Former President Donald Trump apparently sees a path to victory in Iowa through … Puerto Rico.
New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman noted on X (formerly Twitter) that Team Trump is apparently becoming concerned about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ heavy bet on winning the Iowa Republican caucuses.
Accordingly, Haberman posted on Friday that a pro-Trump superPAC has started running ads against DeSantis in Iowa, which signals a recent shift. The PAC had been hitting President Joe Biden, which indicated that Trump believed Iowa was sewn up.
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DeSantis has pledged to visit all 99 counties in Iowa, openly courted the endorsement of popular Gov. Kim Reynolds, including suggesting he would pick her as a vice presidential candidate, and argued that Iowa should host a presidential debate and that Trump should participate.
Despite that, Trump still retains a 32-point lead over DeSantis, even though he does not have a solid majority, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.
As Haberman reported, the latest attack ad by the pro-Trump PAC “focuses on DeSantis’s co-sponsoring of a bill for a pathway to statehood for Puerto Rico while he was a congressman, a move generally unpopular with Republican leaders over the years.”
In 2018, Jenniffer González-Colón, the resident commissioner in Congress representing Puerto Rico and a Republican, introduced the Puerto Rico Admission Act. DeSantis was among 26 GOP co-sponsors, including five other Florida Republicans.
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Many Republicans have been critical of Puerto Rico becoming a state because they believe it would swing to Democrats.
In 2018, Trump was quoted as being an “absolute no” on statehood, but his comments were more nuanced than headlines suggested.
As the Orlando Sentinel reported at the time, Trump, reacting to criticism of the federal response to Hurricane Maria by far-left San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, said, “With people like that involved in Puerto Rico, I would be an absolute no.”
“Puerto Rico shouldn’t be talking about statehood until they get some people that really know what they’re doing,” he added.
While it’s unclear how much weight Iowa Republican voters will place on a bill for Puerto Rican statehood from five years ago, DeSantis’ campaign was buoyed by the news of Trump’s redirection.
“After months of pounding their chest that they already had the race won, Team Trump is now being forced to publicly admit that Ron DeSantis is climbing in Iowa and is a dire threat to their chances of securing the nomination,” Andrew Romeo, DeSantis’ campaign spokesman, posted on X.
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