Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump questioned the accuracy of polls that place him neck and neck with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in the presidential race during the Pennsylvania FOX News town hall event.
Trump appeared at the FOX News event, advertised as a town hall gathering but did not include public questions, even though host Sean Hannity repeatedly stated that audience questions were coming.
The event was organized after Kamala Harris refused to debate the former president on FOX News on the same day. Trump stated that Sean was a good guy, but he still wanted to debate Harris on the right-leaning news network.
He also aimed ABC News, the network scheduled to host a debate between Trump and Harris on September 10, labeling it the “nastiest” and “meanest” media network. Trump claimed that ABC News intentionally released polls against him before the 2016 election to influence voting decisions allegedly. The former president also said ABC News would share questions with the vice president before the upcoming debate.
Trump also bragged about receiving an endorsement from the family of Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, as recently emerged photos showed some distant relatives of the Minnesota governor wearing Trump shirts.
While talking about polls, Trump said that he is leading the nationwide presidential race by small margins in most polls, which is “hard to believe” because his opponent has “been so bad.”
This is not the first time Trump or his team have criticized polling results. Recently, Trump’s campaign even slammed FOX News polls for releasing what they called “atrocious polling.” These polls showed Harris taking a small lead against Trump in key battleground states.
Later in the FOX News event, Trump labeled Kamala Harris’s rise to the top of the Democratic presidential ticket a “coup” against Biden.
Meanwhile, Trump also doubled down on his long-standing anti-immigration narrative during the interview and reiterated his plans to launch a decisive operation to deport illegal immigrants living in the country should he win the election. He called illegal immigrants “so bad” and “so dangerous” and accused them of destroying the country.
The former president also called out Harris for her previous policy banning fracking. This process involves extracting natural gas and oil through drilling, an important part of the economy in commonwealth states.
In her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris advocated completely banning fracking, although she recently changed this stance to lure moderate voters. In her recent CNN interview, the vice president defended the shift, claiming that her core values remain the same, but she is trying to “build consensus.”
Trump said that Harris’s stance on fracking should be enough for Pennsylvania voters to vote for him even if they do not like him.
