Biden and Trump revisit Jan. 6 before third anniversary and the 2024 election

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Former President Donald Trump‘s return to Iowa in 2024 coincides with the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 unrest at the Capitol, and President Joe Biden isn’t letting him forget it.

But although some Republicans became more weary (and wary) of Trump post-Jan. 6, others warn Democrats that their strategy of underscoring the importance of protecting democracy only strengthens their support of him.

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In the western Iowa town of Council Bluffs, the Washington Examiner met Peter Finn, 63, a likely caucusgoer who is choosing between Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) two weeks before the opening 2024 Republican contest on Jan. 15.

“I’m pretty sure that it’s DeSantis, and it has been for a long time,” Finn said after an event for the governor. “The only little thing is I’d like to stick a big middle finger to the people who are banging on President Trump.”

“The lawsuits and all the rest of it, trying to keep him off the ballots, is totally unfair, and it’s bad for our country to be doing that, so there’s that motivation,” the Council Bluffs construction small business owner added. “I like Gov. DeSantis, but I’m very bitter that they’re doing this to our country and to an ex-president.”

But while Finn was adamant the “Jan. 6 thing” was “way overblown,” one reason he is considering DeSantis is that the governor “doesn’t come with near as much baggage.”

At the same event, Marie Andersen, 76, a DeSantis supporter, also used the word “baggage” to describe why she is backing the governor.

“For a lot of us, that was kind of a tipping point with him,” the retired healthcare recruiter said of Trump and Jan. 6. “I don’t like the way he handled Jan. 6. I don’t like the things that, just how he’s handled it since. I think that he burned out a lot of Republicans. There might be people that come to rallies, and there might be people that answer the polls, but I just … think that he’s left a sour taste in a lot of Republicans’s mouths, what he put the party through.”

Andersen conceded that she would vote for Trump over “such a disaster” Biden despite it being with “a prayer and a song” because she is “nervous” he will “cause a bunch of chaos.” She additionally understood why Trump was “angry” since the Democrats “put him through … a lot of rotten stuff to him.”

“But as president, you can’t take your anger out on another candidate,” she said. “I’m afraid he’s out for revenge.”

Both DeSantis and former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley have cited Trump’s “baggage” on the campaign trail, though Haley’s team declined to comment for this story. Simultaneously, Trump averages a 30-plus percentage point advantage in Iowa, with a slightly smaller 20-odd point lead in New Hampshire.

In an interview with Bob Vander Plaats, the president and CEO of the socially conservative organization Family Leader and a DeSantis surrogate, he dismissed the idea the Jan. 6 anniversary would “make or break anybody” in Iowa as “it has not dented the former president [or] his support amongst a lot of Republicans.”

“That’s already been baked into the cake, so to speak,” he said. “Right now, it’s going to be [about] electability, who can win the general election. … And that’s where I think they still see Trump is going to present the highest hurdle to winning the general election.”

But DeSantis, who this week faced criticism from voters in Iowa for being “soft” on Trump, has to be careful regarding the former president as he seeks the support of his backers, according to Vander Plaats.

“He knows that he is a second choice amongst Trump supporters, by and large, so the more he can break people away from Trump, they’re going to go to him, say not Nikki Haley,” the prominent Iowan said. “He can’t be disrespectful to the former president, but he also has to be able to communicate the reality of what’s at stake here.”

Biden is adopting a similar strategy at the White House and on the campaign trail, counterprogramming Trump’s rallies in Mason City and Sioux Center on Friday, the day before the Jan. 6 anniversary, with his own remarks near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a historic Revolutionary War site. His address will be amplified with a new ad, his team’s first of 2024, called “Cause,” in which he talks about what he says is “Trump and MAGA extremists’s prior and ongoing efforts to erode American democracy and excuse and even promote political violence.” Biden is then expected to speak at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina, where the 2015 racially motivated shooting took place, on Monday.

Meanwhile, Trump is anticipated to have a message concerning the “two-tiered system of justice,” his son Eric told the Washington Examiner.

“I mean, you’d have people who firebombed [St.] John’s Church, a walk across from the White House [in 2016 during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations],” he said. “I’m not sure if people really buy that talking point anymore, given the Left and what the Left has gotten away with and the crime and murders and kidnappings and carjackings and you name it that are happening in Democratic-controlled areas all over the country.”

On the opposite side of the state in Keokuk, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), a Trump supporter and a potential vice presidential nominee, mocked Democrats for contending they were “protecting democracy” while also attempting to remove Trump from ballots — particularly after his federal Russia investigation, impeachments, and Justice Department prosecutions.

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“People don’t care. Everyone’s over it,” she told the Washington Examiner after her Trump campaign event. “No matter how much the media wants to shove Jan. 6, and no matter how much the Democrats want to talk about Jan. 6, all of these people right here, I guarantee you, they remember BLM riots.”

Trump will be in Clinton and Newton on Saturday too, in addition to Atlantic, Cherokee, Indianola, and Sioux City next weekend.