GOP strategist suggests Trump cancelled Iowa rally to avoid having smaller crowd than DeSantis

DeSantis continued to meet voters just minutes from where Trump was to speak

Donald Trump’s decision to cancel a rally Saturday evening in Iowa is already being picked apart by his rivals.

The former president was set to speak over the weekend in Des Moines but abruptly cancelled his plans shortly before his departure from Mar-a-Lago, citing weather concerns. The county fell under a tornado watch Saturday evening as heavy thunderstorms rocked parts of the country.

But Iowa was spared from the brunt of the storms, which instead caused damage in Oklahoma and Kansas. And to make matters worse for the former president, his likely 2024 rival continued to hold events in and around the city that night, even remarking on how nice the weather was.

On Sunday, a Republican commentator on CNN speculated that Mr Trump’s real reasoning for cancelling the rally had been a fear of Mr DeSantis overshadowing him with a larger crowd size.

“Some people say it was because of the weather. Other people say it was because he wasn't able to draw a big crowd. I don't know what the truth is,” said Scott Jennings, a former official with the second Bush White House.

Mr Trump’s rivals are keen to spot any hint of weakness in the ex-president’s support base as they charge into the 2024 primary with no real indication, at least so far, that he will be unseated as the de facto leader of their party. Mr Trump continues to enjoy a wide polling lead over all his likely and announced challengers, including Mr DeSantis who remains the only Republican polling in the double digits other than the former president himself.

That polling threshold cleared by the Florida governor has earned him the clear ire of the former president, who has spent months attempting to bain Mr DeSantis into an all-out political brawl. He has loudly insisted in numerous interviews and other appearances that Mr DeSantis came begging for his endorsement in 2018 and would not have been re-elected (or won the first time) without his support.

Those claims are likely overblown. While Mr DeSantis did win a narrow victory in 2018, he coasted to reelection in 2022 while Republicans across Florida saw similar success.

Comparatively, on the national stage, candidates who were more vocally aligned with Mr Trump and his false claims about the 2020 election tended to underperform their GOP colleagues in many crucial midterm contests.