In a strange twist, he declared himself the “father of IVF.”
Former President Donald Trump is ramping up efforts to appeal to women voters as he trails with this crucial demographic in national polls. In a town hall that aired Wednesday morning, he sat down with Fox News host Harris Faulkner in front of an all-female audience in Cummings, Georgia, which happens to be in a reliably red county where Democrats have made gains in recent years.
You might be surprised to learn that Trump used to boast a lead among women — particularly white women — in both 2016 and 2020, but that might not be the case this time around. In the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, Vice President Kamala Harris leads the Republican nominee among women by 15 points, 57 to 42 percent.
Though the event was billed as focusing on women’s issues, the former president also addressed various topics, including immigration. We’re recapping the most noteworthy moments.
What did Trump say about abortion during his Fox town hall?
Abortion didn’t come up until about 50 minutes into Trump’s latest town hall.
One attendee raised the issue by asserting that “women are entitled to do what they want to and need to do with their bodies” and asked, “Why is the government involved in women’s basic rights?”
Trump responded in his usual fashion by saying that it would be left up to the states. He also implied that some have chosen to make abortion laws less restrictive. “The states are now voting for it,” Trump said. “And honestly, some of them are going much more liberal, like in Ohio, than I would have thought.”
“Some of them are not,” Faulkner interjected. Trump then responded by suggesting that abortion laws will be “redone,” declaring that some states have made them “too tough” without specifying which ones.
Following the end of Roe v. Wade in 2022, 14 states, including Texas and Georgia, have banned abortion, and several others have attempted to pass restrictions or severely limit access. In the town hall, Trump repeated his support for “exceptions for rape, incest, life of the mother.”
But at one point, Trump proceeded to make a joke surrounding 28-year-old Amber Thurman, a Georgia woman who is believed to have died as a result of the state’s six-week abortion ban following a rare complication. When Faulkner mentioned that her family was on a press call with Harris’ campaign, Trump quipped his town hall would “get better ratings.”
As his latest comments prove, the former president has voiced some pretty confusing — if not contradictory — views about abortion throughout his campaign. He’s simultaneously bragged about his role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who ended Roe, while also saying that the issue should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
However, we know that SCOTUS’ landmark decision remains deeply unpopular among large swaths of voters. In fact, two-thirds of Americans oppose the high court eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, according to a Marquette Law School poll published in August.
Wait, did he really call himself the “father of IVF?”
The Republican nominee fielded a question on another area where he’s known to go on the defense — in vitro fertilization (IVF), which has also come under threat following the end of Roe.
“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF, so I want to hear this question,” he blurted out as a woman in the crowd prepared to ask a question. But no, Trump is not actually “the father of IVF” — the first child conceived through it was born in 1978 in the U.K. and he obviously had nothing to do with it. Harris later seized on Trump’s remarks, calling them “bizarre” before adding that “his actions have been very harmful to women and families in America.”)
But when one woman asked what his IVF regulations would be, Trump went into a tangential story about how he had gotten a call from the “fantastically attractive” Alabama Sen. Katie Britt after her state found that frozen embryos could be considered children.
“She’s a senator, and she called me up like, ’emergency, emergency,’ because an Alabama judge had ruled that the IVF clinics were illegal and they have to be closed down,” he recalled. The former president then went into how Republicans are “party for IVF.”
“We want fertilization…and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them,” he said. “So, we’re totally in favor.”
Unlike abortion, Trump has consistently touted his support of IVF. In August, the Republican nominee announced that he would make the treatment free for women who needed it, though he didn’t detail how he would go about doing this or how it would be paid for.
What other issues did Trump touch on?
The former president also talked about immigration — well, sort of. When Faulkner asked what he could do with Congress to address it, he sidestepped the question and instead slammed Biden and Harris’ record on the border.
“There’s no country that can sustain this,” he said. “We’re a laughing stock all over the world. They’re laughing at our president and our vice president.” The former president did delve into the issue more during a separate town hall with Univision on Wednesday, where he railed against immigrants and continued to push unfounded claims about Haitian migrants eating pets.
During the Fox News town hall, he also doubled down on his rhetoric from over the weekend, suggesting to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News that Democrats were “the enemy from within” and that the military should be used against them “if really necessary.”
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous,” he repeated when pressed by Faulkner. But he maintained that he wasn’t threatening his political opponents and instead shifted blame to Democrats. “They’re the ones threatening,” he said. “They’re the threat to democracy.”
Ultimately, it’s unclear how informative the town hall actually was — CNN counted at least 19 false statements during the one-hour event alone.
