'That date has some significance': Trump plans rally on 3rd anniversary of Jan. 6 riot

Former President Donald Trump will be kicking off the new year with a "commit to caucus" campaign rally in Newton, Iowa on a historically significant date: January 6.

In an interview with the Daily Beast, Jasper County, Iowa Republican Party chairman Thad Nearmyer — a 52-year-old livestock farmer — said the date of the rally may very well be a nod to the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol that resulted in nine deaths and hundreds of injuries of US Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers.

"When [the Trump campaign] first announced it was on Jan. 6, I didn't even think anything of it," Nearmyer told the Beast. "And then a little bit later it kind of occurred to me that that date has some significance... I would imagine [the insurrection] will get brought up by him."

For his part, Nearmyer said he felt the description of the January 6 riot as an assault on democracy is over-exaggerated, saying the deadliest attack on the US Capitol since the war of 1812 "wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as it was made out to be." He added that Trump's four criminal indictments that include 91 state and federal felony charges was just as much of a boost to his campaign as the recent Anderson v. Griswold Colorado supreme court decision that may end up disqualifying Trump from the Centennial States's ballot. The GOP official opined that the legal actions Trump is being subjected to amount to "election interference."

"I would say it’s getting awfully close to that, if not crossing that line for sure," he said.

The first ballots of the 2024 presidential election will be cast during the Iowa Republican Caucuses on January 15, where the former president maintains a healthy lead over his closest rivals, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former UN ambassdor Nikki Haley. The Messenger reported Saturday that the Trump campaign is hoping to run away from the rest of the GOP field in the four early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — in order to cement his status as the presumptive Republican nominee. Longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson theorized that Trump would then use his status as the de facto GOP nominee to argue that his criminal trials are another form of election interference.

Nearmyer described the upcoming caucuses as "a bunch of neighbors that get together in a room and write down their name on a piece of paper," saying it was "not a very exciting process." If Trump's 32-point Iowa lead over DeSantis holds, he may be proven right.