Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd was booed as he left the stage after throwing the strongest punch of the evening at Trump.
Former President Donald Trump and a dozen of his Republican primary rivals descended on Iowa over the weekend, with some sharing a stage for the first time as they vied for support in the state where the nation’s first nominating contest will be held.
But “rival” is relative. Few of Trump’s ostensible opponents — even his apparent top competitor, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — appear to be even close to touching him in the polls. And with less than six months to go before the Iowa caucuses, most of the GOP field remains reluctant to take aim at the biggest obstacle to their party’s nomination.
Trump has not shared their hesitations.
After DeSantis spoke at Friday’s Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Trump took the stage and within three minutes lashed out at the governor, accusing him of “fighting against ethanol” before the Corn State crowd.
“He fights against it all the time,” Trump said of “DeSanctus,” a condensed version of the derisive nickname “DeSanctimonious” that he has attempted to popularize.
“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again,” Hurd said. “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.”
Hurd holds less than 1% in FiveThirtyEight’s tracker of national GOP primary polls.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is also polling in the low single digits, warned the crowd, “As it stands right now, you will be voting in Iowa while multiple criminal cases are pending against former President Trump.”
DeSantis did not mention Trump in his speech.
He has defended that strategy even as his poll numbers have appeared to sag and as his 2-month-old campaign launches a reboot that includes firing a chunk of its staff and reassuring donors amid new financing concerns.
“We need to focus the election on Joe Biden’s failures and our positive vision for the future,” DeSantis told NBC News earlier Friday. “If we’re litigating things from four or five years ago, Republicans are going to lose.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s legal woes don’t seem to be dampening his campaign. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday found Trump leading DeSantis by 37 percentage points among likely Republican voters.
No candidate other than Trump and DeSantis topped 3% support in the poll, which was conducted from July 23 to July 27 and has a margin of error of 3.96 percentage points.
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