A Tense Town Hall

President Trump doesn’t spend much time with voters who don’t already support him. As The Times’s Maggie Haberman puts it: “Trump, by only doing rallies and almost never doing town hall forums, has been insulated from the kind of voter interaction that usually help incumbents as they’re running. But he craves adulation and many of his aides enable it.”

Last night, though, the president traveled to Philadelphia for a town hall, broadcast by ABC, with voters who identified themselves as undecided. And he heard an earful.

The first question came from a 2016 Trump voter who said he was trying to take the coronavirus seriously and had to avoid people who refused to wear masks: “Why did you throw vulnerable people like me under the bus?” the man, Paul Tubiana, asked.

Another voter, Julie Bard, asked why Trump didn’t support a national mask mandate. A third asked why he downplayed the virus. Others asked about racial injustice, Trump’s attempts to take away health insurance from people and his unpresidential behavior.