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Campaign spokesman claims the Pennsylvania town hall was a ‘total lovefest’ as former president dances onstage to music
Donald Trump turned a Pennsylvania town hall into an impromptu “musical” after two audience members passed out.
The 78-year-old former president has set a frenetic pace through the battleground states ahead of polling day. But on Monday evening, he cut short a question-and-answer session with voters to spend more than half an hour onstage swaying to music.
Two people fainted in quick succession at the event, with Trump joking the venue owners had refused to turn the air conditioning on because it was too expensive.
Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, claimed that the town hall was a “total lovefest” and that “everyone was so excited they were fainting”.
When the first individual collapsed, the former president asked a “Justin” backstage, apparently in charge of his playlist, to play Schubert’s “Ave Maria”.
He then decided on a change of course after the second supporter fainted.
“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a musical,” Trump declared. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
Trump complained that he wanted Pavarotti singing “Ave Maria” instead of the instrumental version, then stood on the spot swaying, pointing at the crowd and pumping his fist as it rang out.
“We’ll do those songs that we had mentioned, Justin,” Trump, whom aides say personally curates his playlist of campaign songs, said afterwards. “And if Justin doesn’t get it right he gets fired.”
He then mimed conducting Andrea Bocelli’s Con te Partirò, making grand sweeping motions with both hands.
After dancing to James Brown’s “This is a Man’s World”, Trump suggested: “We could do another question or two if you’d like”, prompting cheers from the crowd, before changing his mind.
“How about this? We’ll play ‘YMCA’ and we’ll go home.”
“Those two people that went down are patriots and we love them. And because of them we ended up with some good music, right? So play ‘YMCA’,” he added, before raising his arms and waving them stiffly above his head.
The former president stood and danced on stage for a total of 39 minutes in total as attendees slowly trickled out.
Among the nine songs he played were Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing compares 2 U”. The late singer’s estate has previously requested Trump stop using her songs for campaign events because she considered him a “biblical devil”.
Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who had taken the role of moderator at the event, stood beside more solemnly.
“Nobody wanted to leave and wanted to hear more songs from the famous DJT Spotify playlist,” Mr Cheung claimed.
Kamala Harris’s campaign claimed that the Republican appeared “lost, confused, and frozen on stage”. Ms Harris, who has recently questioned his mental acuity, wrote on social media: “Hope he’s okay.”