Trump courts business in Chicago

CHICAGO (CN) — Donald Trump returned to Chicago for the second time in three months Tuesday, sitting for an interview co-hosted by Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of Chicago.

Trump was scheduled to begin speaking with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at 11 a.m. but didn’t come on stage until about 11:50. He then spoke for a little over an hour with his host. The conversation ran the gamut from tariffs to immigration to Air Force One’s paint job, but Trump avoided answering most of Micklethwait’s questions directly.

For much of the interview Trump instead played his greatest hits: Defending increased tariffs in an attempt to force more businesses to operate in the U.S., criticizing America’s NATO funding levels, attacking unspecified “criminals” he said have entered the country illegally, and highlighting the conservative takeover of the Supreme Court he helped facilitate.

“A lot of presidents get none. I got three,” Trump said, referring to Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Many answers the former president did give turned into anecdotal stories. Trump recounted a cabinet business owner he said broke down into grateful tears after increased tariffs saved his company, and eulogized assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“He was a handsome, wonderful man, loved by everyone,” Trump said.

Despite the lack of concrete answers to Micklethwait, Trump found a receptive audience in the Economic Club members who attended the interview. Trump took and left the stage to standing ovations, and as he exited the venue cries of “USA!” and “we love you!” went up from the crowd.

“It’s about what I was expecting,” Economic Club member Daniel Goodman told Courthouse News after the event concluded. “I think he made the points he thought were important to make.”

Protesters nevertheless marched over Trump’s presence outside the venue, as they did when he last visited the city in July to speak at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention.

Trump has been stepping up the frequency of his campaign appearances ahead of the November election, with multiple recent polls showing him narrowly trailing his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. An Oct. 11 - 13 HarrisX poll sponsored by the Harvard University Center for American Political Studies put Harris two points ahead of Trump, 51% to 49%; an Oct. 8 - 11 YouGov poll sponsored by CBS News had Harris ahead by three.

“She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing,” Trump said of Harris on stage Tuesday.

The interview with Micklethwait was targeted directly at the business class, unlike more public-facing events his campaign has recently held — like his rally in California’s Coachella on Saturday and his town hall-turned-concert in the Philadelphia suburbs on Monday. Chicago is a Democratic bastion and has been for decades, but it is also home to wealthy corporations, including the likes of McDonald’s, Exelon and United Airlines. The Economic Club audience, many of them business executives or managers themselves, trended older and mostly white. They wore suits and business attire, and only a few donned red MAGA hats.

Further separating the appearance from other Trump campaign events, the interview’s location at the Fairmont Chicago hotel was kept private except for reporters and invitees who received the venue location and security protocols ahead of time. The club members enjoyed a free coffee service and breakfast, doubling as a networking event, in the Fairmont’s Imperial Ballroom before the interview began.

Those Courthouse News spoke with all said economic issues were among their top concerns. Even declared Harris supporter Iqbal Brainch, currently a marketing executive with Culligan International, said he was “interested in [Trump’s] economic policy.”

Club member Diane Dawson, CEO of food wholesaler Dawson Sales Company, had similar priorities. She wanted to hear about Trump’s plan to support small businesses, and like several other attendees said immigration was another of her top issues this election cycle.

“I want migrants to be vetted,” Dawson said. “My grandparents came over from Europe, both of them, but they did it properly.”

Immigration is one of Donald Trump’s top issues as well. On the campaign trail he has made statements about immigrants that have been decried as xenophobic; this past December he said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” and made the false claim in September that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating longtime residents’ pets. He has also called for mass deportations of undocumented people.

During his interview Tuesday, Trump once again addressed the issue, saying he is in favor of legal immigration while also railing against unspecified “terrorists” he said have entered the country illegally. He further accused the Venezuelan government of purposefully sending criminals to the U.S., without citing any evidence, and repeated false claims that Venezuelan immigrants had taken over swaths of Aurora, Colorado.

“Those people have to be returned. We can’t live with thousands of murderers,” Trump told the Economic Club members.

Democrats have lambasted Trump’s rhetoric on immigration, but materially they have followed him and other Republicans to the right on the issue over the course of President Joe Biden’s term. Democrats attempted to pass a bipartisan bill enforcing tighter border controls earlier this year; Republican senators voted it down in May nonetheless. Harris — herself the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants — called for an “earned pathway to citizenship” on the Democratic National Convention stage in August, and promised to revive the failed border security bill if elected.

Dawson said she has not yet decided whether she will vote for Trump or Harris.

“I wanted to come here and hear what the candidates have to say,” she said.

The Economic Club said it had extended an interview invitation to Harris as well, but that thus far the vice president has declined.

Follow @djbyrnes1