“This isn’t rambling. This isn’t rambling,” President Trump said 80 minutes into his rambling performance on stage in Dubuque on Sunday. “This is genius, if you want to know.”
The event — announced on Oct. 15, canceled on Oct. 29 and reannounced less than 24 hours later — was the longest rally Trump has done in his series of rallies meant to boost struggling Republican candidates, especially those in states that normally vote for Republicans. Trump was onstage for two hours, delivering the same performance he did in Sioux City 10 days earlier: long on his well-known grievances, light on actual Iowa content.
For the people at the Five Flags Event Center in Dubuque, however, the rally lasted much longer than two hours. There was a lineup of speakers before Trump who addressed the crowd for about 90 minutes in total. Then there was an hour-long wait between the final pre-Trump speaker and the sound system playing Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an America,” as the president walked onstage. In the hour between, the crowd had been listening to a playlist that ended up repeating several songs. That meant rally attendees on Sunday spent more time listening to Elvis Presley ( multiple songs that were repeated) than to any speaker from Iowa.
As in Sioux City, Trump talked a lot about politicians in other states, especially Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Ilhan Omar in Minnesota. Trump did mention the steel plant that is planned for Lee County, but spent much more time talking about auto plants that have no connection to Iowa. He repeated his promise of $5,000 for every adult citizen if the Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate. He claimed once again that the price of gas is now cheaper than it was under either Obama or Biden, even though anyone with a memory stretching back two years knows that’s not true. He blamed Democrats for all the country’s problems.
“The Democrats caused the high prices,” Trump said. “The Democrats caused affordability problems. The Democrats caused them, and we’re fixing them. They caused them, they caused everything.”
As is standard for Trump, he claimed no one had ever used the word “affordability” in a political context until Democrats started using it to criticize him. He also boasted his inventiveness in calling Democrats “dumocrats,” and claimed, as he frequently has, that no one knows the word “dumb” ends with a “b.” He also claimed no one knows Kamala Harris’ surname is Harris, and claimed he met with President Xi of China at the White House two weeks ago. Xi’s visit to Washington D.C. was in September.
“Isn’t it nice to have a president that doesn’t have to use a teleprompter?” Trump said at one point. But it was only while reading from the teleprompter that Trump seemed to be able to recall Zach Lahn’s name.
Trump included his standard racist, xenophobic and transphobic set pieces in his performance. His audiences have come to expect them. That Iowa audiences had heard all of it less than two weeks ago apparently didn’t matter.
There were a few minor changes. In Sioux City, Trump was angry at the WNBA for not being patriotic enough. This time he was angry at a different professional sports organization — the NFL.
“Who the hell wants to watch football?” he asked the crowd. “It’s boring as hell.”
The president dislikes the league’s new kickoff rule, designed to reduce player injuries. Trump called the rule “unglamorous” and said it didn’t really help avoid injuries.
“They have no right to ruin football, doing shit like that,” he said.
And while Trump has repeatedly discussed men’s bodies at his earlier rallies, especially Ohio Sen. John Husted’s ass, he focused on a woman’s body in Dubuque. Six minutes into his two hours on stage, Trump started talking about Hinson’s weight.
“I knew Ashley for a long time, and she was a little bit heavier,” the president said, making large circular gestures with his hands. “OK? And she put herself — she knew what she was doing — she knew the weight that was on her. Really, literally, the weight. And she knew the importance of what she was doing. And she went out, the old-fashioned way, too — not with, you know, give me a shot, the old-fashioned way — and she put herself into great…”
At that point a protester interrupted the president. It was the first of three protests inside the events center on Sunday. The crowd chanted “USA, USA,” as the protester was removed. Trump claimed, as he always does, that any protesters at his events aren’t legitimate, and are paid $250 by George Soros. There’s no evidence for that, or for the involvement of Soros, a financier and Holocaust survivor, who is the frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Once the protester was gone, Trump went back to talking about Hinson’s weight.
“Ashley knew the importance of what this was, and how important it was, and boy, she put herself— she went on a regiment, she put herself in shape. She’s in perfect shape. She was good, I thought she was great the other way. But she put herself in shape. She did that for you.”
Hinson was one of the candidates Trump was in Dubuque to help, along with gubernatorial candidate Lahn; Joe Mitchell, who is running for Congress in IA-02; and Chris McGowan, the Republican candidate in IA-04, along with Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Rep. Zach Nunn. With the exception of McGowan, who is running in the Republican stronghold of western Iowa, all those candidates are either in races that polling shows are too close to call (Hinson) or that polling shows they are clearly losing (Lahn).
A constant theme in the pre-Trump speeches on Sunday, including one by Sen. Chuck Grassley, was that people should ignore all polling data, all reports of the unpopularity of Trump’s policies and any report of Democrats being more eager to vote than Republicans.
A noteworthy difference between the rally in Dubuque and the one in Sioux City is that Miller-Meeks and Nunn attended the rally on Sunday. They skipped Sioux City, and Trump never mentioned their names on Oct. 22. Neither Miller-Meeks nor Nunn mentioned Sioux City when they spoke during the pre-Trump period.
The president did not invite any of the House candidates to share the stage with him, only Hinson and Lahn. But that didn’t happen until Trump had been onstage for an hour and 42 minutes.
Hinson spoke quickly, taking just one minute to praise Trump and criticize Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek for missing votes in the state legislature.
“Common sense versus crazy is on the ballot,” Hinson said. “We need to defy Chuck Schumer.”
Lahn spoke for three minutes. He praised Trump, of course, and denounced “Somalia fraud in Minnesota.”
“You know what I love seeing?” Lahn said as he wrapped up. “You know what our friend Charlie Kirk would love seeing? All the young people here today to support America.”
The Charlie Kirk reference was a callback to Lahn’s speech during the pre-Trump period. Lahn told the crowd he was running for governor to defend western civilization against Marxism and other forms of godless radicalism. Then he mentioned a friend he said “wasn’t interested in politics, but was interested in culture.” Lahn was talking about Charlie Kirk, the conservative Republican political activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, who was shot and killed in Utah last year.
Lahn did not elaborate on his belief that Kirk wasn’t interested in politics, but instead tried to motivate the crowd to vote to honor Kirk.
“And I’m telling you right now, this one is for you, Charlie,” he said, finishing his pre-Trump speech. “This race is for you. We are going to win this for you.”
Trump’s meandering performance would be odd for any other president during a time of war, but since this is how he typically presents itself, the distance between the president’s conduct and the seriousness of the moment seldom attracts much scrutiny in the national media.
Trump talked about his administration’s sudden attack on Venezuela, which resulted in the seizure of the country’s president and first lady, as a great military victory. He went on to claim he is a better commander-in-chief than any other president.
“I could have won that war in three weeks,” Trump said about America’s war in Afghanistan. “I could have won the Vietnam War in a week.”
As for why the United States is still at war with Iran, even though the president has announced several times he’s defeated Iran, the president said it’s because he’s a humanitarian.
“The only reason we’re not finished with Iran is I want to be nice,” Trump said. “I want to save all those lives if I can… But at some point, we’re going to have to give them the hammer.”
He did not elaborate on what any of that means.
In terms of the content of Trump’s performance, there was very little difference between his two Iowa stops 10 days apart. Outside the Trump-centric atmosphere of his rallies, there was an important development between his Oct. 22 rally and Sunday’s.
On Oct. 28, the Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee released a report further detailing Donald Trump’s relationship with pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffery Epstein, and how Trump’s Department of Justice is still withholding evidence and appears to be deflected inquiries for the president. The report contains a new and highly detailed account by a former beauty pageant contestant from Switzerland alleging Trump raped her in 1993. Even though three years ago, a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, and later defaming her, this new report has been largely ignored in the national media.
Of course, no one at the rally on Sunday mentioned the report or this new rape allegation against Trump.
At almost the two-hour mark of Trump’s performance, he called for legendary UI wrestling coach Dan Gable to join him on stage. Gable, a longtime supporter of Trump, appeared a little surprised that he was invited to appear with the president in front of the crowd. Gable looked even more surprised when Trump pointed to the podium and asked him to speak.
“I think we’ve had enough,” Gable said. “I’m a pretty good coach, and I read everything really well.”
He gestured at Trump, and said, “This guy is doing a job that needs to be done, and that’s my coaching expertise. So, and I’m a pretty damn good coach, thank you.”
With that, Gable was gone.
It took Trump almost 10 minutes to tell the crowd to ignore the polls, and assure them “we’re going to have a tremendous victory on Tuesday,” before ending the rally, as he usually does, with a standard litany of promises ending in, “We will make America great again.”
On Monday, President Trump went to the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial to deliver what was billed as his final message to the nation before the midterms. The president spent the majority of his time talking about his various renovation and construction projects in Washington D.C., not just the Reflecting Pool (“this is a massive piece of pool”), but also the resodding of the White House lawn, his planned triumphal arch (“It’s going to have tremendous drone capability, I would say, sniper or shooter capability. Its height, its storage capacity is incredible.”) and a golf course project that is currently blocked by a federal court.
The president, who looked and sounded tired, didn’t mention the midterms until 20 minutes into his somewhat rambling remarks. Then he delivered a truncated version of the speech he gave in Dubuque, Sioux City and his other rallies trying to boost struggling Republicans.
Trump seemed most engaged when talking about his renovation and construction projects. The same was true at the Dubuque rally, where he spoke for seven minutes straight on his renovation projects at the White House.
