Damage from tariffs, Minneapolis killings go unmentioned as Trump complains to Iowans about ‘rigged elections,’ ‘paid insurrectionists’

Wind chills put temps in the single digits, but people began gathering on the street in front of the Horizon Event Center before 11 a.m. on Tuesday to protest Donald Trump. The president was in Clive, Iowa to deliver remarks on “energy and the economy,” according to the White House.

Of course, Trump doesn’t really do policy speeches like other presidents. He airs old grievances, repeats long-debunked lies, and always includes elements of a campaign speech (not the only way his administration has undermined the Hatch Act, which bars officials from using the resources of their office for political purposes). During Trump’s policy speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, he went off script to complain about the 2020 election. 

“It was a rigged election,” he said to a room of business executives and government ministers sitting in awkward silence. “Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. It’s probably breaking news, but it should be. It was a rigged election. Can’t have rigged elections.”

He then moved on to disparaging the media (“very biased, terrible”) and complaining he doesn’t get enough credit for winning “all seven swing states” in 2024. The speech had other rambling, stream-of-consciousness sections as Trump kept departing from the prepared remarks on the teleprompter.    

That was the sort of speech Trump delivered on Tuesday.

Outside in freezing temperatures, the crowd of protesters grew from about 60 at first to more than 2,000 as the 3 p.m. start time for Trump’s speech approached. Demonstrators chanted, waved signs and blew whistles. They also took care of each other, sharing sandwiches, donuts, water and hand-warmers. The Casey’s across the street from the Horizon Events Center served as a warming station, and one person left her credit card on file to pay for coffee for all the protesters. 

Inside the Horizon Events Center, there were about 700 Trump supporters. Some held signs that had been passed out by Trump’s advance team, with slogans such as “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks” in all caps. 

The response to the brutal and unprofessional actions of the 3,000 ICE agents and Border Patrol sent to Minneapolis by the Trump administration as part of Operation Metro Surge provided much of the energy at the protest on Tuesday. The killings of Renee Good — a poet and mother who just dropped her young son off at school before ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed her on Jan. 7 — and Alex Pretti — an ICU nurse at the local VA hospital shot by two Border Patrol officers multiple times after he was already restrained, on the ground and disarmed — was something many protesters cited as a reason for coming out. Pretti was trying to help a woman the Border Patrol had already knocked down and pepper sprayed when they attacked him. 

Throughout Operation Metro Surge, federal agents have attacked people peacefully protesting and filming them. Despite the violence, and the indiscriminate use of chemical agents like tear gas, the people of Minneapolis have not backed down. 

Trump never mentioned Good or Pretti, or the attacks on peaceful protesters in Minneapolis when he finally arrived at the events center. 

The doors opened for the event at noon, and Air Force One landed in Des Moines at approximately 1:30 p.m. Instead of going directly to Clive, Trump went to the Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale to do some campaigning. Rep. Zach Nunn was at Trump’s elbow in the restaurant, with a wide smile on his face. Rep. Ashley Hinson and Rep. Randy Feenstra stayed a few paces behind Trump, and kept smiles on their faces. 

The speech was supposed to begin at 3 p.m., but Trump didn’t take the stage until almost 90 minutes after the advertised start time. The crowd waited over four hours for the president, but immediately revived their energy and began chanting “USA, USA” as Trump took the stage while Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” played. 

“I’m thrilled to be back in the great state of Iowa, with so many proud, hardworking American patriots, which is what you are,” the president said. “It’s an amazing state. What a place. Boy, do we have some victories here, where they’re the greatest.”

After complaining the 2020 election was “rigged,” the president teased the possibility of running again, even though the Constitution prohibits that. 

“Should we do it a fourth time? Four — four victories. Four victories.”

Trump moved onto bragging about his win in the 2024 election (“We won the popular vote for the first time of any Republican in many decades.” Actually, George W. Bush was the last Republican president to win the popular vote, in 2004.) and complaining about the media (“That’s a lot of fake news”). The president cited various polls and statistics to prove he is popular and successful. Most of those numbers were suspect or misstated, and one made no sense at all. (“You could say it’s an 80 percent reduction or you could say it’s a 1,000 percent reduction. You could say whatever you want,” Trump claimed about his plan to address drug prices.) 

Talking about his tariffs, Trump used the decision by John Deere to build two new factories as an example of how tariffs are improving the economy. 

“We’ve got the chairman of John Deere here, chairman and CEO,” Trump said. “That’s pretty good. I even signed a John Deere hat for him. He said, I’m going to put this in the museum. I said, that’s good. No, it’s a great company, great company.”

Neither of the factories will be in Iowa. One is in North Carolina, the other is in Indiana. Trump did not mention the fact that John Deere laid off 598 workers in Iowa during his first year back in the White House. He also did not mention the massive damage the tariffs have done to Iowa’s agricultural exports. 

The one new proposal in the speech was Trump’s announcement that he intends to support the year-round sale of E15 ethanol. The president immediately followed that statement by saying it was up to Congress, not him, to make year-round sales across the county a reality. 

“I want to be there in person to tell them, the people of Iowa, to know that I am trusting Speaker Mike Johnson, who’s great, and [Senate Majority] Leader John Thune, who’s great,” the president said. 

“That’s House and Senate — to find a deal that works, we’ve got it, for farmers, consumers and refiners, including small and midsize refiners. In other words, to get E15 approved and they’re working on it. They’re very close to getting it done. So, I just wanted to let you know that.” 

“And China [sic] will be sending me a bill very shortly, supporting year-round E15 to my desk very quickly and I will sign it without delay, OK, I hope you remember us for the midterms.”

Trump must have meant Congress, not China. It’s the sort of error that’s been creeping into his speeches lately. At Davos, his plans to acquire Greenland were an important part of his speech, but he called Greenland “Iceland” four times during the speech. 

In his speech Tuesday, Trump used the word “ethanol” seven times and “E15” three times, mentioning Joe Biden’s name 12 times (including calling him Sleepy Joe and Crooked Joe). 

Some of the president’s lies in his speech were bizarre, including his claim that before he won the 2024 election, no one would join the military. Others were just updates of old ones. 

After blaming Democrats for high prices, Trump said they had recently invented the issue of “affordability.”

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“No, but they — they caused the problem,” the president said. “And then they came up, you know, it’s a word that they came up with, affordability. Every time you hear the word, remember, they’re the ones that caused the problem. And uh, first time you heard about it was like a few months ago, ‘this election is all about affordability.’”

People who remember the 2024 campaign will recall Trump’s claim that “groceries” was an old-fashioned word that no one said until Democrats started using it to attack him.  

Trump did make a passing reference to Minnesota in his speech on Monday, complaining that he is not getting credit for what a good job ICE and the Border Patrol are doing.

“So, you read much about Minnesota where, unbeknownst to the public, we have brought down crime very substantially in Minnesota,” he said. “We’ve taken out thousands of hard criminals, hard and vicious, horrible criminals.”

Most of the people arrested by ICE or the Border Patrol in Minnesota have no criminal records, and many of those that do have only minor violations, like traffic citations. 

Speaking to reporters at the White House before leaving for Iowa on Tuesday morning, Trump claimed that his large-scale deployments of federal immigration agents to cities have been good for those cities, driving down crime. 

“You know where else it’s down?” the president said. “It’s down in Minnesota, it’s down in Minneapolis and it’s down very much. Because of the fact we’re there.”

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar pointed out that there have only been three homicides in Minneapolis this year. One was by ICE, another was by the Border Patrol. 

The president spoke for an hour in Clive. As his traditional walk-off music — the Village People’s “YMCA” — boomed in the events center, Trump made a few desultory jerking motions with his hands, but did not do one of the little dances he often finishes speeches with. The president exited the stage without delay.

Additional reporting by Liz Rosa and Seth Coughlin