Trump to appear at same Iowa event as Ron DeSantis, GOP rivals

Former President Donald Trump is set Friday to appear at an Iowa Republican Party dinner along with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the rest of the crowded GOP primary field.

Hours after being hit with new federal criminal charges, Trump was expected to jet into Des Moines for the Iowa GOP’s Lincoln Day Dinner in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, a rare appearance at the same event with his rivals.

The dominant Republican frontrunner is not expected to come face to face with DeSantis or other rivals.

He is flooding supporters with new fundraising pleas after being hit with a superseding indictment charging him with trying to obstruct the probe by ordering surveillance footage of his Mar-a-Lago estate where he stashed hundreds of classified documents.

Trump declared war on special counsel Jack Smith, saying he would fire him if reelected to the White House.

“I wouldn’t keep him,” Trump told the right-wing Breitbart News in his first interview after being hit with new charges Thursday in the documents case. “What he’s done is just horrible. The abuse of power, it is prosecutorial misconduct.”

Trump has only cemented his impressive position as the overwhelming favorite of GOP voters in recent months even as his legal woes pile up.

With Trump far ahead of the pack, most of the recent drama in the Republican presidential race has centered on DeSantis, whose once promising challenge has stalled badly in recent months.

Once back-in-the-pack rivals Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott are smelling blood in the water and are training their efforts on DeSantis in the hope of taking over the mantle of second place in the contest behind Trump.

Recent polls show both men gaining some ground on DeSantis, who was forced to cut a third of his campaign staff in a reboot of his struggling bid.

Scott, whose positive tone and evangelical faith has attracted a growing audience, held a town hall Thursday night in Ankeny with Iowa’s Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and a crowd of a few hundred people.

DeSantis, on the other hand, launched a two-day bus tour Thursday organized by a super PAC amid small crowds and growing criticism of his frosty personality.

Along with myriad other problems, DeSantis has also in recent days been forced to defend Florida’s controversial new Black history curriculum, which requires teachers to instruct middle school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was also heading for Iowa on Friday.

The nation’s first Black vice president will meet in Des Moines with activists pushing abortion rights, which Democrats consider to be an electoral ace in the hole as the GOP pushes stricter bans after the conservative U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision last year.