Trump Town Halls on CNN: Live Updates (2023)

The 2024 presidential campaign has only just begun, but the former presidentdonald trumpHe made it clear that his third visit to the White House feels a lot like his first two.

Trump may be trying a new tack in this campaign, running a hitherto more traditional campaign with less internal drama. But pressed by CNN's Kaitlan Collins, the 76-year-old showed on Wednesday night that he was very similar to someone Americans knew in 2016, when he was in office for four years. year, after losing the 2020 general election.

Not surprisingly, the largely Trump-loyal crowd cheered. Trump, as he has often mentioned, is high in the Republican primary. On Wednesday night in New Hampshire, he explained why.

Here are some highlights from Trump's CNN town hall:

Trump says GOP should be willing to raise debt ceiling:America is on the brinkcatastrophic default on sovereign debt. When asked what advice he had for Republicans in Washington, Trump was clear. "If they don't give you a big cut," he said, "you're going to have to default." The U.S. reached the debt ceiling set by Congress in January. It forced the Treasury to start adopting the so-calledextraordinary measuresLet the government pay the bills. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently warned that the U.S. could default on its debt as early as June 1 if Congress doesn't address the debt ceiling.

Trump made dismissive comments about Carroll:A little over 24 hours after a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault and defamation of author E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages, the former president denied the allegations and said again that he never Met Carol. "This woman, I don't know her. I've never met her. I don't know who she is," Trump said, before talking about her ex-husband and a pet on a whim.

Trump also dismissed questions about whether the ruling would hurt his standing with female voters, saying he doubted it would. The reaction from the Trump crowd seemed to support his point — they laughed at his jokes and other dismissive comments about Carroll.

Trump did not say whether he would support Ukraine going to war with Russia:Trump refuses to saydoes he want ukraine to winIn the war with the invading Russia. "I'm not thinking about winning or losing," he said, "I'm thinking about solving this problem so we can stop killing all these people." Asked to choose which side he would prefer to win, Trump struck again. "I want everyone to stop dying," he said before committingEnd the war within "24 hours".

Trump suggests family separation immigration policy may return:Trump said he would restore one of the toughest immigration enforcement policies his administration has put in place:Migrant families separated at US-Mexico border"When you tell a family we're going to beat you up if you come, they don't come," Trump said. His comments came fromTitle 42Trump-era pandemic public health restrictions, a key tool officials have used to deport migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, expire on Thursday.

Trump coy about federal abortion ban:Trump repeatedly dodges questions about whether he will sign lawfederal abortion ban, and about the number of weeks a pregnancy must be made to make abortion illegal. He announced the Supreme Court's decision last yearOverturning Roe v. Wade's Federal Abortion RightsCalled "such a great victory" -- a victory he made possible by appointing three conservative justices. Trump said he supports exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape, incest and when the mother's life is threatened. "We have great negotiating power now, and I think we're going to be able to get things done," Trump said.

Read more highlights from tonight's town hallsheAnd read our team's fact checkshe.

During a CNN town hall with former President Donald Trump, host and anchor Kaitlan Collins asked why Trump kept classified documents when he left the White House, one of many discordant moments one. The FBI later recovered them from Mar a Lago by executing a search warrant.

Trump cut her off when Collins pointed out the difference between Trump and Joe Biden, who also faced questions about classified documents found in his home but not ignoring the subpoena.

"Ready? Can I speak?" Trump demanded. "do you mind?"

"Yes, I want you to answer that question. That's why I'm asking," Collins said.

"Quite simply, you're a boring person and I'll tell you," Trump said, trying to insult her as the crowd cheered.

"Can you answer why you're keeping these documents?" Collins asked again, at which point Trump issued a lengthy response that boiled down to more than a year of negotiations with the National Archives — and the administration was looking for them.

It was an insult to Collins' face, and calling her "mean" was off-putting. The cheering crowd made it even more so.

The term has long been Trump's favorite insult, often hurled at women who frustrate him.

He called Hillary Clinton "theugly woman"At the end of the last presidential debate in 2016.

he usedVice President Kamala Harrisand earlierHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Regarding Meghan Markle, who had criticized him, Trump told a British newspaper in 2019: "I didn't know she was ugly. "

The Washington Post's Aaron Black said after he insulted Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen later this summer.14 recordsTrump used the insult to describe a woman. He found more instances of Trump using the term to describe men, though some of them appeared to be complementary.

Former President Donald Trump claims that classified White House documents were "automatically declassified" when he brought them to Mar-a-Lago.

Facts first:There is no evidence to support this claim. Trump and his team have offered no evidence that Trump actually did some sort of extensive declassification of the documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago — and so far, his lawyers apparently haven’t argued in the lawsuit that Trump Trump did.

Ministry of JusticeexplainIn a lawsuit in August 2022, Trump's representatives never claimed the documents had been declassified -- not in January 2022, when they voluntarily surrendered 15 boxes containing 184 unique classified documents, nor in June 2022, when Trump's team responded to a subpoena by returning another batch including 38 additional unique documents with classification marks.

In addition, 18 former senior Trump administration officials, including two former White House chiefs of staff who spoke publicly, told CNN at the time that they had never heard of the long-standing Trump declassification order while in the administration, They now believe the claims are false. Former officials used words such as "ridiculous," "ridiculous" and "nonsense."

"It's total nonsense," said a former senior White House official. "If true, where is the order with his signature? If so, the Intel community and the Department of Defense would strongly object, and Intel and the Military Council on the Hill would almost certainly know about it."

Undeclared voters and Republican voters from New Hampshire watchCNN Town Hall with Donald Trump, saying the former president should focus more on the future than the 2020 election.

CNN also asked voters what they thought of Trump's overall performance. Of the eight listeners who participated in the post-town hall discussion, only one said they would vote for Trump in 2024. The rest said they were still undecided.

Check out the full discussion here:

Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday night that "some" of the Jan. 6 rioters "may have gotten out of hand," comparing the uprising to leftist protests that have turned violent in other cities.

Facts first:This statement is wrong. On Jan. 6, when hundreds of rioters were accused of violence against police, Trump downplayed the violence and vaguely described the uprising as a social justice protest, failing to acknowledge the gravity of the attack on the Capitol.

Riots by Trump supporters overwhelmed the Capitol on Jan. 6, which led to the largest law enforcement response in modern history—due to the sheer amount of violence on the ground that day, particularly against police officers.

The number of thugs accused of police brutality numbered in the hundreds.

according toDOJ this week, 346 people face federal charges of assaulting, resisting or obstructing officials or other employees. They included more than 100 people charged with using a weapon or causing grievous injury to an officer. About five dozen people have pleaded guilty to charges of such crimes.

The FBI is still seeking information to identify more than 220 other people who may have committed violent crimes at the Capitol.

Althoughfederal judge appointed by trumpLeftwing rioters in Portland, for example, behaved in the same way the pro-Trump crowd did on Jan. 6.

Writing in the January 6, 2021 riot case, Judge Trevor McFadden wrote: "While both Portland and the January 6 rioters attacked federal buildings, Portland The defendants attacked mainly at night, meaning they stormed a vacant Grand Court building. By contrast, on Jan. 6, mobs stormed the Capitol in broad daylight. Many entered it.

Another federal judge in the District of Columbia, Carl Nichols, wrote: "The actions of the Portland rioters, while clearly serious, did not address the constitutional process designed to ensure the A peaceful transition. Neither did the Portland rioters, who, unlike those who attacked the U.S. Capitol in 2021, breached the building's exterior defenses."

President Joe Biden did not watch CNN's town hall with former President Donald Trump, a source familiar with the President's Gala said.

During the event, Biden was flying from New York City to Washington, D.C., and the TVs on Air Force One were tuned to another channel — except for the press cabin, which was watching CNN.

But Biden's campaign and Democratic officials are watching closely, believing more comments from the former president will become fodder for future ads and digital content.

A source familiar with the campaign's thinking said they believed Trump's message and doubling down on issues such as rejecting the election would alienate voters, and a town hall showing Biden's campaign message starting in 2022, the midterms and starting in 2024 would alienate voters. Proven rightist. Advisers believe they can take advantage of Trump's comments about abortions, debt defaults and refusal to say whether he would accept the results of the upcoming election.

A Democratic official described Trump's comments on overturning Roe v. Wade as "a home run for us" as they try to argue that women's reproductive rights are under attack from Republicans.

The Biden campaign is already working to translate town hall moments into ads and digital content, including Trump's Jan. 6 comments, election rejections, abortion and other comments containing misogynistic remarks.

Biden's political account hastweeted the videoJuxtapose the former president's comments about Jan. 6 with images of rioters at the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

The day after a federal jury found former President Donald Trump in ManhattanSexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean CarrollAfterwards, Trump claimed the jury in the civil trial found he did not rape her and said he "didn't do anything else either."

"They said 'he didn't rape her,' and I didn't do anything else," Trump said.

Facts first:This statement needs more context. Although the jury did not find Carroll to prove rape, it did find that she proved Trump was sexually abusive enough to hold him liable for the assault.

Carroll claimed Trump raped her at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s, then defamed her when he denied her claims.

In the civil trial, the jury must decide whether Carroll's legal team found a preponderance of the evidence that Trump carried out the assault on Carroll.

While it didn't rule that Carroll's team proved rape -- state law makes a person liable if a person forces another person to have sex with them without their consent -- they found they Proof that Trump committed sexual abuse.

The jury was told that a person is liable for sexual abuse if he exposes another person for sexual contact without consent, which under New York law means "any touching of a person's sexual organs for the purpose of gratifying sexual contact or other private parts” the wishes of both parties. "

Former President Donald Trump answered questions from New Hampshire voters on a variety of issues during a CNN town hall Wednesday that could open the door for other Republicans to challenge him in the 2024 presidential primary, former Trump executive Alyssa Farah Griffin's white house. Communications and CNN political commentator said.

The former president has often avoided direct questions and specific policy positions in town halls, such as whether he would sign afederal abortion banor if he wantsukraine or russiawin the war. Trump repeated hiselection liesand triedredraw his characterDuring the uprising of January 6, 2021.

However, issues like crime and the economy are on the minds of most voters every day, Farah Griffin said.

Farah Griffin cites statements by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' super PAC criticizing Trump as an example of how other candidates are taking advantage of it.

"After 76 years, Trump still doesn't know where he stands on key conservative issues likesupport lifeandsecond amendment. How does this make America great again? ’ said the statement.

Two Super PACs in OnetweetSeveral issues were also addressed, including possibleAmnesty for rioters on January 6and related investigationssecret documentAt Mar-a-Lago — DeSantiza didn’t criticize the subject of Trump, and in some cases avoided discussing it at all.

"For me, this actually became an opportunity for the Republicans to take him and say that if you want a lot of policy -- and not something crazy like family separation -- you don't want chaos and anti-democratic attitudes," Farrar said. Hergriffin said.

CNN's Steve Contorno and Alayna Treene contributed reporting for this article.

Both former and current Republican governors have responded to former President Trump's claimsCNN town hallWednesday night in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu:The Republican governor told CNN's Anderson Cooper that Trump didn't say anything he thought would help him win the Republican nomination. "It's kind of clichéd, clichéd. He had a chance to move on from 2020, and he didn't. He had a chance to have some numbers on Jan. 6, what was his role. He... didn't. He had a chance to shoot Joe Biden, but he didn't," Sununu said.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie:in donald trump saysHe will end Russia's war in Ukraine within 24 hours, the Republican tweeted, "Despite how absurd it is to say so, I doubt he will attempt to achieve this by handing Ukraine over to Putin and Russia. #Putin's Puppet."

Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson:this2024 ChallengerTrump said on CNN that the former president "was not doing well, he was stuck in the past."

"I'm sure he had a goal of broadening his base to prove he could appeal to independents and suburban voters. He didn't pass that test. He narrowed his support base, he was stuck in the past, he didn't Fix the future," the Republican said.

"When asked about the economy, he gave a short answer on energy policy, but didn't actually address the broad issues in our economy to get it going again," he added.