Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke to a cheering crowd of more than a thousand supporters in Council Bluffs Wednesday afternoon, just hours before Thursday’s (today’s) launch of “early” voting in Iowa. “You need to start voting immediately,” Trump said, to cheers. “Don’t forget early voting. You have to knock on doors. You have to pick up that phone.” The crowd joined Trump in reciting his campaign slogan. They cheered when he again promised to “build the wall” along the southern border with Mexico. And they chanted “lock her up” when Trump mentioned Clinton’s email controversy.

“Hillary Clinton is an insider fighting for her donors and her insiders, mostly fighting for herself,” Trump said. “I am an outsider fighting for you. We’re fighting together.” Trump briefly mentioned Monday night’s debate. He pointed to online polls taken afterwards. Trump argued the “corrupt corporate media” is ignoring his “landslide” victory in the event by focusing instead on a C-N-N poll.

“Then I have to sit back and you have to sit back and hear how those polls don’t mean anything, but when they poll 300 people, that means a lot, right? And so we won every single online poll — hundreds and hundreds of thousand voters — and then you sit back and you hear how she did so well in the debate. I don’t think she did well in the debate at all,” Trump said, with supportive catcalls from the audience. Trump called Clinton “unserious”, “petty” and “a globalist.”

“I’m not running to be president of the world. I’m running to be president of the United States and we’re going to protect your interests,” Trump said, to some of the loudest cheers of the afternoon. And Trump again questioned Clinton’s stamina and the days she to raise money, prepare for the debate and recover from pneumonia.

“Then she can’t even make it to her car. Isn’t it tough?” Trump asked, getting laughter from the crowd. “All those day offs. Right? Boom. Did you ever see her chart? She won’t be campaigning today…I’m campaigning and I’m saying: ‘What’s going on?’ Now in all fairness, she’s spending all of that Wall Street money on commercials, whereas I’m doing it the old-fashioned way, right? So you have six weeks to make every dream you’ve dreamed for your country come true.”

On Wednesday, the Trump campaign released a list of Christian conservatives in Iowa who are backing him. Steve Scheffler, the president of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, is also a member of the Republican National Committee who cast his vote for Trump at the G-O-P’s national convention in July. He often calls Clinton “pathological.”   “My personal view of Hillary Clinton is she is a borderline evil person,” Scheffler said. “She is a pathological liar.” Scheffler told about 600 members of his group this past weekend that if Richard Nixon were alive today, he’d be owed “an apology” and “nominated for sainthood” because Clinton’s transgressions are worse.

Hillary Clinton talked with officials from Cedar Rapids by phone on Wednesday, saying her “heart goes out to the families and businesses” affected by this week’s flooding and Clinton promised as president she’d work with Cedar Rapids leaders to erect new flood protection barriers along the Cedar River corridor. Clinton is due to headline a midday rally in downtown Des Moines to mark today’s (Thursday’s) start of early voting in Iowa. Democrat Tom Miller, Iowa’s attorney general, went to Council Bluffs Wednesday to declare’s Trump’s “temperament” unfit for the presidency.

(Radio Iowa)