Carmen Nieves Nunez wore her pink Make America Great Again hat and her white gloves to watch Fox News host Sean Hannity interview Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
She came down from Manhattan, she said, escaping her children every chance she can get to see a Trump rally. She said Trump is a great man and said her son worked at Trump’s New York hotel.
Nieves Nunez also said she loves Trump’s policies and wanted to hear him speak on immigration and the economy.
She got her wish.
During their hour-long discussion, Hannity led Trump through several campaign talking points, mainly focused on Nieves Nunez’ top priorities. They also discussed world security and, in a Pennsylvania-specific flair, Trump said he supports fracking.
All the other stuff, including nuclear, he said, just won’t work for energy production.
Several attendees said immigration was their top priority, including 24-year old Cameron Martin from Gaithersburg, Maryland.
“I think it is very important for the United States to take immigration more seriously than it is right now,” he said.
He also said he did not follow the news of the bi-partisan immigration bill that failed earlier this year after Trump reportedly wanted to prevent President Joe Biden from having the policy win ahead of the election.
Trump spent much of the evening making false claims that have been debunked for months about migrants, including that people crossing at the southern border are coming in the millions from prisons or mental asylums.
He repeated that migrants are “poisoning” the country, a statement that first earned him extensive coverage nine months ago for how it echoes Nazi language about Jewish people in Germany before the Second World War.
Trump’s approach in the town hall followed that of his rallies, in that the topics covered were about energizing his voters around the issues that matter to them.
That’s good for Trump’s base, but isn’t a good strategy for reaching a broader swath of voters, according to Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College.
But that wasn’t a problem Wednesday night, where every voter WITF interviewed said they were already a lock to vote for Trump this fall. Yost said the attendees were likely to already be dedicated partisans rather than voters looking to make up their minds.
Renee Talkington from Montgomery County said she wanted to hear about how Trump would support small businesses. She owns a bowling alley and tavern.
She was especially interested in Trump’s tax plan. She said his 2017 tax cuts, of which portions are scheduled to expire in 2025, helps small businesses “employ another person because we get that little tax break, or helps us renovate the place. It really helps us put our money back into our business to help our customers.”
Talkington said she wanted details about the qualified business income deduction. She didn’t get that, but Trump did praise small businesses like hers and said he wanted to cut interest rates and taxes.
The Federal Reserve, an independent agency, controls interest rates. Congress would need to pass a bill in order to extend the 2017 tax cuts passed under Trump or create new ones.
His previous plan increased the federal deficit and favored the already wealthy.
This was Trump’s third visit to the Harrisburg Farm Show Arena this year and at least his ninth in Pennsylvania this year.
The race against Democratic candidate and current Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to be neck-and-neck. Central Pennsylvania is a Republican stronghold, though Harrisburg itself and Dauphin County went for the Democratic Party in 2020.
Like several other attendees, Elizabeth Newman, from Walton, New York, said she grew up watching Fox News and had been to a previous Trump event.
Though still a young voter, Newman said she voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020.
Now, her primary concern is the economy.
“I’m old enough now where I’m starting to feel all the effects of trying to buy groceries, trying to buy a home and all of that,” she said.
She said she also hoped Trump would address financial stability for the elderly, like social security and prescription costs. She said she’s seen older folks struggle financially.
Trump didn’t get to those points. Still, Newman, like most in the crowd, heard part of what she came to hear: what was Trump going to do about immigration.
Once again, he promised the largest deportation in U.S. history.