Trump Claims He Was Unaware of Town Hall With Tulsi Gabbard

Donald Trump recently found himself surprised during a town hall event in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, as he took the stage alongside former Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Initially, he believed he would be delivering a pre-prepared campaign speech to his supporters, unaware that the format of the event would be a town hall discussion.

“I figured I was going to come here, and we’re going to make a speech,” Trump said, revealing his confusion. “I have a speech all set for you. I was ready. [And they said, you’re] doing a town hall. I said, ‘Oh, nobody told me that.’ I said, ‘Who’s doing this? Tulsi?’ Well, that’s at least good news,” he added, expressing his admiration for Gabbard.

As the evening unfolded, Trump began to discuss government-funded IVF and his aim to boost the birth rate in the U.S. His comments meandered through various topics, including a “sort of announcement” he had made earlier regarding his IVF plan during a rally in Michigan. “I just felt that it would be a good place to announce it,” he explained. “And we did sort of the announcement there a little bit. And now we do the big announcement tonight in front of all of these television stations, all of the fake news. They’re all over the place. I don’t know what’s going on. We don’t even know, I was saying, because we’re doing this.”

He went on to admit that he wasn’t even aware of which television networks were covering the town hall event, noting, “I don’t even have any idea who we’re doing it for. I don’t know, is it for a network or what? I see a lot of television all over the place, so maybe it’s on all of them.”

Even before receiving a question from the audience, Trump made a point of highlighting the size of the crowd. “And it’s really, this is some crowd,” he remarked, almost immediately after taking the microphone. “And you can duplicate the crowd outside. So if anybody would like to give up your seat, that would be okay. No, no, let’s have a good time. Thank you very much, everybody.”

The town hall, featuring Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party in 2022, started more than an hour later than scheduled, coinciding closely with Vice President Kamala Harris’ first televised interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, which was set for 9 PM EDT. During the extended wait for the event to begin, audience members filled the time by dancing to a mix of songs, including “Hall of Fame” by The Script and will.i.am, “More Than a Feeling” by Boston, and “Sweet Home Alabama” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. A father even lifted his toddler, sporting a MAGA hat, to dance along to the music.

After a rendition of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and a local teenager singing the national anthem, Gabbard, dressed in a teal pantsuit, emerged onto the stage. Trump made his entrance to the patriotic tune “Proud to be an American,” with attendees raising cellphones to capture the moment.

Trump then proceeded to deliver a series of familiar talking points, inaccurately claiming that undocumented immigrants had taken “107 percent” of all new jobs created in the previous month, along with a dubious assertion that inflation has led Americans to stop eating bacon.

This visit to Wisconsin marked Trump’s first since the Republican National Convention in July. Trump had previously won the state in the 2016 election, though President Biden claimed it in 2020. Following his event in Wisconsin, Trump is scheduled to make an appearance in Pennsylvania, where he faced an incident last month that left him with a gunshot wound in his ear.