DES MOINES, Iowa — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed “I will get the job done” but shied away from attacking former President Donald Trump as the two top rivals for the Republican presidential nomination were making rare appearances at the same Iowa campaign event on Friday night.
Despite Trump being charged a day earlier with additional counts over his retention of classified documents that could shake up the race, DeSantis stuck to his standard campaign speech, mostly targeting President Joe Biden.
Trump frequently avoids attending multicandidate events in person, questioning why he would share a stage with competitors who are badly trailing him in polls.
The Florida governor also repeated his frequent promise to halt the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, an allusion to Trump's legal troubles, but offered no specific thoughts on the cases against him.
“The time for excuses is over. We must get the job done," DeSantis said. "I will get the job done."
Trump frequently avoids attending multicandidate events in person, questioning why he would share a stage with competitors who are badly trailing him in polls. But with Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus less than six months away, the former president joined a dozen other GOP hopefuls in speaking to about 1,200 GOP members and activists at the Lincoln Day Dinner.
He also opened an Iowa campaign office in Urbandale, outside Des Moines, prior to the main event — and wasn't shy about slamming his competitors around the same time DeSantis was taking the stage at the dinner.
“I understand the other candidates are falling very flat ... it’s like death,” Trump said, adding, “There’s no applause, there’s no nothing.”
Attendees included former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Perry Johnson.
In her remarks, Haley said the Biden Administration and D.C. “have failed”, and we have “a country to save” by voting in younger candidates to the White House and to Congress.
Meanwhile, Hutchinson honed in on border issues: "We live in hard times because we have failed with the border. We have no border security."
Author Vivek Ramaswamy targeted the border as well, urging that "your first entry into the country must be legal" and that, if elected president, he would use the military to protect the southern border.
Commentator Larry Elder, however, focused on a different agenda — fatherlessness — even calling it an epidemic in America, and former CIA officer Will Hurd was booed after claiming Donald Trump is running to avoid jail.
DeSantis, Trump’s strongest rival in the field, has been trying to reset his stalled campaign for two weeks. He returned on Thursday to Iowa, where his campaign is increasingly focusing its efforts on trying to derail Trump.
DeSantis’ stumbles have raised questions about whether another candidate might be able to emerge from the crowded field and catch the former president. Some evangelicals, who play a determinative role in the state’s caucuses, have pointed to South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s upbeat message and pulpit-style delivery as strengths that could help him rise there.
Scott held a town hall Thursday night in Ankeny with Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and a crowd of a few hundred people, many of whom were forced to stand in the corners of the room. He drew laughs, head nods and amens, and the senator took about a dozen questions.
The only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, Scott said all Americans should recognize how “devastating” slavery was. “There is no silver lining” to slavery, he added.
While talking to reporters afterward, Scott took a swipe at DeSantis over the Florida governor's support for new standards that require Florida teachers to instruct middle school students that slaves developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” Scott, the only Black Republican in the U.S. Senate, said all Americans should recognize how “devastating” slavery was.
“There is no silver lining” to slavery, Scott said, offering a rare critical word for a fellow GOP presidential candidate.
DeSantis has also faced criticism from teachers and civil rights leaders and gotten into a public dispute with Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, a Black Republican who said he had a problem with the part of the curriculum addressing lessons on the “developed skills” of enslaved people.
That means DeSantis is now at odds with two of his party's prominent Black elected officials. Still, the governor continued to dig in on the issue, saying at an event in Oskaloosa on Friday: “D.C. Republicans all too often accept false narratives, accept lies that are perpetrated by the left." The governor has defended the new school curriculum, saying, “I think it’s very clear that these guys did a good job on those standards."
Vice President Kamala Harris made her own Iowa stop on Friday, seeking to draw a contrast with the Republicans as she looked to lift President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. Harris met in Des Moines with activists and discussed abortion rights, after Reynolds recently signed a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. A judge has temporarily blocked the law, but the Iowa Supreme Court will consider the governor’s request to put it back in effect.
“I do believe that we are witnessing a national agenda that is about a full-on attack on hard won freedoms and hard won rights,” the vice president said.
Hours later, many Lincoln Day Dinner attendees wore “Trump Country” stickers, including 72-year-old Diane Weaver of Ankeny, Iowa.
“I think he makes America great," said Weaver, a retiree who plans to caucus for Trump. “I think he did it once and I think he can do it again.”
She also said the rest of the Republican field should make a more robust and vocal defense of Trump as he faces his legal problems.
DeSantis, meanwhile, ducked repeated chances before Friday evening's event to criticize Trump over the additional charges he faces. Pressed on why he isn't willing to use the additional charges to go on the offensive against a primary opponent he'll need to beat, DeSantis pointed to past policy clashes he's had with Trump over issues like the COVID-19 pandemic response and the federal deficit.
“We have engaged when appropriate,” DeSantis told reporters. He added that such topics affect voters’ lives and and were more important than "relitigating the latest superseding indictment.”
The governor has pledged to eventually visit all of Iowa’s 99 counties, is in the midst of a two-day state bus tour organized by a super PAC supporting his run. But he faces fresh questions about his strategy and path forward.
After his fundraising reports showed him burning through donations, the governor cut more than a third of his campaign staff. One of the laid-off aides had shared a video featuring DeSantis’ face superimposed on a symbol embraced by the Nazis.
DeSantis' cash crunch seems to be driving the campaign to rely even more on the efforts of the super PAC Never Back Down to take up the work typically done by campaign staff.
Super PACs can receive unlimited sums from donors but are barred under federal rules from donating to candidates or coordinating with campaigns on how their money is spent.
While presidential campaigns have been supplemented before by the work of super PACs, which frequently use deeper coffers to run expensive television ads, the work Never Back Down has done to promote DeSantis has been more expansive.
The group has been organizing on the ground, including lining up caucus supporters for DeSantis. And while candidates before him have appeared at events put on by super PACs, DeSantis is embarking on the bus tour as the PAC’s “special guest.”
Both the DeSantis campaign and Never Back Down defended the arrangement when asked how it complies with federal rules.
“There are decades of precedent for Super PACs to host candidates and others as special guests at events," said Jess Szymanski, a spokesperson for Never Back Down.
