President Donald Trump traveled to Iowa on Tuesday to promote his economic agenda — his fourth attempt in the last seven weeks to pivot to the issue in a 2026 swing state.
But the would-be reset at the Horizon Event Center in Clive exposed the challenges Republicans face in this year’s midterm elections — and revealed that Trump’s focus remains fully on insisting that things are on the right track and that his presidency has been a shining success, even as voters insist otherwise.
“Under my leadership, economic growth is exploding to numbers unheard of,” Trump said. He boasted of “scoring giant wins for the farmers, ranchers, and agricultural producers like no other president has ever done.”
“Today, just after one year of President Trump, our economy is booming, incomes are rising, investment is soaring, inflation has been defeated,” Trump claimed.
He claimed his administration has secured $18 trillion in investments, a number that has ebbed and flowed in his remarks, and that is not supported by publicly available data. He bragged about record stock market highs, a recent executive order he signed aimed at making housing more affordable, and drops in the prices of eggs and gasoline.
But economic indicators on the ground paint a more complicated picture.
In October, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, identified Iowa as one of nearly two dozen states at risk of a recession. Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia ranked Iowa last in the nation for economic growth. Data shows Iowa farmers’ incomes are expected to decline by nearly a quarter this year, and the most recent employment data shows the state’s unemployment rate was 3.5% in November, up from 3.3% a year before.
In 2025, inflation cost the average Iowan household roughly $1,300 more on goods and services, according to an analysis conducted by Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. And approximately 80,000 Iowans will lose their health insurance this year, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization, with monthly insurance premiums roughly doubling for another 117,000.
Trump won Iowa in each of the past three presidential elections, earning nearly 56 percent of the vote in 2024, up from 51 percent in 2016. On Tuesday, the friendly crowd provided a welcome boost for the president despite his cratering poll numbers and the crisis in Minneapolis, where federal agents killed two American citizens in recent weeks: Alex Pretti, 37, on Saturday, and Renee Good, 37, earlier this month.
But Trump’s visit also featured interruptions from protesters — one of whom repeatedly yelled, “Release the files!” an apparent reference to the Epstein files, a collection of documents numbering into the millions, the vast majority of which the Department of Justice has yet to publicly release.
Trump, without citing evidence, referred to that demonstrator and another disruptive attendee as “paid agitators.”
“They’re paid insurrectionists, really, in some cases,” he told the crowd. “They’re sickos.”
The situation unfolding in Minnesota repeatedly overshadowed all other messages Trump tried to get out on Tuesday.
At the famous Machine Shed restaurant in Urbandale ahead of his speech, Trump told reporters that he had not heard top administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, describe Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” and “assassin.”
Trump said Pretti “certainly shouldn’t have been carrying a gun” when he was killed by Border Patrol agents, but called the killing “a very unfortunate incident.”
He also sought to downplay his recent decision to send Border Czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis while simultaneously removing Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino.
“I do that all the time,” Trump told reporters. “I shake up teams.”
“We all love Tom,” Trump added. “He met with the governor, met with the mayor. He’s going to meet with the mayor, I guess. And it’s going very well.”
Soorin Kim, Lindsey Pipia, and Vaughn Hillyard contributed reporting.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.