Trump launches blistering attack on 'radical Democrats just down the street' in Iowa

Donald Trump has launched a blistering attack on “radical Democrats just down the street”, after effectively gatecrashing the Iowa caucuses.

At a rally in Des Moines just days before Democrats hold their first vote of the 2020 political cycle – the decision to “get in their face” delighting his supporters – the president claimed his opponents were controlled by extremists who wanted to destroy the nation and “brainwash” children.

“During this campaign season, the good people of Iowa have had a front row seat to the lunacy and the madness of the totally sick left,” he said, speaking in the basketball court on campus of Drake University.

“This November we’re going to defeat the radical socialist Democrats that are right down the street.”

He added: “America will never be a socialist country. We can’t.”

And as more than a dozen Democrats raced across the state in the final days of campaigning ahead of Monday’s primary, or caucus, Mr Trump delivered mocking attacks on many of the frontrunners – Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg.

And all of it was delivered with an energy, passion and political cunning that whomever Democrats choose as their candidate, they will ignore at their peril.

“The Democrats have spent the last three years trying to overturn the last election,” he declared. Later, he said: “Sleepy Joe. That poor guy, he’s so lost.”

In truth, there was little in the president’s speech that was different from his usual campaign address.

He boasted about the economy, praised law enforcement officials, bragged about the targeted killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, vowed to protect the second amendment of the constitution. and repeated a fake claim that CNN “turns off” the cameras when he attacks the media, a claim the network’s White House correspondent effectively destroyed on Twitter.

He also threw in a few lines tailored especially for largely rural and white Iowa.

He said its farmers would be “driving bigger tractors and owning more land” if he was reelected. In a nod to the state’s large number of social and religious conservatives, he talked about his appointment of conservative judges and attacked late-term abortion, all of which earned loud applause.

Rather, what was most striking, but hardly surprising, about the president’s speech, was that he was here in Iowa to deliver it smack bang in what Democrats would hope was their show. While Republicans are also caucusing next week as part of the formal process to select a candidate, and there are half-a-dozen other GOP candidates on the ticket, it would be astonishing if almost all the votes cast went for the president.

As such, it is traditional for incumbents seeking reelection to stay away from the state at this point in the race, another upending of presidential norms that brought a grin to the faces of many of his supporters.

“I love the man. He’s not a politician – he’s a doer, not a bullsh*tter,” said 61-year-old Jeff Hoemann, lining up to enter the venue on a typically icy winter Iowa evening.

Mr Trump, who was introduced by vice president Mike Pence, brought to the stage former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders

She also earned loud applause when she declared: “Sorry you’ve got so many crazy liberal Democrats running around here in the last year.”

Earlier in the day, Mr Trump addressed workers at a manufacturing plant in Michigan where he could not hide his anger over the impeachment trial. He complained the Senate trial was overshadowing the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and he recounted tax cuts and economic gains under his presidency.

“And what do they do? They impeach you. Explain – explain that one,“ he said to boos, the Associated Press reported.

“But we have great Republicans out there, and they don’t like it any better than you do. A very partisan situation.”​