Trump takes aim at migrants and U.S. judges in a closing pitch to voters ahead of Iowa caucuses

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In one of his closing pitches to Iowa voters, Donald Trump warned that the U.S. is “being invaded” by migrants, railed against “radical left crazy judges” and joked that President Joe Biden spends so much time at his Delaware beach house because he “looks good in a bathing suit.”

All of it was standard Trumpian fare on Saturday evening. But instead of delivering it at one of his signature mass rallies in front of thousands of cheering fans, the former president and current candidate had to settle for a livestream flanked by a handful of supporters.

A week of blizzards and deep-freeze temperatures has pummelled this state of 3.2 million ahead of Monday’s caucuses, the first contest in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. With impassable highways lined by hundreds of jackknifed tractor-trailers and crashed cars, campaigning has been drastically scaled back.

Mr. Trump cancelled three of four scheduled weekend rallies, replacing them with studio events. And with temperatures set to plunge to -28 C Monday, all of the campaigns expressed concern about how low turnout might scramble their chances.

For now, however, the state of the race appears as frozen as the rolling farmland that defines Iowa’s topography. The final polls showed Mr. Trump with the support of about half of voters, roughly where he has been for months, with Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis battling for a distant second and Vivek Ramaswamy in fourth.

The former president’s fervent supporters vowed not to let anything stand in the way of his return to the White House.

“The cold won’t affect us true Trumpers,” said Suzie Morgan, 63, as she lined up in -27 C weather on Sunday for Mr. Trump’s only live appearance of the weekend, at a university campus in the town of Indianola.

“I hadn’t been out in two days, but this morning I got up and came out. I wasn’t going to miss this.”

Ms. Morgan, a retired construction company owner, was particularly drawn by Mr. Trump’s promises of a clampdown at the country’s borders. She gave voice to an unsubstantiated fear that terrorists were infiltrating the country along with migrants.

“Biden has destroyed our border with Mexico – and even with Canada, things are starting to happen there, too. I’m scared we’re going to have another 9/11.”

Unlike in a conventional election, the caucus system requires everyone to show up and vote at the same time – 7 p.m. ET – increasing its susceptibility to low turnout. After a debacle in 2020 in which technological glitches caused caucus results to be delayed by a week, the Democrats this year have largely abandoned the format, moving instead to mail-in ballots.

Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, is hoping for a strong enough Iowa result to turn the race into a genuine competition. While far behind Mr. Trump, she is the only candidate to improve her standing through a series of polished debate performances. She is running as an establishment Republican, contrasting her support for backing Ukraine’s war with Russia against Mr. Trump’s isolationism.

In the campaign’s dying days, Ms. Haley’s ads have played up her appeal to moderate voters. They cast Mr. Trump as the “weakest candidate against Joe Biden.” Another spot disparages Mr. DeSantis as a Trump clone, showing images of the two men together with a soundtrack of a crowd chanting, “Who’s your daddy?”

Diana Deahr, a 57-year-old office administrator, said she liked Ms. Haley’s temperament: “She’s not petty and childish like Donald Trump.” Ms. Deahr also hoped that Ms. Haley could forge a compromise in the fractious debate over abortion.

“The country is completely divided on it, and maybe we can meet in the middle. It’s a losing issue for Republicans now, and I want a Republican in office,” she said as she sat in the audience for a Haley rally in Cedar Rapids, a small industrial city in the state’s east.

Polling suggests Ms. Haley may be helped by independent and Democratic voters temporarily switching their party allegiance to take part in the Republican caucuses.

Apparently fearful of Ms. Haley’s rise, Mr. Trump has stepped up attacks on her. On social media this past week, he shared a report falsely claiming that Ms. Haley is ineligible to be president because her parents are immigrants. It was a return to Mr. Trump’s embrace of birtherism, the racist conspiracy theory that former president Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, has accused her of being in the pocket of moneyed interests – many of whom previously supported him before abandoning his underperforming campaign.

The Florida Governor has staked his bid on Iowa but mostly failed to gain traction. He is campaigning on the same policies as Mr. Trump but argues he would be better at implementing them. Among other things, Mr. DeSantis has assailed the former president for failing to finish a wall on the Mexican border and strip citizenship from the U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants.

In recent days, Mr. DeSantis has expressed exasperation that conservative media outlets rarely criticize Mr. Trump’s failings.

“They don’t hold him accountable because they’re worried about losing viewers,” he told reporters.

Mr. Trump’s supporters, for their part, don’t see much point in voting for Mr. DeSantis when Mr. Trump himself is on offer.

“Ron DeSantis would do a great job as president, but we need to keep him in Florida. After Trump leaves office, DeSantis could succeed him,” said Gary Dyer, a 68-year-old auto mechanic from Bettendorf.

Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, has similarly failed to gain momentum despite hitting up to 10 campaign events a day. On one occasion this past week, his driver drove his SUV into a snowbank during a whiteout on the highway. Mr. Ramaswamy’s ride was freed after another passing motorist stopped to help.

Mr. Trump’s schedule, by contrast, has not been particularly frenetic. He missed campaigning for most of this past week in order to attend court cases in New York and Washington – a preview of what could lie ahead throughout the campaign. The former president faces four coming criminal trials, including two for trying to overturn the 2020 election.

His supporters shrugged these off. Many believe conspiracy theories that falsely claim the election was stolen and that Mr. Trump’s enemies deliberately provoked the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters to tarnish him.

“The trials are a Democratic ploy to give him a bad name,” Nancy Manders, a 67-year-old retiree, said at a Trump campaign event at a Davenport church.

Mr. Trump, for his part, spent much of the livestream urging supporters not to be complacent about the inevitability of his victory. The event’s host, state Attorney-General Brenna Bird, was more bullish. The caucuses, she predicted, would eliminate all of Mr. Trump’s competition.

“Sometimes the road to the White House starts in Iowa,” she declared. “This time, it ends in Iowa.”