Editor’s Note: This article is part of “If Trump Wins,” a project considering what Donald Trump might do if reelected in 2024.

When Donald Trump first took office, he put a premium on what he called “central casting” hires—people with impressive résumés who matched his image of an ideal administration official. Yes, he brought along his share of Steve Bannons and Michael Flynns. But there was also James Mattis, the decorated four-star general who took over the Defense Department, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs chief operating officer who was appointed head of the National Economic Council, and Rex Tillerson, who left one of the world’s most profitable international conglomerates to become secretary of state.

Trump seemed positively giddy that all of these important people were suddenly willing to work for him. And although his populist supporters lamented the presence of so many swamp creatures in his administration, establishment Washington expressed pleasant surprise at the picks. A consensus had formed that what the incoming administration needed most was “adults in the room.” To save the country from ruin, the thinking went, reasonable Republicans had a patriotic duty to work for Trump if asked. Many of them did.

[From the December 2019 issue: James Mattis on the enemy within]

Don’t expect it to happen again. The available supply of serious, qualified people willing to serve in a Trump administration has dwindled since 2017. After all, the so-called adults didn’t fare so well in their respective rooms. Some quit in frustration or disgrace; others were publicly fired by the president. Several have spent their post–White House lives fielding congressional subpoenas and getting indicted. And after seeing one Trump term up close, vanishingly few of them are interested in a sequel: This past summer, NBC News reported that just four of Trump’s 44 Cabinet secretaries had endorsed his current bid.

Even if mainstream Republicans did want to work for him again, Trump is unlikely to want them. He’s made little secret of the fact that he felt burned by many in his first Cabinet. This time around, according to people in Trump’s orbit, he would prioritize obedience over credentials. “I think there’s going to be a very concerted, calculated effort to ensure that the people he puts in his next administration—they don’t have to share his worldview exactly, but they have to implement it,” Hogan Gidley, a former Trump White House spokesperson, told me.

What would this look like in practice? Predicting presidential appointments nearly a year before the election is a fool’s errand, especially with a candidate as mercurial as this one. And, whether for reasons of low public opinion or ongoing legal jeopardy, some of Trump’s likely picks might struggle to get confirmed (expect a series of contentious hearings). But the names currently circulating in MAGA world offer a glimpse at the kind of people Trump could gravitate toward.

One Trump-world figure with a record of deference to the boss is Stephen Miller. As a speechwriter and policy adviser, Miller managed to endure while so many of his colleagues flamed out in part because he was satisfied with being a staffer instead of a star. He was also fully aligned with the president on his signature issue: immigration. Inside the White House, Miller championed some of the administration’s most draconian measures, including the Muslim travel ban and the family-separation policy. In a second Trump term, some expect Miller to get a job that will give him significant influence over immigration policy—perhaps head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or even secretary of homeland security. Given Miller’s villainous reputation in Democratic circles, however, he might have a hard time getting confirmed by the Senate. If that happens, some think White House chief of staff might be a good consolation prize.

[From the September 2022 issue: The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy]

For secretary of state, one likely candidate is Richard Grenell. Before Trump appointed him ambassador to Germany in 2018, Grenell was best-known as a right-wing foreign-policy pundit and an inexhaustible Twitter troll. He brought his signature bellicosity to Berlin, hectoring journalists and government officials on Twitter, and telling a Breitbart London reporter early in his tenure that he planned to use his position to “empower other conservatives throughout Europe.” (He had to walk back the comment after some in Germany interpreted it as a call for far-right regime change.)

Grenell’s undiplomatic approach to diplomacy exasperated German officials and thrilled Trump, who reportedly described him as an ambassador who “gets it.” Grenell has spent recent years performing his loyalty as a Trump ally and, according to one source, privately building his case for the secretary-of-state role.

One job that Trump will be especially focused on getting right is attorney general. He believes that both of the men who held this position during his term—Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr—were guilty of grievous betrayal. Since then, Trump has been charged with 91 felony counts across four separate criminal cases—evidence, he claims, of a historic “political persecution.” (He has pleaded not guilty in all cases.) Trump has pledged to use the Justice Department to visit revenge on his persecutors if he returns to the White House.

“The notion of the so-called independence of the Department of Justice needs to be consigned to the ash heap of history,” says Paul Dans, who served in the Office of Personnel Management under Trump and now leads an effort by the Heritage Foundation to recruit conservative appointees for the next Republican administration. To that end, Trump allies have floated a range of loyalists for attorney general, including Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Josh Hawley; former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Jeffrey Clark, formerly one of Trump’s assistant attorneys general, who was indicted in Georgia on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election (the charges are still pending).

Vivek Ramaswamy—the fast-talking entrepreneur running in the Republican presidential primary as of this writing—is also expected to get a top post in the administration. Ramaswamy has praised Trump on the campaign trail and positioned himself as the natural heir to the former president. Trump has responded to the flattery in kind, publicly praising his opponent as a “very, very, very intelligent person.” Some have even speculated that Ramaswamy could be Trump’s pick for vice president.

One source close to Ramaswamy told me that a Trump adviser had recently asked him what job the candidate might want in a future administration. After thinking about it, the source suggested ambassador to the United Nations, reasoning that he’s a “good talker.” The Trump adviser said he’d keep it in mind, though it’s worth noting that Ramaswamy’s lack of support for Ukraine and his suggestion that Russia be allowed to keep some of the territory it has seized could lead to confirmation trouble.

Beyond the high-profile posts, the Trump team may have more jobs to fill in 2025 than a typical administration does. Dans and his colleagues at Heritage are laying the groundwork for a radical politicization of the federal civilian workforce. If they get their way, the next Republican president will sign an executive order eliminating civil-service protections for up to 50,000 federal workers, effectively making the people in these roles political appointees. Rank-and-file budget wonks, lawyers, and administrators working in dozens of agencies would be reclassified as Schedule F employees, and the president would be able to fire them at will, with or without cause. These fired civil servants’ former posts could be left empty—or filled with Trump loyalists. To that end, Heritage has begun to put together a roster of thousands of pre-vetted potential recruits. “What we’re really talking about is a major renovation to government,” Dans told me.

Trump actually signed an executive order along these lines in the final months of his presidency, but it was reversed by his successor. On the campaign trail, Trump has vowed to reinstate it with the goal of creating a more compliant federal workforce for himself. “Either the deep state destroys America,” he has declared, “or we destroy the deep state.”

This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “Loyalists, Lapdogs, and Cronies.”

Editor’s Note: This article is part of “If Trump Wins,” a project considering what Donald Trump might do if reelected in 2024.

If Donald Trump regains the presidency, he will once again become the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States. There may be no American leader less suited to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” as the Constitution directs the president. But that authority comes with the office, including command of the Justice Department and the FBI.

We know what Trump would like to do with that power, because he’s said so out loud. He is driven by self-interest and revenge, in that order. He wants to squelch the criminal charges now pending against him, and he wants to redeploy federal prosecutors against his enemies, beginning with President Joe Biden. The important question is how much of that agenda he could actually carry out in a second term.

Trump tried and failed to cross many lines during his time in the White House. He proposed, for example, that the IRS conduct punitive audits of his political antagonists and that Border Patrol officers shoot migrants in the legs. Subordinates talked the former president out of many such schemes or passively resisted them by running out the clock. The whole second volume of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which documented 10 occasions on which Trump tried to obstruct justice, can be read as a compilation of thwarted directives.

[From the November 2023 issue: How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump]

The institutional resistance Trump faced has reinforced his determination to place loyalists in key jobs should he win reelection. One example is Jeffrey Clark, who tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Trump sought to appoint Clark as acting attorney general in early January 2021, but backed off after a mass-resignation threat at the DOJ. People who know him well suggest that he would not let that threat deter him a second time. Trump will also want to fire Christopher Wray, the FBI director, and replace him with someone more pliable. Only tradition, not binding law, prevents the president and his political appointees from issuing orders to the FBI about its investigations.

The top jobs at the DOJ require Senate confirmation, and even a Republican Senate might not confirm an indicted conspirator to overturn an election like Clark for attorney general. Under the Vacancies Reform Act, which regulates temporary appointments, Trump can appoint any currently serving Senate-confirmed official from anywhere in the executive branch as acting attorney general. Of course, all of the officials serving at the beginning of his new term would be holdovers from the Biden administration.

Trump’s allies are searching for loyalists among the Republicans currently serving on several dozen independent boards and commissions, such as the Federal Trade Commission, that have “party balancing” requirements for their appointees. Alternatively, Trump could choose any senior career official in the Justice Department who has served for at least 90 days in a position ranked GS-15 or higher on the federal pay scale—a cohort that includes, for example, senior trial attorneys, division counsels, and section chiefs. As Anne Joseph O’Connell, a Stanford law professor and an expert on the Vacancies Reform Act, reminded me, “This is how we got Matthew Whitaker,” the former attorney general’s chief of staff, as acting attorney general. (Whitaker was widely criticized as unqualified.)

Would some career officials, somewhere among the department’s 115,000 employees, do Trump’s bidding in exchange for an acting appointment? Trump’s team is looking.

Once Trump has installed loyalists in crucial posts, his first priority—an urgent one for a man facing 91 felony charges in four jurisdictions—would be to save himself from conviction and imprisonment.

Of the four indictments against him, two are federal: the Florida case, with charges of unlawful retention of classified documents and obstruction of justice, and the Washington case, which charges Trump with unlawful efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Those will be the easiest for him to dispose of.

To begin with, there is little to stop Trump from firing Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing both of the federal investigations. Justice Department regulations confer a measure of protection on a special counsel against arbitrary dismissal, but he may be removed for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.” That last clause is a catchall that Trump could readily invoke.

[David A. Graham: The cases against Trump: A guide]

The regulations state that a special counsel may be fired “only by the personal action of the Attorney General,” but that would not stop Trump either. In the unlikely event that his handpicked attorney general were reluctant, he could fire the attorney general and keep on firing successors until he found one to do his bidding, as Richard Nixon did to get rid of Archibald Cox. Alternatively, Trump could claim—and probably prevail, if it came to a lawsuit—that the president is not bound by Justice Department regulations and can fire the special counsel himself.

Smith’s departure would still leave Trump’s federal criminal charges intact, but no law would prevent Trump from ordering that they be dropped. He could do so even with a trial in progress, right up to the moment before a jury returned a verdict. No legal expert I talked with expressed any doubt that he could get away with this.

Dismissing the charges would require the trial judges’ consent. But even if the judges were to object, Trump would almost certainly win on appeal: The Supreme Court is not likely to let a district judge decide whether or not the Justice Department has to prosecute a case.

Trump will be able to avoid going to prison even if he has already been convicted of federal charges before he is sworn in. Here again, a trial judge is unlikely to order Trump imprisoned, even after sentencing, before he exhausts his appeals. And there is no plausible scenario in which that happens before Inauguration Day.

At any time while Trump’s appeals are pending, his Justice Department may notify the appellate court that the prosecution no longer wishes to support his conviction. This is known as a confession of error on the government’s part; the effect, if the court grants the request, is to vacate a conviction. Under Attorney General Bill Barr, the Trump administration did something to similar effect in a false-statements case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, moving to dismiss the charges after Flynn had pleaded guilty but before his sentencing. (Trump later pardoned Flynn.) According to the relevant rule of criminal procedure, dismissal during prosecution—including on appeal from a conviction—requires “leave of the court,” but it’s highly unlikely that an appellate court would refuse to grant such a motion to dismiss.

Trump might also invoke the pardon power on his own behalf. He has already asserted, as far back as 2018, that “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.” No president has ever tried this, and whether he can is a contested question among legal scholars. Experts who agree with Trump say the Constitution frames the pardon power as total but for one exception, implicitly blessing all other uses. (The exception is that the president may not pardon an impeachment.) Those who disagree include the Justice Department itself, through its Office of Legal Counsel, which concluded in 1974 that a self-pardon would be invalid under “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.”

But the debate over self-pardons wouldn’t matter much to Trump in practice. If he pardoned himself of all criminal charges, there would be no one with standing to challenge the pardon in court—other than, perhaps, the Justice Department, which would be under Trump’s control.

Unlike the federal charges, Trump’s state criminal cases—for alleged racketeering and election interference in Georgia and hush-money payments to a porn star in New York—would not fall under his authority as president. Even so, the presidency would very likely protect him for at least the duration of his second term.

The Office of Legal Counsel, which makes authoritative interpretations of the law for the executive branch, has twice opined, in 1973 and again in 2000, that “the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.” That conclusion is binding for federal prosecutors, but state prosecutors are not obliged to follow it.

No one knows what would happen if Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, or Alvin Bragg, the DA in New York, decided to press ahead with their cases against Trump should he regain the presidency. Like so many outlandish questions pertaining to Trump, this one has no judicial precedent, because no sitting president has ever been charged with felony crimes. But legal scholars told me that Trump would have strong arguments, at least, to defer state criminal proceedings against him until he left the White House in 2029. By then, new prosecutors, with new priorities, may have replaced Willis and Bragg.

Trump has named a long list of people as deserving of criminal charges, or execution. Among them are Joe Biden, Mark Milley, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, James Clapper, and Arthur Engoron, the judge in his New York civil fraud case.

If he returns to office, Trump may not even have to order their prosecutions himself. He will be surrounded by allies who know what he wants. One likely DOJ appointee is Mike Davis, a Republican who has substantial government credentials: He was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and chief counsel for nominations to Senator Charles Grassley when Grassley chaired the Judiciary Committee.

If Davis were acting attorney general, he said on a right-wing YouTube show, he would “rain hell on Washington.” First, “we’re gonna fire a lot of people in the executive branch, in the deep state.” He would also “indict Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and James Biden and every other scumball, sleazeball Biden.” And “every January 6 defendant is gonna get a pardon.” Trump could not immediately appoint an outsider like Davis attorney general. But he could make him a Justice Department section chief, and then appoint him as acting attorney general after 90 days.

Trump could also appoint—or direct his attorney general to appoint—any lawyer, at any time, as special counsel to the Justice Department, with the authority to bring charges and prosecute a case. Trump might not be able to convict his political enemies of spurious charges, but he could immiserate them with years of investigations and require them to run up millions of dollars in legal fees.

Likewise, if he managed to place sufficiently zealous allies in the Office of Legal Counsel, Trump could obtain legal authority for any number of otherwise lawless transgressions. Vice President Dick Cheney did that in the George W. Bush administration, inducing the OLC to issue opinions that authorized torture and warrantless domestic surveillance. Those opinions were later repudiated, but they guided policy for years. Trump’s history suggests that he might seek comparable legal blessing for the use of lethal force at the southern border, deployment of federal troops against political demonstrators, federal seizure of state voting machines, or deferral of the next election in order to stay in power. He would be limited only by the willingness of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the career civil service to say no.

It occurred to me, as I interviewed government veterans and legal scholars, that they might be blinkered by their own expertise when they try to anticipate what Trump would do. All of the abuses they foresee are based on the ostensibly lawful powers of the president, even if they amount to gross ruptures of legal norms and boundaries. What transgressions could he commit, that is, within the law?

But Trump himself isn’t thinking that way. On Truth Social, in December 2022, he posted that righting a wrong of sufficient “magnitude” (in this case, his fictitious claim of election fraud) “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

The “take Care” clause of the Constitution calls for the president to see that laws are carried out faithfully. But what if a court rules against Trump and he simply refuses to comply? It’s not obvious who would—or could—enforce the ruling.

This article appears in the January/February 2024 print edition with the headline “Trump Will Get Away With It.”

On Saturday afternoon, with just over six weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis told a story about how he once bravely stood up to the Special Olympics.

He was speaking atop a small platform in a partitioned-off section of a former roller rink in Newton, Iowa, dubbed “the Thunderdome.” The anecdote, like so many, had something to do with the tyranny of vaccine mandates. DeSantis said he had met a family at the Iowa State Fair, and that one of their children had wanted to participate in the Special Olympics, but wasn’t vaccinated. As it happened, the games were being held in Florida, where DeSantis serves as governor. “Well, we don’t have discrimination in Florida on that,” he said, meaning vaccination status. “So we were able to tell the Special Olympics, you let all the athletes compete!” People hooted.

This narrative followed a familiar arc: The Florida governor had confronted something he didn’t like, and, after a brief crusade, emerged victorious. DeSantis plays the part of a fearless maverick pursuing justice—even if that means picking a fight with a well-respected nonprofit. All year long on the campaign trail, self-awareness has seemed to elude him. “What you don’t want to do is repel people for no reason,” DeSantis told the room a little later.

[Mark Leibovich: Just wait until you get to know Ron DeSantis]

Saturday’s speech marked the culmination of DeSantis’s 99-county tour of Iowa. The event may have been intended as a moment of triumph, but the crowd on this cold, dreary afternoon was, at approximately 400 attendees, not at capacity. Outside the venue, you could buy buttons that said RON ’24 HE’S KIND OF A BIG DEAL! with an illustration of DeSantis mashed up with Anchorman’s Ron Burgundy. Other merchandise leaned harder into DeSantis’s culture-warrior reputation: SOCIALISM SUCKS, ANNOY A LIBERAL WORK HARD BE HAPPY, CRITICAL RACE THEORY with a no-smoking slash through it, and DESANTISLAND with the Disney D.

Is this angle working? Despite his GOP fame and high-profile endorsements, his polling average is trending in the wrong direction. He has more or less staked his candidacy on winning Iowa. But now he’s almost tied with former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the polls there, and elsewhere, for distant second place to former President Donald Trump. He may soon slip to third. His super PAC, Never Back Down, just fired its CEO, Kristin Davison, after nine days on the job. (She had taken over for the previous CEO, who had resigned around Thanksgiving, along with the group’s chair.) I asked Never Back Down what potential voters should make of all these changes. The group’s spokesperson sent a statement: “Never Back Down has the most organized, advanced caucus operation of anyone in the 2024 primary field, and we look forward to continuing that great work to help elect Gov. DeSantis the next President of the United States.”

One of Saturday’s warm-up speakers, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, attempted to humanize DeSantis for her constituents. She gestured to the importance of DeSantis achieving the “full Grassley”—a nod to Iowa’s senior senator, Chuck Grassley, who visits all of the state’s 99 counties every year to meet voters. (DeSantis’s team temporarily rebranded the milestone as a “Full DeSantis,” with placards peppering the venue.) “Listen, Iowans want the opportunity to look you in the eye; they want the opportunity to size that candidate up just a little bit,” Reynolds told the room. “It’s also really important for the candidates—I’ve said it really helps them kind of do the retail politics.” She spoke of DeSantis and his wife taking in all of the state’s offerings over the past year—Albert the Bull, Casey’s breakfast pizza. “And I’m going to tell ya, I think they’re having some fun!” Reynolds said unconvincingly.  

DeSantis did not appear to be fully enjoying himself in Newton. More than a few people have noted that his wife, Casey, is the more natural politician, and could herself be a stronger future candidate. As she introduced her husband on Saturday, he stood a few feet behind her, staring intensely into the back of her head. She was confident and effortless at the mic; Ron didn’t seem to know what to do with his eyes, or his mouth, or, especially, his hands. Clasp them loosely below his belly button? Put them on either side of his waist like Superman? He looked unsettled as he waited for her to finish.

When his turn to speak came, DeSantis began by trying to follow Reynolds’s lead. He recalled his visit to the Field of Dreams baseball field in Dubuque County. (“And our kids were there and everything like that.”) He fumbled the name of  a famous bakery and was swiftly corrected by many members of the audience. He offered his affection for other Iowa staples: ice cream, cheese curds. “We brought a whole bunch of cheese curds back to the state of Florida, which was a lot of fun,” DeSantis proclaimed. No means of pandering was off limits. Iowa, he declared “will begin the revival of the United States of America.” He hinted that, as president, he’d even move the Department of Agriculture from Washington, D.C., to Iowa.

Watching DeSantis up close as he lumbers through these moments of his campaign is almost enough to elicit sympathy. One of Saturday’s attendees, Caleb Grossnickle, a 25-year-old cybersecurity analyst from Ames, told me that he found DeSantis endearing. “I mean, he does seem a little awkward at times. But I think, honestly, it just shows that he’s a normal human,” he said. “He’s just a normal guy who’s trying to run for president, trying to make change.” Grossnickle told me that he was also interested in Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running as an independent.

One of DeSantis’s highest-profile Iowa surrogates, the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, was arguably the most captivating speaker on the bill. “Let me bathe this thing in prayer,” he said. He then launched into an invocation that ended with “Lord, when he does win the Iowa caucuses and when he does go through and win the early states, make people know that this is of you, by you, and for you, Lord.”

Vander Plaats pointed out that voting for DeSantis is not the same as voting “against Trump.” But he also preached the need for a candidate who “fears God,” adding that “the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom.” That noble idea morphed into a jab. “We need somebody to know that they fear God; they don’t believe they are God.”

A 46-year-old attendee from Ottumwa, Iowa, named Jeremy had brought his daughter along to see DeSantis up close. He told me that he’d twice voted for Trump and would vote for him a third time if he gets the nomination, though he admitted he finds him “distasteful.” DeSantis, he added, is his favorite candidate, and “more of a classy person.”

[David A. Graham: The 2024 presidential race: a cheat sheet]

Later in the afternoon, I approached Vander Plaats in the back of the room. I asked him about his line relating to the type of person who believes they are God. Vander Plaats said he was referring to “the left.” I also brought up how DeSantis seemed to lack interpersonal skills, and asked if he thought that was a fair criticism of the man he had endorsed. “I think it’s overhyped,” Vander Plaats said, but he didn’t outright dismiss the notion. “Right now, I think Americans want a real leader to get things done versus, you know, Hey, do I want to sit on the couch with them and watch a football game?”

Yet some people really do love him. In my conversations with attendees, many of them pointed to DeSantis’s follow-through as the core of his appeal. A 55-year-old supporter named Todd Lyons told me that he and his wife had driven four hours west from their home in Normal, Illinois, that morning to be there. They’d never seen DeSantis in the flesh. “He says he’ll do something and he does it,” Lyons said. “As opposed to with Trump, you see a tweet where he’s going to do something and talk about how amazing it’s going to be and then he wouldn’t follow through.” Even if DeSantis doesn’t get the nomination, Lyons told me he planned to write in the governor’s name on the ballot. Anne Wolford, a 74-year-old retiree from Grinnell, Iowa, told me that she had liked South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, but he had just recently dropped out, and now she was interested in DeSantis. “I think we’ve got to have somebody that’s got the gumption to go head-to-head with China, Russia, and North Korea. And I think with his military background, he can maybe achieve that.”

Two nights earlier, DeSantis exhibited his gumption in a TV debate with Governor Gavin Newsom of California. At one point, DeSantis brandished a “poop map” purportedly showing the places in San Francisco where human feces could be found on streets and sidewalks. (Practically the entire image was tinged brown.) In Iowa, DeSantis posited that Newsom was carrying out a shadow campaign for the presidency. “We cannot assume that they are actually gonna run [Joe] Biden,” he said. He seethed at the Democratic establishment. “We are not gonna be gaslit by people who think we’re dumb,” he said a little later.

During his stump speech, he spent a good deal of time talking about the pandemic. He promised that Anthony Fauci, now in retirement, would face a “reckoning” over all things COVID-19. But even the demonized Fauci serves as a symptom of a larger disease, in DeSantis’s worldview. The field of medicine, he warned, has been infected by a “woke ideology,” and Harvard Medical School doctors “basically take, like, a woke Hippocratic oath.” (DeSantis holds degrees from Harvard and Yale.) He also punched down, endorsing the idea of imposing fees on remittances that foreign workers send back to their home countries. He believes these are the ideas that will win him the presidency.

DeSantis attacks Trump more than most of his competitors (with the exception of Chris Christie), but he’s also assumed the role of Trump’s primary target. Nearly every day, the Trump campaign sends out press releases attacking DeSantis, with one recurring item that it calls the “kiss of death.” A sample from Friday mocked his stature: “KISS OF DEATH: Small Expectations, Smaller Candidate.” On Saturday morning, hours before DeSantis’s big achievement of stumping in every county, the Trump campaign sent out a preemptive press release: “Republican candidate for president Ryan Binkley, who is polling at 0%, outperformed Ron DeSantis by becoming the first person to visit all 99 counties in Iowa earlier this month.”

[Read: Inside the mind of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

It’s hard to understand what DeSantis’s real plan is, as Trump is still so far ahead in the polls. In an emailed statement, DeSantis’s deputy campaign manager, David Polyansky, said, “The collective firepower of Team DeSantis remains unmatched” and that the campaign “will carry the support of the most robust turnout operation in modern Iowa history into success on January 15.” Even if DeSantis wins the Iowa caucuses or comes in second, though, that doesn’t necessarily predict a victory in the New Hampshire primary. That state’s motto—“Live free or die”—is out of sync with what DeSantis has done in Florida, using the government to impose book bans and a six-week abortion limit. If by some chance Trump were to lose New Hampshire, it would probably be to Haley, not to DeSantis—and such a victory would position Haley for more success in her home state of South Carolina.

In Newton, leaning against the rear wall was a 66-year-old man, in a Kangol-style hat and a University of Iowa pullover, named Vern Schnoebelen. He’s the lead singer and harmonica player of a band that had played the Thunderdome the night before. He told me that he and his friend had snuck into the VIP section, where the bar was, earlier that afternoon. He had come out on Saturday not because he loves DeSantis but simply because he lives nearby and this seemed like a big event. He told me that, come caucus time, if Trump is running away in the polls, he’ll intentionally support the candidate in third or fourth place to encourage them to stay active in the party. “I don’t want them to lose heart,” he said. “We never know what’s going to happen with Trump. Who knows what’s going to come out of the woodwork?”

He told me that he had voted for Trump twice, and would support whoever became the GOP nominee, Trump included. I asked whether anything about Trump’s various indictments bothered him. “No, I think it’s all a fallacy,” he said. “I think most of it’s made up.”

That’s what DeSantis is competing with. He’ll have to try not to lose heart.