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      ‘It’s a live audition’: Trump surrogates swarm Iowa before caucuses

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      Outside, traders were braving the bitter cold to sell Trump hats, T-shirts and other merchandise. Inside, hundreds of Trump supporters were proudly sporting “Make America great again” (Maga) regalia. They were surrounded by big screens, loudspeakers, TV cameras, patriotic flags and “Team Trump” logos.It had all the trappings of a Donald Trump campaign rally but one thing was missing: Donald Trump.The former US president was content to let South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, speak on his behalf at the convention centre in Sioux City, Iowa, on Wednesday night. “We would never have the situation going on like we see in the Middle East right now,” Noem said. “If he had been in the White House, we would never see what was going on with Russia and Ukraine.”It was not the first time that Trump has delegated his campaign to a proxy ahead of the Iowa caucuses on 15 January, the first of the state-by-state contests in which Republicans choose a presidential nominee to take on Democrat Joe Biden in November’s election.While rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have crisscrossed Iowa in search of votes, the frontrunner has been content to stay at home and let allies do much of the legwork for him. For these campaign surrogates, it is a very public opportunity to stake their claim to a job in a future Trump cabinet – or even as his vice-president.This week’s lineup included Ben Carson, a former housing secretary seeking to rally Iowa’s Christian evangelical voters; Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right firebrand and prominent ally of Trump in Congress; and Eric Trump, a son of the former president who followed him into business.On Monday two “Team Trump Iowa Faith Events” will feature ex-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now governor of Arkansas, and her father, Mike Huckabee, a former governor of the same state.Other prominent proxies include Florida congressmen Byron Donalds and Matt Gaetz; Kari Lake, a former candidate for Arizona governor who has roots in Iowa; Iowa’s attorney general, Brenna Bird, whose endorsement of Trump put her at odds with the state’s governor, Kim Reynolds, a backer of DeSantis; and actor Roseanne Barr, who five years ago was fired from her sitcom, Roseanne, after posting a racist tweet.For the Trump campaign, these events are useful to scoop up personal information that allows for follow-up calls and texts to remind supporters to show up at the caucuses. For the surrogates, they represent a chance to enhance political careers or boost their profile in the “Maga universe”, which might lead to work as a host or pundit in rightwing media.Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, said: “It’s a live audition, using the campaign trail as a substitute for the boardroom set that he had on The Apprentice. All of these people are jockeying and trying to curry favour with Trump so that they are considered to be on the shortlist for some of the high-visibility positions that might become available if he were to win.”Since 2016, Trump campaigns have also been a family affair. His eldest son, Don Jr, attended the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee along his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, but they were denied access to the official “spin room” so talked to reporters on the sidelines. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, a former senior adviser at the White House, is sitting this one out.Eric Trump, who turns 40 on Saturday , has long been mocked by comedians and satirists as the poor relation but seems to be working doubly hard to impress his dad. He told an audience in Ankeny, Iowa, on Thursday: “The greatest fighter in the world is my father. In fact, it’s kind of sometimes what he’s actually criticised for.”Bardella, a former senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee, added: “It’s ‘I’m trying to win your approval’, whether it’s politically in terms of someone like Kristi Noem particularly or the lifelong pursuit of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr to live up to the last name, to the outsized shadow that their father cast over their lives.”Such ostentatious displays of fealty could prove valuable to Trump in a year in which he faces the distraction of four criminal cases that threaten to strand him in a courtroom instead of the campaign trail. He is expected to appear at a federal appeals court hearing next week regarding the scope of his presidential immunity while in office.He must also choose a running mate. It is safe to assume that it will not be Mike Pence, his former vice-president, who alienated Trump by certifying the 2020 election results and ran an abortive campaign against him last year. Potential contenders include Haley, Lake and Noem as well as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, entrepreneur and 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNoem’s event on Wednesday was far bigger than two DeSantis events in western Iowa on Wednesday, one of which was right down the road. Asked by CBS News what she would do if offered the vice-presidential slot, the South Dakota governor said: “I think anybody in this country, if they were offered it, needs to consider it.”Rick Wilson, a cofounder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, commented: “Noem is auditioning for vice-president, absolutely, which is why I think you’ll also see Elise Stefanik out there in the next couple of weeks also, because she is definitely trying to be vice-president. She’s not being shy about it at all; she’s telling people: ‘I want this gig.’”Wilson added: “Trump responds to people who are not just loyal. It’s subservience and a willingness to do whatever Trump wants you to do and so they’re checking a box. This is probably the minimum they can do to stay in his good graces. We’ll see more ‘respectable’ Republicans in the coming months also out there checking the box.”The former president’s absence from the campaign trail also reflects his dominance. Last month a Fox News poll put him at 52% among likely Republican caucus goers in Iowa, far ahead of DeSantis, at 18%, and Haley, at 16%. DeSantis has visited all 99 counties in the state but has made little headway.Trump is scheduled to host eight events in person before the caucuses, a small number compared with other candidates. He will skip a Republican primary debate hosted by CNN in Des Moines on Wednesday in favour of a town hall hosted by Fox News in the same city at the same time. He will hold his final rally in Cherokee on the eve of the caucuses and remain in the state on caucus night.His opponents have struggled to attract surrogates with star power. Haley’s backers include Will Hurd, a former congressman who dropped out of the race, and Chris Sununu, an ex-governor of New Hampshire, which holds the second nominating contest later this month. DeSantis has the support of Reynolds and Bob Vander Plaats, an influential Republican operative in Iowa and the chief executive of the Family Leader, a social conservative organisation.None is able to fire up the Republican base like Trump allies such as Greene, who was greeted by cheers in Keokuk, Iowa, on Thursday and proudly declared: “I’m a Maga extremist.”Sam Nunberg, a DeSantis supporter who was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, acknowledged her influence: “Marjorie Taylor Greene, whatever the majority of Americans think of her, is very strong within the Republican primary so she’s a good surrogate to have, specifically for the people that [Trump] needs.“The strongest, most enthusiastic voters … would like the message of a Marjorie Taylor Greene and are on the same page as him, particularly about the 2020 election and issues with Biden. But in general a surrogate operation can only do so much. I’m not saying that he’s going to lose the caucus; I hope he does.” More

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      Trump Takes Aim at Haley as Primary Enters Final Phase in Iowa

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      Nearly a week before the state’s caucuses, a frenzy of campaigning belies a seemingly static G.O.P. race, with former President Donald J. Trump the prohibitive front-runner.Donald J. Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley both on the airwaves and at his rallies — criticisms she likened Saturday to “a temper tantrum” — captured the turbulent dynamics in the final week before the first votes of the 2024 Republican presidential primary are cast.Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Ron DeSantis fanned out across Iowa this weekend to make their case before the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15 in a frenetic burst of activity as voters endured an unending barrage of mailers, TV ads and door knockers.But the late gust of campaigning belies a Republican race that has remained stubbornly static for months despite unfolding under the most extraordinary of circumstances. Mr. Trump remains the party’s prohibitive front-runner, even as he stares down legal jeopardy in the form of 91 felony counts spread across four criminal cases.For months, the date of the Iowa caucuses has been circled on Republican calendars as the first and one of the best opportunities for those hoping to slow Mr. Trump’s march toward a rematch with President Biden. Iowa Republicans, after all, were some of the few voters in the party to reject Mr. Trump in the 2016 primary.But the former president’s two top rivals — Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor — continue to thrash each other as much as Mr. Trump, though both are badly trailing him in most polls.Nikki Haley, left, the former governor of South Carolina, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have attacked each other as much as they have Mr. Trump, even though most polling shows him leading them both by wide margins.Brian Snyder/ReutersThe leading pro-Haley super PAC has spent more than $13 million attacking Mr. DeSantis in Iowa since December, including one recent mailer that features Mr. Trump’s distinctive blond hair photoshopped onto Mr. DeSantis, calling the governor “unoriginal” and “too lame to lead.” A pro-DeSantis super PAC, meanwhile, has funded more than $8 million worth of attacks in Iowa on Ms. Haley since November, with ads calling her “Tricky Nikki Haley” and condemning her positions on China and transgender rights.“It’s literally a circular firing squad for second place,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist who managed Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. “Trump is the de facto incumbent nominee of the party, and if you want to beat an incumbent, you have to give a fireable offense. Their effort has been abysmal at delivering a fireable offense.”On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol on Saturday, Mr. 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 roles in the attack as “J6 hostages.” But his leading G.O.P. rivals, ever wary of crossing a Trump-aligned party base even as the election nears, left the anniversary mostly unremarked upon. And it was Mr. Biden who on Friday used the occasion to pitch Mr. Trump as unfit for the presidency.Chris McAnich, who was at Mr. Trump’s event in Newton, Iowa, on Saturday wearing his white “Trump Caucus Captain” hat, said he had specifically attended because of the Jan. 6 date.“He did not incite a riot, and that’s kind of why I’m here, on Jan. 6, to say I’m with Trump and stick a thumb in their eye,” Mr. McAnich said.A Trump rally in Clinton, Iowa, on Saturday, the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has described those imprisoned for their roles in the attack as “J6 hostages.”Tannen Maury/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA confident Mr. Trump continued to throw punches at a range of Republicans, including the late Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war whom Mr. Trump infamously mocked in 2015 when he said, “I like people who weren’t captured.” In Newton on Saturday, Mr. Trump brought up Mr. McCain’s vote against repealing the health care law known as Obamacare.“John McCain for some reason couldn’t get his arm up that day,” Mr. Trump said, mimicking Mr. McCain’s thumbs-down gesture. Mr. McCain had sustained injuries during his imprisonment that limited his arm mobility.Entering 2024, Ms. Haley appeared to be gaining momentum, consolidating support among more moderate Republicans. She announced this week that she had hauled in $24 million in the fourth quarter, a major infusion of cash at a critical juncture. The political network founded by the industrialist Koch brothers said it was plunging another $27 million into aiding Ms. Haley, including the first spending in Super Tuesday states.But she has made some verbal stumbles in recent days as a brighter spotlight shines on her. She suggested that New Hampshire would “correct” Iowa’s vote and that “you change personalities” as the calendar turns to the second voting state, miscues that Mr. DeSantis’s operation hopes he can capitalize on as the battle for second place has raged in Iowa. The DeSantis campaign was texting the quotes to Iowans over the weekend.Mr. Trump slashed at Ms. Haley, much as he has Mr. DeSantis, for daring to run against him after she said she would not. “Nikki would sell you out just like she sold me out,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday. The day before, he accused her of being “in the pocket” of “establishment donors,” and of being a “globalist.”“She likes the globe,” Mr. Trump said. “I like America first.”Mr. Trump’s pivot to Ms. Haley after months of unrelenting attacks on Mr. DeSantis signaled a new phase in the race. Ms. Haley is threatening not only to eclipse Mr. DeSantis for second place in Iowa but also to compete with Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, where independent voters are giving her a lift in a state with an open primary.Since mid-December, Mr. Trump’s super PAC has spent more than $5 million hitting Ms. Haley in New Hampshire — after spending nothing, federal records show. Mr. Trump’s campaign is now on the airwaves there, too.“Isn’t that sweet of him spending 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 has endorsed Ms. Haley and campaigned with her in Iowa this week, said in an interview that Mr. Trump was “scared.”“He’s seeing exactly what we’re seeing,” Mr. Sununu said. “She’s moving. He’s not. She has momentum. He doesn’t. She’s getting people excited. He’s yesterday’s news.”Ms. Haley campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday. She is threatening not only to eclipse Mr. DeSantis for second place in the state but also to compete with Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.Rachel Mummey/ReutersMr. Trump’s team is hoping that a string of early and decisive victories, starting in Iowa and then in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, will help make him the presumptive nominee by March, when most of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination are up for grabs. The former president has reliably led in national polling by landslide margins for many months. The indictments at the center of Mr. Trump’s legal vulnerability have so far served only to strengthened him politically, with Republicans consistently rallying to his defense.Mr. Trump’s advisers have said that, in some ways, they are battling complacency as much as they are his rivals, with surveys showing him so far ahead. “Don’t go by the polls,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday, urging Iowa Republicans to turn out despite his lead to send a “thundering message” that will resonate through November.“It is effectively over,” said David Bossie, a Republican National Committee member who oversaw the debates process for the party and was a Trump campaign adviser. “It’s been effectively over since the beginning. This has never been a real race.”Still, millions of dollars are being plunged into the race by all sides. Mr. Trump’s super PAC recently produced a mailer in New Hampshire that counterintuitively links Ms. Haley to Mr. Trump. The mailer calls her “a BIG supporter of Trump’s MAGA Agenda.” It then tries to attack former Gov. Chris Christie as “an anti-Trump Republican.”The twist, according to a person working for the super PAC, is that the mailer went exclusively to independent voters in New Hampshire who have voted in Democratic primaries. The idea is that tying Ms. Haley to Mr. Trump will lure those independents to Mr. Christie, which could help the former president stay ahead of Ms. Haley.It’s just one example of the flurry of tactical maneuvers and advertisements that is now so omnipresent in the early states that one pro-DeSantis ad played on television screens in an Iowa venue on Saturday while Ms. Haley was speaking.Mr. Trump’s decision to bypass all the debates so far has left his rivals to fight among themselves. On Wednesday, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are set for their first one-on-one debate, on CNN. Mr. Trump has scheduled an overlapping town hall on Fox News.Ms. Haley, who has made the case 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.Mr. DeSantis, who has struggled for months to find an effective message that draws a contrast with Mr. Trump, may have landed on one in the waning days: “Donald Trump is running for his issues. Nikki Haley is running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues.”The Iowa caucuses are quirky. There are no traditional polling places that are open all day. Instead, on a Monday evening of a holiday weekend, more than 1,500 precincts will open in the evening for in-person gatherings that can include speeches and lobbying among neighbors. Temperatures are projected to be in the single digits.The exercise can advantage the most organized campaigns, and Mr. DeSantis is banking that his super PAC’s much-discussed door-knocking operation will pay late dividends.“It’s never in our business inevitable,” said Beth Hansen, who managed former Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 Republican run for president. “But we don’t know what it is that is going to change this paradigm. And I don’t think it exists inside the current set of arrows the candidates are using in the quiver.”Kellen Browning More

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      Trump tells Iowans to ‘get over’ school shooting at campaign event

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      Donald Trump told an audience at a campaign event on Friday in Iowa to “get over” a deadly shooting at a high school in the state a day earlier.After offering sympathy and emotional support for the victims of the shooting in Perry, Iowa, and their families, Trump said at the event in Sioux Center: “It’s just horrible – so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”Trump’s comments on the shooting that occurred about 36 hours earlier were the first he had made addressing the violence.Friday’s remarks were not the first time in the last year that Trump has apparently tried to deflect from having a substantial conversation about gun violence in the US. During a speech in April 2023 to the National Rifle Association, Trump argued that the long history of deadly school shootings in the US is “not a gun problem”. He instead blamed the issue on Democrats, mental health issues, marijuana and the transgender community.Trump’s recent comment on the Perry shooting was criticized by the Democratic Super Pac American Bridge.“We knew Trump lacked empathy for others, but no one thought he could go this low and tell Iowans to simply ‘get over it’ as they grieve from a situation communities across the country know all too well,” American Bridge presidential campaigns communication director Brandon Weathersby said in a statement on Trump’s comments. “This is beyond the pale, even for Trump.”Trump has made several campaign stops in Iowa ahead of the Republican presidential primary caucuses on 15 January. He is seeking a second presidency despite facing 91 criminal charges for trying to subvert his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, illegally retaining government secrets after he left the Oval Office and illicit hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has reported having a sexual encounter with Trump during an earlier time in his marriage to Melania Trump.The former president has also grappled with civil litigation over his business practices and a rape allegation deemed “substantially true” by a judge.Nonetheless, Trump dominates polling for the Republican presidential nomination this year.The shooting in Perry killed one sixth grader and wounded seven others. Police identified the shooter as a 17-year-old student who attended high school at the targeted campus. The teen attacker died from a self-inflicted bullet wound, police said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPolice said they found an improvised explosive device during a search of the school while responding to the shooting.Four of the wounded were students, two were faculty and one was the principal, who was reported to be in critical condition but – like the remaining victims – did not appear to be facing life-threatening injuries.The shooting occurred shortly before classes started on the first day of school after the students’ holiday break. More

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      US ‘won’t survive’ four more years of Trump ‘chaos’, Nikki Haley says

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      The re-election of Donald Trump would bring “four more years of chaos” the US “won’t survive”, the former president’s closest challenger for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, told an Iowa audience, turning her fire on the frontrunner as the first vote of the 2024 primary looms.The former South Carolina governor has caught up with Ron DeSantis, the hard-right governor of Florida, in the battle for second place in Republican presidential polling. The gap between Haley and Trump is also closing, particularly in New Hampshire, the second state to vote when it holds its primary on 23 January.Trump faces a slate of criminal and civil trials as well as attempts to keep him off the ballot, for inciting the 6 January 2021 insurrection.Nonetheless, he remains formidably popular with the Republican base and Haley, who as UN ambassador under Trump was often touted as a potential vice-president, must perform a balancing act on the campaign trail.In Iowa, she said Trump had been “the right president at the right time”. But she added: “The reality is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him, and we all know that’s true … and we can’t have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it.”Saying she used to tell Trump he was “his own worst enemy”, Haley added: “We have a country to save, and that means no more drama. No more taking things personally.”Haley was speaking in Des Moines, as CNN hosted town hall events for her and DeSantis, rivals who will also meet on the debate stage next week, as Trump continues to avoid such traditional forums. DeSantis also used his airtime to attack Trump, but Haley is widely seen to have acquired greater momentum and therefore attracted greater attention.A confident performer and stump speaker, she is not immune to gaffes. On stage at Grand View University, she addressed her controversial failure last week in New Hampshire to say slavery caused the civil war.Saying she “had Black friends growing up”, and that slavery was “a very talked-about thing” in her state (the first to secede in 1860, its declaration of secession citing slavery as the cause), Haley said: “I shouldn’t have done that. I should have said slavery. But in my mind that’s a given, that everybody associates the civil war with slavery.”She was also forced to deal with a remark in New Hampshire only the day before, when she appeared to dismiss the importance of Iowa, telling voters: “You know how to do this. You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it.”DeSantis is Trump’s closest challenger in Iowa, Haley closest in New Hampshire. In Iowa, Haley claimed she had been joking.“You are going to see me fight until the very end, on the last day in Iowa,” she said. “And I’m not playing in one state. I’m fighting in every state. Because I think everybody’s worth fighting for.”Trump’s campaign has switched to a fighting stance, airing its first attack ad against Haley in New Hampshire this week, portraying her as soft on immigration.That offensive coincided with Haley securing the endorsement of Don Bolduc, a far-right former special forces general who ran for US Senate with Trump’s backing but now says: “With Trump, there’s too many distractions. There’s too much risk of losing.”Still, any Trump opponent faces an uphill fight: Haley’s state, South Carolina, will vote in February and she trails Trump there by about 30 points. There are also other candidates still in the race.On Thursday, the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the only explicitly anti-Trump candidate, pinning his hopes on New Hampshire, angrily rejected calls to drop out and throw his weight behind Haley.“The fact is that I’m running for president of the United States and no one’s voted yet,” Christie told Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio host, in an interview that started awkwardly and went downhill from there. “And I don’t have an obligation to do anything other than to answer questions, tell the truth, run a good campaign, and try to win. And so, you know, where this has become Nikki Haley’s campaign when no one’s voted yet is kind of a mystery to me.”The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and the former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson are also still in the race. But their odds are even longer than Christie’s.On Friday, writing on Substack, the Republican operative turned anti-Trump crusader Steve Schmidt said: “Nikki Haley is an imitation of Trump, a hollow woman … firmly on Trump’s side of the field. She is an acolyte who has strayed, probably much to Trump’s amusement because he knows she will be back in the menagerie more loyal than ever.“It is Chris Christie who stands alone against Trump. He is … the only moral choice.”Christie, however, told Hewitt that if he did not win the nomination, and even if Trump did, he would not vote for Joe Biden. More

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      DeSantis Launches Most Forceful Trump Attacks, Just Days Before Iowa Caucuses

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is finally taking the fight to the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.After months of being pressed by voters to go harder, Mr. DeSantis accused Mr. Trump of not being “pro-life” during a nationally broadcast CNN town hall in Des Moines Thursday night. He pointed out that Mr. Trump had deported fewer undocumented immigrants than Barack Obama did in his presidency. And Mr. DeSantis suggested that Iowans, who will conduct the first voting in the Republican Party’s presidential nominating contest on Jan. 15, would do well to contrast his behavior with that of Mr. Trump.“You’re not going to have to worry about my conduct,” Mr. DeSantis told the audience. “I’ll conduct myself in a way you can be proud of. I’ll conduct myself in a way you can tell your kids: ‘That’s somebody you should emulate.’”Immediately after Mr. DeSantis’s hourlong town hall finished, another began for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, also broadcast on CNN. For her, the evening seemed to go less smoothly. She was consistently placed on her back foot, defending herself over a string of recent gaffes and even receiving boos because of a joke she made a day earlier about the Iowa caucuses. At one point, she used an oft-derided cliché when talking about race, saying that she had “Black friends growing up.”The dueling town halls signaled the start of a sprint to the finish for the Republican candidates still standing in Iowa. For Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, however, that sprint means a race for second place. Polls show they are both trailing Mr. Trump in the state by roughly 30 points. They are set to meet next week in a one-on-one debate — Mr. Trump, confident in his lead, has skipped the debates — and will also appear in separate Fox News town halls.Behind Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is in a distant fourth, despite campaigning vigorously. And former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, the field’s anti-Trump standard-bearer, is not even campaigning in Iowa, preferring to focus on New Hampshire, which votes on Jan. 23.DeSantis speaking during a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, on Wednesday.Scott Morgan/ReutersMr. DeSantis was seen for much of the year as the strongest challenger to Mr. Trump. But Ms. Haley’s more moderate image has appealed to wealthy donors and independent voters, lifting her standing in the race. She is now virtually tied with Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, where he had been favored, and beating him badly in New Hampshire.Although they and their allies have attacked one another for weeks, Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley barely mentioned each other on Thursday. Instead, Mr. DeSantis trained most of his fire on Mr. Trump, particularly on abortion, an issue Mr. DeSantis is hoping to use to woo Iowa’s influential evangelical voters.“I mean, when you’re saying that pro-life protections are a terrible thing, by definition you are not pro-life,” Mr. DeSantis said, referring to criticisms Mr. Trump had made of six-week abortion bans. He added: “How do you flip-flop on something like the sanctity of life?”Ms. Haley continued to characterize the former president as a force of chaos, criticizing him for raising the national debt, and asserting that, although some of the cases against him are “political in nature” and without basis, “he’s going to have to answer.”“I used to tell him he’s his own worst enemy,” said Ms. Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.For Mr. DeSantis, a confident performance in front of a national audience was a welcome change. He has largely underwhelmed in the G.O.P. debates. Mr. Trump has mocked him mercilessly, including over his sometimes awkward mannerisms and choice of footwear. Chaos in Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and an allied super PAC have often overshadowed his attempts to catch up to Mr. Trump and to fend off Ms. Haley.But Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has argued for weeks that Ms. Haley would stumble as the news media and her rivals focused more attention on her.Indeed, from the moment she took the stage on Thursday, Ms. Haley appeared slightly uncomfortable and on the defensive. Her anecdotes were at times difficult to follow, and she largely relied on canned remarks from her stump speeches, which hardly seemed to make for TV-ready answers.Haley greets people at a Lady Hawkeyes tailgate campaign event in Coralville, Iowa, last week.Rachel Mummey/ReutersMs. Haley has had a series of recent missteps on the campaign trail. Just hours before her CNN town hall, she drew fire from Mr. DeSantis’s campaign surrogates in Iowa for her comments at a New Hampshire town hall, in which she suggested that the state’s voters would “correct” the result of the Iowa caucuses. Last month, she flubbed the name of the Iowa Hawkeyes’ star basketball player Caitlin Clark and failed to mention slavery as the cause of the Civil War.“I should have said slavery right off the bat,” Ms. Haley said on Thursday when asked to respond to criticism of her Civil War response, before contending that she had “Black friends growing up” and that slavery was “a very talked about thing” in her state. “I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward — I shouldn’t have done that.”She seemed to regain some footing as she spoke about her foreign policy stances, her experiences as a mother and her brushes with racism and prejudice in South Carolina as the daughter of the only Indian immigrant family in a small rural town.“We weren’t white enough to be considered white,” she said, deploying a line she often uses. “We weren’t Black enough to be considered Black. They didn’t know who we were, what we were and why we were there.”For once, both candidates largely stuck to their contention that they were running to beat Mr. Trump, not each other.Mr. DeSantis mentioned Ms. Haley most directly in a line that was fast becoming his campaign’s catchphrase: “Donald Trump is running for his issues. Nikki Haley is running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues.”Ms. Haley hardly mentioned Mr. DeSantis by name, even after being directly asked about his policies. When the CNN moderator Erin Burnett asked if Ms. Haley supported the efforts of Mr. DeSantis and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas to transport migrants from the Southern border to more liberal areas of the country, she demurred.“Well, I’ll talk about Governor Abbott,” Ms. Haley said. “Because I think he was courageous. He was the first one to do it.” More

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      DeSantis PAC Makes Donations to Iowa Lawmakers Who Endorsed Him

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      A political action committee controlled by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida donated tens of thousands of dollars to Iowa legislators who have endorsed his candidacy for president, according to state campaign finance records.The group, called Great American Comeback, gave a total of $92,500 to 14 legislators between October and December — all of whom had earlier endorsed Mr. DeSantis, the records show. That figure includes $15,000 each to two of Mr. DeSantis’s most prominent legislative endorsers, Amy Sinclair, the Iowa State Senate president, and Matt Windschitl, the Iowa House majority leader.Groups like Great American Comeback — known as leadership committees — are frequently used by candidates to support their allies.Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis, has also hosted fund-raisers for Iowa legislators who endorsed him.Mr. DeSantis has aggressively sought the endorsements of influential Iowans, and has secured the backing of Gov. Kim Reynolds and the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. But polls show he is still trailing well behind the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, and is now roughly tied with former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, said the donations reflected Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to help fellow Republicans.“Rising tides lift all boats — just as Republicans were victorious up and down the ballot in Florida under his leadership, as president he will end the Republican Party’s culture of losing and make winning contagious,” Mr. Romeo said in a statement.Ms. Sinclair and Mr. Windschitl did not immediately reply to requests for comment. More

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      Haley Jokes That New Hampshire Primary Will ‘Correct’ the Result of the Iowa Caucuses

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      Campaigning in New Hampshire on Wednesday, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina said that voters there would “correct” the result of the Iowa caucuses — the night before she was scheduled to appear for events in Iowa.“You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it,” Ms. Haley said, prompting laughter from the crowd of New Hampshire voters. “And then my sweet state of South Carolina brings it home.”Local campaign surrogates for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is vying with Ms. Haley for second place in Iowa polls for the Republican presidential nomination, seized upon the remark as dismissive of the state’s first-in-the-nation balloting, scheduled for Jan. 15.Gov. Kim Reynolds, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said, “I trust Iowans to make their own decisions. No ‘corrections’ needed.” Bob Vander Plaats, the Iowa evangelical leader who has also thrown his support behind Mr. DeSantis, called Ms. Haley’s quip an “admission of getting beat in the Hawkeye State.”Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley are scheduled to participate in back-to-back town halls Thursday night in Iowa. The events, to be broadcast live on CNN, will be among the few remaining opportunities for the two candidates to draw away support from former President Donald J. Trump.Ms. Haley’s teasing remark also reflects her dim chances of a victory in Iowa, where Mr. Trump is the overwhelming favorite; he is polling around or slightly below 50 percent support. Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are polling below 20 percent in Iowa in a virtual tie for second place.In contrast, Ms. Haley has decisively risen from the pack of Mr. Trump’s rivals in New Hampshire. Recent polls there have shown her in second place far above other candidates, except for Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley’s quip also reflects the perils of campaigning across state lines in quick succession: Remarks playing to the local crowd in one state can become a liability in the next. More

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      DeSantis and Haley Will Appear in Dueling Town Halls Tonight

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      It’s another busy day on the presidential campaign trail in Iowa.Eleven days out from the caucuses, two of Donald J. Trump’s rivals, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, will participate Thursday night in back-to-back town halls to be broadcast live on CNN.For Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who have been battling for second place, the town halls will provide prime-time opportunities for them to win over Iowans ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses. Mr. DeSantis will go first at 9 p.m. Eastern time, followed by Ms. Haley an hour later.Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur, is keeping up his fevered sprint across Iowa, aiming to beat the odds on Caucus Day despite his fourth-place position in state polls.The man they are all trying to take down, Mr. Trump, won’t start appearing at Iowa events until Friday, but his surrogates are stumping on his behalf. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right firebrand from Georgia, and Eric Trump, a son of the former president, will hold simultaneous campaign events in different parts of Iowa Thursday night.Mr. Trump, the overwhelming favorite of Republicans in Iowa, is regularly shown in state polls to be around or slightly below 50 percent support, with Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley polling below 20 percent in a virtual tie.But Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis have so far spent far more money attacking each other than they have Mr. Trump, and they have both been very cautious whenever they do venture toward criticizing the former president.Ms. Haley has focused on policy differences between her and Mr. Trump, on attack ads Mr. Trump has put out against her, and on the “chaos” that she says has followed him throughout the years. Although Mr. DeSantis has gone after Mr. Trump for making campaign promises in 2016 that he failed to keep while in office, Mr. DeSantis so far appears more comfortable attacking Ms. Haley. He has called her a liberal, a flip-flopper and the favored candidate of Wall Street, while Ms. Haley has mostly ignored him when speaking on the campaign trail.Mr. DeSantis’s refusal to more directly criticize Mr. Trump is a version of a problem every other candidate in the race faces: Seemingly every approach to talking about Mr. Trump, whether it’s aggressively attacking him or coming to his defense, has failed to draw away significant support.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is not campaigning in Iowa and is instead staking his candidacy on the later New Hampshire primary, has most aggressively gone after Mr. Trump throughout the race. However, Republicans have so far had little appetite for that message.Nicholas Nehamas More