Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump attends a town hall event focused on women’s issues hosted by Fox News in Cumming, Georgia, on Tuesday.

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Former President Donald Trump attempted to reach female voters with a Fox News town hall video that aired Wednesday morning. Trump answered questions from an all-female audience during the hour-long special.

Trump heard from a friendly crowd on a range of topics, including child care and transgender children in sports. He spoke late in the town hall about reproductive rights, acknowledging that some states had passed “overly strict” abortion laws in the process Dobbs Decision. He also defended his comments to Maria Bartiromo over the weekend, when he called some Democrats “enemies from within” and said he would use the military against them.

Trump held this town hall amid a wide gender divide among American voters. In the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist pollVice President Harris led Trump among women by 15 points, 57 percent to 42 percent.

The crowd overwhelmingly supported the former president and frequently erupted in loud cheers. Faulkner was also kind — she was critical of Democrats’ efforts to “pre-vote” Tuesday’s town hall with a press call, and shook her head silently after playing a clip of Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock from that Democratic press call.

Trump made many of his campaign promises known, such as drilling more for oil, cutting taxes on corporations and cracking down on illegal immigration.

The focus is on immigration and economics

News photographers watch Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on screen at a town hall event hosted by Fox News on Tuesday in Cumming, Georgia.

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Trump did not give clear answers to many questions. When Faulkner pressed him about what he could realistically achieve with Congress on immigration, he didn’t respond, instead criticizing Biden and Harris’ record on the border.

“There is no country that can sustain this,” he said. “We are a laughingstock around the world. They laugh at our president and our vice president.”

At other times, his answers left out important context.

After a question about how he would help with child care costs, Trump talked about expanding the child tax credit as president. He did so, but much of the benefit accrued to him High income families. He was also unsure how he would continue to cover the costs of raising children. He said he wanted to “re-arrange things so it’s fair for everyone,” adding that he wanted to cut corporate taxes.

Faulkner pressed Trump on his comments to Bartiromo over the weekend about using military force against political opponents.

“I think the bigger problem is the enemy within. Not even the people who came in and are destroying our country,” he said on Bartiromo’s Sunday Morning Futures this week. “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left-wing lunatics, and it should be handled very easily by the National Guard if necessary or, if really necessary, by the military.”

Trump stood by those comments.

“It is the enemy from within and it is very dangerous,” he repeated.

He insisted the comment posed no threat to his political opponents.

“I don’t threaten anyone. They are the ones who threaten,” he said. To loud cheers, he added: “You are a threat to democracy.”

Address abortion

The topic of abortion came up about 50 minutes into the show. One questioner claimed, “Women have the right to do what they want and need with their bodies,” and then asked, “Why is the government committed to women’s fundamental rights?”

Trump responded with a statement that he often says in retrospect: he simply sent the abortion issue back to the states.

But he also indicated that he is siding with states that have chosen to make abortion laws less restrictive.

“The states are voting for it now,” Trump said. “And honestly, some of them are becoming a lot more liberal, like in Ohio, than I would have thought.”

“Some of them aren’t,” Faulkner interjected.

“And some are not, but it is being renewed,” Trump said, briefly adding that some states’ laws are now “too strict.”

Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, all of whom voted to oust him Roe v. Wadethereby ending federal protection of abortion rights.

The Harris campaign continues to push Trump hard on the issue of reproductive rights. In that “Prebuttal” call they held outside Trump’s town hall, the family of Amber Thurman, a woman who died after taking abortion pills while awaiting reproductive treatment, spoke emotionally about how Thurman’s death was preventable.

The Harris campaign also released a commercial before the airing of Trump’s town hall featuring Hadley Duvall, a woman who was there impregnated from her stepfather when she was 12 years old. Several states with abortion bans do not make exceptions for victims of rape or incest.