Trump takes aim at Haley as K-12 education enters final phase in Iowa

Donald J. Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley, both on air and at his rallies – criticism she likened Saturday to “a tantrum” – captured the turbulent dynamics in the final week before the first votes for the Republican presidential nominations of 2024 were released.

Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Ron DeSantis fanned out across Iowa this weekend to make their case for the state’s Jan. 15 caucuses in a frenetic burst of activity, as voters faced an endless barrage of mailers, TV ads and door knockers.

But the late campaign campaign belies a Republican race that has remained stubbornly static for months, despite developing under the most extraordinary circumstances. Mr. Trump remains the party’s prohibitive frontrunner, even as he points to legal dangers in the form of 91 crimes 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 Trump’s march toward a rematch with President Biden. After all, Iowa Republicans were some of the few voters in the party who rejected Trump during the 2016 primaries.

But the former president’s two biggest rivals — Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor — continue to thrash each other as hard as Mr. Trump, even as they stand both trailing him badly in most polls.

The leading pro-Haley super PAC has spent more than $13 million attacking Mr. DeSantis in Iowa since December, including a recent mailer showing Mr. Trump’s signature blonde hair photoshopped onto Mr. DeSantis, with the governor is called ‘not original’ and ‘too boring’. A pro-DeSantis super PAC, meanwhile, has funded more than $8 million worth of attacks on Ms. Haley in Iowa 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 Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. “Trump is the de facto incumbent candidate of the party, and if you want to defeat an incumbent, you have to commit a fireable offense. Their efforts have been abysmal in delivering a fireable offense.”

On the third on the occasion of the January 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 insurrection, describing those imprisoned for their role in the attacks as ‘J6 hostages’. But his leading Republican rivals, ever wary of crossing a Trump party base even as the election approaches, left the anniversary largely unnoticed. And it was Mr. Biden who took the opportunity Friday to pitch Mr. Trump as unfit for the presidency.

Chris McAnich, who was at Trump’s event in Newton, Iowa on Saturday wearing his white “Trump Caucus Captain” hat, said he was there specifically because of the Jan. 6 date.

“He didn’t cause a riot, and that’s really why I’m here on January 6 to say I stand with Trump and stick a thumb in their eye,” Mr. McAnich said.

A confident Mr. Trump continued to throw punches at a series 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 haven’t been captured.” On Saturday in Newton, Mr. Trump brought up Mr. McCain’s vote against repealing the health care law known as Obamacare.

“John McCain couldn’t get his arm up that day for some reason,” Trump said, imitating McCain’s thumbs-down gesture. Mr. McCain had suffered injuries while in captivity 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 raised $24 million in the fourth quarter, a big chunk of money at a critical time. The political network founded by the industrialist Koch brothers said it was investing another $27 million in aid to Ms. Haley, including initial spending in Super Tuesday states.

But she has made some verbal stumbles in recent days as more and more spotlights shine on her. She suggested that New Hampshire would “correct” Iowa’s vote and that “you would change your personality” if the calendar changes to second-ballot status, mistakes that Mr. DeSantis’ operation hopes to capitalize on as the battle for second place is raging in Iowa. The DeSantis campaign texted the quotes to Iowans over the weekend.

Mr. Trump lashed out at Ms. Haley, just as he has Mr. DeSantis, for daring to act against him after she said she wouldn’t. “Nikki would betray you, just like she betrayed me,” Trump said on Saturday. The day before, he accused her of being “in the pocket” of “establishment donors” and of being a “globalist.”

“She loves the world,” Trump said. “I love America first.”

Trump’s switch to Ms. Haley after months of relentless attacks on Mr. DeSantis heralded a new phase in the race. Ms. Haley threatens not only to displace 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 open primaries.

Since mid-December, Trump’s super PAC has spent more than $5 million beating Ms. Haley in New Hampshire — after spending nothing, federal records show. Mr. Trump’s campaign is now on the air there, too.

“Isn’t that sweet of him to spend so much time and money against me?” Ms. Haley said this on Fox News on Friday after she was shown a Trump ad attacking her on immigration.

Governor 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 sees exactly what we see,” Mr. Sununu said. ‘She’s moving. He is not. She has momentum. He does not do that. She makes people enthusiastic. He is yesterday’s news.”

Trump’s team hopes that a series of early and decisive victories, starting in Iowa and then in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, will make him the presumptive nominee come March, when most of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination set. are there for the taking. The former president has reliably led national polls for months, with crushing margins. The charges at the heart of Trump’s legal vulnerability have only made him politically stronger so far, with Republicans consistently rallying to his defense.

Trump’s advisers have said they are in some ways struggling with complacency as much as his rivals, and surveys show he is that far ahead. “Don’t rely on the polls,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday, urging Republicans in Iowa to send a “thunderous message” despite his lead that will resonate into November.

“It’s basically over,” said David Bossie, a member of the Republican National Committee who oversaw the debate process for the party and was a Trump campaign adviser. “It’s actually been over since the beginning. This has never been a real race.”

Yet millions of dollars are being poured into the race from 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 HUGE supporter of Trump’s MAGA Agenda.” It then tries to attack former Governor Chris Christie as “an anti-Trump Republican.”

The twist, according to someone who works for the super PAC, is that the mailer went exclusively to independent voters in New Hampshire who voted in the Democratic primaries. The idea is that tying Ms. Haley to Mr. Trump will draw these 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 advertising that is now so ubiquitous in the early states that a pro-DeSantis ad played on television screens in an Iowa venue on Saturday. while Mrs. Haley was speaking.

Mr Trump’s decision to ignore all debates so far has led to his rivals fighting among themselves. On Wednesday, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are set for their first one-on-one debate on CNN. Mr. Trump has planned an overlapping town hall on Fox News.

Ms. Haley, who has argued that a Trump nomination will bring too much “chaos,” tried to lure the former president to the debate stage at a town hall in Indianola, Iowa, urging him to “stop acting like Biden to behave’ and stop hiding.

Mr. DeSantis, who has struggled for months to find an effective message to contrast with Mr. Trump, may have settled on this in recent days: “Donald Trump is running from his problems. Nikki Haley is running for office because of her donors’ problems. I run from your problems.”

The Iowa caucuses are quirky. There are no traditional polling stations that are open all day. Instead, on Monday evening over a holiday weekend, more than 1,500 counties will open at night for in-person gatherings, including speeches and lobbying among neighbors. Temperatures are expected to be in the single digits.

This exercise can benefit the most organized campaigns, and Mr. DeSantis is counting on his super PAC’s much-publicized door-knocking operation to pay off.

“It’s never inevitable in our industry,” said Beth Hansen, who led former Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 Republican presidential bid. “But we don’t know what it is that will change this paradigm. And I don’t think it exists within the current set of arrows that the candidates are using in the quiver.

Kellen Browning reporting contributed.