Former President Donald Trump fielded multiple questions from voters during a Wednesday town hall with Spanish-language television network Univision meant to appeal to Latino voters.
Immigration was a key topic at the event, filmed in Doral, Florida, and hosted by journalist Enrique Acevedo. But for the most part, Trump opted not to discuss some of his toughest proposals to stem illegal immigration and generally erred on the side of softer rhetoric when discussing the issue.
Instead, the former president painted a record of success during his four years in office, touting in particular his handling of the economy and foreign policy.
Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a Univision-sponsored town hall last week in which she slammed the “broken immigration system.”
The two candidates are in a close race to win over the small segment of Hispanic voters, particularly in the battleground states Arizona and Nevada, who will help decide the next president.
Here are the Washington Examiner’s top takeaways from the town hall.
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1. Trump silent on mass deportation plan
In his third bid for the presidency, Trump has repeatedly stated he would undertake a mass deportation plan to remove illegal border crossers, but he omitted the proposal during his town hall. Trump did not shy away from his desire to secure the border, counting it as part of his success as president, but he avoided inflammatory rhetoric that has garnered national headlines in recent months.
In October, Trump claimed there were a “lot of bad genes in our country” while discussing migrant criminals, echoing his December comments that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”
When strawberry farmworker Jorge Velázquez asked Trump about who would work the jobs that immigrants provide, the former president reiterated his stance that illegal immigration harms black and Hispanic Americans.
“We had people coming in under my administration, and they were coming in, legally they were coming in through a system that we had, which was great because I’m the best thing that ever happened to farmers, you know that,” Trump responded.
“The other thing I can say is that a lot of the jobs that you have and that other people have are being taken by these people that are coming in,” Trump added. “And the African American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in.”
He then went on to claim that illegal border crossings were allowing unwanted immigrants to enter the nation. “They’re also coming in largely, and tremendous numbers coming in out of mental institutions. They’re emptying out mental institutions. They’re emptying out insane asylums,” Trump said despite little evidence for the claim.
He was also asked by Guadalupe Ramirez why he successfully pushed to scuttle a border security deal negotiated in the Senate earlier this year.
Trump responded by touting a secure border while he was in office before slamming Democrats. “The Democrats are weak,” Trump claimed. “They have a governor who’s horrible, [Gov. J.B.] Pritzker. He’s a horrible governor. That’s the state of Illinois. He’s horrible. And they’re very weak on crime.”
2. Trump defends unfounded Haitian migrant claims
Trump also stood by the claim that Haitian migrants were eating animals in Springfield, Ohio, when a voter asked if he believed the story was true. City officials have denied the animal abductions are taking place.
“I was just saying what was reported. That’s been reported, and eating other things too that they’re not supposed to be,” Trump said of his promotion of the unfounded claim.
The former president then said he would travel to the city, but no official date has been announced. “I was there. I’m going to be there, and we’re going to take a look, and I’ll give you a full report,” Trump said.
In his answer, Trump eschewed his usual bombastic personality, opting to answer in a calm manner.
“We want to make our people safe and secure, and we want to make them happy, but Springfield, Ohio, is a perfect example,” Trump continued before arguing the arrival of Haitian migrants, who entered the country through legal pathways, were disrupting social services.
“And the people that live there are, you know, they’d want to leave. They want to move,” he added. “They want to leave because they’ve never had anything like this. And we can’t let that happen to our towns and our cities and our country.”
3. Trump calls Jan. 6 a ‘day of love’
Another voter, Ramiro Gonzalez, asked Trump to win his support after he was turned off by the Jan. 6. Capitol attack. “I want to give you the opportunity to try to win back my vote,” Gonzalez told Trump. Gonzales also expressed reservations over the former Trump administration officials who have been publicly critical of the former president.
“The people that don’t support, a very small portion,” Trump responded.
On Jan. 6, Trump said: “Ashley Babbitt was killed, nobody was killed. There were no guns down there.”
“We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns,” he continued. “This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody, nobody shows. But that was a day of love.”
Trump then insisted he didn’t encourage rally attendees to engage in violence. “They asked me to speak. I went and I spoke, and I used the term ‘peacefully and patriotically,’” said Trump.
The former president stressed that he wanted “honest elections” before going on a tangent against President Joe Biden before concluding, “I hope someday maybe we’ll get your vote. Sounds like maybe I won’t, but that’s OK.”
Later on, Trump continued to cast doubt that he lost the 2020 election, telling a voter, “When I left office, we had an election that was in dispute by most people, I think, but certainly a vast majority of people.”
4. Trump says three nice things about Harris
As the town hall concluded, Trump was asked to list three virtues about his Democratic opponent, to which he responded that the question was “very hard.”
Trump claimed Harris had “harmed the country,” pointing to the border, before praising her as a “survivor” given her trajectory in politics.
“She seems to have a nice way about her,” Trump added. As her third virtue, he said, “She seems to have some pretty long-time friendships.”
“I like the way some of her statements, some of her, the way she behaves, in a certain way. But in another way, I think it’s very bad for our country, very bad for our country,” Trump continued.
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Harris was also asked to list three of Trump’s virtues during her town hall with Univision, to which she said he seemed to love his family.
“But I don’t really know him. I only met him one time,” she added. “So I don’t really have much more to offer you.”
