DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flipped pork chops in front of the cameras at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, a plane appeared in the broiling blue sky.

It was Donald Trump's Boeing 757 private jet. It circled the fairgrounds, and thousands in the crowd looked up and went wild, cheering for the Republican former president.

An hour later, Trump arrived in a motorcade from nearby Des Moines airport to a rock-star reception, stealing DeSantis' thunder and reducing his nearest rival for the Republican presidential nomination to a bit-part player at one of the biggest political events on the U.S. political calendar.

It was a moment that epitomized the state of the 2024 Republican presidential nominating race: Trump is far ahead in national polling, eclipsing Florida's governor and the rest of the field, who have so far been at a loss over how to narrow that gap.

The Iowa State Fair is a political must for aspiring presidential candidates in the Midwestern state that kicks off the Republican nominating contest in January. But with Trump leading DeSantis by 34 percentage points among likely Republican primary voters in an Aug. 3 Reuters/Ipsos poll, and the rest of the field languishing in single digits, the fair this year had the air of a coronation rather than a beauty pageant.

Despite Trump's legal problems - he has been indicted three times this year and could be indicted a fourth time in Georgia this week - he holds one of the biggest primary polling leads in U.S. electoral history. No candidate in modern history has had such a big lead in a contested primary and gone on to lose the nomination.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has had two staff shake-ups in the past three weeks and has been sinking in the polls as he desperately tries to recalibrate his campaign.

As Trump walked from the pork chop tent to the Steer N' Stein bar to make a speech, flocked by supporters chanting, "We love you Trump!," a reporter asked him about DeSantis.

"He's doing very, very poorly in the polls. He really should leave the race," Trump said.

 

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who opposes Trump's nomination, has been holding focus groups with Republican voters all year. During the last two she held, in the past two weeks, not a single person even mentioned DeSantis.

When asked directly about the Florida governor at the recent focus groups, one voter called him "sneaky." Another dismissed him as just "another regular politician." A third said he was part of the "deep state," a term often used by conspiracy theorists to refer to people in government they believe are working clandestinely to manipulate national policy.

"DeSantis is in a death spiral," Longwell said.

 

FULL STORY

More like the funeral of the Republican Party 

TRUMP HEADING FOR JAIL

 

there fixed the headline for you

Trump at it again: lying, making things up and taking credit for things he had absolutely nothing to do with.

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-lies-about-crowd-size-iowa-fair

its madness personified...both Trump & Biden are yesterdays news wrapping todays fish heads or they should be...one drops rockets on a country and the other likes sniffing little people.

6 minutes ago, wombat said:

its madness personified...both Trump & Biden are yesterdays news wrapping todays fish heads or they should be...one drops rockets on a country and the other likes sniffing little people.

Putin Lover huh , ask Putin if Biden is yesterdays news 

Edited August 14, 20232 yr by Irish star

47 minutes ago, wombat said:

its madness personified...both Trump & Biden are yesterdays news wrapping todays fish heads or they should be...one drops rockets on a country and the other likes sniffing little people.

'Child sniffing' ?? As opposed to the orange madman traitor openly confessing lust for, and groping his own daughter

What a sick nation, and I thought my home country of Oz has its problems haha ???? 

 

To see in the stark light of day that this nation has over 70 million people who are actively or if they are are so bigoted, so perverted themselves that they chose to excuse or embrace the perversity of Trump because it matches their own is both sad, shameful, repulsive and given the USA's propensity to throw it military might about readily, frightening.

 

There seems no champions no moral backbones in the GOP.  On the contrary the GOP has completely, utterly, and without nuance abandoned any sense of humanity and decency and become a gaggle of repulsive Gollum-like creatures.

A truly stark, jarring reality in this emptiness is, in any way, to stand with the courage of the Founding Fathers, men like Washington Lincoln et al. for the clear and present immediacy, nay the death-rattle imperative in the struggle to preserve all that is good in the Constitution.

 

It occurred to me as and when I began to grow more understanding of the USA's political processes that the USA is NOT a democracy at all, whether you chose to specify its a 'Democratic Republic' (just a useless word salad and ignorant understanding of nomenclature) or not makes no difference to the reality of the system in place and certainly does not excuse, rationalise, or justify such a false equivalency of the USA being a free, fairly chosen, open-electorally directed nation.

 

This notion of it being so, is perhaps one of the biggest lies ever told to a people by its government and power brokers. Woven into the Constitution no less and done in order to subvert the will of the People and to entrench, validate, and promulgate a Power or Royal class. 

 

To vote and to have those votes not counted equally as a total for each candidate and to have this tally be the true vote - this is NOT a democratic process at all.

In its shocking, lamentable, shameful, and undemocratic reality to create a scheme that values some votes more than others and use this as the means to declare a winner.  So sayeth The Electoral College System.

 

This undemocratic abomination could not be farther from the meaning, spirit, and ethos of Democracy.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 14, 20232 yr by Tropposurfer

1 hour ago, rudi49jr said:

Trump at it again: lying, making things up and taking credit for things he had absolutely nothing to do with.

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-lies-about-crowd-size-iowa-fair

"This is the biggest crowd they've ever had. I'm honored by it .. and they say there's one reason for it."

0 of 2 minutes, 20 seconds

It was a complete fabrication."

1 hour ago, candide said:

"This is the biggest crowd they've ever had. I'm honored by it .. and they say there's one reason for it."

0 of 2 minutes, 20 seconds

It was a complete fabrication."

Lie # 3,495,742, 188 for those who like to keep track of such things.  

So who will be the republican nominee if Trump goes to prison?

Surely it can't be DeSantis by default? 

1 hour ago, Purdey said:

So who will be the republican nominee if Trump goes to prison?

 

In USA you can run for president from prison.

 

Give it 10 years - and if the current far left wing dems are not out - I fully predict a breaking up of the union. The reds are already moving to red states in mass now as seen by loss of population in Dem cities.

48 minutes ago, RichardColeman said:

In USA you can run for president from prison.

 

Give it 10 years - and if the current far left wing dems are not out - I fully predict a breaking up of the union. The reds are already moving to red states in mass now as seen by loss of population in Dem cities.

Is this migration the reason that Texas has steadily been electing more Democrats. Because it's turning redder?

9 hours ago, rudi49jr said:

Trump at it again: lying, making things up and taking credit for things he had absolutely nothing to do with.

https://www.meidastouch.com/news/trump-lies-about-crowd-size-iowa-fair

Great source Rudi. 

40 minutes ago, MonteD said:

Great source Rudi. 

So? As long as they’re stating hard and verifiable facts. Which is what they did: Trump was lying, making stuff up and taking credit for things he had nothing to do with. You do know the difference between fact and fiction, don’t you?

1 hour ago, MonteD said:

Great source Rudi. 

Are these people lying, too?

.Daily attendance numbers for the 2023 Iowa State Fair

Day 3 of the 2023 Iowa State Fair drew 118,286 people to the fairgrounds in east Des Moines.

That's 5,274 more people than Day 3 last year, when a total of 1,118,763 people went through the gates over the fair's 11 days.

The record for Day 3 attendance is 127,277 in 1991, and the all-time attendance mark is 1,170,375 in 2019.

https://www.kcci.com/article/daily-attendance-numbers-for-the-2023-iowa-state-fair/44796130#

 

That last number is for the grand total of all the days of the fair.

Only in America, we get to watch 2 old geezers run for the Presidency.  The cut off age should be 75.

  Surely there has to be somebody in either party that is younger, and could be a great President.

Trump and Biden both need to retire. In My Opinion anyway.

17 hours ago, Tropposurfer said:

'Child sniffing' ?? As opposed to the orange madman traitor openly confessing lust for, and groping his own daughter

biden's child sniffing is on camera, please show link to pic or evidence of the bad orange man groping his daughter.

2 hours ago, EVENKEEL said:

biden's child sniffing is on camera, please show link to pic or evidence of the bad orange man groping his daughter.

Are we clutching at straws again lol what an absolute nothing burger ???? lol ???? meanwhile in the real world donald just picked up 10 more indictments that sir ain’t good not by any measure