President Donald Trump held a town hall interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday night in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Appearance He now has a slight lead in the polls.
While Trump, a Republican, offered a bold vision for international peace and American prosperity, self-proclaimed fact-checkers worked desperately to cast doubt on nearly every word he uttered.
For the Poynter Institute's PolitiFact, this meant tweaking the definition of “coup” to suggest that the US president cannot actually prevent or stop war.
High-level overview
Trump harshly criticized Kamala Harris over her record, the “coup” that led to her becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, and her unwillingness to meaningfully engage with the fourth estate.
Hannity also had fun mocking Harris.
Pretend to end the interview The roughly 16-minute comment was a mockery of the brevity of Harris' brief interview with CNN's Dana Bash last week, the vice president's first after weeks of dodging questions and reporters.
Trump's often harsh rhetoric resonated with the event's audience of thousands, and while the heat clearly made Hannity's job difficult at times, the president also made the case for why his re-election would bode well for the commonwealth and the country as a whole.
Meanwhile, fact-checkers were pointing out errors from afar.
Apparently peace is impossible
Trump initially described the world as “sick and angry” and vowed to “heal” it.[ting] We need to end the wars that are being started all over the place because of incompetent American leadership.”
Trump reiterated that the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 “would never have happened” if he were president, and repeated Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's recent comments that Trump is, in effect, an antidote to the chaos prevalent in Eastern Europe, particularly.
Orban
said Politico's parent company, Axel Springer, said in July that Trump is “a man of peace. During his four years in office, he never started a war and has done much to bring peace to old conflicts in a very complex part of the world.”
“We haven't had any turmoil in the last four years,” Trump said Wednesday, before suggesting to Hannity that his current leadership could make the difference between nuclear war and relative peace.
“We're heading into World War III territory,” Trump said, suggesting this was all the more worrying because of “the power of weapons, particularly nuclear weapons but also other weapons. I know weapons better than anybody because I'm the guy who buys them.”
“We need a president who won't get us into a war. If I'm elected president there won't be World War III, but with the clowns we have now we're going to end up with World War III,” the president continued. “It's going to be a war like we've never had before.”
The Poynter Institute's PolitiFact is among the many liberal organizations that “fact-check” Trump's comments at the town hall.
I did my best. It suggests that the US president cannot stop or prevent war.
PolitoFact's comments come after Trump said he would “heal the world” and address wars “that are breaking out all over the place.”
Louis Jacobson He claimed so-called experts had told him that “there is a limit to the influence the president of the United States has over whether a foreign conflict escalates into war.”
Jacobson quoted Richard Betts, professor emeritus of war and peace studies at Columbia University, as saying, “The American president has little control over foreign decisions on war and peace unless he demonstrates a willingness to apply American power.”
Jacobson also quoted an associate professor of political science at Muskingum University who suggested Trump would not have been able to stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine “without simply betraying the Ukrainians and giving President Putin what he wanted, or by sending U.S. troops into Ukraine.”
Harris doesn't seem to be a communist.
Trump criticized Harris,
Marxist economist's daughter and advocate For “equality of outcome”[s]President Trump has “criticized” her proposed wealth redistribution plans and currently vague economic policies.
“If she becomes president, this country will be in a recession,” Trump told Hannity. “Just like 1929, this will be a 1929 recession. She has no idea what she's doing.”
“I gave you the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. If you let it. If you let the Trump tax cuts expire, which she wants to end, then you're going to suffer the biggest tax increase in history. We've never had a tax increase like this before, and she wants a huge tax increase on top of that,” Trump added, referring to Harris' remarks.
Proposed 28% tax Regarding long-term capital gains.
At one point, Trump referred to his opponent as “Comrade Harris.”
“Harris is neither a Marxist nor a Communist.”
Trump said in a recent interview with Rex Friedman.
explanation He noted that he began describing Harris and other radicals as communists because “she instituted price controls…. That leads to communism. That leads to socialism. That leads to no food on the shelves and massive inflation.”
Trump isn't the only one who thinks Harris' proposal is a little too red. The Washington Post recently ran the following article:
title“If they call you a 'Communist,' why not suggest price controls?”
Nonetheless, PolitiFact fact-checkers
Amy Sherman He wouldn't let the nickname stand.
“Experts tell us Harris is not a Marxist or a communist. She's a capitalist,” Sherman said, referring to an earlier “Fact Check.”
Sherman added:
The Trump campaign has pointed to Harris' plan to ban price gouging by implementing price controls. The proposal is vague, but its scope falls far short of a communist policy that calls for a political system or party to abolish private property. Harris has not called for the seizure of private homes or businesses.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Sunshine previously said:
said PolitiFact, “Kamala Harris literally proposed price controls as economic policy.”
“What I would like you to check is
Detailed list of Marxists and Communists “Others have suggested the same thing,” Sunshine added.
A coup by another name
At the town hall meeting, Trump criticized the way Harris became the Democratic nominee, calling it “very unfair.”
“She's the one,” Trump said of the 2020 election. [Biden] She was unopposed in the primary and was the first to exit. … He won 14 million votes. [in 2024]and they kicked him out.”
“Really
coup d'etat If you think about it,” Trump continued, “and the last woman, the last person to come. [became the nominee]”
PolitiFact's Amy Sherman and Jeff Cercone jumped in to reassure readers that Trump was wrong, again.
“A coup is a French word that usually means the overthrow of a government through illegal means and the threat of violence,” the so-called fact-checkers wrote. “Experts have previously told PolitiFact that Democrats' efforts to convince President Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race don't fit the commonly used definition.”
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a coup as “a sudden and decisive use of force in politics.”
Online Etymology Dictionary Define It looks like this:
1640s, from the French coup d'étate, literally meaning “blow to the nation” (see coup). Technically it refers to a sudden and decisive political act, especially a significant and unexpected change in the form or method of government, but in the 20th century it has generally been restricted to the overthrow of a government.
“The selection of Ms. Harris was made entirely within the bounds of Democratic Party rules.”
On the other hand, Polytofact
Previously proposed While they claim that the protests at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 were a coup, they also claim that the fabricated Russian collusion hoax instigated by outgoing Obama administration officials and some Democrats, ostensibly aimed at undermining or removing President Trump, was not a coup, and that the pressure campaign to remove Biden as the Democratic candidate in this election was also not a coup.
Scott Althaus, director of the Klein Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, said:
The coup project, “To be considered a coup incident, the resignation of a top official must involve illegal or extra-legal coercive or the threat or use of force,” he told PolitiFact, adding that “social pressure from within one's own party does not meet this standard.”
Newsweek, embarrassed after publishing false information about Tucker Carlson, also conducted a “fact-checking” operation on Wednesday night, highlighting the following points in a blog post:
Ms Harris' rise to the top was not the result of a coup: Political parties are allowed to choose their own presidential candidate, and Ms Harris' selection was made entirely within the bounds of Democratic Party rules.
Apparently he's not the emperor of the border.
After Hannity
Played a montage As Vice President Harris defended open border policies and incentives for illegal immigration, he and Trump excoriated her shortcomings as America's “border czar,” a title and role that PolitoFact suggested was largely fictional.
Axios
Reported In April 2021, “Harris, who was nominated by Biden to be border secretary, said she would investigate the 'root causes' that drive migration.”
PolitiFact confirmed that Harris was appointed to “work with officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues that are causing people to leave those countries for the United States,” and that Harris highlighted her role during a visit to El Paso, Texas, a few months later.
Nevertheless, the fact-checking organization concluded that “Harris was not in charge of border security.”
While irritated by Harris' reference to her role as “border czar,” Maria Ramirez Uribe, a former race and equality reporter at PolitiFact, seemed more concerned by Trump's suggestion that more than 20 million illegal immigrants are “flooding our country.”
“No country has ever had 21 million people come into the country in three years,” Trump told Hannity, seemingly factoring in estimates of the number of illegal immigrants who enter the country without ever encountering a federal agent. “And 21 million people, many of them are people who have just been released from prison, many of them are murderers, drug dealers. And child traffickers, and for that matter, women traffickers.”
According to According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, at least 8.2 million illegal immigrants committed thefts by crossing the southern border between January 2021 and July 2024. This figure includes: Millions These “fugitives” were not stopped or processed at the border.
Liberal fact-checkers seem to have found a way to undermine each other.
Uribe desperately argued that Trump had exaggerated the number of illegal immigrants who had entered the country under Harris' watch, suggesting:
Under the Biden administration, immigration officials have encountered migrants illegally crossing the US border about 10 million times, a figure that rises to about 11.6 million if “fugitives” who were not stopped by border authorities are included.
Newsweek, citing PolitiFact,
Fact Check that:
President Trump may have added 11.6 million people who were not stopped by authorities at the border to bring the figure up to 21 million, but this figure is based on subjective and unverified counts, and the actual number of people who crossed the border is unknown.
Newsweek's interpretation is that Trump was right.
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