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On a rare jaunt outside the friendly Fox News media bubble Tuesday night, Donald Trump answered questions directly from unengaged American voters at a televised “town hall” event, in an experiment his campaign might not be in a rush to repeat. .
Faced with sometimes aggressive questions from ordinary members of the voting public about health care, immigration, and the coronavirus, Trump sometimes skewed in the limelight, squinted at a question about the “racial problem in America” and tried interrupt another voter’s health question. safe.
But the voter shut down the president. “Please stop and let me finish my question sir” said the interrogator, Ellesia Blaque, a professor from Philadelphia, who explained that, as a black woman with a pre-existing health condition, “I am downplayed and not taken seriously.”
Trump looked away bitterly, but didn’t try to interrupt again.
Political analysts could not look away from what some saw as a disastrous performance for Trump, while Trump himself claimed the next day on Twitter that he had garnered “rave reviews.”
“I would love to know who in the White House thought Trump doing this town hall was a good idea,” columnist Karen Tumulty tweeted.
The Washington Post factchecker praised Trump’s performance as “four Pinocchio, over and over again.”
Perhaps worse for Trump than the fact-checkers, however, were his multiple visible descents into onstage confusion, as when he described how “herd mentality” could defeat the coronavirus, when she seemed to mean “herd immunity.”
“He would go without the vaccine, George,” Trump told ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos about Covid-19. “Sure, for a period of time. You will develop as a herd mentality, it will … it will develop as a herd, and that will happen. Everything will happen. “
The moment was turned into an instant attack announcement by Project Lincoln, an anti-Trump Republican consortium, which commented: “This is not a man who wants to entrust the administration of a national distribution of vaccines.”
The coronavirus tangle was not the only moment of Trump’s apparent disorientation on the stage of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where masked voters were seated far apart.
In response to a crying voter who told the story of how his mother, an immigrant, had died of cancer, Trump mistook the cause of death, repeatedly referring to the death of “Covid’s” mother.
Challenged in a recently released audiotape of which Watergate journalist Bob Woodward can be heard telling about the coronavirus, “I’ve always wanted to downplay it, I still like to downplay it,” Trump, who has been telling Americans for six months that the virus is about to disappear – he said that he had in fact “improved” the virus.
“Actually, in many ways, I took advantage of it, in terms of action,” Trump said.
The comments came in response to an unengaged voter at the event, who asked Trump why he would “downplay a pandemic that is known to disproportionately harm low-income families and minority communities.” The president said he did not minimize the threat of the virus: “My action was very strong. I’m not trying to be dishonest. I don’t want people to panic. “
He went on to adamantly state that he has no regrets for his handling of the pandemic, despite a confirmed death toll in the United States approaching 200,000 with no signs of containment from the virus soon.
“I think we could have had 2 million deaths if we didn’t shut down the country,” Trump said, referring to his policy of restricting travel from China, which happened after the virus spread internationally and had no effect on the cases. to come. from Europe and elsewhere. “No, I think we did a great job.”
In an interview with CNN on TuesdayWoodward said of Trump: “I don’t know if he is clear in his head, to be honest, what is real and what is unreal.”
Being challenged again in city hall on why he rarely wears a mask, Trump said, “I do wear them when I have to,” but went on to state that “a lot of people think masks are not good.”
When asked by an incredulous Stephanopoulos who he was talking about, Trump replied cryptically, “waiters,” a response that got no follow-up from the host.
The forum was highly unusual for the president, who is more used to having flattering conversations with Fox News anchors.
At other times, Trump lied about his efforts to gut Barack Obama’s health care bill or smear anti-racist protesters.
“He has yet to address and acknowledge that there has been a racial problem in America,” one voter told Trump.
“Well, I hope there isn’t a racial problem,” Trump said, after years of national anguish over the killing of African Americans by white police officers, the empowerment of white supremacists and the murder of anti-racist activists.
“I can tell you that there are none with me. Because I have great respect for all races, for all ”.
But it was a lie from Trump about his health care record that caused the largely impassive Stephanopoulos to push back harder.
As he has done many times, Trump repeated the lie that Democrats want to remove insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions, a cornerstone of Obama’s health care bill, and repeated a joke about a bill. health that is always just a few weeks away.
“We are going to make a very aggressive health care plan and protect people with pre-existing conditions,” Trump said. “And I’ll tell you this, you won’t do that.”
“I have to interrupt you there,” Stephanopoulos said. “I interviewed him in June of last year, he said the health plan would arrive in two weeks. You told him [Fox News’] Chris Wallace this summer would be here in three weeks. “
“Got it,” Trump said. “I already have it.”
Forum participants later told CNN they weren’t buying it.
“He didn’t answer anything,” said one. “He was lying through his teeth.”
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