OAKS, Pa. — Former President Donald Trump vowed to make housing, energy and groceries more affordable at a town hall Monday night in the country’s largest swing state before ending the event early after multiple audience members experienced health emergencies.
Trump, 78, blasted Vice President Kamala Harris for presiding over high interest rates and inflation that hiked consumer prices about 21% since President Biden took office — before calling off the forum in the Philadelphia suburbs as overheated attendees in the packed space were taken away.
“Let’s make this a musical fest,” Trump improvised — calling on his staff to blast opera icon Luciano Pavarotti’s “Ave Maria” and other songs before leaving the stage with a call-out to his supporters to turn out and vote.
“We win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, we are in clover. And then we’re going to fix our country. And we’re going to fix it fast,” Trump encouraged his listeners after only taking a few of their questions.
The much-hyped event initially went sideways when attendees heard a loud thud of what sounded like someone falling from bleachers — before a heavyset middle-aged man was wheeled out on a stretcher with his shirt cut open.
Minutes later, Trump was prevented from answering a question by more attendees shouting for medics.
The ex-president asked for the facility’s doors to be opened, but said later they could not be left ajar due to security concerns — as he and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, the event’s emcee, speculated that inflation had made air conditioning too expensive for the facility’s operators.
Trump outlined some, but not all, of his economic platform as he courted suburban voters in Pennsylvania’s third-most-populous Montgomery County, which he lost by large margins in both 2016 and 2020, as statewide polls show him neck-and-neck with Harris, 59.
If he returns to the White House — “You’re going to buy that house, and you’re going to pay two and a half, 3% interest, and you’re going to say, ‘I love this guy,’” Trump told his first questioner, a military veteran who said his family was struggling to buy a home.
Asked about grocery costs by a woman who said she was raised in a black and Democratic-voting union household in Philadelphia, Trump focused on record-high illegal immigration during Harris’ tenure as Biden’s point person on reducing migration along the southern border.
“When millions of people pour into our country, they’re having a devastating effect on black families and Hispanic families, more than any others,” Trump said.
The Republican nominee argued that he would boost domestic fossil fuels production and that “when the energy comes down, the prices are going to come down.”
“One year from January 20, we will have your energy prices cut in half all over the country,” he claimed.
Trump also said he’d take aim at regulations that make it more expensive to build new housing — a vision also touted by Harris.
In his abbreviated Q&A, Trump did not mention some of his trademark economic policies aimed at the middle class, including eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits, along with new initiatives to make IVF fertility treatments free and allow tax deductions for car interest payments.
In a reflection of the battleground state’s importance to the national election, the vice president visited Erie, Pa., on Monday night — a post-industrial region historically seen as a bellwether.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 spectators attended Trump’s town hall, according to his campaign — as Harris spoke to a crowd of roughly 7,000 in Erie, according to a pool report.
Harris has touted her own middle-class economic proposals to expand child tax credits and maintain subsidies for home improvements in the Inflation Reduction Act’s bundle of environmental incentives.
The Democratic nominee argues Trump’s plans for more tariffs would amount to a new national sales tax, while the Republican, who used tariff threats as a bargaining tactic during his term of office, says that it won’t and argues record illegal immigration under Biden and Harris boosted costs, including for housing.
Trump lost Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes in 2020, after winning the state by more than 44,000 votes in 2016.
The former president fared worse in Montgomery County in the past election, helping tank his overall effort to carry the state — losing the county by more than 26 percentage points to Joe Biden in 2020 after trailing Hillary Clinton by a more modest 21 points in 2016.
