At town hall in La Crosse, Trump rambles on IVF, election conspiracies, Black jobs, Viktor Orban

by Henry Redman, Wisconsin Examiner
August 29, 2024

At a town hall event in La Crosse Thursday evening, former President Donald Trump gave long, often rambling responses to questions from voters and former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. 

The event started more than an hour late because Trump’s rally earlier in the afternoon in Michigan ran long and more than once during his responses he mused that he didn’t know it was a town hall until right before. Trump spoke for about 30 minutes, taking about six questions. 

Gabbard, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 before dropping out and endorsing President Joe Biden, opened the event by saying it was an exciting week because “two former Democratic candidates for president have endorsed Donald Trump to be president of the United States,” referring to herself and  Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who ended his independent campaign for president last week. 

Gabbard never polled at more than 2% in any state in her campaign and Kennedy switched his party affiliation before primary voting started earlier this year. 

In her first question, Gabbard told Trump about her own personal history as she and her husband tried unsuccessfully to have a child through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Ahead of the event, Trump had announced a proposed policy for his administration in which the government would cover, or force insurance to cover, the costs of IVF. 

After that policy announcement, Democrats quickly pointed out that Republicans across the country have acted to block access to IVF. Challenges to IVF began after the U.S. Supreme Court, including anti-abortion justices appointed by Trump, overturned Roe v. Wade. They also pointed out that Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, voted against a bill that would have protected IVF access. 

In response to Gabbard’s question about IVF, Trump talked for nearly ten minutes, touching on Social Security; Michigan’s car industry; the so-called “fake news” media; the political views of his opponent Vice President Kamala Harris’ father and a shipbuilding contract in Marinette. 

“I didn’t know about your situation, and it’s tough stuff, right?” Trump said. “Life is pretty tough. It can be beautiful, but it can be difficult. We are doing something with IVF, because IVF, as you know, for friends, people you know, it’s really worked out very well. For a lot of people, it gave them a child when they would not have had a child. And I told my people I wanted to look at this a couple of weeks ago.”

Trump then segued directly into a new topic before returning to the question about IVF: “And as you know, we have no taxes on a thing called tips. You know that? And I said, Tell me, we did three things. We did that, and we did no tax for seniors on Social Security benefits. We want to have that. And I’ve been seeing a lot of IVF, and I kept hearing that I’m against it, and I’m actually very much for it. In fact, in Alabama, where the judge ruled against it, and I countered the judge and came out with a very strong statement for it. And the Alabama [Legislature] they were amazing. The Legislature approved virtually my statement. I mean, full IVF, and it’s really gone — it’s terrific. And I said, so, with the tips and with the Social Security, no taxes on Social Security, I said, maybe for IVF, and I’ve been looking at it, and what we’re going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization, we are, government is going to pay for it, or we’re going to get or mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that. Well, it’s big. And you know what? We want to produce babies in this country, right? We want to produce babies. So I think it’s going to be something we told we sort of announced it a little bit.”

Without taking a break, Trump then moved on to talk about the rally he had just attended: “We were in a great place, Michigan. We all love Michigan, right? We’re going to bring back the car industry, and we’re going to get a lot of it back to Michigan. They’ve been taking our cars away. They’ve been taking our manufacturing away over years, over decades. And if you look at it today, it’s a shell of what it was years ago, but we’re going to bring it back. Mexico is right now building massive car factories, actually being financed and built by China. They think all their cars back into our country — it’s not going to happen. That’s not going to happen. Oh, listen to that. That is not going to happen. But so much, so many things have gone wrong in the car industry. The union leadership has been horrible. I think I’m going to win by 85% the union but because we’re bringing back and we’re gonna have electric cars, but we’re gonna have gasoline powered cars, and we’re gonna have hybrids, we’re gonna have every kind of car. We’re not gonna go with just that. But I just felt that it would be a good place to announce it. 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. They’re all over the place. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Then Trump moved directly to his statement that he didn’t know about the town hall format in Wisconsin: “We don’t even know, I was saying because we’re doing this, and I finished, and I figured I was going to come here and we’re going to make a speech. I had a speech all set for you. I was ready. They said, ‘Sir, you’re actually doing a town hall.’ I said, ‘Oh, nobody told me that.’ I said, ‘Who’s doing it?’ They said, Tulsi. I said, ‘Well, that’s at least good news. She’s been, I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time after,’ so I’m in the plane and looking over some material, and we’re going to give you a hell of a speech tonight. We’re set to give you one hell of a speech. They said, ‘No sir, it’s a town hall.’ I said, ‘Why doesn’t somebody tell me this stuff?’ And 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.”

Trump then segued into a critique of the his opponent’s CNN interview, which was airing at the same time he was speaking, after it was taped earlier in the day:  “But I did get to see the strangest thing today. I looked at the news conference of Kamala. I call her comrade, comrade, comrade Kamala. She’s a — you know that she’s a Marxist. Her father was a Marxist before her, so she was brought up in the family tradition, and she really is and this country is not ready for a Marxist. We don’t want a Marxist as a president.”

Harris’ parents divorced when she was 8 years old, and she was raised primarily by her mother.

“And she destroyed San Francisco,” Trump continued. “She destroyed California, and we’re not going to let her destroy our country. I’ll tell you it’s not going to happen. So, but just to finish, so, for some reason, she doesn’t want to talk to anybody, so she’s either not the smartest light in the ceiling — trying to be nice here. I want to be. They say, ‘Be nice.’ To be nice, you know, it’s hard to be nice when somebody is destroying your country and wants to destroy your country. It’s hard to be like, ‘Guys, but, but …’ she is. She was a terrible vice president. She was a terrible border czar, worst in history, probably not just in this country, but the border.”

Trump then moved directly to his talking points on the border. “You know, millions and millions of people, I say 20 million plus have poured through the border during their term. I had the safest border in the history of our country. They have the most unsafe border in the history of the world.”

Border crossings dropped markedly in July, to levels lower than during some periods in the Trump administration.

Trump also repeated false claims about other countries emptying their jails and mental institutions to send migrants to the U.S. “I don’t know if you saw the news today, Tulsi, they had a group of a lot of them, Venezuelan people with lots of machine guns taking over a building someplace. I’m looking, I’m saying, Where is that? They went in and they took over a building. This is just the beginning. They’re taking their criminals from all over the world, not just South America, not just Venezuela, which you’ve been reading about, all over the world. They’re taking their criminals and they’re dumping them into the United States, Kamala. That’s Kamala is allowing it to happen. And they actually want to actually, they want to give them papers, they want to make them citizens, and they want to give them your Social Security. They want to give them your Medicare, and your Social Security will collapse under her.”

Trump then segued to Social Security: “I’m the one that’s going to protect the Social Security, but they’re coming. I will tell you, as I did for four years, and there was no age increase, there was not anything they’re going to protect. You know, they destroy you with inflation, and then they want to destroy your Social Security …  not going to happen. But this is going to be the most important election in the history of our country. So I just want to say that it’s an honor to be with you tonight. It’s a forum that’s very different, because I have no idea who the hell is broadcasting it, but all we’ll do is we’ll talk because we’re friends. I love this state. I gave them Marinette. We gave them a very big, you know, Tulsi, we have a ship contract. And as you know, we gave Marinette guards, but we gave them a tremendous contract. They wanted her all over the country. I said, we’re going to get it for Wisconsin, and it’s a big one, and they’re doing a great job, I understand. So we got that, and we’re going to have a good time tonight. So let’s go.” 

After Trump’s lengthy introductory remarks, a woman from Cameron said her son had just started trade school and that she was still an undecided voter but worried about the effect on the country of illegal immigration. 

Trump opened his response by talking about how immigrants take “Black jobs.” 

“The people that I’m talking about, they’re pouring in at levels never seen before,” he said. “They’re coming in by millions and millions, and a lot of them are taking the jobs for the Black population, the Hispanic population, and unions are going to be very badly affected.” 

A student at UW-La Crosse asked about Trump’s plans to bring down inflation and help young people buy homes. Trump’s response touched on election conspiracies and said he was going to make America the “energy capital of the world.” 

“I’m supposed to be nice when I talk about the election, because everybody’s afraid to talk about it. ‘Oh please sir, don’t talk about the election, please,’” he said. “You know, if you can’t, if you can’t talk about a bad election, you really don’t have a democracy, if you think about it, right? But what they did, Tulsi, is they took, they took the oil production. The oil started going crazy. That started the inflation. Then they went back. They said, go back to where Trump was. The problem is that we would have been three times that level right now. We would have been so dominant over Russia and Saudi Arabia. Look, Saudi Arabia, Russia, lot of oil. We would have had more. You know, we had something in Alaska, ANWR, that we, that I created. I mean, Ronald Reagan wanted it. You remember, Ronald Reagan wanted it. They all wanted it. And I got it approved. Nobody was able to get it approved. I got it approved. And they, the first week in office, they turned it back. They said, No, it’s the biggest site possibly in the world. Could be bigger than Saudi Arabia. Well, we’re going to start that up. We’re going to become the energy capital of the world. We’re going to pay down our debt, and we’re going to reduce your taxes still further, and your groceries are going to come tumbling down, and your interest rates are going to be tumbling down. And then you’re going to go out, you got to buy a beautiful house. OK, you got to buy a beautiful house. That’s called the American dream.” 

When asked about crime, Trump used the topic as a chance to tee off on Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota. 

“He is weird,” Trump said, referencing a common attack Walz has made against him. “I’m not. He’s a weird guy. He’s a weird dude. You know, see, they always have sound bites. And one of the things is that J.D. and I are weird. That guy is so straight, J.D. is, so he’s doing a great job, smart, top student, great guy, and he’s not weird. And I’m not weird. I mean, we’re a lot of things, we’re not weird, I will tell you. But that guy is weird. Don’t you think? You know he called, he signed for and this is — who would think that this is even happening in our country? — with men playing in women’s sports and all of this. But he has it. He has it at a level that nobody can believe a bill that every boy’s bathroom will have tampons. Hence his name, Tampon Tim.” 

Trump then started falsely claiming that in Minnesota and other states run by Democrats, babies can be “executed” after they’re born.

“You sit the mother down and the father down, you sit them down, and you talk, and the baby is born, and you make a decision what to do,” he said. “He meant, do you execute the baby after birth? And according to what they have passed a legislation in Minnesota, they’re allowed to execute the baby after birth. And this guy is a participant, and that’s why she picked him, because she is, in fact, a Marxist slash communist. Remember, I’d say all the time, our country will never be socialists, right? We will not have a socialist. Well, I was right. We skipped socialism. We went to communism. This woman has to be stopped.”

When asked by Gabbard about foreign policy issues, Trump praised Viktor Orban, the far-right Hungarian prime minister. 

“Viktor Orban, a very strong leader from Hungary, prime minister of Hungary. They asked him recently about what’s the problem in the world,” Trump said. “A few years ago, during my time, we had, no we didn’t have Israel being attacked. We didn’t have Russia attack in Ukraine. And they asked him, Why is it so bad now the Middle East is on fire? So many places are on fire, and there are plenty places that could very well and very quickly catch on. What’s the problem? He said, ‘You have to bring Trump back as President of the United States. You will have no problem. He single handedly kept things.’ And it’s true, and I could do it with telephone calls by being smart, but literally, he said you have to bring Trump back.”

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