by Donald J. Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley both on the airwaves and at his rallies — criticism she likened Saturday to “a tantrum” — captured the turbulent dynamics in the final week before the first U.S. votes are cast. 2024 Republican presidential primaries.
Trump, Haley and Ron DeSantis fanned out across Iowa this weekend to make their arguments to the state caucuses on Jan. 15 in a frenetic burst of activity as voters endured an endless barrage of mailers, television spots and calls for action. the doors.
But the latest campaign streak belies a Republican race that has remained stubbornly static for months despite unfolding under the most extraordinary circumstances. Trump remains the party’s prohibitive favorite, even as he faces legal peril in the form of 91 felony charges spread across four criminal cases.
For months, the date of the Iowa caucuses has been marked on Republican calendars as the first and one of the best opportunities for those hoping to stop Trump’s progress toward a rematch with President Biden. After all, Iowa Republicans were some of the party’s few voters to reject Trump in the 2016 primary.
But the former president’s two main rivals — Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and DeSantis, the governor of Florida — continue to bash each other as much as Trump, although both trail him far behind in most polls.
The main pro-Haley super political action committee has spent more than $13 million attacking DeSantis in Iowa since December, including a recent mailer showing Trump’s distinctive blonde hair photoshopped onto DeSantis, calling the governor “unwell.” original” and “too boring.” to lead”. Meanwhile, a pro-DeSantis super PAC has funded more than $8 million worth of attacks in Iowa against Haley since November, with ads calling her “Complicated Nikki Haley” and condemning her positions on China and human rights. of transgender people.
“It’s literally a circular firing squad for second place,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist who managed Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. “Trump is the party’s de facto incumbent, and if you want to beat an incumbent, you have to commit a crime that can be fired. “His effort has been abysmal to commit a crime that can be fired.”
In the third On the anniversary of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot on Saturday, Trump indulged in the same lies about the results of the last election that were at the center of the violent uprising and described those imprisoned for their role in the attack as “J6 hostages.” But his main Republican Party rivals, always wary of crossing paths with a Trump-aligned party base even as the election approaches, largely went unnoticed about the anniversary. And it was Biden who on Friday took advantage of the occasion to present Trump as unfit for the presidency.
Chris McAnich, who was at Trump’s rally in Newton, Iowa, on Saturday wearing his white “Captain of the Trump Caucus” hat, said he had attended specifically because of the Jan. 6 date.
“He didn’t incite a riot, and that’s why I’m here, on January 6, to say I’m with Trump and stick my thumb in their eye,” McAnich said.
A confident Trump continued to take jabs at a variety of Republicans, including the late Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war whom Trump infamously mocked in 2015 when he said, “I like people who weren’t captured.” In Newton on Saturday, Trump mentioned McCain’s vote against repealing the health care law known as Obamacare.
“John McCain, for some reason, couldn’t raise his arm that day,” Trump said, imitating McCain’s thumbs-down gesture. McCain had suffered injuries during his incarceration that limited the mobility of his arm.
Entering 2024, Haley appeared to be gaining momentum, consolidating support among more moderate Republicans. He announced this week that he had raised $24 million in the fourth quarter, a significant cash injection at a critical time. The political network founded by the industrialists Koch brothers said it was investing another $27 million to help Ms. Haley, including the first spending in Super Tuesday states.
But she has made some verbal stumbles in recent days as a spotlight shines on her. He suggested that New Hampshire would “correct” the Iowa vote and “change personality” as the calendar turns to the second voting state, errors that DeSantis’ operation hopes it can capitalize on as the battle for second place has raged in Iowa. The DeSantis campaign texted the quotes to Iowans over the weekend.
Trump attacked Haley, as well as DeSantis, for daring to run against him after she said She wouldn’t do it. “Nikki would betray you just like she betrayed me,” Trump said Saturday. The day before he accused her of being “in the pocket” of “establishment donors” and of being a “globalist.”
“She likes the world,” Trump said. “She likes America first.”
Trump’s pivot toward Haley after months of relentless attacks on DeSantis marked a new phase in the race. Haley threatens not only to eclipse DeSantis for second place in Iowa, but also to compete with Trump in New Hampshire, where independent voters are giving her a boost in an open primary state.
Since mid-December, Trump’s super PAC has spent more than $5 million to hit Haley in New Hampshire, after spending nothing, federal records show. Trump’s campaign is now broadcast there as well.
“Isn’t it very kind of you to spend so much time and money against me?” Ms. Haley said on Fox News on Friday after she was shown a Trump ad attacking her on immigration.
Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who endorsed Haley and campaigned with her in Iowa this week, said in an interview that Trump was “scared.”
“He’s seeing exactly the same thing we’re seeing,” Sununu said. “She’s moving. He is not. She has drive. He does not do it. She’s getting people excited. He is yesterday’s news.”
Trump’s team hopes that a series of early and decisive victories, starting in Iowa and then in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, will help him become the presumptive nominee in March, when the majority of the delegates who will be elected have met. needed to secure the nomination. are at stake. The former president has reliably led national polls by overwhelming margins for many months. The allegations at the heart of Trump’s legal vulnerability have so far only served to strengthen him politically, and Republicans have consistently rallied to his defense.
Trump’s advisers have said they are, in some ways, fighting complacency as much as his rivals, and polls show him far ahead. “Don’t go by the polls,” Trump said Saturday, urging Iowa Republicans to go to the polls despite their lead to send a “thunderous message” that will resonate throughout November.
“It’s effectively over,” said David Bossie, a member of the Republican National Committee who oversaw the party’s debate process and was an adviser to the Trump campaign. “This is effectively over from the beginning. “This has never been a real race.”
Still, all parties are pouring millions of dollars into the race. Trump’s super PAC recently ran a mailer in New Hampshire that counterintuitively links Haley to Trump. The email calls her “a HUGE supporter of Trump’s MAGA agenda.” She then tries to attack former Governor Chris Christie as “an anti-Trump Republican.”
The twist, according to a person who works for the super PAC, is that the mailer targeted exclusively New Hampshire independent voters who voted in the Democratic primary. The idea is that linking Haley to Trump will draw those independents to Christie, which could help the former president stay ahead of Haley.
It’s just one example of the avalanche of tactical maneuvering and advertising that is now so ubiquitous in the early states that a pro-DeSantis ad was shown on television screens in one location in Iowa on Saturday. while Mrs. Haley spoke.
Trump’s decision to skip all debates so far has left his rivals fighting among themselves. On Wednesday, Haley and DeSantis are set for their first face-to-face debate on CNN. Trump has scheduled a town hall overlay on Fox News.
Haley, who has argued that a Trump nomination will bring too much “chaos,” tried to goad the former president onto the debate stage at a town hall in Indianola, Iowa, urging him to “stop acting like Biden” and stop hiding.
DeSantis, who has struggled for months to find an effective message that draws a contrast with Trump, may have hit on one in recent days: “Donald Trump is running because of his problems. Nikki Haley is running because of his donor problems. “I’m running because of your problems.”
The Iowa caucuses are wacky. There are no traditional polling places that are open all day. Instead, on a Monday night of a holiday weekend, more than 1,500 precincts will open in the evening for in-person meetings that may include speeches and neighborhood lobbying. Temperatures are expected to be in the single digits.
The exercise can benefit more organized campaigns, and DeSantis is confident his super PAC’s much-discussed door-knocking operation will pay late dividends.
“In our business it’s never inevitable,” said Beth Hansen, who led former Gov. John Kasich’s Republican presidential bid in 2016. “But we don’t know what’s going to change this paradigm. And I don’t think it exists within the current set of arrows that the candidates are using in the quiver.”
Kellen Browning contributed reports.
