Where do Iowa GOP VIPs stand if Trump wins again?
Is retribution on the way?
Saturday in South Carolina brought another primary win for Donald Trump, making him 3 for 3 (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina) if you’re keeping score at home. (I didn’t include Nevada in this since that state was a mess with both a caucus and a primary).
Unless Trump’s health or criminal investigations stop him, it looks like he will become the Republican nominee for president. If Trump then wins the general election and becomes president again, what does that mean for some prominent Iowans?
Trump demands complete fealty. And some of Iowa’s top leaders chose to oppose him instead.
Governor Kim Reynolds: Before last summer, she defended almost every Trump policy, social media post or criminal indictment. But she later privately decided that she had enough weeks (months?) before she publicly announced her support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ahead of the Iowa Caucuses.
That should put to rest those who claimed that all Reynolds wanted was to become Trump’s vice president or some cabinet position in his administration. (I never felt like that was her intention, even before her DeSantis endorsement.)
Senator Joni Ernst: In 2016, Ernst let Trump know that she wasn’t interested in becoming his vice president. (She told me about it in my book, “Caucus Chaos Trump.”)
Earlier this month, she criticized Trump for ridiculing Nikki Haley about her husband’s absence on the campaign trail. (Haley’s husband, Michael, was deployed on a peacekeeping mission to Africa with the South Carolina National Guard. Trump’s wife, Melania, doesn’t appear with him on the campaign trail this cycle.)
And then Friday while holding an event in Boone, Ernst said this about the bipartisan border security bill that she and other Republicans ultimately sunk by opposing it after Trump trashed the proposal:
“Even my own colleagues were out there knowingly putting out misinformation about the bill because they wanted to tank it. Why? Because we had a former president that even before the bill was written said, 'It's garbage. You don't need it. I have all the authority I need to shut down the border when I become president.'”
(The Des Moines Register has additional details.)
Ernst, unlike Reynolds, never publicly endorsed a Trump challenger but appeared several times with Haley and never hid her admiration.
Ernst and Senator Chuck Grassley both voted for the latest aid package for Ukraine to try to help that country survive Russia’s invasion. Trump opposed the bill and has maintained a relationship with Vladimir Putin.
I suppose that you could argue that Iowa’s governor, two U.S. senators and 4 U.S. house members all hurt themselves with Trump by failing to endorse him. Except for Reynolds, they all remained publicly neutral before the caucuses.
4th District Congressman Randy Feenstra had told me in December that he would endorse a candidate. I suspected that it would be Haley. But Feenstra ended up avoiding Trump’s public wrath by keeping his caucus candidate preference to himself and endorsing no one before caucus night.
Will any of this matter if Trump becomes president again? Will all these Republicans just fall in line, support all he does and all will be forgiven? Perhaps. Or will the man who has promised retribution and revenge take it out on the Iowa leaders who didn’t give him the public loyalty that he demands?
Which one do you think is more likely?
WHAT ELSE HAVE I BEEN DOING?
—I learned a lot about cicadas. Apparently, many of them will emerge over the next several months and it could be more than 200 years before we experience anything like this again. Here’s what I found out for American Farmland Owner.
—As many of you know, I hosted a political show for 10 years. I missed doing something like that. So, I started a new one! Please let me introduce “Inside Iowa Politics.”
It’s a mix of interviews and my analysis of what’s happening around us. Right now, it’s a digital segment that we do once per week. And it’s shared on the digital platforms of the 10 Gray Television stations that broadcast in Iowa. Here’s the link for this weekend’s show. I welcome your feedback and appreciate your interest and support.
Thanks for reading! I appreciate it. I started this column as part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, a group of independent writers. You can check out their latest work by clicking on the links next to their name.