Trump answers few audience questions at Fox town hall. Were they still satisfied?

Despite only answering three questions from the audience, attendees were overwhelmingly satisfied by Trump’s responses at Fox News’ Town Hall event in Greenville on Tuesday.

The town hall began with playing a soundbite from Nikki Haley’s Greenville “State of the race” speech that occurred earlier in the day, where she affirmed she would not be dropping out of the race.

“Many of the same politicians who now publicly embrace Trump, privately dread him,” the tape from earlier in the day played of Haley.

Trump responded to that and said “everybody knows you’re not supposed to lose in your home state, shouldn’t happen anyway, and she’s losing it bigly.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Trump questions on how he would pay for his legal issues, the border, debating Biden, Ukraine and Alexei Navalny.

Although between 400-500 people were in attendance, only three audience members at the Trump town hall asked questions. At Haley’s similar event Sunday nearly 10 did. Earlier that morning, people lined up outside the airport to wait for Trump, some as early as 4:30 a.m.

Overall, audience members were satisfied with the former president’s responses, but some felt he didn’t fully answer some of the questions. Some said they didn’t necessarily care about the topics addressed.

Cammi Teems, who is from Manning, said Trump “mostly,” answered the questions. One of the questions from an audience member on settling old scores and revenge he didn’t necessarily address, she said.

“He didn’t really address the revenge thing until Laura brought him back to it,” Teems said. “But otherwise, I think he was great.”

Trump was asked about the country’s divide, and assuring independent and undecided voters that his focus as president would be improving the state of the country, and not “settling old scores,” by a woman from the audience.

Trump’s response included “I did it before,” and “we had a great four years.”

“We had such success in history .... They said, ‘Sir, if Abraham Lincoln and George Washington came back from the dead, they wouldn’t beat you.’ We had the greatest economy ever. And, the people, let’s call them on the left and far left, were calling me, we want to get together. I said, can you believe this? Everybody was happy.”

Ingraham redirected the question to his policy and away from name calling.

“Everything was good and this country was coming together then we got hit with COVID, but this country came together,” Trump said. “I don’t care about the revenge thing. I know they usually use the word revenge. Will it be revenge? My revenge will be success.”

Teems said she felt the discussion around the economy and the border were important, but some issues she didn’t necessarily care about anymore.

“I don’t care about Hunter Biden anymore,” Teems said. “It’s not important to me.”

Trump was asked what he thought Hunter Biden did in order to receive the money.

“Well, he’s got a lot of houses all over the place ... look he’s gotten a lot of money, Hunter’s got a lot of money,” Trump said. “Hunter gets millions of dollars just for sitting on a board, an energy board, and he admits that he knows nothing about energy.”

Teems said Trump is the only candidate able to handle foreign policy and the economy. She emphasized the importance of the border questions and his responses.

“I’ve heard him say before that he would shut the border down and just like start over,” Teems said. “He didn’t quite go that far today. The border was really important.”

Yvonne Julian, the county chair for the Greenville Republican party, said she thought Trump did an amazing job bringing the answers back to the people and the country. She said her favorite line was when Trump stated he was concerned for America’s safety.

“I don’t think that was scripted. It came across as very natural and I think that’s one of the things that we appreciate about him as a candidate for president as someone who’s really concerned about the country and the the average American.”

Toward the end of the town hall, Ingraham said people prayed for Trump and worried about his safety. He said, “can I be honest, I’m worried about their safety.”

“These people, everybody in this room,” Trump said. “‘I’m worried about this country. This country’s in such trouble. We have incompetent people running our country right now. The only thing they’re good at has been vicious, vicious, horrible people.”

Julian said questions and issues were “designed to be landmines,” specifically bringing up the questions about Navalny and Ukraine, yet he avoided them well, she said.

Trump was asked about his post on Truth Social, his social media site, where he said what happened to Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader who recently died in Russian prison, is “happening here.”

“Navalny is a very sad situation. He was very brave,” Trump said. “But it’s happening in our country, too. We are turning into a communist country in many ways.”

Ingraham asked Trump if he he saw himself as a “potential political prisoner in the United States.” Trump said if he was not doing so well in the polls and “beating Biden at a level that they’ve never seen before,” they would not be going after him, and then added, they probably would because “they hate me so much.”

“The problem is Washington, DC,constantly tries to make us worried about things that really are not our problem,” Julian said. “You know, things like poverty in Mexico is not a problem for the person in South Carolina who’s working in a restaurant. It’s not something they should be concerned about.”

James Edwards, a lift operator who drove from Virginia the day before for the event, said he thought Trump did “very well” in answering the questions, specifically regarding the border.

“Especially in Virginia, illegal immigration is killing a lot of our jobs,” Edwards said.

Trump said he will do two things about the border; “Drill, baby, drill,” and have the safest border in recorded history, which he said is what he had when he was president.

When asked about how to deport the “millions of people” who have come to America and how it would work, Trump said, “We get the bad ones that are coming in from the prisons, they’re coming in from jails and mental institutions. We’re gonna find them through local police. The local police are so phenomenal. I love them. They love me.”

Edwards said Trump answered all questions well. “I think it was good overall.”

Edwards said he would “love” to see Biden debate Trump, but he doesn’t think it’ll happen because Biden won’t do it, he added.

Trump said he would “challenge” Biden to debate “right now,” because there is an obligation. When it came to the Republicans, he said he was “up by 40, 50, 60 points,” and that “you want to be smart and don’t want to waste your time.

Lelis Welch, from Oklahoma but visiting South Carolina on a vacation, said she liked the way Trump answered questions, specifically on how his legal issues and how he is being treated.

“I liked the way he answered with everything that’s happening to him, how he is being treated pretty much worse than anybody in the court system,” Welch said.

Trump was asked by a member of the audience how he “kept his spirits so high,” when he was “attacked by the other side.”

Trump said he gets two questions most often. One,“will they do it again?” and second “how do you take it?” He said “I don’t know the answer to that except that I must be wired in a certain way.” He went on to say he has a lot of friends and enemies, and a “lot of people come up to me like Wall Street tycoons, big, tough, smart people. And they say ‘how the hell do you take it?’ ”

Welch said she appreciated his response on immigration. When talking about immigration to her husband, they often have the same remarks that Trump used at the town hall, she said.

“He said ‘we’re gonna take the ones that are actually hurting and killing people and do something with them first’ because some of them will probably end up liking being here and being glad they’re in America.”

Dany Putnam, who works in maintenance from Simpsonville, said he liked all Trump’s answers, especially his responses on the border.

“To me, he should have never left office,” Putnam said.

Putnam said Trump answered all the questions great, and there weren’t any that he didn’t like the answer to.

“Anything he says is great, because he’s a straightforward guy,” Putnam said. “He tells it the way it is, whether you like it or you don’t.”