Former President Donald Trump will speak to the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s 23rd Annual Spring Kick-Off later this month.
The early frontrunner in the Republican presidential nomination chase will remotely address the conference at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 22, at the Horizon Events Center in suburban Des Moines.
Trump’s address will cap off a full lineup of brief speeches from GOP presidential hopefuls, elected officials and leaders in the national conservative movement.
“We are pretty pleased with the lineup we’ve got,” said Steve Scheffler, president of the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition.
Potential and declared candidates confirmed to speak include: Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence; Ohio entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader Vivek Ramaswamy (at 37, the youngest candidate for president); former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson; Michigan businessman Perry Johnson; and U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), who on Wednesday announced the formation of a presidential exploratory committee ahead of a trip to Iowa.
Conservative talk show host and activist Larry Elder and former Hawaii Congresswoman and outspoken critic of the left Tulsi Gabbard also are slated to speak.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Iowa GOP Chairman Jeff Kaufmann will moderate.
Doors open at 3:30 p.m., with dinner at 4 p.m. and the program begins at 5:30 p.m.
“We don’t endorse people. We just want to give people the opportunity to compare” the candidates, Scheffler told The Iowa Star. He’s expecting more than 1,000 people in attending the conference, many of them conservative activists.
The event will feature 12-minute segments, with each speaker given four minutes to introduce himself or herself to attendees, and the rest of the segment devoted to answering questions from the moderators.
Trump will be making his first comments directly to an audience in kick-off caucus state since his unprecedented arrest stemming from far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s politically driven investigation into the 45th president. His polling numbers and campaign coffers have benefitted immensely from what many Americans see as a partisan prosecution against President Joe Biden’s chief rival for the White House.
The non-profit Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition, formerly the Iowa Christian Alliance, stands “for integrity in government, high moral values, constitutional authority, and Christian principles,” according to its website.
“Our purpose is to educate and influence voters and politicians to keep their commitment to both liberty and law; that America may continue to be one nation under God. We are not tied to any political party,” the organization’s website states.
In an email, Trump’s campaign said the coalition is “the state’s premiere faith-based organisation that is committed to defending conservative values and religious liberty.”
“President Trump has long supported the great patriots of Iowa and the Faith and Freedom Coalition, having first addressed the conference in September 2015,” the campaign said.
The coalition has welcomed an array of presidential candidates and national leaders to its conference over the years.
Scheffler said this month’s event hopes to shine light on a Biden administration that is waging a political war on faith communities. He said the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” led by Democrats and supported by some Republicans is “just the beginning” of an administration looking to “stamp out religious liberty.”
He pointed to Democrat Michael Franken, who ran unsuccessfully ran against U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in November’s midterms. Franken said he would “take away” tax exemptions from churches that don’t admit gays as members. Franken said he would use their nonprofit tax status “as a club to ensure that religious understanding, tolerance, etc. is based on basic human rights and not a distortion of the literature of your faith.”
“To me, that’s just a beginning of where [the left] is heading,” Scheffler said.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
