'Women are smarter than men' and 2 more themes from Trump's Michigan town hall

FLINT — In a change of pace from his usual rallies in which he speaks from a podium, President Donald Trump held a "town hall" event in Flint Tuesday in which he sat beside a moderator and even took a few questions from the audience.

But Trump's messages were mostly familiar ones, whether responding to questions from Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who moderated, or from audience members at the Dort Financial Center hockey arena, where about 6,000 supporters gathered to watch.

More: Flint water crisis gets no mention at Trump event held in struggling Michigan city

Here are three takeaways from the latest in what have become frequent visits to Michigan by candidates for president.

Michigan's auto industry

Unsurprisingly, Trump had a lot to say — this being Michigan — about the auto industry, free trade, Elon Musk and China.

But not all of it appeared consistent or realistic.

Trump predicted that, if he’s not elected, Michigan “will have no auto industry within two to three years… China’s going to take over all of your business.”

But there is no evidence that’s going to happen, even with a push to produce more electric vehicles and the fact that China has more of the raw materials to produce EVs.

Also, the Biden administration has already argued for tariffs of 100% on Chinese EVs.

Trump also argued that he’s actually OK with China or other countries’ companies making vehicles for the U.S. market as long as the manufacturing plants are located in the U.S.

“You can’t flood our market with cars, you just can’t do it,” he said. “However, if you build your plant in Detroit, or if you build it in in Michigan, or if you build it anywhere in the United States for that matter… They go from paying 100% tariff to paying nothing.”

That’s akin to what Gotion — a North American subsidiary of a Chinese company that makes EV batteries — wants to do in Big Rapids, even though the Republican Party has railed that Democrats have been too easy to welcome investment from China into the U.S. that threatens American enterprise. Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, was in Big Rapids last month making that same case .Finally, Trump mentioned Elon Musk — the billionaire founder of electric vehicle maker Tesla, who has endorsed Trump — several times by name, at one point going out of his way to say Musk “loves this state and he loves … everything you're doing here.” Musk, though, has no Michigan operations despite the state’s connection with the auto industry and the UAW has accused him of trying to intimidate workers.

'Women are smarter than men'

It was a surprising statement, if not an admission from Trump, especially considering that his opponent in the presidential race is a woman.

Trump made the comment that "women are smarter than men" when giving a detailed description of a recent assassination attempt made against him Sunday at one of his golf courses, Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Trump said that after Secret Service agents discovered and fired on a man who was hiding in the trees with a rifle, and the man fled, a woman who saw the man running thought him suspicious enough to follow him to his vehicle and take photos of his license plate.

"Who does that?" Trump asked, before saying that somehow the "amazing" woman saw something bad in him.

Sanders, the moderator, said that the message she took from it was that the women of America love Trump.

Revisiting the 2020 election

In his debate with Harris a week ago Tuesday, Trump reversed himself from what commentators had concluded was an earlier acknowledgment that he had lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden “by a whisker.”

During the ABC News debate, Trump said he was being sarcastic, and renewed his false claims that he had actually won.

On Tuesday night in Flint, Trump seemed at pains not to say he won exactly but also not to say he lost, while continuing to obliquely press unsubstantiated grievances that corruption and fraud in Michigan and other swing states cost him that election.

When he was asked why he was running again this year, he said, “We… ran in 2020, we did much better than 2016. People don't like to hear it, you know, oh, he's a conspiracy theorist… We got millions and millions more votes, we did much better, it wasn't even a contest.”

He may have been referring to that “contest” being with himself. He did get 10 million more votes in 2020 than he did in his 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. But in 2020, he still lost to Biden, who got 81 million votes nationwide to Trump’s 74 million.

A lot of Republican voters and Trump supporters are ready to move on from the 2020 claims, with this year’s election a dead heat. But Trump continued: “If I didn't do well in 2020, I wouldn't even think about doing this, but we did phenomenally well, and bad, bad things happened. We're not going to let it happen again… We got let down because what happened should never be allowed to happen in this country again.”

Late Tuesday, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, Joseph Costello, said whether he said it explicitly or not, Trump is still pressing his false 2020 claims.

“Tonight, Donald Trump doubled down on his lies that have turned off swing voters across the country,” Costello said. “Americans are exhausted by his election lies and tired of Trump’s same old playbook.”

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: 'Women are smarter than men' and 2 more themes from Trump's Michigan town hall