URBANDALE — After being turned away at the door of an over-capacity Trump event in Cedar Falls Tuesday night, I made sure to show up an hour early for the candidate’s town hall here at Living History Farms. An eager crowd of no more than a hundred people crammed inside the small museum, where a poster extolling the Six Pillars of Character hung overhead.
The event was supposed to begin at 9:30, but at 10:30 there was still no sign of Trump. Tana Goertz, his Iowa state co-chair and a season three runner-up on “The Apprentice,” came out to coax the increasingly annoyed crowd. She asked for a show of hands of those who would vote for Trump on caucus night. It looked like about 50 percent of hands went up. “We know the media says you won’t caucus,” she said, before reminding attendees to look up their caucus locations and to show up on time on Feb. 1.
Just when I thought I might have to choose between missing seeing Trump speak or missing my flight home, a slow-clap started. That didn’t work, so it was followed by chants of “We want Trump! We want Trump!” A few minutes later he finally appeared on stage. “I haven’t slept yet,” he said, before launching into his usual hyperbole: “We’re winning in every single poll. In fact, I have a feeling we’re actually going to do better than the polls are saying.”
Trump cited a CNN/ORC poll from early December that showed him with 33 percent support among Iowa Republicans — but that survey is old and primary races can change quickly (our forecast models give the CNN poll a weight of 0.02, compared to this week’s Selzer & Co. poll, which has a weight of 1.54 and shows Trump with 22 percent support in Iowa). He touched on last night’s debate, saying that “a few people” did very well and “a few people” did very poorly, but he didn’t name names.
Questions from the crowd ranged from how he’d control the heroin epidemic (Trump replied that he’d “build a wall”), how he’d work with Democrats in Congress (“I’m a businessman, I work with everyone”) and why he avoids political correctness (“It takes too long”). He closed out his speech by telling the crowd that if he becomes president, “We’re going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.” (They’re still saying it in Iowa, at least.)
