Did Fox News Plant the Audience at Trump’s Wild Town Hall?

Fox News built Donald Trump his own safe space in Georgia on Tuesday, reportedly inviting local chapters of conservative organizations to bolster the crowds.

From the jump, the all-women audience-led town hall at Reid Barn in Cumming, Georgia, was notably more energetic than Trump’s recent media appearances. Attendees roared and cheered for the Republican presidential nominee, even while his responses failed to answer their questions or completely went off the rails.

With less than 30 days on the clock until Election Day, the interview was intended to soften Trump’s image with female voters in swing states. But rather than offer an honest depiction of Trump’s popularity among women—which currently drags behind Kamala Harris’s by a 14-point margin, according to a national NBC News poll—Fox opted to plant some of the former president’s biggest fans to help him out.

Some of the women who attended the town hall were spotted in conservative clothing, including one who wore a hat that read “RNC Delegate.” And one of the individuals chosen to ask Trump a question bore a striking resemblance to Lisa Cauley, the president of Fulton County Republican Women.

Behind the scenes, some women openly admitted that they had received “personal invitations” from the network to appear.

“We got a personal invitation from Fox News,” Emily Harris, the vice president of Republican Women of Forsyth, told The Independent. “We were ecstatic.… We were all very, very excited.”

Trump has long fretted over his reputation with women, but that hasn’t stopped him from pushing policies that actively harm women across the country. Those include making rolling back abortion a key component of all three of his campaigns, repeatedly promising over the last eight years to ban the medical procedure at every available opportunity. While in office, he expressed support for a bill that would have banned abortion nationwide at 20 weeks.

He’s actively spread disinformation about the procedure, attempting to turn voters against permitting access to the medical treatment by claiming there are some states and Democrats who support abortions “after birth,” otherwise known as infanticide or, simply, murder. And Trump’s direct actions include the most egregious offense against national access to the lifesaving procedure: the appointment of three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. The resulting nationwide constriction has sent several states into crisis mode, air-dropping pregnant patients to hospitals in nearby states for critical care that they themselves are no longer able to legally provide.

The former president has also caught flak for his treatment of porn star Stormy Daniels, whom he covered up an affair with ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, said at the time that Trump believed the story could torpedo his rising political star, sharing that he believed it was a “disaster” and that “women are going to hate me.”

Trump’s casual, gross remarks about women haven’t helped his popularity, either. Perhaps most egregiously, the real estate mogul was caught on a hot mic claiming that he could do whatever he wanted to women since he was famous, like “grab ’em by the pussy.”

But none of those reasons came to mind when Trump’s supporters at Tuesday’s town hall were tasked with rationalizing why women are peeling away from the MAGA leader.

“I don’t know where that comes from,” Cynthia Brown, treasurer for Republican Women of Forsyth County, told The Independent. “Because everyone I talk to just loves and appreciate[s] what he is doing, because he’s protecting our children, protecting women from sex trafficking, human trafficking and all the … things that bringing, having open borders allows.”

Donald Trump may have called tariffs the “most beautiful word in the dictionary” on Tuesday, but reporting shows that his economic plans would destroy the economy in nearly every metric. His isolationist policy would skyrocket inflation rates, harm the stock market, and damage America’s global economic standing.

A sweeping report from The Washington Post Wednesday found that independent market experts agree that Trump’s tariff plans would immediately raise costs to U.S. consumers, rather than make his global adversaries pay as he promises. At his appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, Trump bragged about a potential “2,000 percent tariff,” not entirely out of line of his economic threats he’s levied against Mexico and China recently. In the past, he has threatened tariffs of 10, 20, 100, 200, or even 1000 percent.

His ridiculous, still ill-defined tariff plan would shock the U.S. economy according to the Post’s analysis, causing price increases on items at the grocery store and at the gas pump. Economic think tanks estimate that the tariffs could cost the typical American household somewhere between $2,600 and $7,600 per year, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Yale Budget Lab.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the poorest Americans would be hit the hardest, paying an average of 6 percent more under Trump’s plan to implement 20 percent automatic tariffs on all imports. The American economy at-large would also suffer, with that same plan resulting in a $4.3 trillion tax hike over the next 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

As expected, Trump’s team called the economic findings fake news. “These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record and acknowledge the shortcomings of their past work if they’d like their new forecasts to be seen as credible,” said Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, to the Post.

Despite what Trump may claim, tariffs are certainly not “the greatest thing ever invented,” and isolating the U.S. economy from the rest of the world will only hurt people at home.

At a Fox News town hall on women’s issues in Georgia taped Tuesday evening, Donald Trump spoke further of the “enemy within” that he wants to use the military against, specifically naming Democratic Representative Adam Schiff as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her family. *

“It is the enemy from within. And they’re very dangerous. They’re marxists and they’re communists and they’re fascists and they’re sick.” Trump said to Fox’s Harris Faulker. “I use a guy like Adam Schiff. They made up the Russia Russia Russia hoax.”

Trump went on to claim that enemies like Russia and China could be handled, but the Democrats were a different story. “The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil,” Trump said, adding that he was investigated “more times than Al Capone.”

“They’re the threat to democracy,” Trump said about his Democratic opponents to applause from the supportive audience.

In a weekend interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, Tru​​mp made an ominous threat to use the military against his critics and intervene in the election, claiming that they are a bigger threat than migrants, a favorite bugbear of his. His supporters struggled to defend his comments, with many Republicans denying them altogether.

Trump has never been a friend of Pelosi, although he did claim in August that one of her daughters said the two would be “perfect together,” which drew a vehement denial from one of said daughters, Christine Pelosi. Trump was also among many of the Republicans who laughed at the violent attack against Nancy’s husband, Paul, in 2022.

The former House speaker has never minced words about Trump, making it clear on January 6, 2021 how much she thought he was a threat to democracy, and highlighting in her book the warnings she received on Trump’s mental health from doctors and mental health professionals. As House speaker, she played a major role in both of Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021. Trump’s targeting of Nancy Pelosi and her family is another way in which he plans to take revenge against his enemies if he wins in November.

* This piece initially misstated Adam Schiff’s title.

It seems that Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t too happy with the glitchy canvassing efforts of Elon Musk’s America PAC.

Musk’s PAC is responsible for the majority of the Trump campaign’s ground game in several swing states. Musk himself has donated at least $75 million to the PAC, spent on advertisements and canvassers to get out the vote.

However, GOP operatives and conservative activists have seen little activity from Musk’s PAC in battleground states, and Trump’s allies are taking their complaints straight to the man in charge, Rolling Stone reported Wednesday.

“We were upfront about our concerns,” said one GOP operative close to Trump. The operative, who spoke anonymously with Rolling Stone, shared a screenshot of a text conversation that showed their reports from swing states had been relayed to the former president.

Several mega-donors and operatives who spoke to Rolling Stone pointed out that the America PAC is still searching for canvassers, according to a posting on its website. “Why isn’t the army already in place?” one donor asked rhetorically.

This complaint is consistent with descriptions of Musk’s operation. In true technocrat fashion, Musk’s canvassing efforts relies on a door-knocking app called Campaign Sidekick, which means that there is no way to actually verify whether volunteers in swing states are doing their jobs.

Sources told Rolling Stone that members of Trump’s camp have been complaining about his reliance on America PAC for weeks. Some in Trump’s inner circle don’t trust the PAC because of who’s actually in charge of it: two veterans of the Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential run, Phil Cox, who led the Never Back Down Super PAC, and Generra Peck, who served as DeSantis’s campaign manager before he dropped out.

“Why in the world would we trust them with anything?” one Trump adviser asked rhetorically.

It seems that Trump has been less than receptive to the warnings from his allies, though. “I can tell you from personal interactions with him that Donald Trump loves what Elon and his operation are doing in the battleground states, and nobody trying to convince him otherwise lately has had any effect,” one Trump political adviser told Rolling Stone. “As you can see, Trump has been saying at rallies how much he loves Elon and the work he’s putting in… Elon is going all in where it truly matters, especially in Pennsylvania, where his efforts are most visible.”

Rather than devote campaign resources to organizing canvassers, Trump has instead focused on motivating his supporters to act as poll watchers, leaving Musk in charge of rounding up hundreds of thousands of votes. As Trump has outsourced his ground game, his efforts have been dwarfed by Kamala Harris’s field campaign.

Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred had one prevailing message for Texans regarding Senator Ted Cruz: You can’t trust this guy.

Going head-to-head for the first time on Tuesday night, Allred systematically portrayed Cruz as failing to work for the Lone Star State, including torching the Republican for his response to the January 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol and for fleeing the state during times of hardship.

“After he’d gone around the country lying about the election, after he’d been the architect of the attempted overthrow of that election, when that mob came, Senator Cruz was hiding in a supply closet,” Allred said.

Cruz, in turn, shook his head and laughed weirdly. But the sordid detail first emerged from the 53-year-old’s own book, Justice Corrupted, which detailed Cruz’s escape into a “supply closet with stacked chairs” while Trump supporters descended on the legislature.

“And that’s OK, I don’t want him to get hurt by the mob, I really don’t. This election is his accountability. You cannot just be patriotic when your side wins,” Allred continued. “If for the first time in 250 years, this project of ours—this shared American project—that we did not have a peaceful transfer of power, the folks responsible have to be held accountable.”

Allred also attacked Cruz for his minuscule legislative accomplishments after more than a decade in office, which included joining a conservative effort earlier this year to bomb a bipartisan border deal to help Trump win the election. Cruz also faced the fire for his trip to Cancún in 2021, dipping out on the state—and his dog—during a historic winter storm that paralyzed Texas’s infrastructure. Allred leaned into a Texan saying to sum up Cruz’s efforts during his congressional tenure: “all hat and no cattle.”

“This is a pattern. He talks tough, but he never shows up,” Allred said. “Six more years of this? Come on. He’s had 12 years to do it already.”

Cruz, meanwhile, cast Allred as “radical and extreme,” lamenting that the native Texan would “change” Texas.

“We’re doing an awful lot right in the state of Texas,” Cruz said at the top of the debate. “Colin Allred wants to change that. I want to keep Texas Texas.”

After spending weeks trying to run away from his anti-abortion stance on the campaign trail, Senator Ted Cruz was held accountable by his opponent and the moderators of Tuesday night’s Texas Senate debate.

During the debate against Democratic challenger Representative Colin Allred, Cruz tried to dodge a question on whether he supported the right to an abortion in cases of rape and incest.

In Texas, abortion care is not permitted, except to save the mother’s life. When initially asked if he supported exceptions to the state’s draconian abortion law, Cruz gave a nonanswer, simply saying that states should determine their own laws.

“Well, listen, abortion is an issue that many Texans, many Americans, care deeply about, and it’s an issue that people of good faith can disagree,” Cruz said.

“You did not directly answer the question,” said debate moderator Gromer Jeffers, who again tried to push Cruz to respond to the question. “Why is this an issue you won’t address, about saying whether you support or oppose exceptions for rape and incest?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” asked an exasperated Cruz.

Cruz is clearly avoiding the question because he knows that abortion bans that don’t permit exceptions for rape and incest aren’t popular with voters, even in the state of Texas and even among Republicans.

He quickly tried to change the subject and accused Allred of allowing minors to get abortions without their parents’ permission. “He has voted in favor of striking down Texas law that gives parents the right to be notified and consent,” said Cruz. “He’s voted in favor of striking down Texas’ law and legalizing abortion up to and including the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy.”

“Senator Cruz just called himself pro-life. You’re not,” responded Allred. “It’s not pro-life to deny women care so long that they can’t have children anymore. It’s not pro-life to force a victim of rape to carry a their rapist baby. It’s not pro-life that our maternal mortality has skyrocketed up by 56 percent.

“When Ted Cruz says he’s pro-life, he doesn’t mean yours.”

Donald Trump babbled incoherently at a rally in Atlanta, Tuesday night, the latest in a series of untethered performances from the former president where his apparent cognitive decline showed on full display. 

“‘Thirty-two days, Mr. Congressman. Thirty-two,’ she goes. And the election will be in thirty-twoooooo daaaaaays. Thirty-two days,” Trump said to the audience, slurring his words. 

The former president was attempting to mock Kamala Harris for repeatedly announcing that she had only 32 days until the election during a rally speech. Trump claimed that she froze when the “teleprompter crashed.” 

And with that, Trump’s so-called “weave” carried him away.

“Ohhh, I would’ve loved to—you know, it kicked back in, it’s called a kickback. Like, some people know a lot about a kickback. It’s called a kickback. They know in this administration. But no, it’s a kickback, it kicks back in,” Trump garbled.  

Trump picking up on the minute details of Harris’s public speaking performances is particularly ironic considering the gibberish he was in the midst of delivering during his sleepy Tuesday night speech.

At one point, Trump complained about the “woke military,” playing an explicitly homophobic video that included clips from the antiwar film Full Metal Jacket (1987), and expressed his apparent love for world wars, a third of which he is constantly promising Americans is on the horizon. 

“So, we won two, BEAUTIFUL, biiiiiiiiiig, horrible—in many ways—we won two world wars with that attitude,” Trump said. 

This is only the latest scattered, strange performance that Trump has given this week, as his blitz of events seems to be catching up with him. 

Trump struggled to provide coherent answers to policy questions during an interview with the Economic Club of Chicago earlier Tuesday, and lashed out when faced with multiple fact-checks. 

During a town hall in Pennsylvania on Monday night, the Republican presidential nominee abruptly stopped taking questions, and instead had his team play music for 40 minutes while he silently swayed back and forth onstage. Occasionally, he even pretended to conduct.

Donald Trump is going to work at McDonald’s.

CNN reported Tuesday that the former president will visit one of the fast food restaurants in Pennsylvania on Sunday and “work the fry cooker,” a bizarre stunt after his repeated claims that Kamala Harris never worked at a McDonald’s.

Trump has always been a big fan of the fast food chain, even catering a White House event during a government shutdown in 2019 with some of McDonald’s offerings. The news that he would work there for a short time drew laughter on social media.

Harris has often spoken of her time working at McDonald’s while she was a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., even telling the story in a campaign ad. Her running mate, Tim Walz, mocked Trump at a campaign event in August, questioning whether he’d be able to work there.

“Can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s, trying to make a McFlurry or something?” Walz said. “He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything.”

On Sunday, Trump, a child of nepotism who has never worked a job outside of the Trump Organization, will presumably have his time cooking french fries. It remains to be seen how hands-on his role at the golden arches will be, or if the stunt will help his campaign at all, with recent polls showing him narrowly behind Harris in Pennsylvania.

A Georgia judge has ruled to block some of the recent changes to the state’s election regulations, deciding that a new rule by the Trumpian board—and its suspicious timing ahead of the November election—would only amount to bedlam for the swing state.

In his Tuesday night decision, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote that the initiative, driven by local MAGA politicos (whom Trump referred to as “pit bulls fighting for victory” before their August vote) was “too much, too late.”

The regulation would have mandated poll workers to hand-count ballots after they were electronically filed—an arduous order that local officials warned last week was making it that much harder to find people willing to do the job.

In his ruling, McBurney noted that although the strenuous regulation appeared, on its face, to be consistent with the intent and purpose of the State Election Board, the timing of the rule’s passage and its expedited implementation would only further destabilize the election and seed chaos.

“A rule that introduces a new and substantive role on the eve of election for more than 7,500 poll workers who will not have received any formal, cohesive, or consistent training and that allows for our paper ballots—the only tangible proof of who voted for whom—to be handled multiple times by multiple people following an exhausting Election Day all before they are securely transported to the official tabulation center does not contribute to lessening the tension or boosting the confidence of the public for this election,” McBurney emphasized.

“This election season is fraught; memories of January 6 have not faded away, regardless of one’s view of that date’s fame or infamy,” McBurney wrote. “Anything that adds uncertainty and disorder to the electoral process disserves the public.”

It’s the second consecutive blow to the MAGA movement’s supposed success in the Peach State. On Monday, McBurney torched another component of the far-right overhaul, deciding that local election officials could not stand in the way of voting results and cannot refuse to certify election results. Instead, officials have a duty to certify the results by 5 p.m. on the Monday following Election Day, according to the judge.

“No election superintendent (or member of a board of elections and registration) may refuse to certify or abstain from certifying election results under any circumstance,” he ruled.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s massive grift was embarrassingly revealed during his debate against Representative Colin Allred Tuesday night.

Cruz has been seriously struggling in his Senate race against Allred, and on Tuesday, it seemed that Allred dealt several critical blows to the Texas Republican.

In his closing remarks, Allred didn’t hold back.

“We’re all Americans, and we’re all Texans. We need a leader who will bring us together around our shared values. That’s what I’m trying to do during my six years in Congress. That’s the exact opposite of what Senator Cruz has done,” Allred said.

“Whatever he says tonight, you’ve seen it for 12 years. He’s been one of the most divisive senators in the entire country. If you don’t like how things are going in Washington right now, well, you know what, he is singularly responsible for it.

“He has introduced this new kind of ‘angertaiment’ where you just get people upset and then you podcast about it, and you write a book about it, and you make some money on it, but you’re not actually there when people need you. Like when the lights went out, when 30 million Texans were relying on a senator to spring into action, he went to Cancun. That’s who he is,” Allred said.

Throughout the debate, Cruz appeared incapable of countering any of his opponent’s blows. As Allred launched attack after brutal attack, Cruz just awkwardly laughed.

Cruz has innovated a new way to scam podcast money back into his now flailing campaign. The Republican senator has been funneling the payout from his podcast, Verdict With Ted Cruz, straight into a pro-Cruz super-PAC called “Truth and Courage.” According to iHeartMedia and Cruz, the senator is simply “volunteering” his time, and the massive payouts are just “digital revenue.”

Cruz faces a tough election against Allred, especially considering that nearly 2.6 million people have registered to vote in the state since the midterm elections—the bulk of whom are from some of Texas’s most liberal territories, including the areas surrounding Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Austin.