DES MOINES — Donald Trump was the target of sharp criticism from some of his fellow Republican candidates for president — albeit from candidates who are hovering around the bottom of the polling ladder — Friday night in Iowa during a state party fundraiser that featured remarks from 13 GOP candidates.
Will Hurd, a former Texas Congressman, told a gathering of more than 1,200 in downtown Des Moines that Trump is not running to make America great again or represent Americans, but that he is running to keep himself out of prison.
Former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, speaks during the 2023
Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, July 28, 2023. The
event featured remarks from thirteen candidates for the Republican
nomination for President. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Nick Rohlman
The remarks were met with loud boos from the crowd, who paid at least $150 each to attend. Hurd left the stage with nearly two minutes left in his available speaking time.
Trump has been indicted by a grand jury on charges of mishandling classified documents after he left the White House and could soon be indicted on charges in a separate investigation into his efforts to convince state elections officials to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that he lost to Democratic President Joe Biden.
In an effort to display why Republicans need to move in a different direction, Hurd noted that a Republican presidential candidate has not won the popular vote in 20 years and reminded the crowd that Republicans lost their U.S. House majority in 2018, and the White House and U.S. Senate majority in 2020, and did not grow their numbers in the U.S. House in 2022 as much as historical projections suggest they should have.
“One of the things we need in our elected leaders is for them to tell the truth, even if it’s unpopular,” Hurd said. “Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020. Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison,” Hurd said, eliciting loud and extensive booing from the crowd.
“I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. Listen, I know the truth is hard,” Hurd said over the booing. “But if we elect Donald Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House, and America can’t handle that.”
Businessman Perry Johnson speaks during the 2023 Lincoln Dinner
in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, July 28, 2023. The event featured
remarks from thirteen candidates for the Republican nomination for
President. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Nick Rohlman
Hurd is not registering in most polling on the Republican presidential primary.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who been hovering around 1% in most primary polls, implored Iowa Republicans to set the tone in the party’s primary by voting to move on from Trump.
“The GOP is under threat today. As it stands right now, you will be voting in Iowa while multiple criminal cases are pending against former President Trump,” Hutchinson said. “Iowans have an opportunity to say, ‘We as a party need a new direction for America and for the GOP. We are a party of individual responsibility, accountability, and support for the rule of law. We must not abandon that.”
Trump’s onetime vice president, Mike Pence, made a more veiled appeal for Republicans to abandon Trump. He said Republicans need to turn away from familiarity and populism and find a new, more traditionally conservative leader for the party.
That new leadership, Pence argued, is necessary to defeat Biden in the 2024 election.
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“I understand the temptation to cling to what is familiar over leadership fitted to the times, but I believe we must resist the politics of personality and the siren song populism unmoored from conservative values,” Pence said. “Because different times call for different leadership.”
Trump, who was the night’s final speaker, did not appear to directly respond to any of those comments.
Trump said he was the best candidate to beat Biden in a general election, pointing to polls that show him beating the president in a hypothetical matchup.
“I’m leading Biden by six, seven, eight and 11 points, while 'DeSanctus' is losing to Biden in all cases,” Trump said, employing his derogatory moniker for DeSantis. “I wouldn’t take a chance on that one.”
Trump also said the various investigations into allegedly criminal conduct are politically motivated and that they would not be happening if he was not running for president again.
“If I weren’t running, I would have nobody coming after me, and if I was losing by a lot, I would have nobody coming after me.”
A full baker’s dozen: 13 presidential candidates addressed the gathering of more than 1,200 at the Iowa Events Center in downtown Des Moines.
Each candidate was given 10 minutes to speak and not a second more. With so many candidates speaking, in order to abbreviate the program, the campaigns were warned that the microphone would be shut off at exactly 10 minutes, even if the candidate was still speaking.
Hutchinson was the only candidate to have their remarks cut off by a killed mic, just as it appeared he was making his closing comments.
Eleven of the 13 candidates rented hospitality rooms on the lower level of the venue to host people after the event. The longest line formed around Trump’s hospitality room, as people waited for their chance to have a photo taken with the candidate. There also was a line to get into DeSantis’ hospitality room.
Democratic National Committee spokesperson Ammar Moussa issued a statement after the event, calling it “a grand finale for an absolute dumpster fire of a week for the 2024 Republican primary field.” She accused the Republican presidential candidates of being “desperate to find some kind of new extreme (policy) plank to get an edge.”
“(Election year) 2024 Republicans made clear tonight that whoever the nominee is, they are guaranteed to push an agenda too dangerous and out of touch with hardworking American families,” Moussa said.
The following are quotes from the remaining Republican presidential candidates who spoke at Friday night’s event.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., speaks during the 2023 Lincoln Dinner in
Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, July 28, 2023. The event featured
remarks from thirteen candidates for the Republican nomination for
President. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Nick Rohlman
Nikki Haley
Taking aim at some fellow candidates, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley said it was not just Democrats, but Republicans too, that caused the high national deficit. She noted the first COVID relief law, passed under then-President Donald Trump and a Republican-run Senate, spent billions on social programs and expanded Medicaid and federal food assistance.
“Our Republicans did that to us too. You go back and look at that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill they passed with no accountability, that expanded welfare that has now left us with 90 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. And did Republicans try to make it right? No, they doubled down and opened up earmarks again for the first time in 10 years.”
Ron DeSantis
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told the crowd he had a track record of delivering conservative wins, and promised to bring that ambition to the White House.
“Everything I promised people I would do, we did,” he said of his time as governor of Florida. “And we delivered more than what we promised. We expanded Second Amendment rights, we enacted the heartbeat bill, we cut taxes by $2.7 billion.”
Taking a line common among the Republican field, DeSantis said he would dismantle bureaucracy in the federal government, taking specific aim at Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert and COVID-19 adviser to Trump, and the FBI and Department of Justice.
DeSantis has been critical of the COVID-19 vaccine and vaccination mandates, as well as COVID mitigation measures during the initial months of the pandemic.
Tim Scott
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, as he regularly does on the campaign trail, made his personal story and his faith central themes of his remarks. He also spent a chunk of his time speaking about immigration policy, and finished by saying Republicans must “win the culture war” in America.
“For any of this to happen, we have to win the cultural war here at home. The radical left and Joe Biden has us, as they continue to sell this drug of victimhood and the narcotic of despair, leading to a culture of grievance,” Scott said. “We must win this battle against a culture of grievance. … We must choose greatness over grievance, victory over victimhood, and we must protect this land of opportunity so it doesn’t become, with the radical left, the land of oppression.”
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Perry Johnson
Michigan businessman Perry Johnson made his signature pitch to cut 2% each year from the federal discretionary budget. He said the results would erode the federal debt and lower taxes for Americans.
“We are going to freeze the budget and cut 2 cents out of every dollar of discretionary spending,” he said. “I want to be at a point where we can say that all Americans live a great life. I’m tired of the government always talking about how they’re spending money instead of talking about how they should be cutting taxes.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks during the 2023 Lincoln
Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday, July 28, 2023. The event
featured remarks from thirteen candidates for the Republican
nomination for President. (Nick Rohlman/The Gazette)
Nick Rohlman
Doug Burgum
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said his presidential campaign will focus on the economy, energy and national security. He highlighted his work with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on the Republican Governors Association, and introduced his wife Kathryn, who speaks publicly about her recovery from addiction.
“Growing up in a small town, you weren’t the enemies of your neighbors. It’s not the person down the street. We should be uniting this country to fight against our real enemies: China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Mexican drug cartels,” Burgum said.
Francis Suarez
Francis Suarez said his record as mayor of Miami sets him up to be the next U.S. president.
He pointed to policies that lowered taxes, increased police funding and boosted economic growth. He’d bring those sensibilities to the Oval Office and kick-start the national economy, he said.
“Bidenomics is not going to solve (the deficit), by the way,” he said, adding later, “If you’re asking me what Bidenomics is, it’s actually a situation where the poor get poorer. A situation where if you have your money in a bank account, you lose purchasing power to inflation, or it gets harder to borrow money.”
Ryan Binkley
Texas businessman Ryan Binkley also appeared to address Trump supporters without specifically naming the former president. Brinkley said the Republican Party is “battling for the soul of the future,” and said he believes there are some in the party who want to look forward, and some who want to settle scores from the past.
“In my heart, to you, I have to tell you, it is time, and I believe it’s God’s will, that we move forward as a nation,” Binkley said. “We have to. It’s so difficult to try to settle scores and look in the rearview mirror when there’s a huge vision ahead.”
Larry Elder
Larry Elder said he was running to bring attention to the “epidemic of fatherlessness” in America and address what he called failing schools in America’s inner cities. Those issues, he said, are not talked about enough in the Republican Party.
“If I can put these issues front and center — the lie that America remains systemically racist, the need for school choice and the epidemic of fatherlessness — if I can put these issues front and center along with a couple of others, then I will feel like I’ve given back to my party and more importantly, I will feel that I’ve given back to my country,” Elder said.
Vivek Ramaswamy
Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said a conservative American identity could fill what he called a void of meaning in American culture. He pledged to abolish a host of federal agencies, including the Department of Education, the FBI, the CDC and the IRS.
“When that deep state has become so rotten, we can no longer just fix it from the top,” he said. “This is not a moment for reform. I don’t stand for reform. I stand for revolution. This is the moment of the American Revolution — those 1776 ideals that set this nation into motion 250 years ago.”
A full slate of Republican candidates come together at the Republican Party of Iowa's 2023 Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa.