Donald Trump faced questions from an all-female audience in the battleground state of Georgia in a pre-recorded TV special.
The town hall event – chaired by Harris Faulkner – was recorded on Tuesday, airing a day later on Fox News’s The Faulkner Focus.
Topics ranging from abortion to immigration were covered, with the Republican presidential candidate making a series of typically bold claims.
‘I’m the father of IVF’
Trump described himself as the “father of IVF” during the event, talking up the Republican party’s support for the fertility treatment.
“I want to talk about IVF. I’m the father of IVF,” he told the audience.
“We really are the party for IVF,” he added. “We want fertilisation, and it’s all the way, and the Democrats tried to attack us on it, and we’re out there on IVF, even more than them. So, we’re totally in favour.”
Trump offered no explanation as to why he could be regarded as the “father” of IVF, a process pioneered in the 1950s, where eggs are combined with sperm outside of the body to help people struggling to conceive.
It is behind more than 8 million births in America and viewed favourably by a majority of the population, according to polling.
Trump’s apparent attempt to boost his credentials an IVF advocate come amid a wider debate about the procedure.
In February, Republican-appointed justices of the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos were children, with the same legal rights.
It led to multiple IVF providers pausing their services, fearing that they could face criminal charges over the routine destruction of frozen embryos decreed non-viable for pregnancy, or unclaimed.
Republicans distanced themselves from the ruling, but Democrats have portrayed it as a preview of a second Trump presidency, seeking to undermine his support among women.
Trump has spoken out in favour of IVF on multiple occasions since. In August, he pledged to require the Government or insurance companies to pay for the treatment if he returns to the White House.
Responding to Trump’s town hall comments, Kamala Harris wrote on social media: “Donald Trump called himself ‘the father of IVF.’ What is he talking about? His abortion bans have already jeopardised access to it in states across the country — and his own platform could end IVF altogether.”
‘13,099 murderers were released into our country’
In a section about crime and immigration, Trump said: “It was just announced last week, 13,099 murders were released into our country.”
He made a similar comments in September, both on his Truth Social platform, at rallies, and again in October during a radio interview.
The claim has been widely dismissed as a distortion of data from the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
The figure represents the 13,099 non-citizens convicted of homicicde were on its records and not in the custody of ICE.
Previously, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, said the figures span many years and include migrants who entered the US during the Trump presidency and previous administrations.
Although the figures show that as of July 2024, there were 13,099 people who were convicted of homicide, the data goes back decades. ICE did not state when they arrived in the US.
“It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners,” the DHS said.
Although not detained by ICE, it does not mean those in question are “roaming freely”, it added.
The data is not routinely released and only published under certain circumstances.
Democrats are ‘the enemy from within’
Trump also repeated a controversial attack line from the weekend, branding high-ranking Democrats the “enemy from within”.“
“It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous,” Trump said, referring to former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and California Representative Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment case against him.
“They’re Marxists and communists and fascists,” he added. They’re the threat to democracy.”
In a speech in 1950, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy used the same phrasing when referring to Communism and claimed to have a list of name within the US government with links to the ideology. McCarthy help spawn the ‘Red Scare’ with hunts in the 1950 over the fear of Communism within the US.
Trump made similar comments in a Fox interview on Sunday.
“I always say, we have two enemies,” he said. “We have the outside enemy, and then we have the enemy from within, and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries.”
At a rally in northwestern Pennsylvania, Harris said the comments showed Trump was a serious threat to American democracy who is “out for unchecked power.”
“He considers anyone who doesn’t support him or who will not bend to his will an enemy of our country,” she said after playing a clip of the comment on a screen.
“This is among the reasons I believe so strongly that a second Trump term would be a huge risk for America, and dangerous.”
