Former President Trump joined Fox News’ ‘Hannity’ on Tuesday night for a town hall discussion on the GOP presidential primary, President Biden, dictatorships, and more.
Trump joined Hannity in Davenport, Iowa, for the town hall, one day before the fourth GOP presidential primary debate in Alabama on Wednesday.
Here are the top moments from Trump’s ‘Hannity’ town hall on Tuesday night.
TRUMP SAYS BIDEN WON’T BE THE NOMINEE
Trump predicted President Biden ultimately wouldn’t be the Democrats’ nominee for president in 2024.
The topic arose when Sean Hannity asked Trump about the criticism facing Biden from his fellow Democrats, as well as noted that he seemed to be ‘struggling cognitively.’
‘I personally don’t think he makes it, okay? I haven’t said that. I’m saving it for this big town hall. I’ve never really said that. I personally don’t think he makes it,’ Trump answered, to cheers from the audience.
‘I think he’s in bad shape physically,’ he added before joking about a previous instance in which Biden said he’d like to take Trump to the ‘back of the barn.’
Trump joked that Biden would ‘fall over’ if he simply blew on him.
‘I personally don’t think he makes it physically. I watched him at the beach. He wasn’t able to lift a beach chair, which is meant for children to lift. And mentally I would say he is possibly equally as bad, and maybe even worse,’ Trump added.
‘DICTATOR’ FOR ‘DAY ONE’
The former president turned some heads with some of his comments during the town hall, most notably with his comments to Hannity’s question asking Trump to pledge to ‘never abuse power as retribution against anybody.’
‘Except for day one,’ Trump said. ‘I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.’
Hannity said ‘that’s not retribution,’ with Trump quipping back, ‘I love this guy, he says, ‘you’re not going to be a dictator are you?”
‘I said, ‘No, no, no, other than day one,’ Trump said.
‘We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling,’ Trump said. ‘After that, I’m not a dictator.’
Hannity said that it sounded like what Trump was saying was that he would go back to his first-term policies, to which the former president agreed.
Trump’s comments come after multiple media outlets claimed a second term for the former president would result in a ‘dictatorship.’
Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez blasted Trump over the comments, saying in a release, ‘Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one.’
‘Americans should believe him,’ she said.
‘TALKING POINTS’: TRUMP RESPONDS TO BIDEN
Trump mocked President Biden for his claim that he wouldn’t be running for re-election if Trump wasn’t in the race.
‘Well, I think somebody gave him a talking point. They thought that would sound good,’ Trump said as the crowd laughed.
‘You know, I just found out that Democrats are funding Nikki Haley’s campaign. I hear that Democrats are contributing to Ron DeSanctus’, or Ron DeSanctimonious, to Ron DeSanctus’ campaign. And then you hear the talking points. That’s the only thing they’re good at, cheating on elections and great talking points,’ Trump added.
Biden made the statement earlier in the day to a group of supporters at a Boston fundraiser, saying, ‘If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win for the sake of the country.’
‘I’M GOING TO WIN IOWA’
Trump came out swinging in his town hall, but one of the biggest moments of the night was the former president calling his shot in the Hawkeye State.
The former president declared to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he would ‘win Iowa.’
Trump touted the ‘hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs’ from China and ‘gave the farmers $28 billion.’
‘That’s why I say I’m going to win Iowa,’ Trump said, eliciting cheers from the Hawkeye State crowd.
‘My people say, ‘Please sir, don’t keep saying you’re going to win Iowa, you sound so, really, horrible, crass’ — someone said ‘crass,” Trump continued.
‘I said, ‘But it’s true. We’re going to win Iowa,” the former president continued.
Trump noted again that he ‘gave the farmers $28 billion’ and that he ‘got it from China’ during his administration.
‘Who else could do that? Who else would be able to do it, number one, who else would think about it?’ Trump asked, adding that he told farmers to ‘buy more land’ and ‘bigger tractors.’
BLASTING BIDEN’S ‘MAGA’ CRITICISM
Trump’s town hall began with him torching Biden over his criticism of his MAGA movement.
‘You know, I see Biden talking about, ‘Oh, MAGA! MAGA!’ MAGA means Make America Great Again. That’s what it means. And that’s what people want,’ Trump said to cheers from the crowd.
‘They want to see our country be great again. Right now we’re not a great country. We’re a country in decline. We are a declining country,’ he added.
The Biden campaign has ramped up its criticism of Trump as polls consistently show him trailing the former president.
He has frequently blasted the the MAGA movement as ‘extremist,’ and attempted to tie other conservative Republicans into that criticism.