Former President Donald Trump followed DeSantis on the Iowa campaign trail

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Former President Donald Trump said Thursday in Urbandale that he is confident he will continue to lead in Iowa.

There’s no way I’m going to lose Iowa, Trump told the crowd. Have to do some bad things to lose at this point.

Trump spoke to a packed room at the Iowa Machine Shed restaurant with the Westside Conservative Club, a right-wing organization that hosts Iowa Republicans and caucus candidates at their twice-monthly breakfast. He spoke about the victories he won for Iowans during his time in the White House on issues like ethanol and farm deals with China — and told attendees that President Joe Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the first-in-the-nation state as long as he has.

Trump’s most recent trip to Iowa began on Wednesday, when he was on the Simon Conway Show for the 1040 WHO radio station and appeared at a legislative dinner in Des Moines on Wednesday night. Next to his Urbandale stop, Trump will have lunch with faith leaders in Des Moines Thursday and will hold a Fox News Town Hall at the Horizon Events Center in Clive.

Her events come on the heels of her current closest competition, DeSantis, who ran five statewide events on Tuesday and Wednesday. While DeSantis is currently campaigning in New Hampshire, the first primary state, the governor plans to return to Iowa on Saturday to support US Sen. Joni Ernst at her “Roast and Ride” fundraiser with seven other 2024 hopefuls, Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa’s US congressional delegation.

DeSantis did not directly call out Trump in his campaign speeches in Iowa, but said the GOP needs to end the “culture of defeat” and reverse its performances in the 2020 and 2022 elections. At his campaign kickoff, DeSantis joked to the crowd about enjoying the Iowa weather during his previous visits to the state, when he and Trump’s events were scheduled to overlap before Trump’s rally was canceled due to a tornado.

Trump responded to DeSantis

Trump has no such hang-ups, publicly following DeSantis to Iowa on this trip, as he did on earlier visits before the Florida Republican entered the race. The former president cited specific disagreements he had with DeSantis’ claims on the campaign trail in Iowa, such as his claim that a Republican president should serve two terms to get the country to the “right direction.”

Trump said if he is re-elected president, Americans will only have to wait six months to see a “major return.”

“When he says ‘eight years,’ every time I hear it, I cringe,” Trump said. “Because they say, if it takes eight years to turn this around, then you don’t like him. You don’t want him as your president.”

He also took a jab at DeSantis, saying other politicians “don’t want to ask questions, they’re just reading a speech” before Trump took questions from those attending the event. He held conservative lines on most issues, defending gun rights through the Second Amendment and increasing security of the US-Mexico border and in national elections while answering questions from the audience.

DeSantis, approached by a reporter while taking photos with event attendees after his speech in New Hampshire, was asked why he wasn’t taking questions from voters.

“Are you blind? asked DeSantis. “Okay, so people come up and talk to me (about) what they want to talk to me about.”

On “parental rights” and transgender issues in schools, Trump said he doesn’t believe an “incredibly young” child can make choices about changing their gender, and doesn’t think that transgender women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports. But he said he disagreed with how some other candidates — like DeSantis, who has rallied against the “woke mind virus” in his speeches — are talking about these issues.

“The country is sick,” Trump said. “I got sick, and I don’t like the term woke because I hear, Woke, woke, woke. You know, it’s like a term that they use that half the people can’t even identify. They don’t know what it is.

While Trump still leads in the latest national and Iowa polls, more candidates are expected to join the field in the coming weeks, including Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence. DeSantis continues to trail Trump as the second-place candidate.

In conversations with national reporters in Iowa earlier this week, DeSantis criticized Trump for being “left-wing on some of these issues. A DeSantis campaign bus was parked outside the breakfast club meeting and at during the event fliers were distributed in people’s cars about Trump saying the six-week abortion ban was “too harsh,” according to an NBC reporter.

@NvrBackDown24 folks leaving material on windshields outside Trumps first stop in Iowa of the day. pic.twitter.com/EzI2tfZ3rN

Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) June 1, 2023

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