Roughly 40 days before the Iowa caucuses, former President Donald Trump is reserving most of his ire not for his GOP primary challengers but for President Joe Biden, his presumed 2024 rival should he secure the Republican nomination.
During a Tuesday night town hall with Fox News, Trump repeated perfunctory attacks against his two closest rivals, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, but spent more time on slamming Biden, the latest sign that the former president has moved his focus toward a general election campaign.
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In one of his few attacks against his GOP foes, Trump hit at DeSantis and Haley for wanting to “play around” with voters’ Social Security.
“We have more wealth than anybody, but we don’t use it,” Trump said. “And then guys like DeSantis and guys, like many of the Democrats, but guys like DeSantis and, to a lesser extent, Nikki Haley — they want to play around with your Social Security.”
Trump also attacked Haley over a New York Times report on Tuesday that Reid Hoffman, a Democratic billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, gave $250,000 to a Haley super PAC. “I just found out that Democrats are funding Nikki Haley’s campaign,” Trump mused before also attacking DeSantis. “I hear that Democrats are contributing to Ron DeSanctus’s or Ron DeSanctimonious, to Ron DeSanctus’s campaign.”
Largely, though, Trump spent the majority of the town hall contrasting his administration with Biden’s presidential record. The former president slammed Biden over the United States’s 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel.
He also slammed Biden over domestic problems, including Biden’s handling of a growing migrant population at the southern border, inflation increasing the price of groceries and gas, and the 91 criminal indictments Trump is facing. In his harshest critiques, the 77-year-old Trump attacked the 81-year-old Biden’s mental and physical capabilities.
“I personally don’t think he makes it, OK,” Trump said when host Sean Hannity asked if Biden would remain the Democratic nominee in 2024. “I think he’s in bad shape physically.”
“Do you remember when he said I’d like to take him behind the barn? If he took me behind the barn, and I went like this,” Trump said while pretending to blow on Biden, “I believe he’d fall over. … Who knows?”
Poll after poll shows the public is largely put off by another Trump vs. Biden rematch in 2024. But for Biden, voters are more likely to say his age makes him less eligible for the White House compared to Trump. An August Associated Press/NORC poll showed 77% of participants said Biden is too old for another term, while only 51% said the same for Trump.
It increasingly appears that Biden and Trump will face off again in 2024, as Trump leads his rivals by double digits in state and national polls. Trump polls at 61.3% in a RealClearPoltics poll average, while DeSantis polls at 13.2% and Haley at 10.2%.
The former president will skip the fourth GOP primary debate Wednesday night in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, as he did the first three. This time, however, Trump is bypassing holding a competing event, opting to hold a private fundraiser in Florida. Trump is hoping for a strong showing at the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses to cement the inevitability of him winning the GOP nomination and stymie any other rival from gaining momentum heading into the New Hampshire primary eight days later.
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The Alabama debate is ostensibly one of the last moments in front of a national audience that DeSantis, Haley, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will have to convince GOP voters to back their campaign.
Trump, however, is largely looking ahead to how a second term would play out for him — including reversing Biden’s policies. “We are going to make our country greater than ever before,” Trump said during the town hall. “Day one, the border gets closed. And day one and a half, we drill. You know we drill, baby, drill drill, drill, drill. And probably … on day two, we’ll get rid of this ridiculous electric car mandate.” The crowd loudly clapped in support of Trump’s plans.
