ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:
Now, some of what the candidates said this past week as they said it.
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DONALD TRUMP: Let me hear that music, please. Let me hear that...
KRISTI NOEM: Everyone, let's thank President Trump.
TRUMP: Loud - nice and loud.
NOEM: God bless you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NOEM: Let's send President Trump back to the White House.
WESTERVELT: If you like Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli or Guns N' Roses, then former President Donald Trump's town hall with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem in Oaks, Pennsylvania, was the place to be Monday. Trump turned to music from his playlist after two medical incidents in the crowd, even after Noem announced the second person was up and moving.
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TRUMP: Nobody's leaving. What's going - there's nobody leaving.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HALLELUJAH")
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT: (Singing) I heard there was a secret chord...
TRUMP: Keep going. Keep going. Should we keep going?
TRUMP: All right. Turn that music up. Turn it up. Great song.
WESTERVELT: All in all, Trump played and swayed for about 40 minutes rather than take more questions from the audience. It was quite a start to an intense week of campaigning and one Vice President Kamala Harris pounced on.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Donald Trump is increasingly unstable. And as has been said by the people who have worked closely with him, even when he was president, he's unfit to be president of the United States.
TIM WALZ: If he shuts down like he did last night, you know he's doing that when he's sitting in the Situation Room or in briefings that are important. And you don't have to guess. You don't have to guess how he's going to act. He acts the same way. And when it came time to making a decision on January 6, he froze.
JOHN MICKLETHWAIT: The U.S. Justice Department is thinking about breaking up Alphabet, as Google likes to be known now. Should Google be broken up?
TRUMP: I just haven't gotten over something the Justice Department did yesterday where Virginia cleaned up its voter rolls and got rid of thousands and thousands of bad votes, and the Justice Department sued them that they should be allowed to put those bad votes and illegal votes back in and let the people vote. So I haven't gotten over that. A lot of people have seen that. They can't even believe it.
MICKLETHWAIT: The question is about Google, President Trump.
TRUMP: Yeah.
BRET BAIER: Why, if he's as bad as you say, that half of this country is now supporting this person who could be the 47th president of the United States - why is that happening?
HARRIS: This is an election for president of the United States. It's not supposed to be easy.
BAIER: I know, but...
HARRIS: It's not supposed to be - it is not supposed to be a cakewalk for anyone...
BAIER: So are they misguided, the 50%?
HARRIS: That's not...
BAIER: Are they stupid? What is it?
HARRIS: Oh, God, I would never say that about the American people. And in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he's the one who tends to demean and belittle and diminish.
TRUMP: Make sure you vote and bring all our friends that want to vote for us. Tell them, Jill (ph), get your fat husband off the couch. Get that fat pig off the couch. Tell him to go and vote for Trump. He's going to save our country. Get that guy the hell off of - get him up, Jill. Slap him around. Get him up. Get him up, Jill. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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