(Bloomberg) -- Ron DeSantis and  Nikki Haley used televised town halls in Iowa to attack Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump with less than two weeks to go before the state holds the first Republican presidential contest of 2024.

Although they are competing for second place in the nomination contest, each largely ignored the other on Thursday night to single out the former president. They were far more critical, however, of President Joe Biden, particularly over migrants coming across the southern US border.

Haley said that when she was Trump’s United Nations ambassador she told him he was his “own worst enemy.” Addressing his legal troubles, she said that if elected, she would pardon him were he convicted — for the good of the nation. 

“It’s not about guilt or innocence,” she remarked. “I don’t think our country will move forward with an 80-year-old president sitting in jail that allows our country to continue to be divided.”

The town halls were broadcast back to back on CNN from Grand View University in Des Moines. 

Going first, DeSantis portrayed the former president, on whom he had modeled himself while campaigning for Florida governor, as a candidate who failed to keep pledges made when he won the White House in 2016. He faulted Trump’s position on issues such as immigration and abortion, suggesting he shouldn’t be trusted now. 

“What I’m saying is if you’ve run before, promised things, didn’t deliver and then you’re running on the same things, wouldn’t it be reasonable to say, ‘well gee, I don’t know that I can take that to the bank going forward?’” DeSantis said. “So yes, I think the fact that he’s campaigning on something that does not mean that he would actually follow through on it.”

He tried to cast both Trump and Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has been rising in the polls, as the wrong choices for Republican voters. “Donald Trump is running for his issues. Nikki Haley’s running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues,” he said. 

The governor, who has been characterized as rigid and humorless during the campaign, came across as amiable and sharp at the town hall.

Asked about her failure, at a recent town hall in New Hampshire, to cite slavery as the cause of the civil war, Haley tried to deflect criticism from DeSantis and another candidate, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.   

“I should have said slavery right off the bat,” she said. “But if you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery. You grow up and you have you know, I had Black friends growing up. It is a very talked about thing.”

She went on to describe being part of the only Indian-American family in a rural South Carolina town.

Biden is also taking aim at Haley, with plans to speak in her home state on Monday at Mother Emanuel AME, the historic Black church in Charleston where a white supremacist killed nine people in 2015. 

On Thursday night, Haley spoke of that tragedy and her efforts shortly afterward to ban the Confederate battle flag from the state house grounds. 

DeSantis and Haley have escalated their rivalry as they seek to position themselves as the top challenger to Trump. DeSantis entered the race with that mantle last May but has slid in polls as Haley has surged, driven by her strong performances in GOP debates.

Trump, the Republican frontrunner nationally by a wide margin, leads DeSantis in the state by over 32 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. 

Earlier: Biden to Speak at Valley Forge, Black Church in 2024 Pivot

 

 

Much of DeSantis’ focus in recent weeks has been on Haley, who was Trump’s United Nations ambassador. The RealClearPolitics average shows her now tied with DeSantis nationally. Haley is nearly neck-and-neck with him in Iowa and leads him in the next nominating state, New Hampshire, where she stands in second place behind only Trump.

Haley’s campaign has increasingly tried to frame the GOP race as a two-person race between her and Trump. Haley’s rise in the polls has brought her new interest from prominent Wall Street executives and deep-pocketed donors who are dismayed by the likelihood of a Trump rematch with Biden in November. 

--With assistance from Jon Herskovitz.

(Updates and recasts.)

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