The NPR Politics Podcast - At Iowa GOP Conference, Trump Is Still Running The Show

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Republican presidential hopefuls flocked to Iowa this weekend for a chance to make their pitch to a key block of primary voters: conservative Christians. And even though former President Trump wasn't physically there — he dialed in via video call — he was still the largest presence in the room. This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Don Gonyea, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This episode of the podcast was produced by Elena Moore. It was edited by Lexie Schapitl. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. Hi, this is Sandra in New York, where I'm doing a bit of morning birding along the Bronx River as I walk to work on my first day back from maternity leave. This podcast was reported at 9.12 a.m. on Monday, April 24th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will still be appreciating

the chance to commune with nature as I prepare to teach high schoolers. Okay, here's the show. I am not a birder, but I appreciate birders. They're a really committed bunch. Yeah, I'm just curious if the water and air has gotten cleaner because I don't think of birding in nature with the Bronx River. But, you know, I hope it's gotten good. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And it's April 2023, which means it's a perfect time to talk Iowa 2024. Republican presidential hopefuls were there this weekend for a chance to meet with a key portion of the party's base, Christian conservatives. Don, you're in Iowa right now. You're joining us from Des Moines, and you covered the event. So tell us about it and sort of what were your main takeaways? This was an event sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. That's one of the big Christian conservative groups in Iowa. And they do these candidate cattle calls every cycle. They do multiple candidate cattle calls like this every cycle. And this one, about 1,200 people came out. They paid $60 a head for that. They got to see a bunch of candidates, some you've heard of, some with names like Donald Trump and

Mike Pence. They were handed a Chick-fil-A box lunch slash dinner as they came in. So, you know, it was a pretty full house. So people here are actually, you know, eager to start hearing these candidates. Mike Pence was first. And he, as you might expect, talked about how proud he was to be a part of all the accomplishments of the Trump-Pence administration. And Donald Trump was last. And he was not actually here in person. He spoke via a live stream from Florida. And that was how the evening ended. Don, I love these events because when you get a critical mass

of potential candidates in one place, it sort of starts to give you a sense of how they're trying to differentiate, how they're positioning themselves and sort of what the issues are that it's clear that this portion of the base wants to hear about. So were there consistent themes or sort of lanes also add that people use this event, if they're not a household name already in the way that Trump and Pence certainly are, they use the event to introduce themselves to an audience that just hasn't been paying that close attention. We saw former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on stage talking about his conservative record as governor of that state and the successes he had. You had somebody who is exploring a race not yet declared, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. And when you talk about the topics that came up, he got a couple of them as he introduced himself kind of Baptist preacher style to the crowd.

If you believe that we should educate our children and not indoctrinate our kids, let me hear you say. If you believe we need a little more ABCs and a little less CRT, let me hear you scream. Hallelujah. That's a taste of it. That was pretty typical of what his short segment was like. We heard a lot about gender reassignment surgery by minors. We heard a lot about banned books. We certainly heard a lot about abortion.

A lot about social issues. And then just generally speaking about, you know, candidate after candidate said, Joe Biden has just, you know, driven the country downhill so fast. I want to focus on abortion for a minute. And Domenico, I know we have some new polling out this morning. But Don, one of the things we've talked a lot about in the podcast that I'm curious to hear with this particular part of the electorate is that we're at this moment where, you know, on the issue, Christian conservatives are chalking up a lot of victories on the abortion debate. But they're also really politically unpopular with the country. And I'm curious how these candidates are talking about that issue. And they are also arguing amongst themselves,

Republicans, over where the line should be, right? Should it be a six-week ban? Should it be a 15-week ban? Should there be exceptions? All of that is now playing out in a very kind of noisy, messy way on the Republican side. And we saw some of that this week. In fact, Donald Trump, who, you know, talks about how he's been a champion of the pro-life movement, has come under fire because he has also said recently that individual states should decide what their law will be regarding abortion now that Roe is gone. He's been criticized by the Susan B. Anthony list and some other very hardline anti-abortion groups. So he took to the stage, again, via video, and just wanted to remind people that you're only even having this discussion and this argument because of him. I face down vile attacks to confirm our three great Supreme Court justices,

Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump clearly thinks he's got some wiggle room on this, right, with the Republican base. Not so those who are trying to topple him for the nomination, which is what we saw play out in Iowa over the weekend. Take Mike Pence. Again, careful not to attack Trump from the stage during his speech. But right afterward, they called reporters over. Pence is going to hold a brief news conference. And in that news conference, he did make it a point to differentiate himself from Trump on this stuff. But I don't agree with the former president who says this is a state's only issue. I mean, we've been given a new beginning for life in this country.

So again, he doesn't do it from the stage, but he did want to make sure that that was part of the story. Well, and it's true that what Trump did in reshaping the Supreme Court certainly won him a lot of plaudits with the kind of Christian conservative crowd. I mean, in polling, we continue to see white evangelical voters having the highest approval and favorability ratings of Trump. But the thing is, what he's done in doing that, and all of these culture war issues that he's wound up winning on for the base, it's really turned him and the Republican Party off from independence and persuadable voters because a lot of the policies and a lot of the things that the court has done are actually pretty unpopular with the majority of the country. Domenico, talk about these abortion numbers we have out in our poll this morning.

Yeah, well, in our latest NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll, we asked about, for example, whether or not people support or oppose laws that would ban medication abortion, for example, because of Mifepristone, which obviously just went before the Supreme Court, and the court put a stay on a lower court ruling that had overturned the FDA's approval of that as a prescription drug. And overwhelmingly, people said 64% said that they oppose bans on a medication abortion. That includes a majority of Republicans. When you have those kind of numbers, it's a losing political issue. Yeah, definitely. And it was a similar split when we asked about whether judges should overturn FDA approval of prescription drugs. And just 36%

said yes, 61% said no. And by the way, those numbers pretty much mirror the percentages of people who say that they think Trump should be president again when we've asked that in past polls. And it's fascinating to me that Trump maintains this position on abortion, that it should be left to the states, because that is potentially a difficult position in a Republican primary, but actually probably a difficult position in a Republican primary, but actually probably a smarter position in a general election. Like Trump seems to be positioning here not to win the nomination, which he's, you know, pretty favored to do as we sit here today, but looking forward.

All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about who wasn't there. Here in D.C., it's almost time for the annual white house correspondence dinner my advisors asked me mr president do you have a bucket list one of the only times a president gets to be funny on purpose and i said well i have something that rhymes with bucket list in our latest bonus episode hear how the evening known as nerd prom comes together. Writing the Correspondents Dinner speech is definitely a process. That's in our bonus episode, available now. Be sure to check it out if you're an NPR Politics Plus listener. And thanks for supporting NPR.

And we're back. And Don, we should note that one of the most interesting and talked about candidates in this potential primary fight is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And he did not attend this event. But I'm really curious. You know, we talked a lot about DeSantis in the podcast on Friday and how he seems to have this moment where he's slipping among the Republican base. But the voters you talked to there, are they interested in him? Did they bring him up organically? Like, what was the DeSantis vibe? They are interested in him. It doesn't mean they support him. And some of them said he should wait his turn, that we got our guy and it's Donald Trump. There was a lot of support for Donald Trump

in this room, right? But DeSantis has been to Iowa. He was in Davenport a few weeks back. And I did talk to one voter. Her name is Jen Turner. She's 41 years old, suburbanite, lives in Urbandale outside Des Moines. She said she is undecided because there's no reason to decide this early if you're an Iowa voter. Listen to everybody, hear everything. We saw President Trump in Davenport. We've been to Ron DeSantis when he was here. So we're going to continue seeing all of the people and hearing all of the words and figuring out who is best to lead this country. But Don, just to be clear, I mean, your sense walking away from this event is that Donald Trump is still their guy. Yes, yes, yes. And well, let me just give you one example.

79-year-old retired farmer Ron Partlow was there, and he acknowledges Trump has some baggage, but... We're going downhill. The whole country's going downhill. We've lost ground the past three, four years. Yeah, we need Trump. We need somebody back in there to straighten this thing out. I heard over and over that he deserves another shot. He's been tested. He's proven the country was never in better shape than when Donald Trump was president. This is a pro-Trump crowd. And, you know events, at this stage in Iowa, yeah, maybe there's a frontrunner, maybe a Mitt Romney or a John McCain or somebody is the frontrunner at this stage.

But there's always some buzz in a room where a bunch of candidates show up. Maybe this person is going to really light it up and catch fire here. And oh, that was a better than expected response to that person. But at this one, there is a little bit of a sense that, you know, somebody might do well, but this is still Trump's show. And it's going to take some outside force to, to, you know, knock him out of that, that that very, very, very strong frontrunner slot. Domenico, it's always been, to me, one of the more confounding things in politics that one of the portions of the Republican base that Donald Trump has on such lock is the evangelical voter, especially in a field that could have candidates like Mike Pence, like Tim Scott, who even prior to having presidential ambitions were so closely aligned with the

movement. You know, they've walked the walk before they talk the talk. And yet it doesn't necessarily matter to this group. I mean, they've obviously picked the candidate that might be the least put forward the kinds of judges that the evangelical community has really wanted over the years to be able to sort of change what they've seen as a liberal direction in the country. And Trump in reshaping the Supreme Court I think was a really big deal for them, the way he talks about a lot of these issues. So I think that we've learned a lot about the white evangelical community, that it's not necessarily about how pious somebody comes across. It's about what they deliver when it comes to these policies, and especially through the courts. I'm curious to see if that'll evolve as we get through the primary process, because I always am curious whether voters show up to say thank you, or they show up because of something of something forward leaning. And, you know, Trump delivered the court. It's harder to run on saying I can get you a conservative Supreme Court. He did that. Like, what's the next

thing that will move the movement forward? And I don't know if we know that, especially, you know, it's worth repeating. Trump's got a lot of baggage and a lot of legal problems. And even this week, another trial is starting in New York, a civil case by E.G. Carroll, who has alleged that the former president raped her many years ago. He obviously denies that allegation. But these are some ugly politics to wade through a nomination fight. And we know there are a host of potential things that are out there from the legal standpoint, you know, when it comes to Trump, because there's also the investigation in Georgia, which, you know, there could be something that happens within the next month, according to some reporting.

And none of these candidates feel like they can go after Trump on these things that might, might in some world be weak spots for him eventually with this base. Outside forces, if the criticism is coming from the commentators on TV or from just straight-ahead journalism performed watching Trump, none of those things really move an audience like I saw Saturday night. All right, Don, you have a flight to catch, although I am confident this is not the last time we'll be talking to you from Iowa this year. All right, this is fun. Thank you. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.