Trump takes on DeSantis and rivals at Iowa GOP dinner as charges loom

Former President Donald Trump and a dozen of his Republican primary rivals descended on Iowa over the weekend, with some sharing a stage for the primary time as they vied for support within the state where the nation’s first nominating contest might be held.

But “rival” is relative. Few of Trump’s ostensible opponents — even his apparent top competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — look like even near touching him within the polls. And with lower than six months to go before the Iowa caucuses, many of the GOP field stays reluctant to take aim at the most important obstacle to their party’s nomination.

Trump has not shared their hesitations.

After DeSantis spoke at Friday’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Trump took the stage and inside three minutes lashed out on the governor, accusing him of “fighting against ethanol” before the Corn State crowd.

“He fights against it on a regular basis,” Trump said of “DeSanctus,” a condensed version of the derisive nickname “DeSanctimonious” that he has attempted to popularize.

Other speakers on the dinner included former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Vice President Mike Pence.

The dynamic between Trump and his would-be challengers has held firm whilst Trump racks up criminal charges in multiple cases, with possible additional indictments forthcoming.

Someday before he spoke on the dinner, Trump was hit with a superseding indictment within the federal criminal case related to his alleged efforts to hide classified documents that he kept after leaving the White House. The newest charges accuse Trump and his co-defendants of attempting to delete surveillance footage at his resort home, Mar-a-Lago, after it was sought by a federal grand jury.

Trump now faces 40 charges within the unprecedented federal case, the primary ever to be filed against a former president. He has pleaded not guilty in that case and in a separate criminal case in Manhattan, where he’s charged with falsifying business records related to hush money payments to women who claim that they had extramarital affairs with him.

Yet few of the candidates who spoke at Friday’s dinner mentioned Trump in any respect of their remarks, which mostly featured condensed versions of their campaign stump speeches. Those who did are considered extreme long shots in the first, and their criticisms were hardly well received by the gang of 1,200 Iowa Republicans.

Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd was booed as he left the stage after throwing the strongest punch of the evening at Trump.

“Donald Trump shouldn’t be running for president to make America great again,” Hurd said. “Donald Trump is running to remain out of prison.”

Hurd holds lower than 1% in FiveThirtyEight‘s tracker of national GOP primary polls.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who can be polling within the low single digits, warned the gang, “Because it stands straight away, you might be voting in Iowa while multiple criminal cases are pending against former President Trump.”

DeSantis didn’t mention Trump in his speech.

He has defended that strategy whilst his poll numbers have appeared to sag and as his 2-month-old campaign launches a reboot that features firing a piece of its staff and reassuring donors amid recent financing concerns.

“We’d like to focus the election on Joe Biden’s failures and our positive vision for the longer term,” DeSantis told NBC News earlier Friday. “If we’re litigating things from 4 or five years ago, Republicans are going to lose.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s legal woes aren’t dampening his campaign. A Latest York Times/Siena College poll released Monday found Trump leading DeSantis by 37 percentage points amongst likely Republican voters.

No candidate aside from Trump and DeSantis topped 3% support within the poll, which was conducted from July 23 to July 27 and has a margin of error of three.96 percentage points.

The poll also found that a majority of GOP respondents said they considered Trump higher in a position to beat Biden than DeSantis.

Trump lost to Biden within the 2020 election but has falsely claimed he won. The previous president has pushed a raft of debunked conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud to elucidate his defeat. Swaths of Republican voters still say they think Biden’s victory was illegitimate, polls show.

Since his indictments on the campaign trail, Trump has worked to reframe the costs against him as a tale of political martyrdom. “If I weren’t running, I’d have no one coming after me,” he said on the Lincoln Dinner. He has vowed to maintain up his campaign even when he’s convicted and sentenced before the 2024 election.

His fundraising operation has put a highlight on Trump’s legal threats because it solicits donors for contributions. The Latest York Times reported Saturday that Trump’s political motion committee, Save America, has spent greater than $40 million this 12 months alone on legal fees racked up by the ex-president and his allies.

The PAC may soon should spend more. The special counsel who investigated Trump’s retention of classified documents can be leading a Trump-centered probe of interference within the 2020 presidential election. Trump said he has been informed that he’s a goal in that criminal probe, a signal that charges are likely coming soon.

At the identical time, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is anticipated to soon seek indictments in her investigation of the efforts by Trump and his allies to meddle in Georgia’s election in 2020.

“We have been working for two-and-a-half years,” Willis said over the weekend, in line with a neighborhood news report. “We’re able to go.”

Trump, who left Iowa to talk at a crowded campaign rally on Saturday night in Erie, Pennsylvania, said he considers each recent indictment “a badge of honor.”