President Donald Trump held a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, yesterday.
Now, like every Trump rally, you know it’s going to have a lot built into it.
But this one, because of the location, has a little bit of a deeper meaning for 2024, because Iowa is the state front and center of any presidential primary run.
Trump pointed to the importance of Iowa in the effort to take back the House and Senate in 2022, then the White House in 2024. The Republicans need a net gain of just one seat in the Senate and a net gain of five in the House to win back the majority. The only Democrat in the House from Iowa narrowly won, so Republicans are definitely targeting that seat as one of the possibilities to try to grab back.
Trump is definitely more popular than Joe Biden is in Iowa now, with 53% of Iowans having a favorable view of him, as opposed to 45 percent unfavorable. According to a recent Iowa poll, Biden is deeply underwater there, with 31 percent of Iowans approve of how Biden is handling his job, while 62 percent disapprove, and seven percent are not sure.
Thousands were out early Saturday for the rally, and they were treated with a plane touting the message: “Let’s go, Brandon!” The saying has become a popular movement, along with the more ribald version: “F**k Joe Biden” — spawned last week after an NBC reporter tried to spin NASCAR fans chanting the latter as though they were chanting for driver Brandon Brown.
Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and longtime GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, who will be running again, both spoke before Trump.
Trump ripped Biden’s economic policies that are reminding people of the horrible days of the 1970s inflation under Jimmy Carter.
Trump also took on the woke movement, as well as the dangerous overreach of the Biden Administration’s proposed agenda, slamming the effort to have the IRS be able to look into the bank accounts of virtually all Americans. He warned how the IRS had been used against Americans in the past, including against the Tea Party and himself. He called the Biden agenda a “naked power grab,” a “monstrosity,” and “so dangerous for our country.”
Trump mocked Joe Biden’s 31-percent approval rating in Iowa, which is sure to hit Biden right in his insecure heart.
Trump also went after Biden on the border, observing that if he had just left Trump’s policies in place, he would have been okay. “If Biden had just gone to the beach and enjoyed the surf, we would have a great border,” Trump said. “They didn’t have to do anything.” That’s a point that really resonated with the crowd. He further ripped Biden’s actions in Afghanistan, calling it “the most embarrassing event in the history of our country.”
Hitting the current battle over the debt limit and the Biden agenda, Trump chastised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the other Republicans who went along with a procedural vote that allowed an short-term debt limit increase that is anticipated to carry us to at least Dec. 3. Trump said they “should be ashamed of themselves.”
“They just don’t seem to have a spine, some of them,” he said. “You need a spine!”