Donald Trump\u2019s town-hall-style campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday understandably attracted more attention for its conclusion than for its contents. But the actual question-and-answer period did provide useful insights that should not be overlooked.<\/p>\n
One of the questions posed to Trump \u2014 apparently prescreened by the campaign \u2014 came from a Black woman standing behind him on the stage. Reading from a card, the woman said she had been raised in a Democratic, union household in Philadelphia before (as other question-askers said as well) seeing the light about America\u2019s problems \u2014 and, in particular, how they affect the Black community.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike my fellow Americans,\u201d the woman said, \u201cmy grocery bill has not gone down. Everything is still so very expensive. What steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from this inflation?\u201d<\/p>\n
What follows is Trump\u2019s response in its entirety. Some audience feedback is indicated, and we\u2019ve added some footnotes for clarification and correction. Paragraph breaks are placed approximately where Trump appeared to shift his train of thought.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, you know, it\u2019s such a great question in the sense that people don\u2019t think of grocery. You know, it sounds like not such an important word when you talk about homes and everything else, right? But more people tell me about grocery bills, where the price of bacon, the price of lettuce, the price of tomatoes, they tell me. [1] And we\u2019re going to do a lot of things.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, our farmers aren\u2019t being treated properly. And we had a deal with China, and it was a great deal \u2014 I never mentioned it because once covid came in, I said, that was a bridge too far because I had a great relationship with President Xi [Jinping]. And he\u2019s a fierce man and he\u2019s a man that likes China and I understand that. But we had a deal and he was perfect on that deal, $50 billion he was going to buy. [2] We were doing numbers like you wouldn\u2019t believe, for the farmer. But the farmers are very badly hurt. The farmers in this country, we\u2019re going to get them straightened out. We\u2019re going to get your prices down.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you asked another question about safety and also about Black population jobs and Hispanic population in particular those two. [3] So when millions of people pour into our country, they\u2019re having a devastating effect on Black families and Hispanic families more than any others. [4] I think it\u2019s going to spread to a lot of other places.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to spread to unions. I think unions are going to have a big problem because, you know, employers are just not going to pay the price. They\u2019re going to \u2014 and it\u2019s going to be \u2014 it\u2019s a very bad thing that\u2019s happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo they\u2019re coming in. Many are coming in from jails and prisons and mental institutions, insane asylums. [5] That\u2019s like, you know, step above, right? Insane asylum. And whenever I go, Hannibal Lecter, you know what I\u2019m talking about. They always go \u2014 the fake news. That\u2019s a lot of fake news back there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
[Boos from the audience.]<\/p>\n
\u201cThey always mention \u2014 you know, it\u2019s a way of demeaning, they say, \u2018Hannibal Lecter, why would he mention?\u2019 [6] Well, you know why, because he was a sick puppy, and we have sick puppies coming into our country. I figured that\u2019s a lot \u2014 that\u2019s better than wasting a lot of words. You just say, \u2018Hannibal Lecter. We don\u2019t want him.\u2019 But. But they always sort of say, \u2018Why would he say that?\u2019 I do it for a lot of reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I do it because we are allowing some very bad people into our country. And they\u2019re coming as terrorists. You know, you saw the other day, last month they had the record number of terrorists. [7] I had a month \u2014 and I love Border Patrol.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you see they gave me a full endorsement two days ago? Border Patrol.\u201d [8]<\/p>\n
[Cheers from the audience.]<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Border Patrol. And they\u2019re great. And, you know, they want to do their job. They don\u2019t want to let these people come in. They look at them. They can tell. They can look at somebody, say good, bad. They say what\u2019s coming into our country now, it\u2019s having a huge negative impact on Black families and on Hispanic families and ultimately on everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019re going to close that border so tight. It\u2019s going to be closed. And I said the two things I\u2019m going to do, first, we\u2019re going to close that border \u2014 [9] and people are going to come in. You want people to come in. We need people to come in. People are going to come into our country legally.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s so unfair. You have people that are waiting on a system, in a line and they\u2019ve been waiting in this line. You know how long? For years, 10 years, 12 years and they study and they take tests. And then people come. I actually say, \u2018Why don\u2019t you just go and just come on across?\u2019 I tell people that it\u2019s terrible, right? I said, \u2018Go out. You\u2019re incredible.\u2019 They say, \u2018What can I do to speed up the process?\u2019 I say, \u2018You know what, go to the southern border. I\u2019ll see you on the other side.\u2019 It\u2019s so unfair. [10]<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re going to have them come in legally. You have to see what they have to do. They take tests on, you know, who was the first one here? What date was this? What does 1776 mean? All this stuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd these other people are coming in and they\u2019re affecting the school systems and they\u2019re affecting the hospital system. I mean, if you take a look at what\u2019s going on in Springfield, Ohio, a town of 50,000 people, they\u2019ve just added 32,000 people. Illegal immigrants. [11] And we\u2019re not going to put up with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019re going to take care of your costs are going to come down, and you\u2019re not going to have a problem with \u2014 because the biggest problem, and I\u2019m hearing it from Black people and to a lesser extent right now, but it\u2019ll be the same, Hispanic people.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019ll tell you what, our poll numbers have gone through the roof. With Black and Hispanic, have gone through the roof. [12] And I like that. I like that. I like that. So we\u2019re going to take care of it. You will be \u2014 I\u2019ll tell you, if everything works out, if everybody gets out and votes on January 5th. [13] Or before.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it used to be, you\u2019d have a date. Today, you can vote two months before, probably three months after. They don\u2019t know what the hell they\u2019re doing. But we\u2019re going to straighten it all out. We\u2019re going to straighten that out. We\u2019re going to straighten our election process out, too. That\u2019s going to be important, also. So thank you very much, darling. We\u2019re going to get it straight. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that is how Trump will address inflation.<\/p>\n
[1] The Wall Street Journal recently conducted a survey of economists. Overwhelmingly, they indicated that Trump\u2019s stated economic policies \u2014 heavy on tariffs that would raise the cost of goods for Americans \u2014 would be inflationary.<\/p>\n
[2] Trump\u2019s former national security adviser John Bolton claimed that Trump had pushed the Chinese president to buy goods from American farmers specifically to boost his reelection bid. In part thanks to the pandemic, the purchases stipulated in the deal were not made.<\/p>\n
[3] She did not ask this question.<\/p>\n
[4] Black and Hispanic unemployment hit record lows during the Biden administration.<\/p>\n
[5] These comments about prisons and insane asylums are years-old rhetoric from Trump that is not substantiated.<\/p>\n
[6] Here\u2019s the answer to the very good question of why Trump keeps talking about 1990s movie character Hannibal Lecter.<\/p>\n
[7] Like many on the right, Trump opportunistically conflates being on the Terrorist Screening Dataset with being a terrorist. While apprehensions of people on that watch list between border checkpoints are up, more people on the watch list were stopped at the southwest border in 2019, under Trump, than at any point in Joe Biden\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
[8] The union of Border Patrol agents endorsed Trump, not the government agency.<\/p>\n
[9] Trump was probably going to refer to his \u201cdictator on day one\u201d pledge of addressing the border and drilling for oil, if he hadn\u2019t gotten sidetracked.<\/p>\n
[10] This comment about going to the southern border is not good advice, unless the people Trump knows have viable reasons to seek asylum in the United States.<\/p>\n
[11] The number of immigrants from Haiti presented by Trump is exaggerated. More important, they are in the country legally.<\/p>\n
[12] Trump\u2019s poll numbers with Black and Hispanic voters are better than the support he saw in 2020, but he is still losing with both groups.<\/p>\n
[13] Election Day is Nov. 5.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s town-hall-style campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday understandably attracted more attention for its conclusion than for its contents. But the actual question-and-answer period did provide useful insights that should not be overlooked. One of the questions posed to Trump \u2014 apparently prescreened by the campaign \u2014 came from a Black woman standing behind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}