The 2024 GOP Field Celebrated the Fourth with Voters while Trump Complained about 2020 Online

Donald Trump’s unique campaign style was laid bare this week as other candidates traveled to early primary states to participate in local Fourth of July festivities, while Trump stayed home.

Other candidates walked in small-town parades and shook hands with voters in New Hampshire and Iowa. Trump chose to celebrate the holiday by spreading false information about the 2020 election on Truth Social.

He shared a post that suggested just 113 million votes were cast in 2020, which the original poster interpreted as meaning that if Trump had secured 74 million votes, Biden would have been left with just 39 million votes.

Trump said, “A lot has been made of this lately. What do you think?”

Yet in reality, more than 158 million votes were cast in the presidential race in 2020. The user arrived at the false number by misinterpreting a statistic about a 67 percent turnout: That turnout was among all citizens of voting age, not all registered voters.

While Trump chose to forgo the typical retail politicking in the early primary states on Independence Day, he held a massive rally in South Carolina on Saturday.

Trump’s rally, far from the intimate affairs typically held by other GOP contenders, drew a crowd of 15,000 in the small town of Pickens, S.C., which has a population of 3,400. Hundreds of people had lined up to attend the rally by 6 a.m. While Pickens Police Chief Randall Beach estimated a crowd of 50,000 attended the event, the Secret Service estimated a turnout closer to 15,000.

The town’s director of marketing said it was a “once-in-a-lifetime event” for Pickens.

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina spoke at the event for just over six minutes as the crowd booed him the entire time.

While Trump’s previous two campaigns were defined by his massive rallies, the event in Pickens was only Trump’s second large-scale rally since he entered the race in November. Trump has held fewer than 30 in-person campaign events this cycle, according to Axios. By contrast, other GOP contenders, many of whom entered the race months after Trump, have held dozens of events: 55 for Ron DeSantis, 59 for Nikki Haley, 36 for Tim Scott, and 102 for Vivek Ramaswamy.

DeSantis attended two parades in New Hampshire on Tuesday, in Wolfeboro and Merrimack — and also used the holiday as a chance to highlight Florida’s Freedom Summer sales-tax holiday. Scott also attended the Merrimack parade, while Asa Hutchinson appeared at the Clear Lake Fourth of July parade in Iowa. Former vice president Mike Pence also spent the holiday in Iowa, in Urbandale, as did Miami mayor Francis Suarez, who spent the day in Cedar Rapids.

While Trump has spent less time on the campaign trail than his competitors, he is still the front-runner in the race by far: He is 30 points ahead of DeSantis, who has consistently polled in second place, according to a polling average from RealClearPolitics.

Still, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the New York Times “it would be incorrect to write that he will be sparing retail politics.” Trump campaign aide Chris LaCivita also previously said the rallies are “half a million bucks a pop” to explain why the campaign has held fewer rallies this go-round.

Ahead of the holiday weekend, the two front-runners crossed paths at the Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia.

The event was big for DeSantis, who has sought to paint himself as the most pro-parent candidate in the GOP primary.

“I think we have something in common, more than just our shared belief in education and parents’ rights,” DeSantis told the crowd. “I see that Moms for Liberty is coming under attack by the left. Attack by the corporate media. Protests out here in the streets. Now you know how I feel everywhere I go. But I want to congratulate you for that because that is a sign that we are winning this fight.”

He added: “When I see events like they had in New York City where they’re chanting some drag queen, ‘we are coming for your kids.’ Let me tell you something: you start messing with our kids, we’ve got problems. I think what we’ve seen across this country in recent years has awakened the most powerful political force in this country: mama bears, and they’re ready to roll. We’ve done so much on these issues in Florida and I will do all this as the next president.”

DeSantis spoke at the conference about his record of protecting children and parents’ rights, including Florida’s passage of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, Parental Rights in Education bill, Let Kids Be Kids bill, and universal-school-choice legislation. The state also passed a tax-relief package in May that makes baby and toddler necessities tax-free.

Trump, meanwhile, told the conference he would “eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the entire federal government.” He said he would also direct the DOJ “to pursue civil-rights claims against any school, corporation, or university that engages in unlawful racial discrimination.”

Nikki Haley, who called herself a “mom for liberty,” Ramaswamy, and Hutchinson also made appearances at the event.

“Never stand in the way of moms on a mission. @Moms4Liberty is right: we don’t co-parent with the government!” Haley wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Larry Elder largely went the way of Ramaswamy this week when he said he is a “big fan” of Trump and that he would be open to being Trump’s, or someone else’s, running mate.

“I am running for president, I’m not running for vice president, I’m not running for a cabinet position,” Elder told Newsweek. “However in the unlikely event I’m not the party nominee, and if Trump or DeSantis or one of the other persons call and ask me to be vice president, I will take the call. I won’t let it go to voicemail.”

Elder suggested that Trump can’t win over crucial swing-state voters who would not vote for him even if he “walked on water.”

“In fact, they would accuse him of not being able to swim. I have no idea what to do about Trump derangement syndrome — maybe someday somebody will develop a vaccine.”

Around NR

• Rich Lowry highlights a poll that found that voters in Nevada, Such Carolina, New Hampshire, and Iowa trust Trump to handle the economy far more than they trust DeSantis. While Lowry notes he can’t say whether the methodology is sound, “this makes intuitive sense, . . . since DeSantis hasn’t had a discernible economic message in his campaign.”

• Mike Pence took an unannounced trip to Kyiv last week and met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, becoming the first 2024 GOP presidential candidate to visit the country. Jimmy Quinn has more on the trip:

During his conversation with Zelensky, Pence conveyed his frustration that the Biden administration has dragged its feet on sending Abrams tanks and other weapons that Kyiv needs to wage a counteroffensive, Marc Short, Pence’s former chief of staff, told National Review. Short added that the former VP views support of Ukraine as crucial to keeping U.S. troops out of a conflict that would be provoked by a future Russian attack on a NATO country.

• DeSantis has responded to questions about January 6 by saying he has nothing to do with what happened and that, while he didn’t “enjoy seeing” what happened, that “we gotta move forward on this stuff.” Christie said on CNN that DeSantis’s answer is not enough: “You don’t have an opinion about January 6, except to say ‘I didn’t particularly enjoy what happened’? People were killed.” Michael Brendan Dougherty offers his own take:

Polls indicate that a larger share of Republicans don’t want to see other Republicans attack Donald Trump than want to see them attack Trump. Maybe that’s informing DeSantis’s strategy here. I think the polls aren’t designed well enough to capture the reality. What I think is really behind the numbers is that GOP voters don’t want GOP candidates to repeat the Left’s criticisms of Trump, or seem to aid the Left by criticizing Trump.

• Madeleine Kearns imagines what a hypothetical DeSantis–Newsom general election would look like:

A 2024 general election between the two of them — as hypothetical as that is — would be a fascinating battle in the nation’s culture wars. Both men are more ideological than either Biden or Trump. And in terms of strategy, Newsom and DeSantis are more similar than they’d like to think.

• South Dakota governor Kristi Noem said last week she doesn’t plan to endorse a candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, but suggested there is no “path to victory” for any candidate besides former president Donald Trump. More from me here.

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