Former President Donald Trump will make his case to Iowa voters on Wednesday as he ramps up his campaigning in the final few weeks before the state’s caucuses open the 2024 GOP nomination calendar.
The front-runner for the Republican nod will hold a “Commit to Caucus” event in Coralville, near Iowa City, before heading to New Hampshire and Nevada – states that hold Republicans’ second and third nominating contests – for events later in the week.
Trump’s flurry of campaigning comes as he holds a commanding lead in the polls over his Republican opponents and is looking to blunt any of their momentum less than five weeks before voting begins. Trump leads the Republican presidential primary field by around 40 percentage points in nationwide polling, according to the latest update to the CNN Poll of Polls. In the latest average, Trump holds 61% support to 17% for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and 11% for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
The Trump campaign is showing an increased urgency to turn out voters at the January 15 Iowa caucuses and has been showing videos at events educating supporters on how to caucus for the former president. Many of his rivals, though, have far outpaced him in terms of the number of events held in the state.
Several of Trump’s allies, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, are also scheduled to act as surrogates for him at events in Iowa over the next few days.
A source briefed on Trump’s Wednesday speech said the former president is likely to respond to attacks made by DeSantis at a CNN town hall Tuesday night. Trying to close the wide polling gap between them, the Florida governor sought to contrast his record as governor with Trump’s White House tenure and criticized the former president’s economic policies, his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and his abortion stance, among other issues.
Though Trump’s team has grown increasingly confident about his standing in Iowa, the campaign sees potential hurdles in New Hampshire as Haley’s popularity has grown in the state. New Hampshire’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, threw his support behind Haley on Tuesday as he made a case for the GOP to move beyond the former president. Trump, on his Truth Social platform earlier Wednesday, ripped into Sununu over his endorsement, arguing that Haley had “no chance of winning.”
Wednesday’s campaign event in Iowa comes after a positive legal development for Trump, who is a defendant in multiple criminal cases. A federal judge on Wednesday paused an election interference case as Trump appeals on presidential immunity grounds her refusal to toss criminal charges he faces. The ruling could delay the start of Trump’s trial, which is currently scheduled to begin in early March.
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