President Donald Trump joined Sean Hannity Wednesday evening for a town hall interview in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — a state where Trump appears now to be eking out a slim advantage in the polls.

While the Republican set out a bold vision for international peace and American prosperity, self-described fact-checkers worked furiously to cast doubt on virtually every sentence Trump uttered.

In the case of the Poynter Institute's PolitiFact, this meant fine-tuning the definition of "coup" and suggesting that American presidents can't actually prevent or stop wars.

Broad strokes

Trump hammered Kamala Harris on her record, over the "coup" that resulted in her becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, and on her reluctance to engage meaningfully with the fourth estate.

Hannity, too, had some fun at Harris' expense, pretending to end the interview after roughly 16 minutes — a gibe over the brevity of Harris' softball interview last week with CNN's Dana Bash, which was the vice president's first interview following several weeks spent dodging questions and the press.

Although Trump's frequent barbs resonated with the thousands of audience members who had gathered for the event and whose energy ostensibly made Hannity's job at times difficult, the president also made the case for why his re-election would bode well for the commonwealth and the country at large.

Meanwhile, fact-checkers were projecting error from afar.

Peace is impossible, apparently

At the outset, Trump characterized the world as "sick and angry" and vowed to "heal" it — in part by "get[ting] rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetent American leadership."

Trump reiterated that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine "would have never happened" had he been office — repeatedly referencing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's recent suggestion that Trump was effectively an antidote to the prevailing chaos, particularly in Eastern Europe.

Orbán told Politico's parent company Axel Springer in July that Trump "is the man of peace. Under his four-year term he did not initiate a single war, and he did a lot in order to create peace in old conflicts in very complicated areas of the world."

After noting Wednesday that he went "four years without any blowups," Trump suggested to Hannity that his leadership now might be the difference between nuclear holocaust and relative peace.

Trump said, "We're heading into World War III territory," indicating this is all the more troubling "because of the power of weapons — nuclear weapons in particular, but other weapons also, and I know the weapons better than anybody because I'm the one who bought them."

"You need a president that's not going to be taking you into war. We won't have World War III when I'm elected, but with these clowns that you have in there now, you're going to end up having World War III," continued the president. "It's going to be a war like no other."

The Poynter Institute's PolitiFact, among the many liberal outfits "fact-checking" Trump's remarks at the town hall, did its best to suggest that an American president cannot stop or prevent a war.

Seizing upon Trump's suggestion that he would "heal our world" and address the wars "starting all over the place," PolitFact's Louis Jacobson claimed that supposed experts told him "there's a limit to how much influence U.S. presidents have over whether a foreign conflict erupts into war."

Jacobson shared a quote from Richard Betts, a Columbia University professor emeritus of war and peace studies, stating, "American presidents have scant control over foreign decisions about war and peace unless they show their willingness to commit American power."

Jacobson also quoted an associate political science professor from Muskingum University who suggested Trump would have been unable to prevent Russia's invasion of Ukraine "without simply selling out the Ukrainians and giving Putin what he wanted, or putting American armed forces in Ukraine."

Harris is not a communist, apparently

Trump criticized Harris, the daughter of a Marxist economist and advocate for "equality of outcome[s]," over her proposed wealth redistribution scheme and her presently vague economic agenda.

"This country will end up in a depression if she becomes president," Trump told Hannity. "Like 1929, this will be a 1929 depression. She has no idea what the hell she's doing."

"I gave you the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country. If you let them. If you let the Trump tax cuts expire, which she wants to do, she wants to terminate them. If you do that, you will suffer the biggest tax increase in history. There's never been a tax increase like it, on top of which she wants to add a lot of tax," added Trump, referencing Harris' proposed 28% tax on long-term capital gains.

At one stage, Trump referred to his opponent as "Comrade Harris."

'Harris is neither a Marxist nor a Communist.'

In his recent interview with Lex Fridman, Trump explained why he has taken to characterizing Harris and other radicals as communists, noting that "she came out with price controls. ... It leads to communism. It leads to socialism. It leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to having tremendous inflation."

Trump is evidently not alone in thinking Harris' proposal is a little red. The Washington Post recently published an article titled, "When your opponent calls you 'communist,' maybe don't propose price controls?"

Nevertheless, PolitiFact's fact-checker Amy Sherman would not let the nickname stand.

Referencing her previous "fact-check," Sherman noted that "experts told us Harris is neither a Marxist nor a Communist. She is a capitalist."

Sherman added:

The Trump campaign has pointed to Harris' plan to ban price gouging by implementing price controls. That proposal is vague, but its scope falls far short of communist policy, which advocates a political system of government or a party that abolishes private property. Harris has not called for seizing private homes or businesses.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Sunshine previously told PolitiFact, "Kamala Harris has literally suggested price controls as a matter of economic policy."

"Would encourage you to inspect the well documented list of Marxist and communists who've suggested the same," added Sunshine.

A coup by another name

During the town hall, Trump criticized the way by which Harris became the Democratic nominee, noting that it was "very unfair."

Referencing the 2020 election, Trump said, "She ran against [Biden] in the primary. She got no votes, and she was the first to leave. ... He got 14 million votes [in 2024], and they threw him out."

"It was really a coup when you think about it," continued Trump. "And the woman who came in last, the person who came in last [became the nominee]."

PolitiFact's Amy Sherman and Jeff Cercone swooped in to reassure their readers that once again, Trump was mistaken.

"A coup d'etat is a French term that means the overthrow of a government, usually by illegal means and with the threat of violence," wrote the so-called fact-checkers. "Experts previously told PolitiFact that Democrats persuading President Joe Biden to drop out of the race for president doesn't meet that commonly used definition."

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines a coup d'etat as "a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics."

The Online Etymology Dictionary defines it thusly:

1640s, from French coup d'étate, literally "stroke of the state" (see coup). Technically any sudden, decisive political act, especially an important and unexpected change in the form and methods of a government, but in 20c. popularly restricted to the overthrow of a government.

'The selection of Harris was done fully within Democratic Party rules.'

Whereas PolitFact has previously suggested that the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol constituted a coup, it maintains that the Russia collusion hoax instigated by outgoing Obama officials and elements of the Democratic Party that was aimed, ostensibly, at kneecapping or removing Trump from office was not a coup nor was the pressure campaign to remove Biden as the Democratic candidate in this election.

Scott Althaus, director of the University of Illinois' Cline Center for Advanced Social Research's Coup D’etat Project, told PolitiFact that "to be considered a coup event, a resignation of a chief executive would need to be connected to threat or use of coercion or force that is illegal or extra-legal," adding, "Social pressure from fellow co-partisans fails to satisfy this criterion."

Fresh off embarrassing itself peddling false information about Tucker Carlson, Newsweek also engaged in a "fact-checking" exercise Wednesday evening. The blog stressed that:

Harris' ascension to the top of the ticket was not the result of a coup — political parties are allowed to select their own presidential candidates and the selection of Harris was done fully within Democratic Party rules.

Not border czar, apparently

After Hannity played a montage of Harris defending open-border policies and incentives for illegal immigration, he and Trump blasted the vice president over her shortcomings as America's "border czar" — a title and role PolitFact suggested was largely a thing of fiction.

Axios reported in April 2021, "Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the 'root causes' that drive migration."

PolitiFact acknowledged that Harris was assigned "to work alongside officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues driving people to leave those countries and come to the United States" and that Harris emphasized her role months later when visiting El Paso, Texas.

Nevertheless, the fact-checking outfit concluded: "No, Harris wasn't put in charge of border enforcement."

While prickled by allusions to Harris' "border czar" role, PolitiFact's Maria Ramirez Uribe, a former race and equity reporter, appeared more concerned with Trump's suggestion that over 20 million illegal aliens have "poured into our country."

"There's never been a country that allowed 21 million people to come in over a three-year period," Trump told Hannity, apparently factoring in an estimate of the number of illegal aliens who have entered without encountering federal agents. "And 21 million people, many of whom are from prisons, many of whom are murderers and drug dealers. And child traffickers, and by the way, women traffickers."

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, at least 8.2 million illegal aliens stole across the southern border between January 2021 and July 2024. This figure does not account for the millions of "gotaways" who were not stopped or processed at the border.

It appears the liberal fact-checkers found a way to trip one another up.

Uribe, desperate to suggest Trump had overstated the number of illegal aliens pouring into the country under Harris' watch, suggested that:

During Biden's administration, immigration officials have encountered immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border around 10 million times. When accounting for 'got aways' — people who aren't stopped by border officials — the number rises to about 11.6 million.

Citing PolitiFact, Newsweek then stated in its fact-check that:

Trump may have arrived at the 21 million figure due to a further 11.6 million people who were not stopped by officials at the border, although this figure is based on a subjective and unverified count and the true number of crossings is unclear.

According to Newsweek's interpretation, Trump would have been right on the money.

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