The Republican presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, takes questions from Latino voters at a town hall hosted by Univision on Oct. 16, 2024. (Photo by Felipe Cuevas/TelevisaUnivision)
WASHINGTON — With less than three weeks to Election Day, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump spent Wednesday evening zeroing in on undecided voters, in a race that polls have in a dead heat.
In Doral, Florida, Trump made his pitch to undecided Latino voters for an hour-long Univision town hall and Vice President Harris waded into conservative waters in a 30-minute Fox News interview with news anchor Bret Baier.
Undecided Latino voters from across the country asked Trump 12 questions focused on the economy, immigration and reproductive rights, among other issues. Trump rarely answered the questions, often meandering off topic and joking that the hardest question he was asked was to list three virtues he admired of his opponent.
“She seems to have an ability to survive,” Trump said of Harris.
In an effort to reach moderate and undecided Republicans, Harris engaged in a somewhat testy interview with Baier that focused on the Biden administration’s immigration policies and Trump’s rhetoric.
The interview also provided Harris with a rare opportunity to distinguish herself from President Joe Biden, a question that she faltered with when asked earlier on the daytime show “The View.”
“My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh and new ideas,” she said. “I represent a new generation of leadership.”
Harris spars with Baier
The start of the interview with Baier brought a barrage of questions about migration at the southern border, and he often interrupted Harris during her answers. He pressed her on why the Biden administration rolled back Trump-era immigration policies.
Immigration has become a top issue for voters and one that Trump has centered in his reelection campaign.
Harris focused on how U.S. immigration needs to be fixed and how the White House brokered a border security deal with the U.S. Senate that was bipartisan until Trump instructed GOP lawmakers to walk back on the deal.
Harris said that Americans “want solutions and they want a president of the United States who’s not playing political games with the issue.”
She also tried to emphasize how she would unite the country, touting endorsements from Republicans.
The Harris campaign has aligned with Republicans who have rebuked Trump, such as launching Republicans for Harris and having former GOP U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming serve as a campaign surrogate to court moderate Republicans.
The Harris campaign has also often pointed to the dozens of Trump administration officials who no longer support the former president.
‘The enemy within’
Harris also blasted Trump’s recent remarks that referred to Democrats as “the enemy within.”
The most combative part of the interview came when Baier played a clip from a Fox News town hall that Trump held with women where the host Harris Faulkner asked him about those comments about “the enemy within.”
In the town hall, Trump said “it is the enemy from within, and they are very dangerous; they are Marxists and communists and fascists and they’re sick.”
But the clip Baier played showed a different response from Trump, and in which he was not making threats.
“I’m not threatening anyone,” Trump said in the clip that Baier played for Harris. “They’re the ones doing the threatening. They do phony investigations. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone was.”
Harris pointed out that the clip “was not what he has been saying about the enemy within.”
“You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest,” Harris said.
“He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him. This is a democracy and in a democracy, the president of the United States, in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he would lock people up for doing it.”
Latino voters question Trump
Both campaigns have tried to attract Latino voters, the second-largest group of eligible voters.
Before the Univision town hall started, Trump said that he was making inroads with Latinos.
Latino voter preferences still largely resemble the 2020 presidential election, when Biden defeated Trump 61% to 36% in earning the Latino vote, according to the Pew Research Center.
Harris currently has a smaller lead over Trump with Latinos, 57% to 39%, according to the Pew Research Center.
Harris already had a Univision town hall with the undecided voters, but Trump’s was postponed due to Hurricane Milton.
One of the audience members, Carlos Aguilera, who works as a public utilities manager in Florida, said he’s seen climate change affect his industry and asked Trump if he still thinks climate change is a hoax.
Trump didn’t answer the question, and said he’s not concerned about weather but instead about nuclear weapons. He said if Harris wins, the U.S. will end up in another world war.
Mass deportations
Several voters asked Trump questions relating to immigration.
A former farmworker, Jorge Valazquez, from California, said that for many years he picked strawberries and cut broccoli in the fields. He said many of those workers are undocumented and he asked Trump what his plans for mass deportations of those workers would mean, especially for food prices.
Trump said he backs legal migration and those jobs would be available for Black and Hispanic workers. In addition to promising a mass deportation of millions of immigrants in the country without authorization, Trump has proposed ending several legal pathways for immigrants such as humanitarian parole and Temporary Protected Status.
“A lot of the jobs that you have, and that other people have, are being taken by these people that are coming in,” Trump said of immigrants. “And the African American population and the Hispanic population in particular are losing jobs now because millions of people are coming in.”
Another audience member, Guadalupe Ramirez from Illinois, asked Trump what his plan is to fix the U.S. immigration system. She asked why he did not support the bipartisan border security deal the Senate and White House struck.
Trump praised his previous immigration policies and then criticized cities with Democratic leadership like Chicago.
“The Democrats are weak,” Trump said. “Don’t forget, the Democrats run Chicago.”
Trump did not answer the question as to why he instructed congressional GOP lawmakers to walk away from the border deal.
The last question on immigration came from Jose Saralegui of Arizona, who said he’s a registered Republican but undecided. He asked about Trump’s comments about Springfield, Ohio, where not only Trump, but several GOP lawmakers have falsely claimed that legal Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets.
Saralegui said that he’s concerned that Trump has called for revoking those immigrants’ legal status — as many have TPS due to unstable conditions in Haiti — and asked Trump, “Do you really believe that these people are eating the people’s pets?”
Trump didn’t answer as to whether he believed that claim, but said he’s just “saying what was reported,” and that Haitians are “eating other things too, that they’re not supposed to be, but this is all I do, is report.”
These claims have been widely debunked. The Wall Street Journal found the Ohio woman who filed a police report for her missing cat and accused Haitian immigrants in the neighborhood of stealing people’s pets and eating them. The woman later found her cat, but the Trump campaign ran with the rumor even though it was found to be baseless.
“You have a town, a beautiful little town with no problems, all of a sudden they have 30 or 32,000 people dropped into the town, most of whom don’t speak the language, and what they’re doing is they’re looking all over for interpreters,” Trump said. “Well, I mean, I think you can’t just destroy our country.”
Saralegui, and many of the audience members who asked questions, had interpreters.
Reproductive rights
Trump was asked about reproductive rights by Yaritza Kuhn of North Carolina. Kuhn said that Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, wrote about her support of abortion and reproductive rights in her recent book. Kuhn asked Trump if he agreed with his wife.
Trump did not answer whether he agreed with his wife, but said, “I told Melania that she has to go with her heart.”
“I want her to do what she wants to do,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to oppose what I think.”