Fox News host: Iowa presidential candidate town halls will cover key issues ahead of caucuses

DES MOINES — A trio of Fox News town halls with presidential candidates in Des Moines this week will dig into the issues that are motivating America’s voters for the 2024 election, especially when it comes to women, Fox News’s Martha MacCallum said in an interview last week.

The network will host town hall events with Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, just days before Iowa Republicans head to the caucuses and kick off the presidential nominating process. The town halls will be moderated by MacCallum, executive editor and anchor of “The Story”; and Bret Baier, the chief political anchor for “Special Report."

The Haley town hall will be held at 5 p.m. today, Jan. 8, the DeSantis town hall will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 9, and the Trump town hall will be held at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 10. The Trump town hall will take place at the same time as CNN’s scheduled debate between DeSantis and Haley, also in Des Moines.

The DeSantis and Haley town halls are billed by Fox News as being focused on “women’s issues.” MacCallum said the town halls will broadly cover the issues that women, especially suburban women, care about. She said suburban women have been a decisive voting population in past elections, and how they vote in 2024 will be a key factor in the outcome.

“For most people issues are issues, whether you're a man or a woman,” she said. “And a lot of these issues go across the board. But because it's such an interesting group to watch on election night, I hope that within these town halls, we're going to get a sense from the women in the room about where they are on all of this.”

The town halls will be held in front of a live audience and much of the time is planned to be dedicated to questions from the audience. The network will select from questions the audience submits to present to the candidates, MacCallum said.

The issues MacCallum said she expects to cover in the town halls include the economy, the border, crime and abortion.

DeSantis, Haley and Trump have participated in a number of town halls and televised media events throughout the caucus campaign held by major cable news networks. CNN held back-to-back town halls with DeSantis and Haley on Thursday.

What’s different this time, MacCallum said, is the level of attention voters are paying to the presidential primary, with just a few days left until the caucuses.

“I think the difference now is that we're so close,” MacCallum said. “And that people have had opportunities to listen to these candidates. I think, also, all of them are sharpening their games in the recent weeks, which I think is very interesting to watch."

Baier occasionally clashed with Trump in a June interview when the former president defended withholding classified documents after leaving the presidency and repeated unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

MacCallum said she hopes the town hall does not “get too eaten up” by Trump’s false election claims or multiple criminal indictments. She said Republican voters generally are less interested in those issues compared to issues like the economy and the border.

“I'm sure that we'll touch on some of those issues, but I hope that we spend the majority of the time talking about the things that we know voters care about the most,” she said.