Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird speaks on stage on the second day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 16, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird told the crowd at the Republican National Convention Tuesday that electing former President Donald Trump in 2024 will support law enforcement and curtail crime in the country.
Bird first won election in 2022, defeating longtime Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller who “was first elected when I was just two years old,” she told the Milwaukee crowd. Her win was part of a sweep of victories for Iowa Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.
At the RNC, Bird said she won her election because Iowans wanted an attorney general who would support law enforcement.
“We won because Iowans were ready for an attorney general who was protecting them, not the criminals, an attorney general who would stand up to Joe Biden and the radical Democrats, and an attorney general who would defend our constitutional freedoms,” Bird said. “But perhaps more than anything, Iowa voters wanted an attorney general who would back the blue.”
Bird said Trump has repeatedly showed his support for law enforcement, and suggested Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have not.
On the 2022 campaign trail, Bird said that her message for Biden was “I’ll see you in court.” After taking office, she has filed and joined numerous lawsuits against the Biden administration, most recently on issues like the U.S. Department of Education’s new Title IX rules prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ+ students on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation and eligibility standards for asylum-seekers following the end of Title 42.
In her speech Tuesday, Bird criticized Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party for their approach to crime, saying that they “treat police like criminals and criminals like victims,” a decision that leaves many victims of crime feeling “abandoned” by the justice and judicial systems. She linked Democratic policies with the “defund the police” movement that gained traction during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
“Never forget the Democratic Party is the party of defunding the police,” Bird said. “They said it, they mean it and they can’t wiggle out of it. Republicans get justice for victims and we put criminals where they belong in jail. That’s why we need to elect President Donald J. Trump.”
Bird has been a longtime supporter of Trump, endorsing him in October 2023 during the lead-up to the January Iowa caucuses. The former president went on to win the first-in-the-nation Republican nominating contest by 51%, a historic margin. In addition to appearing with him regularly at Iowa campaign events, she also traveled to New York as part of the former president’s entourage during the hush-money trial.
Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in that case, but his sentencing was delayed while the judge considers a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling defining broad presidential immunity privileges. Bird did not mention the convictions in her remarks.
In addition to her speech Tuesday, Bird spoke on day one of the RNC, conducting the vice presidential nomination process for U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance after being elected a temporary chair. Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann also gave a nominating speech Monday for Trump to become the official 2024 Republican presidential candidate.
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