Former President Donald Trump questioned polls predicting a neck-and-neck race against Vice President Kamala Harris and complained about the conditions of an upcoming debate during an interview with Fox News in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
When asked by a genial interviewer, Sean Hannity of Fox News, in front of an arena of cheering supporters in Harrisburg, the Republican presidential candidate also reiterated his promise, a massive deportation campaign if re-elected and attacked Harris for her past advocacy of a ban on the natural gas extraction method known as fracking.
Trump agreed to the interview, which was billed as a town hall meeting but did not include questions from the audience, after Harris rejected his proposal for a Fox News debate the same day. He said Wednesday he would have preferred to meet Harris on stage.
“I think he’s a nice guy, but I would have preferred a debate,” Trump said of Hannity. “But this is the best we could do, Sean.”
But Trump spent part of the hour on Wednesday criticizing the details of the 90-minute debate The campaign will air on ABC in Philadelphia on September 10, according to the campaigns’ agreements.
He called ABC News “the most dishonest, meanest, nastiest network,” claimed the network intentionally released indigent poll results before the 2016 election to reduce voter turnout, and said officials sent Harris questions before the election without any evidence.
Hannity said he should moderate the debate instead.
Trump also claimed that the family of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, had endorsed him. Charles Herbster, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor of Nebraska in 2022, posted a photo on X of a group of Walz’s second cousins wearing Trump shirts.
Walz’ sister, Sandy Dietrich, told According to the Associated Press, the family was not particularly close to that branch, and she said she would vote for the list that included her brother.
Walz’s brother, Jeff Walz, made disparaging remarks about the Minnesota governor on Facebook, but later told NewsNation he would not comment further.
Bad polls
Hannity’s presentation on Wednesday said polls indicated a neck-and-neck race, but Trump said the enthusiasm of his supporters made that seem unlikely.
“I’ve heard the polls are very close and we have a small lead,” he said. “I find that hard to believe because, first of all, they were so bad.”
Trump has sought to delegitimize polls and even election results that did not give him the advantage, including during the 2020 campaign when he said he could only lose through fraud. After his loss to Biden, he made a series of baseless fraud allegations that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
He said on Wednesday that he did well in 2016, when he won the election, but that he did “much better” in 2020, when he lost. The enthusiasm for the current campaign surpasses both, he said.
Trump also complained that Harris’ entry into the race after President Joe Biden dropped out following a indigent performance in the June debate was a “coup” against Biden.
Immigration claims
Trump spoke a lot during the hour about immigration, an issue that has been close to his heart throughout his political career.
He repeated, without evidence, the claim that most of the immigrants entering the country illegally come from prisons and “insane asylums” and that terrorists enter the country across the southern border.
He described immigrants as a threat to public safety and to social safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
“These people are so bad,” he said. “They are so dangerous. They have done this to our country, they are destroying it. And we cannot allow that.”
He appeared to be referring to a claim circulating online that Venezuelan immigrants had “taken over” an apartment in Aurora, Colorado. The residents of the building have controversial this description.
Fracking and Pennsylvania
To attract the attention of his supporters in the Pennsylvania state capital, Trump also attacked Harris for her past stance on fracking (hydraulic fracturing), a technique used to extract natural gas that plays an essential role in the state.
Harris said during her short-lived campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2020 election that she supported an end to fracking. Trump and Hannity brought this up several times on Wednesday, with Trump saying it should disqualify her for voters in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes will be crucial to the election.
“You have no choice,” he said. “You have to vote for me even if you don’t like me.”
Harris said this year that she does not support a ban on fracking.
More to follow
The event was billed as a town hall meeting and Hannity announced several times that there would be questions from the audience. However, none of the pro-Trump viewers were given the opportunity to ask a question.
During the interview, Hannity greeted audience member Dave McCormick, the Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Casey in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country.
Hannity announced at the end of the show that the taping would continue, with McCormick asking “the first question” and the show airing Thursday night. In an email following the event, Fox News spokeswoman Sofie Watson said the audience questions portion of the event would air “later this week.”
