Fact-Checking Donald Trump’s Town Hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania

Donald Trump’s Monday Town Hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, made headlines for his impromptu 30-minute listening party and multiple medical emergencies that halted conversation with supporters.
Moderated by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, proceedings were paused while two attendees received medical attention, at which point Trump jokingly asked whether “anybody else would like to faint?” He then said: “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
The Republican presidential nominee stopped taking questions from the audience about an hour after arriving and instead played music for 39 minutes.
There were also multiple false and misleading claims throughout the evening, which Newsweek’s Fact Check team has analyzed.
Newsweek reached out to a Trump representative via email for comment.
This refers to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which Trump frequently mentions at his rallies. The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan at the end of August 2021, days after an ISIS-K suicide bombing at the Kabul airport killed 13 American service members and 170 Afghan civilians.
His claim about “not losing one soldier in 18 months” before the withdrawal is not true. The Department of Defense’s Defense Casualty Analysis System shows that there were two hostile deaths in the 18 months before the withdrawal in August 2021 and five non-hostile/pending deaths.
Trump claimed that mortgage interest rates have hit 10 percent. This is not true. During Trump’s presidency, the lowest recorded average interest rates on 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages were 2.65 and 2.1 percent, respectively.
They are not at 10 percent now. Data from Freddie Mac, presented by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, states that the 30-year fixed mortgage average in the United States as of October 10, 2024, was 6.32 percent. The 15-year rate was 5.41 percent.
Trump claimed that the Biden administration had recently added 818,000 “fake jobs” to their economic projections, which is untrue. There were no “fake jobs.”
As stated in a Fact Check by Poynter, in August 2024, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced a “benchmark revision” to employment statistics for March 2024. Using unemployment insurance tax records, the BLS revised previous figures by 818,000 jobs. The jobs that were revised down were not “fake” jobs; they were part of estimate recalculations. The final revision will be issued in February 2025.
Trump suggested it would be easier to become a U.S. citizen by crossing the border than applying for naturalization. This is an inflammatory but nonetheless misleading comparison between those who apply to become a U.S. citizen through naturalization—with Trump referring to the English and Civics “tests” taken as part of that process—and those who enter the country without documentation.
Non-citizens who enter the country without establishing a legal basis to remain in the United States are removed to their home country or a third country, face at least a five-year ban on re-entry and may be charged with a crime.
“Migrants who are caught crossing the border unlawfully will face arrest, likely detention, and removal from the United States by the Department of Homeland Security,” as stated by the Department of Homeland Security.
There is no evidence for this. A statement by the city of Springfield, Ohio, says Clark County (the county seat Springfield sits in) has an immigration population of approximately 12,000-15,000 people.
“Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS),” the statement reads.
“Haiti is designated by the Secretary of Homeland Security for TPS. Current TPS is granted through February 3, 2026.”
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states that once TPS is granted, DHS cannot detain an individual based on his or her immigration status in the United States.
Kristi Noem, who joined Trump onstage, made this claim. Trump appeared to agree with it and has repeated a version of it before.
It is false, as previously debunked by Newsweek. It was based on an audit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which found ICE had not issued orders to 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children to appear in court. More than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children had not appeared in court for immigration proceedings.
However, Trump and others have incorrectly said that these numbers show that more than 300,000 children have gone missing. Migrant children are placed in shelters or with a sponsor by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is meant to monitor placements.
The audit monitored reporting under the Trump and Biden administrations.
Trump referred to the crowd number of a recent rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of his first assassination attempt in July. This claim has been disproven by Newsweek. Estimates by Newsweek and others put the actual figure somewhere below 59,000.