Politics

Trump is terrible at town halls. He should keep doing them.

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Trump is terrible at town halls. He should keep doing them.

Town hall-style events offer presidential campaigns a counterpoint to the one-way discourse of massive rallies. Candidates typically use these events as a way to humanize themselves, and voters are more than happy to directly question the candidates trying to earn their votes. But because dialogue is the last thing that former President Donald Trump wants, the town hall is a uniquely horrible format for him.

From cutting off questions so he could “do a music” (his words), to rambling far beyond the original point of the questions asked of him, each of Trump’s town halls over the last week has been uniquely disastrous. There were a few moments between his meandering diatribes in which he mustered up the pretense of caring about his supporters’ concerns, but by continuously pulling the spotlight back to himself, again and again Trump missed opportunities to show empathy with struggling Americans.

By continuously pulling the spotlight back to himself, again and again Trump missed opportunities to show empathy with struggling Americans

“Based on the inflation and weak job market, it seems like a big stretch that I’ll ever be able to own a home,” a college student who’ll be voting for the first time told Trump at a town hall in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Sunday. “What is your plan to help bring down inflation and make life more affordable for Americans like me who are just starting off?”Most candidates would love to get that kind of opportunity to offer up specific plans to appeal to the youth vote and talk about housing. Trump instead thanked the young woman for using the term “American dream,” which she didn’t use, and then he ranted about zoning laws and interest rates:

The biggest thing, two things. Make the economy good, so you get a lot of money, right? Make the economy good. And the other thing is interest rates. We’re going to get interest rates. Right now, you can’t get money. Even if you had a good job, you’re paying 10%, you’re paying 11%, 12%, and you can’t get it. When I was president, it was 2.2% interest, and now, and the money was all over the place, and now you can’t get the money. So we’re going to make sure that you can get the money.

That’s not how any politician who cares about a voter and her concerns would answer that question, and the reductive wonder that is “make the economy good” couldn’t have been very inspiring. Most candidates would spend these final days working on being more responsive to what voters are asking. What stands out about Trump’s town halls then is his utter disdain for audience members in favor of pivoting back to his poorly thought-out talking points.

While the impromptu music-listening session at last week’s town hall in Oakes, Pennsylvania, drew more attention, it’s worth clocking how far afield he went while responding to one of the few questions that he took. As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted, Trump’s answer to a question about how he would lower grocery prices included accusations that immigrants are taking “Black population jobs and Hispanic population [jobs],” a boast that the Border Patrol endorsed him and the lie that he won’t let go about Haitian migrants in Ohio. His answer also encouraged everyone to go out and vote on “January 5th.” You may notice that none of those remarks addresses grocery prices. In fact, Trump’s mass deportation plan, if carried out, is a surefire way to cause food prices to skyrocket.During his women-only Fox News town hall on Wednesday, an audience member told Trump that during the previous year she’d broken her neck, was denied assistance, and couldn’t pay for daycare. She asked what he was going to do to help parents afford children. This was his full response:

It’s not fair. You never heard of Ivanka, right? Ivanka. My daughter drove me crazy on this. We had the simplest, most beautiful tax — you know, I gave you the largest tax cuts in the history of our country, OK, larger than the Reagan cuts, larger — but my daughter Ivanka, she said, “Dad, we have to do tax credits for women,” you know, for the child tax credits. She was driving me crazy. Then I did it and I got it just about done. “Dad, you’ve got to double it up.” I said, “Ivanka!” It was actually more complicated than the entire bill, but I got it done, and what we’re going to do and I’m going to — because I understand exactly what you’re saying. We’re going to readjust things so that it’s fair to everybody, ‘cause it’s really not fair to everybody. But we have a lot, and we’re going up higher, but we’re also going to readjust because you have to make some readjustments. It’s unfair to some people and we’re not going to have that. But she was the one that got it started. You know, those were our credits, those were not the Democrat credits. A lot of Republicans said rightfully, “Don’t do it because we’ll never get credit for that.” You know, we’re not known for that. But the truth is, I wanted to put it all in the form of the tax cuts. So I got the maximum tax cut, but we’re also bringing down the taxes for companies and for people. We’re bringing it down to 15% and for companies, only if you make your product, build your product in the USA. Otherwise you don’t get it.

Unlike the other events he’s participated in lately, Thursday’s Univision town hall with Hispanic voters featured questioners who were skeptical of Trump but looking for a reason to back him. In what was a disaster from start to finish, Trump did not deliver on that opportunity. Viral reactions from audience members help illustrate how poorly Trump responded to a former supporter who was looking for a reason to support him again.

But such empathy comes rarely, if at all, from Trump.

These failures to connect are striking when you compare Trump to his predecessors. Former President Bill Clinton was the master of the town hall, adept at connecting with voters, answering their questions and acknowledging their struggles. It was his performance in the second presidential debate in 1992, the first to be held in a town hall format, that likely clinched the election for candidate Clinton. Even former President Barack Obama, who could come across as too cerebral and lecturing at times, at least was able to empathize with the problems Americans were facing.But such empathy comes rarely, if at all, from Trump. Voters bring him problems he could potentially solve if he were elected president, and many seem to quickly realize they’ve wasted their time. The town hall is supposed to foster conversations or at the very least give voters the impression that they’re being heard, rather than just listening to another stump speech. But in pitching their concerns to Trump, they may as well be talking to the wall he’s still promising to build.

Hayes Brown

Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for BLN Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.

Politics

Senate Republicans are getting smoked in fundraising

Published

58 minutes ago

October 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republican Senate candidates are hurting for cash.

Nearly every Democratic candidate in battleground Senate races outraised their GOP opponent from July through September. And in some cases, the disparities were stark.

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico trounced Republican Ken Paxton $60.2 million to $10.2 million in their main campaign accounts.
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff raised $33.1 million to Rep. Mike Collins’ nearly $2.8 million.
In North Carolina, Democrat Roy Cooper raised $12.2 million to Michael Whatley’s $2.1 million.
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed hauled in roughly $33 million to former Rep. Mike Rogers’ nearly $10 million.
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson raised $20.5 million to GOP Sen. Susan Collins’ $5.2 million.
In Ohio, Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown hauled in $23.1 million to GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s $4.8 million.
In Iowa, Josh Turek raised $13.9 million to Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson’s nearly $3.3 million.
In Alaska, Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola raked in $17 million to GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan’s nearly $2.7 million.
In New Hampshire, Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas brought in $8.1 million to Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu’s $1.5 million.
And in Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton raised nearly $9.9 million to GOP Sen. Roger Marshall’s just $866,000.

Across those 10 Senate races, the Democratic campaigns raised more than five times as much as the Republican ones. Put another way: Talarico alone raised more than all those Republicans combined.

Marshall and Whatley each started October with less than $1 million left in the bank. Mike Collins wasn’t much better-positioned, entering the final weeks of the election with just over $1 million cash on hand.

These numbers do not include joint fundraising committees, which allow candidates to raise money and may have some more cash that has not yet been transferred to the campaigns.

Democrats have consistently outraised Republicans on the candidate level this cycle. But the yawning gaps heading into the midterm’s home stretch stand as the latest example of the deteriorating environment for the GOP.

And while GOP outside groups have significantly more money than Democrats, this candidate cash advantage matters because candidates get TV ads for much cheaper rates, letting their dollars stretch much farther.

To underscore how lopsided some of these figures are: At least half a dozen House Democratic challengers raised over $3 million in the third quarter — a sum higher than several GOP Senate incumbents.

There are some silver linings for the GOP.

In Minnesota, Republican Michele Tafoya raised $4.9 million to Democratic Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s $4.3 million. Tafoya started the month with $2.1 million to Flanagan’s $1.5 million.

Sullivan, Husted, Hinson, Rogers and Susan Collins all entered October with millions more in cash on hand than their Democratic opponents.

And Republicans are getting air cover from GOP super PACs bankrolled by billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. that have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms in recent weeks.

Musk was revealed on Thursday as the primary funder of Texas PAC, which has spent $131 million so far boosting Paxton and attacking Talarico. Musk gave $158 million to Senate Republicans’ super PAC arm last quarter, the filings showed, with the group in turn transferring the funds to the pro-Paxton PAC.

Republicans are also benefitting from a recent Supreme Court ruling that allows party committees to spend unlimited sums in coordination with candidates, allowing the National Republican Senatorial Committee to offset at least some of the differences.

Since the tranche of reports filed Thursday only cover until Sept. 30, the full scope of each candidates’ coffers is unknown.

But there are other signs that some are strapped for cash in the final sprint: Whatley has gone dark on television, a clear indication of him running low on funds even as his campaign insists it’s a temporary pause.

Politics

Inside the democratic socialists’ plan to shake up Congress

Published

1 hour ago

October 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Inside the democratic socialists’ plan to shake up Congress

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Politics

Trump lashes out at Republicans as Ken Paxton struggles in Texas

Published

7 hours ago

October 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is blaming fellow Republicans as his endorsed candidate, Ken Paxton, appears to be in a fierce struggle for a Senate seat in Texas with Democratic challenger James Talarico in a state the GOP has long taken for granted.

Trump, in a lengthy post to Truth Social Thursday, singled out longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove and Sen. John Cornyn, the incumbent who failed to secure the president’s endorsement in a heated primary.

Rove and Cornyn, Trump said, are doing “everything possible” to make it harder for Paxton to defeat Talarico, a state lawmaker and Presbyterian seminarian who is making a suprisingly strong run for Senate in deep red Texas.

“They are hurting Texas and, more importantly, hurting the United States of America!” Trump wrote. “If Ken Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like John Cornyn and Karl Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.”

Cornyn, a longtime fixture in Texas politics, lost his bid for reelection in a contentious Republican primary in which he and his supporters portrayed Paxton as a deeply flawed candidate. As Election Day approaches, public polling over the past two months has shown Talarico with a narrow edge against Paxton, the state’s attorney general.

Trump urged his supporters to back Paxton.

“Your favorite President (ME!) is asking all of those who supported Senator John Cornyn to UNITE, and immediately switch your support to Ken Paxton,” Trump said. “He will be a Great Senator, just like he is a Great Attorney General. “

The race has also become one of the most expensive non-presidential battles. Talarico raised $64 million this summer — the largest third-quarter haul of any Senate candidate in history. He has raised more than $134 million since launching his campaign last year.

Paxton raised $18 million in the third quarter of 2026 and last month announced a new $20 million ad buy. Earlier this month, though, a Trump operative told POLITICO that MAGA Inc. and its affiliates are could spend nearly $45 million on direct mail, TV and digital advertising in Texas through Oct. 12.

Already, $235 million has been spent by outside conservative groups and party committees against Talarico as national Republicans scramble to boost Paxton.

Some Republicans have grown concerned that the cost of the Texas race is diverting money needed in other states and have expressed frustrations with Paxton after leaked audio showed him blaming Trump for his woes.

Trump easily won Texas in 2024, winning just over 56% of the vote. But concerns about Republicans’ chances this November have surged as the president’s approval rating plummets.