NEWTON, Iowa — For former President Donald Trump, post-presidential trappings are a blessing and a curse on the campaign trail as he battles for a second nonconsecutive term in the White House.
Although the security protocols create a sense of occasion for his supporters, being a former commander in chief can also create complications when he and his staff need to be nimble — for example, because of wintery Midwestern weather.
While Trump prefers to speak contemporaneously, his campaign events tend to be organized with the precision that comes from practice after three election cycles and four years in the White House.
And they require organization, with hundreds of supporters lining up for hours outside convention centers or schools in Iowa’s January cold before next week’s caucuses so they and their bags can be searched by security before they try to find a rare spare seat or a good position to stand, though the long lines provide vendors with the opportunity to sell them unauthorized Trump merchandise.
Reporters and TV crews, identifiable by their plastic, not paper, press credentials, are advised through lengthy logistical guidance, complete with maps, to be there hours before the former president’s arrival too, so they can have their equipment swept by the Secret Service. The campaign additionally sends around his remarks, at least as they are prepared for delivery.
In comparison, although space can be at a premium at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s events, that is because those 2024 Republican primary candidates’s venues are smaller, from community centers to local bars.
The campaigns criticize each other regarding their respective crowd sizes, but DeSantis and Haley use their events to speak with instead of to voters, responding directly to their questions and concerns. DeSantis also tends to talk with reporters after his first public appearance of the day, whereas access to Haley is more tightly controlled.
In contrast, Trump does not need to convince most Iowa Republicans that he is presidential, with his cultlike status within the Republican Party, the political spotlight on him amid his civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions, as well as his Truth social media megaphone.
The time Trump supporters spend at the former president’s events has the added advantage of the campaign being able to repeatedly play for them a series of high production value videos, including one narrated by Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara about how to caucus, part of his improved organizing strategy compared to 2016.
The Washington Examiner spoke with Mary Doyle, a Trump precinct caucus captain from Des Moines, last weekend after the former president’s almost two-hour speech at the Des Moines Area Community College in Newton.
“This format that he uses, it’s so down to earth. He just comes in and he’s just really relaxed, and it’s so welcoming,” the data analyst, 69, said. “I was impressed with how he just kept talking and talking and talking and his sense of humor.”
For Gary Leffler, another Trump precinct caucus captain but from West Des Moines, the former president was more “off script” in Newton than he typically is, and the audience approved.
“People were excited and ramped up to hear him,” the contractor, 62, said. “It’s kind of like when you’re on a football team and they do the halftime speech or the speech before you go out before game time. That was what today was.”
But as severe weather conditions bear down on Iowa, Trump was 3 1/2 hours late for his event after Newton, a larger rally in Clinton, because the private plane his campaign rented instead of driving experienced mechanical problems.
“I want to tell you that was a hell of trip I just took,” he said. “But you know, my people were great. They said, ‘Look, the people of Clinton won’t mind. Sir, you can cancel and it will be fine. They said, ‘Sir, honestly, you could cancel. They won’t mind at all.’ And I said, ‘There’s no way I’m canceling Clinton.’”
More broadly, Trump’s events can be defined by their sense of community, with attendees, sometimes Republicans who consider themselves islands in their majority Democratic neighborhoods, bonding over their mutual support of the divisive former president against a soundtrack of songs, such as Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” even “Phantom of the Opera” from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical of the same name.
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Mike Lindell, the CEO of My Pillow and a prominent Trump supporter, described the former president’s MAGA movement as the “new Republican Party.”
“Here’s what I’ve told him many times we’ve had a conversation: ‘Sir, once they jump into your bucket, they never get out because you’ve done nothing to make them jump out,'” he said last weekend after an earlier Trump rally in Mason City. “I go everywhere in this country and people are pouring in from both sides into this bucket because they don’t like what’s going on to our country.”
