Fox News host Sean Hannity reminded the audience at New Holland Arena that the Republican nominee’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, declined an invitation to debate Trump that night. That’s why the event instead became a Trump-only town hall.

So far, Harris has agreed to one debate with Trump, set for Sept. 10 with ABC News in Philadelphia. Trump also invited her to appear Sept. 25 on CBS News.

Banter between Hannity and Trump on Wednesday, sprinkled with video montages of Harris’s past statements, filled about 50 minutes that had been allotted—even before a single audience member had been able to ask a question.

Then, Trump suggested, “Let’s make two shows” from the footage; Hannity obliged, and the event continued for about 15 more minutes as Dave McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate, and four attendees sought answers from the former president. Their questions focused on safety, immigration, and the economy. Trump repeated his past pledges to improve on all three of those fronts.

The network was slated to broadcast the prerecorded Trump–Hannity interview later on Sept. 4; the Trump–audience interactions will air during Hannity’s regular time slot on Sept. 5. Other media outlets, including The Epoch Times, were permitted to report on the exchanges only after the first segment was broadcast at 9 p.m. ET on Sept. 4.

ABC Debate: ‘I’m Gonna Let Her Talk’

After Hannity asked what the former president was doing to get ready for next week’s debate with Harris, Trump replied: “I think I’ve been practicing all my life for this stuff. It’ll be an interesting evening.”

The former president said debates are unpredictable, so a candidate needs to be nimble. Many before him have prepped extensively, only to fail miserably in the heat of debate. “Everybody has a plan until they get ‘punched in the face,’” Trump said, speaking figuratively.

“A lot depends on ABC. … I hope they’re going to be fair,” he said, adding that a contract bars the network from providing questions to either candidate in advance of the showdown.

The Trump and Harris camps had proposed different ground rules for the debate; they disagreed over whether the candidates should be seated or standing, and over whether microphones should be muted while the opposing candidate is speaking.

Trump’s strategy? “I’m gonna let her talk,” he said.

That is what he did on June 27 in Atlanta, where CNN hosted a debate between him and President Joe Biden. The incumbent was widely seen to have struggled during that face-off.

Biden withdrew from the race less than a month later and endorsed Harris as his preferred successor.

Fracking a Big Deal for Pennsylvania

Noting that many thousands of Pennsylvanians depend on fracking for their livelihoods, Trump told the audience, “You have no choice; you’ve gotta vote for me.”

Hannity played multiple video clips of Harris making past statements opposing fracking. Trump said he disbelieves her recent statement that she won’t ban the procedure that is used to help extract gas or oil from the ground. He said Democrats’ policies have directly hurt the industry even without an outright ban.

“You have to have fracking. … It’s a massive business for Pennsylvania, and you can’t take a chance” that Harris would eliminate it, Trump said.

Trump Trending Upward

Hannity noted the town hall came at a time when Trump was trending upward in some of the polls. Those include a Trafalgar Group poll showing Trump ahead of Harris in Pennsylvania by 2 percentage points.

The host said the latest numbers seem to suggest that Harris’s “long-lived honeymoon phase now finally, finally appears to be over.”

In the RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls, Harris was holding a 1.9 percent national lead against Trump on Sept. 4. But a few very recent polls were detecting a shift in momentum.

In Rasmussen Reports’ Daily Presidential Tracking Poll on Sept. 4, Trump opened a six-point lead over Harris nationally. But in Rasmussen’s five-day average, he was only 2 percent ahead of her.

Many other polls still show Harris with an edge over Trump nationally, but still within the margin of error, which runs at 3 percent or more for most polls.

An online prediction and betting site, Polymarket.com, on Sept. 4 showed Trump with a 52-percent chance of winning the Nov. 5 election; Harris had a 47-percent chance.

Contrast With Harris–Walz Accessibility

Hannity noted that Harris has given no solo news conferences since she became the apparent Democratic nominee 45 days prior to the Fox town hall.

She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, participated in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Aug. 29 but disclosed no new policy specifics. And, as of Sept. 4, no policy platform was yet listed on Harris’s website.

Hannity contrasted this with the dozens of news conferences and interviews Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have given since Biden dropped out of the race.

After Trump passed the 16-minute, 30-second mark into the program, Hannity thanked him for going longer than Harris’s CNN interview; the audience laughed.

Heightened Security

Hannity and Trump have appeared together for many broadcasts since Trump first campaigned for president in 2016. But “never before have restrictions been so tight,” Hannity said.

In the wake of a gunman’s failed assassination attempt against Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump’s security team insisted on a smaller audience for the Fox town hall, Hannity said. Seating arrangements were also strictly controlled.

No attendance estimate was provided, but the arena, which holds 7,300 people, appeared to be about one-third full.

Hannity and Trump expressed sadness over the Georgia school shooting that left at least four people dead and nine wounded hours before the town hall.

In addition, Hannity also noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned about an unprecedented spike in security threats.

When Hannity wondered aloud why so many problems with violence and threats persist, Trump replied, “It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons,” expressing confidence that he will improve conditions if he wins reelection.

“It starts now, Trump!” one man in the audience said.

Reassuring ‘Hesitant’ Voters

A woman asked Trump what he had learned from his first term as president that could help reassure “those that are hesitant to vote for [him] now.”

Trump replied that he learned the importance of putting the right people into key positions in his administration.

“I put people in, that in some cases were not what I really wanted. … I know the good ones, the bad ones, the weak ones, the smart ones, the dumb ones,” he said, his last phrase prompting a chuckle from the audience. “A big key to running it is getting the right people. … I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody.”

Though some effort is being made to point to “moderator” Kaitlan Collins at once as both victim of President Trump’s supposed attacks and “guilty party” for ostensibly letting him get away with it, the reaction of the townhall audience, and of so many people across America, paints a vastly different picture. To be sure, he was blunt to the point of being confrontational, calling out Collins as a “nasty person,” on account of her own confrontational and hardly “impartial” sham of “moderating” the gathering.

It was clear from the manner in which Collins attempted to contort and recast every topic of discussion into some sort of accusation against the President, that she had fully expected to conduct the gathering in the slanted and fraudulent manner for which CNN has become so tediously predictable and infamous. But President Trump was no more willing to allow such a course than he ever has been in the past. Among the New Hampshire audience and across America, people who have watched the devastation of our Nation at the hands of the Biden Cabal were effusive in their support of President Trump. This message is not being lost on the leftists who illegally wormed their way into authority.

In a government that is properly established of, by, and for the people, those in office are able to wield power in a just manner with assurance that they have the “consent of the governed.” In ugly contrast, while leftists/Democrats may have succeeded thus far in their efforts to steal the 2020 Election, the means by which they achieved their position does not give them the needed confidence and allegiance of the people on “Main Street.” So instead, they attempt to maintain their precarious position by constant, flamboyant claims of unassailable dominance, accompanied by venomous attacks against any who dare to disagree. As is the case with all illicit power structures, their paranoia is palpable.

Leftists may have infested our Nation’s highest offices, reaching all the way to the White House, but they have not established uncontested power, which is absolutely essential if they are going to succeed in operating as they hope to do. In the meantime, they’ll continue trying to project the image of such. And this, more than any other reason, is why America is assaulted on almost a daily basis by their latest outrage against the Constitution, the Rule of Law, and every other vestige of America’s former greatness. Only in that manner can they remind the populace that they are calling the shots.

This effort was clearly on display with Collins, as she incessantly sought to discredit President Trump, framing the topics of discussion to cast him in a bad light and put him on the defensive. Leftists should have learned by now that such transparent tactics simply do not work with a person who not only knows what he believes, but has the courage and boldness to explain why.

So it is that, in the aftermath of their total disaster that was the townhall, leftists have been frantically working to pick up the pieces and convince Americans of something very different from what they saw last Wednesday. Every Swamp Dweller from the far leftist Democrats inside the Beltway to their RINO minions/enablers have been disparaging and discrediting the President’s actions on any spurious grounds.

Though he produced copies of his posts on Twitter, proving that he did nothing to incite a J6 “insurrection” (as if one actually occurred), and showing Collins to be a liar, the narrative that he was guilty of such has continued unabated. If anything, their accusations are even more shrill and condemning in that regard. Similarly, Collins reiterated the leftist narrative that the 2020 Presidential Election was “legitimate,” and that it is somehow criminal to call out the flagrant corruption and manipulations in every jurisdiction where Democrats held power, by which the election results were clearly switched in the dark of night.

The ominous and chilling statement that the leftist political cabal and its Fake News lackeys make with all of this, is that they fully intend to further amass power by systematically shutting down the ability of “We the People” to oppose them. This effort began with the infiltration of the DOJ and FBI with agenda driven operatives who ignore their oaths of office, and give unwavering loyalty instead to the Democrat Party. The next phase involves the stifling and eventual suppression of dissenting voices across America. Finally, the total disarming of the citizenry will ensure that they are ultimately powerless to resist the movement, no matter how despotic and unjust it becomes.

To this end, leftists/Democrats regard the Second Amendment as their greatest remaining roadblock. The recent spate of mass killings, and the thoroughly scripted responses of every leftist with a microphone, from the nightly Fake News anchors, to every grandstanding Democrat in D.C., offer ample evidence of how they intend to wage this portion of the campaign. In the meantime, reaffirming their “narrative” as they expected to do in New Hampshire, and have been feverishly reciting ever since, is all that’s keeping their shaky cabal from facing accountability at the hands of the American people.

Leftists want us to ignore what every marginally honest person actually saw, on Election Day 2020, on January 6 2021, and ever since, in hopes that we’ll believe President Trump represents something really sinister and threatening to us. But he’s only a “threat” to them because that is how they view a Great America. In the end “We the People” are the real enemy they fear and despise.

Bio

Christopher G. Adamo is a lifelong conservative from the American Heartland. He has been involved in grassroots and state-level politics for many years, seeking to restore and uphold the Judeo-Christian principles on which our Nation was founded. His book, “Rules for Defeating Radicals,” is the “Go To” guide for effectively confronting and overcoming the dirty tricks of the political left. It is available at Amazon.