Former President Donald Trump will campaign at an Iowa event this weekend, joined by nine members of Florida’s Republican congressional delegation who endorsed him rather than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
Trump will visit the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, his campaign announced Tuesday. On Wednesday, his campaign told the Des Moines Register that the former president would be joined by Florida Republican Reps. Gus Bilirakis, Byron Donalds, Matt Gaetz, Carlos Gimenez, Brian Mast, Cory Mills, Anna Paulina Luna, Greg Steube, and Mike Waltz.
Trump is slated to stop at the fair at 1:00 p.m. local time.
DeSantis also plans to attend the Iowa State Fair.
The DeSantis campaign’s war room briefly responded to news that these Florida Republicans would join Trump by saying, “Rent free.”
Rent free
https://t.co/wAZGaLWO5X— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) August 9, 2023
Trump’s upcoming stop at the Iowa Fair comes as he leads DeSantis by 25 points, according to the latest Manhattan Institute primary poll. Forty-two percent of Iowa Republicans support Trump, compared to 17 percent who support the Florida governor.
DeSantis has traveled to 30 Iowa counties, with plans to visit each of the state’s 99 counties, in an effort to cut into Trump’s commanding lead.
Although Trump will attend the Iowa State Fair, he will skip out on a “fair-side chat” series Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) is hosting with other Republican presidential candidates.
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis waves to guests during a campaign event, Monday, July 31, 2023, in Rochester, NH. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Last month, Trump criticized Reynolds for remaining “neutral” and not endorsing a Republican presidential candidate.
Trump did attend an Iowa Republican Party dinner in Des Moines last month where he laid out his policy vision just one day after Special Counsel Jack Smith brought new charges against him in the Mar-a-Lago White House documents case.
“I will obliterate the deep state,” Trump told the crowd. “We will say no on 87,000 IRS agents who want to take your money and much worse than that.”
“They want to weaponize the IRS just like they’ve weaponized the Justice Department and the FBI,” he added. “And, by the way, if I weren’t running, I would have nobody coming after me, or if I was losing by a lot, I would have nobody coming after me.”
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/08/09/donald-trump-campaign-iowa-florida-republicans-not-endorse-ron-desantis/