‘Twas the night before the election: Ivanka Trump and friends have their final rally in Des Moines

Sen. Joni Ernst joins Ivanka Trump at the Iowa State Fairgrounds the night before the 2020 election.

Jacob Tubbs

On the eve of the election and with her brother in Arizona and her father in North Carolina, daughter of President Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, teamed up with Sen. Joni Ernst, Gov. Kim Reynolds and other Iowa politicians to shoot their final shot of the campaign at the State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on Monday. 

With the building full of Trump supporters, the tunes of Guns N’ Roses and Elton John bopping in the background and chants of “USA” and “four more years,” the pep rally was in full swing. 

Iowa House District 3 Rep. David Young, who is up for reelection against Democrat Cindy Axne, was the first politician to speak. 

“I’m David Young and I’m a capitalist,” Young said. “What does that mean? It’s how our rights come from God and not from the government, it’s about the sovereignty of the individual.”

Young proceeded to praise the president’s courage and consistency of kept promises. 

“I’m voting for Donald J Trump because I’m voting for life, I’m voting for the right to defend myself, I’m voting for the right to keep my hard-earned dollars,” Young said. “He is so strong, he is a fighter and he does not deserve what he has been getting. He’s been keeping as many promises as he can keep unilaterally by himself. He had a Republican Congress and a Republican Senate, he needs that partnership back again in the U.S. Congress.”

The next speaker in line was Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. Reynolds was in lockstep with Young by also praising the president.

“If you vote, we elect Donald J Trump for four more years. A leader, a fighter, a president who puts America and Americans first. Promises made, promises kept,” Reynolds said. 

Reynolds also made room to praise Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection against Democrat Theresa Greenfield. 

“When you vote, we reelect the daughter of the heartland, Joni Ernst, and we keep the majority of the United States Senate,” Reynolds said. “Joni has never forgot where she comes from, she has been a tireless fighter for Iowans and Iowa values. She has been a champion for our farmers, veterans, working-class families. She is crisscrossing the state and she has fought for us for six years and we have to go to the mat and fight for her.”

When it was Ernst’s turn to speak, the crowd became uncorked. With Ernst in a neck-and-neck race with Greenfield, the energy of her speech felt like a shot to win it at the buzzer. Ernst defended her image as a Conservative woman.

“The Liberals muck Conservative women,” Ernst said. “This has been evident in the last couple of weeks, so if you are a Conservative woman or a woman who believes in life, if you are a woman who holds Conservative values, if you are a woman from the heartland, they will mock you over and over again.”

Ernst went on to paint a picture of what a Democratic versus a Republican America would look like.

“The choice is clear in this election cycle,” Ernst said. “We can go down the path to freedom, economic prosperity and opportunity, which is the path of Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Joni Ernst and all of the other Republicans on the ticket or we can go to the left folks and that is not the path we want to be on. That’s the path of Biden, Harris, Axne, Greenfield, Pelosi. Defunding our police, socialized medicine, a rollback of your Second Amendment rights, we say no thank you.”

After Ernst’s mic drop, the closer, Ivanka Trump, took the stage to put an end to a historic election campaign. Ivanka Trump laid out all of the president’s accomplishments and touched on Joe Biden’s inability to achieve such. 

“The president has done more for Iowa in 47 months than Joe Biden has done in 47 years,” Trump said. “In less than four years, President Trump rebuilt the United States Military, he secured America’s borders, he defeated the ISIS caliphate, he fostered peace in the Middle East, he delivered historic tax cuts and he brought jobs back to America and back to Iowa.”

Ivanka Trump ended her speech mapping out what is in the balance of this year’s election. To appeal to the Trump voters, Ivanka Trump compared her father to famous Britain minister, Winston Churchill. 

“I recently read a quote from the legendary Winston Churchill that really touched me. Winston Churchill said, ‘it was the nation that had the lion’s heart, I just had the luck to get it to roar,’” Ivanka Trump said. “Everything we hold dear is at stake in this election. The Democratic Party is not the party it used to be. I bet you there are many former Democrats in this room, I hear it across the country. The new Democratic plan plans to transform America into a socialist country. If you want a future of jobs, opportunity, safety, freedom, there is one choice and that is to vote for Donald J Trump.”