[ad_1]
Donald Trump was due to return to Iowa on Saturday for a campaign-style rally, following a poll showing strong support in the state that traditionally kicks off presidential elections.
Trump has not announced a runoff for the White House.
Instead, he maintained control of his party by repeating lies about electoral fraud in his loss to Joe Biden; attempt to block a congressional investigation into the deadly attack on Capitol Hill by supporters seeking to reverse that defeat; fundraising strongly; and brag about how he will defeat potential rivals, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, if he chooses to run for the nomination again.
He also continues to attack his own party establishment. This week, Trump condemned the Republican Senate leader for ending his opposition to helping Democrats raise the US debt ceiling, a position that threatened economic disaster.
In a statement, Trump called the move a “terrible deal made by the Mitch McConnell withdrawal.” McConnell looked sure to fall under fire from the stage at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on Saturday night.
Ahead of the rally, the Des Moines Register released a poll that showed 53% of Iowans viewed Trump positively.
The poll also gave Trump a 91% favorable rating among Republicans in Iowa. Unsurprisingly, 99% of Democrats in Iowa viewed him unfavorably. Perhaps more concerning for strategists from both parties looking to plan for 2024, the independents were divided, 48% viewing Trump favorably and 49% negatively.
While Republicans mostly align themselves with Trump, Democrats and independent observers continue to warn of the likely consequences of another bid for Trump – or for the presidency.
In an interview published Friday, Fiona Hill, a former national security staff member at Trump’s White House, told Politico: “He is once again considering a return to what he sees more as a crown than as a crown. presidency in 2024.
“I feel like we’re at a really critical and very dangerous inflection point in our society, and if Trump – it’s not on an ideological basis, it’s just on an observation-based basis. on the broader international historical context – if he makes a successful return to the presidency in 2024, democracy is over. Because it will be on the back of a lie. A fiction.
In return, Trump called Hill, who was born in northeast England, a “steep deep state with a nice accent.”
In Iowa, J Ann Selzer, president of polling firm Selzer & Co, pointed to another divisive and dangerous factor in Trump’s popularity, when she told the Register he had heavily polled a large group. and influential: the unvaccinated.
Despite a death toll of more than 712,000 in a pandemic that started and got out of hand under Trump, resistance to vaccination warrants and other public health measures against Covid-19 remains strong in Republican states like ‘Iowa.
The vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths are in unvaccinated people, but Republican politicians and media have successfully portrayed fire resistance as a matter of personal freedom.
Trump was hospitalized with Covid last October and has been vaccinated since. In August, he said at a rally in Alabama, “You have to do what you have to do, but I recommend: take the vaccines. I did it. It’s good.”
The crowd booed, inflicting the same curse on Trump as that encountered by a key ally, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, at a party last week.
Among interviews with interviewees, the Register spoke to Karen Moon, “a 32-year-old Indianola resident. [who] said she had never been a fan of Trump’s public figure ”.
“He looked like a whiny idiot,” she said. “He looked uneducated. I mean, at one point he asked if it would be okay for people to inject bleach into their bodies to get rid of the coronavirus. “
But the Registered Independent said she had a rather favorable opinion of Trump, in part because he signed a pandemic relief bill that sent checks to Americans.
So earlier this year Joe Biden, who is now trying to get a spending plan that includes health and child care measures through Congress, faced unanimous opposition from Republicans.
Moon told the Register that she would “definitely” vote for Trump if he ran again.
[ad_2]
Source link