Donald Trump in Fifth GOP presidential primary debate
On Abortion:
I got Roe v. Wade terminated and I'm proud to have done it
You wouldn't be asking that question even talking about the issue because for 54 years they were trying to get Roe. V. Wade terminated and I did it and I'm proud to have done it. They wanted to get it back, right?
You wouldn't have that because there would be no question. Nobody else was going to get that done. And we did it and we did something that was a miracle.
Source: Fox News Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Budget & Economy:
I don't want to be Herbert Hoover, and I won't be
We have a situation which I believe the stock market goes up because I'm leading. I think if I wasn't leading, the stock market would be 25% lower. And I think frankly, if I didn't win, I think the stock market would crash, I believe. And I say
that and I do not want to be Herbert Hoover. Do you know who Herbert Hoover was? 1929 he was the president and that was not a good time to be. I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. And I won't be Herbert Hoover.
Source: Fox News Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Energy & Oil:
Electric car mandate is the craziest thing I've ever heard
I'm leading Biden in every single poll that's been taken over the last month or two. I just see one, I'm leading in Michigan by 11. That's great. The autoworkers are smart, they know that
Biden has sold them down the tubes with the electric cars, all electric car mandate, the craziest thing I've ever heard. And they're going to all be made in China too.
Source: Fox News Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Foreign Policy:
Hungary's Viktor Orban is a great leader; he's very strong
There's a great leader, in my opinion, is very strong. Some people say it's terrible to say that, but he is, Viktor Orban. He's the Prime Minister of Hungary. And they asked him, "What would you do? There are wars all over the world right now." He
said, "What I do is make sure the American people vote for Donald Trump for president, because when he was president, China feared him."Fact Check by Human Rights Watch, 8/4/22: Viktor Orban has become the darling of certain political
circles in the US. Since 2012, Orban hijacked public institutions, attacked the independence of courts, and left almost no independent media standing. He has attacked the rights of LGBT and transgender people, and banned same-sex unions.
He encouraged ruthless and rights-abusing treatment of migrants and refugees and the criminalization of those who help them. Orban's adherence to the racist "great replacement" theory risks emboldening white supremacists.
Source: HRW FactCheck on Fox news Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Immigration:
We're going to have the largest deportation in US history
It's not sustainable for our country. We have millions and millions of people here. It is not sustainable. Did you see in New York City with it getting the regular students out and they're putting migrants in their place?
We are going to have the largest deportation effort in the history of our country. We're bringing everybody back where they came from. We have no choice. We have no choice.
Source: Fox News Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Principles & Values:
Says "No time for retribution"; FactCheck: fundraises on it
I'm not going to have time for retribution. We're going to make this country so successful again, I'm not going to have time for retribution and remember this, our ultimate retribution is success. I tell you this, we're going to have a
success that's so great that I won't have, hopefully, I won't have time for retribution. There won't be retribution. There'll be success.Fact Check by Mediaite , 1/11/24:
Trump's claim to be squarely focused on policy is questionable, given the fact that he has repeatedly declared himself the "retribution" of his supporters and threatened to weaponize the government against his political foes.
Just hours before Trump's town hall, his campaign sent out a fundraising email that literally began with the proclamation "I AM YOUR RETRIBUTION!"
Source: Mediaite FactCheck: Fox news Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Principles & Values:
I said I'm going to be a dictator for one day
So I said, I'm going to be a dictator for one day. They cut it, they go, "I'm going to be a dictator." But they cut the rest of the sentence. No, no, I am not going to be a dictator. I'm going to manage like we did. We were so successful that the
country was coming together. It was actually coming together and coming together well, it was a beautiful thing to see and we're going to do that again.
Source: Fox News Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On War & Peace:
I beat ISIS in literally three months; knocked them out
Q: Some believe a Trump presidency will bring four years of chaos. Your response?A: They have chaos at the border. They have chaos in the military. People are going woke. We have the greatest military in the world except for the top where they want to
turn this beautiful thing we built. We beat ISIS, knocked them out. It was supposed to take four years. I did it in literally three months. It was supposed to take four or five years.
[Did Trump's 2017-2018 actions in Iraq knock out ISIS?]
Fact Check by American Enterprise Institute, 9/11/23: "ISIS remains resilient and has sustained a low-level insurgency in Iraq while conducting targeted attacks in Syria, especially against prisons to release key operatives.
It has particularly strengthened in central Syria. Iraqi counterterrorism pressure has suppressed, but not eliminated, the ISIS threat."
Source: AEI FactCheck on Fox news Town Hall 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jan 10, 2024
On Principles & Values:
Questions Nikki Haley's eligibility for presidency
Former President Trump promoted a false conspiracy theory questioning 2024 rival Nikki Haley's eligibility to serve as president in a social media post. Trump reposted a report from the right-wing website The Gateway Pundit that suggested Haley was not
a U.S. citizen because her parents, who immigrated from India, were not citizens at the time of her birth. But Haley was born in the U.S. in 1972, and as a result is a U.S. citizen who is eligible to run for president. Haley's campaign did not respond
to a request for comment.While Trump did not add any commentary to the post, it is not the first time he has tried to sow doubt about the legitimacy of a political opponent's right to serve in the White House. Trump rose to political prominence in
part by pushing the false and racist claim that then-President Obama was not born in the U.S. During the 2016 GOP primary, he claimed Sen. Ted Cruz, one of his rivals at the time, was ineligible for the White House because he was born in Canada.
Source: The Hill analysis of 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jul 19, 2022
On Principles & Values:
Questions Kamala Harris' eligibility for vice-presidency
Trump spent years pushing lies about the birthplace and presidential eligibility of President Barack Obama, the first Black president. [This week], he started floating a new birther lie about Sen. Kamala Harris, who, if elected, would be the first Black
and Asian American vice president.Trump was told about claims on "social media" that Harris might be ineligible to serve as president and vice president. He was then asked if he can definitively say that she meets the requirements. Trump referred to
a lawyer who raised the issue, Chapman University professor John Eastman, as "very highly qualified."
Trump concluded his comments by saying, "I just heard about it, I'll take a look." Nonetheless, his just-asking-questions posture--which he also
employed with his Obama birtherism--doesn't change the fact that he gave credence to the conspiracy theory by praising the author of the article, saying he had heard Harris is not eligible, and raising the possibility that Harris was not born in the US.
Source: CNN FactCheck of 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jul 19, 2022
On Principles & Values:
Questions Ted Cruz's eligibility for presidency
Is Ted Cruz constitutionally eligible to serve as president? Very few people are willing to say he isn't, exactly. But there sure are a lot of questions being raised.Cruz, who was born in Canada to a US citizen mother and a noncitizen father, is
definitely a US citizen. But is he a "natural-born citizen," as the Constitution requires?
When this question initially came up, when Cruz declared his candidacy for president (and then when Donald Trump started the whole "raising the question" thing
earlier this month), the conventional wisdom among constitutional lawyers was that it was a non-issue: Cruz was obviously eligible. But the debate has heated up.
Here's the problem: The Constitution doesn't define "natural born Citizen." Neither does
any current law. And no one has ever brought a court case to decisively settle the question.
Trump has taken to citing Laurence Tribe, who was Cruz's law professor at Harvard, now the leading scholar raising questions about Cruz's eligibility.
Source: Vox.com "Explainer" of 2024 pre-Iowa caucus
Jul 19, 2022
Page last updated: Jan 24, 2024