COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — The day before Iowa’s caucuses, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump spent Sunday appearing with a well-known Christian conservative while attacking rival [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] as “dishonest.”
At an afternoon event at a middle school near the Missouri River, Trump appeared with Jerry Falwell, Jr., the president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia who has endorsed the candidate and who Trump is hoping will help him win the state’s strong evangelical vote.
Rather than his boisterous — and sometimes rambling — rally, Trump sat for a more subdued question and answer session on stage with Falwell.
He went out of his way to criticize Cruz. Heading into Monday’s caucuses — the first votes of the 2016 election season — Trump leads him 28 percent to 23 percent in the Des Moines Register poll released Saturday. Florida Sen. [crscore]Marco Rubio[/crscore] follows in third with 15 percent.
He singled out Cruz for a mail piece sent to voters that has been criticized as misleading for calling it an “official public record” and giving people grades from A to F and encouraging people to caucus.
“It’s so dishonest,” he said. “It is so dishonest.”
He also hit the senator over loans he took out from Goldman Sachs and Citibank during his 2012 Senate campaign. And he reiterated his attacks over Cruz’s eligibility.
“He was born in Canada. A lot of people say he can’t even be running…so we’ll find out about that.”
At another point during the event, Trump invited representatives from the group Partners for Patriots to present a large $100,000 ceremonial cardboard check from his recent event in Iowa to raise money for veterans. The organization pairs veterans with PTSD with a service dog.
Trump — who famously took heat earlier in the campaign for making disparaging remarks about Sen. [crscore]John McCain[/crscore]’s time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam — boycotted a Fox News debate last week, deciding to hold an event to raise money for veterans instead.
Tana Goertz, Trump’s Iowa co-chairwoman, opened the event by telling the crowd how she was once a contestant on Trump’s NBC show “The Apprentice.”
“I got to know the real man,” Goertz said. “Not the man the media portrays…but the real Donald Trump.”
She instructed those at the rally to go online and get information about how to caucus for the New York businessman on Monday.
“It’s going to be a record caucus…you guys are not the silent majority, you are the noisy majority,” she said.
“You get one chance tomorrow night to make a difference,” Goertz said. “Don’t waste it on a wimp. Don’t waste your vote on a wimp. Write down Mr. Trump.”