Inside Trump’s bizarre first town hall in the Philly suburbs, which included a 30-minute playlist party and election date flub

Former President Donald Trump’s first public campaign event in the Philadelphia suburbs took an odd turn Monday night when the candidate abandoned his town hall format and, instead, swayed on stage to his playlist as his audience watched.

“Let’s not do any more questions,” Trump said. “Let’s just listen to music. … Who the hell wants to hear questions?”

The move was precipitated by a pair of medical emergencies in the crowd, but the strange footage of the former president bopping to “Y.M.C.A.” and other selections in Oaks, Montgomery County, drew swift reactions from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and others as the candidates vie for every last vote in crucial Pennsylvania.

Harris’ campaign shared reports of the event on social media, saying Trump acted lost and confused standing onstage during the music. Harris has recently slammed the 78-year-old former president for refusing to release comprehensive medical records. Harris held a rally in Erie on Monday, while Trump campaigned in the Democratic stronghold of Montgomery County.

The unexpected playlist party capped off a town hall in which Trump flubbed the date of the Nov. 5 election — telling supporters to vote on Jan. 5 — and often delivered long, rambling answers to the handful of preselected questions he fielded. Trump’s decision to hold the town hall in voter-rich Montgomery County signals the importance the Philadelphia’s collar counties will play in the final weeks of the campaign.

His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, was scheduled to participate in his own town hall in the county Tuesday evening and Harris will hold a rally in Bucks County on Wednesday.

Trump was about forty minutes into Monday’s town hall, moderated by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and featuring friendly questions from the audience, when a man collapsed in the risers in the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. Several thousand people packed the venue in the warm, cavernous space in Montgomery County, a county President Joe Biden won by 26 points in 2020.

The event paused as the man received medical attention and was taken out in a stretcher. Moments later, a woman on a set of risers on the opposite side of the large expo hall needed attention. She eventually walked out with help after supporters waved red “47″ Trump signs to fan her.

After the back-to-back incidents, Trump suggested that the town hall — only about four questions in — end there, and he proceeded to play DJ. Trump requested Luciano Pavarotti’s rendition of “Ave Maria” (which was played twice) and other songs that have become staples of his rally playlist.

“Those two people that went down were patriots and we love them,” Trump said, referring to the people who fainted. “So play ‘Y.M.C.A.’ There we go! Nice and loud.”

After both emergencies, Trump asked if the air-conditioning could be turned up higher. “Would anybody else like to faint?” Trump asked to laughs.

In all, Trump stood on stage as music played, with brief interjections, for about 30 minutes.

While Harris’ campaign pointed to the incident as a way to question the former president’s mental acuity, Trump campaign political adviser Steven Cheung also shared footage of the evening on X, celebrating it as “something very special” happening in Pennsylvania.

The increasingly Democratic suburbs helped deliver the 2020 election to Biden, but Monday’s crowd drew MAGA-merch-wearing supporters from across the populous five-county region.

Whether Trump can improve his numbers in the Philadelphia’s collar counties could be the difference-maker in Pennsylvania, where the presidential election margins remain razor thin.

Michelle Civitello’s Audubon neighborhood doesn’t have many Trump signs, but the retired pharmaceutical worker wasn’t surprised to walk into the nearby town hall venue and find the only available spot to stand along the back wall.

“There’s a lot of closet Trumpers out there,” Civitello, 61, said.

Before the town hall was cut short, Trump answered a few friendly questions from supporters in the audience, including from a father who was struggling to afford a house, a small-business owner concerned about inflation, and a Gold Star family desperate to find out what led to their son’s death.

The GOP nominee promised to reduce inflation and housing interest rates — without specifics on how.

And he embraced Charles and Mary Ann Strange, whose son Michael was killed alongside 29 other U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2011.

But Trump didn’t temper his message in the moderate suburbs. He talked about illegal immigrants invading the country and described Aurora, Colo., as a war zone taken over by Venezuelan gangs, a narrative local leaders have rejected.

Across the state in Erie, the vice president continued to liken Trump to a dictator, someone who would not be afraid to use the powers of the military to persecute his enemies.

“Donald Trump is an unserious man,” Harris said as the crowd booed the Republican nominee. “But the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious.”

The visit to Oaks was Trump’s fourth event in Pennsylvania in less than 10 days and comes in the midst of a barnstorm of the state by both campaigns.

“Don’t ever call [Pennsylvania] a state. It’s a commonwealth,” Trump said in Oaks. “I know you so well. I’m here all the time.”

For all his visits, though, Trump has recently focused his travel on the kinds of predominantly white working-class places that helped get him elected in 2016. But the Philadelphia suburbs are a key part of the equation for winning the state. The suburbs are home to the largest number of voters in Pennsylvania.

Suburban voters gave Biden the most votes of any regional group in the state in 2020, and Trump pulled his second-largest vote haul out of the suburbs, after rural parts of the state.

His decision to rally in the leafy Montgomery County exurb with about three weeks until Election Day drew suburbanites in down puffer vests and synthetic golf polos to the venue known for hosting the Philadelphia gun show each year.

As college-educated voters in Philadelphia’s suburbs continue to flock to the Democratic Party — a seismic political realignment inspired by both Trump and his larger MAGA movement — supporters in Oaks described a sense that their unchanged conservative beliefs had made them a minority in their affluent, bedroom communities.

Marita Finley, a stay-at-home mom from Wayne, has seen only a few Trump lawn signs in her Main Line community this year; she says showing visible support for the former president is asking for conflict from her Harris-supporting neighbors.

“We think people are for Trump — as they were for Trump against Hillary,” said Finley. “They just don’t want to deal with the nonsense.”

One topic that did not come up onstage Monday night was abortion rights or Trump having appointed justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. The issue has traditionally been a difficult one for Republicans in the suburbs.

It did come up in Chester County, where Gwen Walz, the wife of Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, was stumping for Harris.

“I hear Trump is also here in the collar counties today, peddling his same old gripes and grievances,” Gwen Walz said. “He may even try to rewrite history on his record of attacking our reproductive freedom. Well, I’m a longtime teacher. And in my classroom, we believe in facts. So here are a few: Donald Trump overturned Roe — that’s a fact.”

Staff writer Fallon Roth contributed to this article.