Former President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized his 2024 Republican presidential primary rivals for jumping into the race and ripped his top competitor for insisting a two-term GOP president is needed to reverse the policies of the Biden administration.
Trump, 76, took aim at his opponents during a pre-taped town hall event in Clive, Iowa, moderated by Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The ex-commander-in-chief laid into Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis when asked by Hannity how quickly he’d be able to “shift gears” and address the crisis at the southern border, make the country energy independent, improve school systems and “bring back law and order and safety and security” if elected.
“I think very quickly,” Trump responded, before referencing comments DeSantis made Tuesday in Iowa about the importance of electing a candidate that would be eligible to serve two terms in office.
“Let me just say, so I heard DeSantis saying, ‘Oh, well, I get eight years, I get eight years, he gets four.’ You don’t need four and you don’t need eight, you need six months. Within six months,” Trump said, adding, “And frankly, I wouldn’t vote for him because he said you need eight years. You need six months.”
On Tuesday, in his first official campaign event as a presidential candidate, DeSantis said, “And let’s just be clear, it really does take two terms as president to be able to finish this job. The bureaucracy is so entrenched that I think we can bring George Washington back and I don’t think he could fix it in one single four year term.”
The former president also took shots at rivals further down in the polls than DeSantis, questioning the purpose of their White House bids, including former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is reportedly planning to enter the GOP presidential primary fray next week in New Hampshire.
“I don’t know why people are doing it. They’re at 1%. Some are at zero. I hear Chris Christie’s coming in,” Trump said, which elicited raucous laughter from the crowd.
“He was at 6% in New Jersey, which is – I love New Jersey – but 6% approval rating in New Jersey. What’s the purpose? And he’s polling at zero,” Trump claimed.
Trump also ridiculed former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, dubbing him “Ada” and suggesting voters have never heard of him.
“I call him ‘Ada’ Hutchinson. I don’t call him Asa, I call ‘Ada.’ I gave him a little name for some reason, for certain reasons. But this guy – nobody knows who the hell he is. Never, never good,” Trump argued.
“I don’t understand what they’re doing,” Trump continued, suggesting that some candidates were polling “less than zero.”
“When you’re 1% or less – you know 1%, it says 1% with an arrow pointing left. There’s one guy who’s at zero with an arrow pointing left, that means he’s at less than zero,” Trump said to more laughter.
The former president then declared that he would focus his attacks on DeSantis, given that he is currently polling second in most surveys.
“You really go after the one who’s second. And I think the one who’s second is going down so much and so rapidly that I don’t think he’s going to be second that much longer. I think he’s going to be third or fourth,” Trump predicted.
The former president also declared it to be “the most serious time and the most dangerous time right now in the history of our country,” citing Russia’s incursion in Ukraine and China’s saber-rattling directed at Taiwan.
He also praised GOP-led investigations into the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling operation being conducted by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
“They’re doing a fantastic job,” Trump said, accusing the president and his son Hunter Biden of “being protected” by an “unfair system.”
“It’s a one-sided system, it’s a very unfair system, but they’re being protected,” the former president said.
“When you look at all of this criminality, like the laptop has so much stuff on it, it’s so bad, it’s so evil, and yet they don’t want to do anything,” Trump said, referring to the Justice Department and the laptop abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop by Hunter Biden in 2019.