(CNN) The competing ambitions of former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis collide Saturday in Iowa, the closest the two have come to each other on the road as they move toward a 2024 showdown.
DeSantis will flip burgers and chat up potential caucus-goers in northwestern Iowa on Saturday before addressing a local Republican fundraiser in Cedar Rapids. Meanwhile, in Des Moines the same night, Trump will speak to thousands of his followers at a signature rally, his first campaign event since CNN’s town hall on Wednesday and his first time in a controlled setting since a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming of author E. Jean Carroll.
“We’re going to Iowa because we’re going to Iowa,” one Trump adviser said, downplaying the dueling events. “We are 100% focused on caucusing this trip and outreach to potential voters.”
Even as Trump demonstrates an early dominance over the GOP primary field, the decision to bracket DeSantis’ visit and the frequent attacks aimed at his rival signal that the former president still sees the Florida governor as his most serious potential challenger for the party’s nomination.
DeSantis, for his part, has approached the GOP’s 2024 front-runner cautiously as he maneuvers toward a presidential campaign of his own. The governor has spent much of the past month avoiding Trump — dodging the former president’s constant missives and deflecting questions about his potential rival’s mounting legal troubles — and there is little indication he plans to change strategies before he officially gets in the race in the coming weeks.
“You know, there’s different stuff in the news, but we’ve been busy,” DeSantis said Wednesday, the day after the E. Jean Carroll verdict came down.
DeSantis allies go on the attack
Allies of DeSantis, however, have begun testing potential counterattacks. Leading up to Trump’s New Hampshire town hall on CNN, Never Back Down, a super PAC aligned with DeSantis, called the former president “a candidate who has lost his luster” and suggested he was appearing on the cable outlet to “cling to his eroding ‘frontrunner’ status.” During the Wednesday event, the super PAC cheered on host Kaitlan Collins as she prodded Trump on the unfinished wall at the US-Mexico border, and it accused him of turning on gun owners as president by banning bump stocks.
As Trump left the stage, the group tweeted out a list of controversies Trump had spent the hour discussing, including his sexual abuse case, the investigations into “his stash of taxpayer-owned classified documents at Mar-a-Lago,” his attempts to overturn the 2020 Georgia presidential election, and his role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol and whether he would pardon rioters.
“How does this Make America Great Again?” the tweet stated.
The missive stood out for its willingness to target Trump over topics DeSantis himself has been loath to weigh in on. DeSantis has repeatedly declined to address questions about the 2020 election results and Trump’s election lies. And when DeSantis has broached these controversies, he has largely stood by Trump.
Though he…
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