“I don’t have time for retaliation,” Trump said at town hall

Former President Donald J. Trump, who for months has expressed openness to retaliation against his political enemies if he returns to the White House and has promised that federal prosecutors will investigate them, downplayed his interest in pursuing retaliation at a televised town hall on Wednesday.

“I don’t have time for retaliation,” Trump said at a Fox News town hall in Iowa. “We are going to make this country successful again. I don’t have time for retaliation.”

But even as Trump seemingly changed his stance on seeking political revenge, he did not dismiss the possibility outright, suggesting that many in the country would support his past comments given how Democrats had behaved during his term of office.

“First of all, a lot of people would say that’s not that bad,” Trump said, referring to the idea of ​​seeking retaliation. “Look what they did.”

Trump’s hour-long town hall took place in Des Moines at the same time his two biggest rivals in the race, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, debated on CNN.

As the two exchanged jokes in an effort to appeal to voters and caucusgoers in early candidate states, Mr. Trump showed signs of remaining focused on a general election contest against President Biden.

Days before the Iowa caucuses, which take place on Monday, Trump told town hall moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum that he already had a running mate in mind, although he would not name who he was talking about.

And when asked about his position on abortion by a woman who said it was the most important issue influencing her choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, the former president again said he thought the issue was a risk for the Republicans in elections.

Still, he repeatedly claimed credit for the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, arguing that he had fulfilled a campaign promise Republicans had made for decades. “No one has done more in that regard than me,” he said.

Still, Mr. Trump again declined to take a formal position on abortion, saying, “We’re going to come up with something that people want and like.”

The town hall was a marked contrast to most of Trump’s campaign events this year. In general, he hasn’t fielded voters’ questions, eschewing small meet-and-greets and town halls for larger gatherings and appearances with friendly television interviewers like Sean Hannity.

On Wednesday, he answered questions from moderators and from audience members selected by Fox News. Even as Mr. Baier and Ms. MacCallum pressed Mr. Trump for clear answers, he largely responded with the key points of his stump speech.

Early in the town hall, Mr. Baier asked Mr. Trump about an ominous warning he had made earlier, when he noted that there would be “chaos in this country” if the courts did not rule in his favor in the criminal cases and civil cases. against him.

Mr Trump did not fully explain his “bedlam” comment on Wednesday. Instead, he referred vaguely to Mr. Biden and accused him of a “political ploy,” as he has done repeatedly for months by claiming without evidence that Mr. Biden was behind the cases against him.

He also accused the news media of misrepresenting a comment he made on Fox News last month in which he said he would not be a dictator until “Day 1” of his presidency. Mr. Trump had previously doubled down on that comment.

But on Wednesday he said: “I’m not going to be a dictator,” adding that he would run the country in a second term in much the same way he did during his time in office.

When asked, Mr. Trump said he “of course” believed political violence was not acceptable. But he also emphasized that there was “very little of that” during the presidential election, apparently not taking into account the mob of his followers who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.