ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
With just three weeks to go in the presidential campaign, the candidates are going full throttle, and an event that former President Donald Trump held last night in Pennsylvania took a bizarre turn. He answered questions for just under an hour, then invited the audience to stick around and listen to music with him. For another half hour or so, he stayed on stage, moving to the tunes. NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben is here to talk about it. Hi, Danielle.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: This is such a crucial moment in the campaign. Every event counts. So how did a town hall with voters asking questions about issues turn into a collective music-listening session?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, it was an odd town hall all around, even well before the music started. So first off, Trump and moderator Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota and a Trump ally - they did a Q&A. And this was a friendly audience, by the way. The questioners really seemed to be on Trump's side, based on what they asked. But then the town hall was paused twice for audience members calling for medical help. And during those pauses, you heard people in the audience, relatedly, yelling about how hot the room was where they were. And during those pauses, Trump called for "Ave Maria" to be played. That is famously one of his favorites.
And, as Trump called it, the musical fest kind of went from there. After the medical emergencies were over, Trump asked for Luciano Pavarotti's "Ave Maria" to be played while a chart of border crossings was shown. And after all that, he then added, they didn't need to do more questions. And here you'll hear him and also Noem, the moderator.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: You could sit and listen. We'll play a couple of songs. Some of you will be a little warm, but that's OK. It's not a bad thing. And if you want, we're going to do that, but I think it would be beautiful, don't you think? - a little different. It's nice...
KRISTI NOEM: I think it'd be amazing, sir.
TRUMP: ...Nice to have - isn't it a nice thing to have imagination?
KURTZLEBEN: And so the town hall ended with Trump on stage while music played for around half an hour. So, yeah, that is not something we usually see a candidate do in a tight race with three weeks to Election Day.
SHAPIRO: All right. Well, before the musical interlude, he used some very strong terms to talk about Vice President Harris. What did he say, and how does that fit into the overall message of his campaign?
KURTZLEBEN: Well, yeah, his message has been extreme lately, even at times antidemocratic, and he's been ratcheting up the intensity. He has called Harris mentally disabled at this event. Noem called her stupid. He's promoted police violence, and he said that he would use the military against the left. And it's worth listening to that particular quote. It's from an interview he did on Fox News this weekend with Maria Bartiromo. She asked a question that cast undocumented immigrants as dangerous - not true - and then she asked if Election Day would be peaceful.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the - and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.
KURTZLEBEN: And with Trump's authoritarian and punitive rhetoric, we know that's a feature and not a bug to many of his supporters - think about them chanting lock her up in 2016. But broadly speaking, on both sides, voters are just very calcified. Nothing's going to swing people who are decided at this point, and there are very few people in the middle who can be swayed.
SHAPIRO: Well, in that case, does anything that Trump or Harris says, for that matter, actually make a difference?
KURTZLEBEN: Right. I mean, look. We don't know what affects voters until it happens, right? And even then, we may not know after the fact what affects voters - think about the "Access Hollywood" tape in 2016. Some people thought that would end his campaign, and it turns out it didn't. But it is still possible that some sort of a revelation - a show of weakness from Harris or Trump - could sway some voters.
But this brings us back to what they're trying to do. They're not just trying to sway undecideds. They're trying to persuade people to vote, period. So both of them are making these stark pitches to voters about the stakes of the election. Trump's pitch is authoritarian. Hers is pointedly inclusive. It's also quite serious, but they're both just trying to get anyone out that they can.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thank you.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah, thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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