order to get the people in, legally, they call them probation. Probation is for prisoners. So they use this in Springfield, Ohio. So you have 32,000 people coming into a 50,000 community. You can't get into the hospitals, you can't get your kids into school. They're taking over the school, and they're looking for interpreters cause the people that came in don't speak the language. I mean, other than that, it's a wonderful situation, it's it's — they're destroying our country."

Watch the video above or at this link.

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