Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump took a kind of break from demonizing migrants and calling for a military crackdown on his political opponents on Monday night. After multiple audience members at his town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania experienced medical emergencies, Trump announced there would be no more questions and launched an impromptu listening party instead. It was, by most accounts, incredibly strange.
The Trump campaign said three people were taken from the rally to an area hospital. Their condition is not clear, nor is why they apparently collapsed.
Initially, the town hall was paused after the first medical incident so a doctor could attend to the person who fell ill. Trump then requested “Ave Maria” be played while everyone waited around — and an instrumental version of the song began on the loudspeakers.
NBC News reports that “the room was toasty” and that “after the second incident, a handful of people in the crowd yelled ‘open the doors’”:
Trump then asked South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who was moderating the event, to get someone to open the door. … Trump appeared to talk to a Secret Service agent to see what could be done. He then told the crowd: “For security reasons, they can’t [open the doors]. But you know what, I said just open them. Because anybody comes through those doors, you know what’s going to happen to them.” The crowd cheered. …
The two of them joked that the building could not afford air conditioning because of the economy. Trump cracked another joke, saying: “Would anybody else like to faint? Please raise your hand.”
After the second medical incident, Trump re-requested “Ave Maria” but said he wanted the Luciano Pavarotti vocal version this time.
He also jokingly threatened to fire a staffer named Justin if he didn’t play the right song:
Here’s the Washington Post’s reporting on what happened next:
It was time to listen to Andrea Bocelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye.” After listening to James Brown, Trump began to speak again, as if remembering that he was still at an event that was billed as a town hall.
“This is the most important election in the history of our country,”
Trump said, once again accusing Democrats of weaponizing elections. But then he went back to his music.
“Those two people that went down are patriots and we love them and because of them we ended up with some good music, right?” he asked. “So play ‘YMCA!’ Go ahead, let’s go nice and loud!”
“Here we go, everybody,” Noem interjected.
The crowd cheered and danced to the Village People song from the 1970s, which celebrates gay cruising culture. Noem put her hands up in the shape of a “Y.” As the song began to end, Trump mouthed the words: “Nobody’s leaving.”
“Nobody’s leaving, what’s going on? There’s nobody leaving. Keep going,” he said, as Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Hallelujah” played next. “All right, turn that music up! Turn that up. Great song!”
Then it was “Nobody Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O’Connor. “An American Trilogy” by Elvis Presley. “Rich Men North of Richmond” by Oliver Anthony. Trump stood and swayed.
As “November Rain” by Guns N’ Roses played, he walked off the stage.
NBC reports that Trump was “sometimes swaying along to the music while staring into the distance.”
He finally left the venue to “Memory” from Cats.
Here’s some footage what it looked like from inside the event:
The Trump campaign quickly celebrated the strange turn of events as a demonstration of how fun and relatable Trump is. The Harris campaign highlighted it as Trump being weird.
After a quick search, there does not appear to be any good polling on how much undecided Pennsylvanian voters value the ability of a presidential candidate to mull around on stage and listen to music for little apparent reason.
Some day this election year’s gonna end.
This post has been updated.
