Trump to target DeSantis for past opposition to ethanol standards during Iowa stop

When former President Trump returns to Iowa on Friday, expect him to take aim at his top rival for the GOP presidential nomination — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis —  over ethanol.

The Trump campaign says that the former president will use a portion of his comments at his event in an arena in western Iowa to target DeSantis for the Florida governor’s past opposition to the federal mandate for ethanol — the renewable fuel additive which Iowa leads the nation in producing.

“DeSantis has problematic policy positions that hurt farmers and demonize ethanol,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told Fox News on Friday, ahead of Trump’s visit. “President Trump plans to highlight that.”

During his tenure in Congress, then Rep. DeSantis co-sponsored a bill in 2017 that would have ended the renewable fuel standard, a move favored by fiscal conservatives who view the mandate as overreach by the federal government.

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Federal support for ethanol, a corn-based fuel, has long been a prominent issue in the presidential nominating process thanks to Iowa’s position as the lead-off state in the GOP primary and caucus schedule for the past half century.

Cheung added that Trump will also spotlight his proposals on agriculture and farming during his speech at an arena in Council Bluffs, a city in western Iowa that sits directly across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska. 

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This is expected to be Trump’s largest event to date in Iowa since the former president launched his third straight White House campaign in November. 

Trump spoke in front of more than 1,500 people at a Davenport, Iowa, theater in March. An outdoor rally in Des Moines that was expected to draw at least 5,000 in attendance in May was canceled at the last minute due to the threat of severe storms.

Trump is the commanding front-runner in the latest GOP presidential primary polls, double-digits ahead of DeSantis, with the rest of the large field of candidates in the single digits.

Trump’s team announced on Wednesday that the former president’s campaign and Save America, his political action committee, together brought in over $35 million during the April-June second quarter of 2023 political fundraising. 

Fox Digital was first to report Thursday that DeSantis hauled in $20 million in fundraising during the first six weeks of his presidential campaign from his launch in late May through the end of last June.