Donald Trump appeared to forget where he was during his latest campaign swing through Iowa over the weekend.
The former president took to the stage in Sioux City on Sunday where he told the crowd that he thinks he’ll win the caucuses in the state in January – and that he is disregarding the guidance of his advisors not to take anything for granted.
“I go around saying ‘of course we’re going to win Iowa’. My people said you cannot assume that,” Mr Trump told the audience at the Orpheum Theater in Sioux City, Iowa.
“There’s no way Iowa is voting against Trump,” he said, citing the benefits to farming states from his tariffs on China.
But when Mr Trump first took the stage, he greeted the crowd by muddling up what city and state he was in.
“Hello to a place where we’ve done very well, Sioux Falls. Thank you very much,” he said.
Sioux Falls is in South Dakota, 80 miles north of Sioux City, Iowa. The former president corrected himself shortly afterwards.
Mr Trump’s Sioux City speech was his eighth event in the Hawkeye State in just over a month as the former president has sped up his campaigning schedule ahead of the January showdown.
His event in the western Iowa city came after campaign stops in eastern and central parts of the state, as his team attempts to run a more organised campaign compared to his first run for the top job back in 2016.
The former president has attacked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, one of the presidential candidates trying to take him down, for several months now.
But on Sunday, he went after his former UN Ambassador, the ex-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley after she saw a polling bump and renewed interest from possible GOP voters in the state.
Mr Trump mocked Ms Haley for backtracking on her statement that she would not run for president in 2024 if Mr Trump also did so.
Republican presidential candidate former US president Donald Trump hosts a campaign event at the Orpheum Theater on 29 October 2023 in Sioux City, Iowa— (Getty Images)
The 77-year-old employed his scathing nickname of Ms Haley – “birdbrain” – and claimed she was a “highly overrated person”.
Mr Trump claimed that he appointed Ms Haley to the role of UN ambassador to help South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster assume the role. He was the lieutenant governor in the state ahead of Ms Haley’s departure.
“I liked it. I got two for the price of one,” he claimed.
In his criticism of Ms Haley, Mr Trump focused on her supposed disloyalty to him, not on her performance while serving in his cabinet.
On Saturday, Ms Haley took aim at Mr Trump, attacking him for praising authoritarian leaders and said that his way of leading using “chaos, vendettas, and drama” would be harmful.
