Facing MAGA challenger, Miller-Meeks sticks close to Trump

Literally and figuratively

Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks tries to get close to President Donald Trump on March 4, 2025 (Screenshot from CBS News coverage)

This original reporting and analysis first appeared at Bleeding Heartland and is shared here as part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. For regular emails linking to all recent Bleeding Heartland articles and commentary, subscribe to the free Evening Heartland newsletter. If your email provider truncates this post, you can read the whole article without interruption at this link.

The only Iowa Republican in Congress who did not receive Donald Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement!” in 2022 has been working hard to demonstrate her loyalty to him.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has stuck close to Trump—literally and figuratively—as she prepares for what could be a tough 2026 primary campaign in Iowa’s first Congressional district.

TROUBLE ON THE RIGHT FLANK

David Pautsch, Miller-Meeks’ rival for the Republican nomination in IA-01, has been on the Trump train for nearly a decade. In contrast, Miller-Meeks was not an early supporter of any presidential candidate in 2016 or 2024. She got behind Trump’s latest campaign only after he won the Iowa caucuses.

Even worse, from the MAGA world perspective, Miller-Meeks voted to certify the 2020 electoral college count, and for creating a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. While she has validated some of Trump’s claims about voting “irregularities” in 2020, she’s not in Pautsch’s league as an election denier. He’s already secured the backing of Mike Lindell for his 2026 campaign in IA-01. And he didn’t lose to Miller-Meeks by much last cycle, taking nearly 44 percent of the GOP primary vote despite being massively outspent.

Pautsch depicts his opponent as a “confirmed RINO” (Republican in Name Only) who is only “pretending” to be a Trump fan. The incumbent’s campaign spokesperson told Quad-City Times reporter Sarah Watson in February, “Mariannette is spending all her energy on helping President Trump implement his agenda—it is not time for campaigning.”

Whether or not you call it “campaigning,” Miller-Meeks has sought to make news as a Trump ally. Her Congressional office announced in January that she’d joined the House “DOGE caucus.” A few weeks later, she signed on as a plaintiffin the president’s consumer fraud lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and its longtime pollster. Her campaign put out a written statement about the case that copied Trump’s manner of speaking (“landslide,” “fake election polls,” “Radical Democrats”).

To mark the occasion of Tulsi Gabbard’s Senate confirmation, Miller-Meeks posted a photo of herself with the new director of national intelligence, adding the comment: “As a fellow veteran and friend, I have full faith that you will excel in this role.” The subtext is clear: Miller-Meeks is on board with even the most controversial Trump appointees.

She has stepped up her flattery of the president since Pautsch formally launched his Congressional bid in late February.

“I HAD THE HONOR OF PERSONALLY GREETING PRESIDENT TRUMP”

Following Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on March 4, Miller-Meeks made it her mission to have a few words with the president. In this footage from CBS News, you can see her jockeying for position, trying to get close to Trump—who did not appear to acknowledge her, even as she spoke to him. I’ve cued up the video to the relevant part. Watch for about 30 seconds:

Later that evening, Miller-Meeks posted on her X/Twitter and Facebook feeds,

I was proud to personally greet President Trump tonight and attend his Joint Address with guest Riley Gaines after a disastrous 4 years under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. President Trump is restoring the American Dream—protecting women’s sports, securing our borders, and making our communities safer. Under his leadership, manufacturing is returning, interest rates are coming down, and America is strong on the world stage once again. I look forward to working with him to put America First and get our country back on track.

Miller-Meeks expanded that post as a commentary extolling Trump’s leadership on many fronts. Her office provided the column to local media outlets and shared it as the top item on her weekly email newsletter. The piece began, “On Tuesday night, I had the honor of personally greeting President Trump and attending his Joint Address to Congress alongside my guest, Riley Gaines.”

The closing paragraph:

I left the Joint Address feeling optimistic and energized for the future. President Trump is fighting to get our country back on track, and I will continue working alongside him to deliver real results for Iowans. The American Dream is not lost—it’s being renewed. Let’s get to work.

For Miller-Meeks, part of that work involves being seen as an enthusiastic supporter.

TAKING THE MESSAGE TO CONSERVATIVES

As an elected official, Miller-Meeks can more easily generate media coverage than an outsider candidate. That role has helped her find opportunities to praise Trump in front of large conservative audiences.

For example, Miller-Meeks gave an interview to Newsmax on March 5, focused on the president’s executive order banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports. Why was she invited on for that segment? Maybe because she watched Trump’s speech in the House chamber alongside Gaines, the onetime elite collegiate swimmer turned professional anti-trans activist.

Miller-Meeks appeared on Fox & Friends on March 10 to praise Trump’s approach to securing “critical minerals” from Ukraine. In addition to putting up a regular YouTube video, her office released a “short” (in the style of a TikTok or Instagram reel) containing a clip of Miller-Meeks saying on Fox & Friends, “I think that President Zelenskyy has gotten the message that President Trump is serious about achieving peace within this region and doing so in a very rapid fashion.”

You would never guess Miller-Meeks initially condemned Russia’s invasion, called for ramping up sanctions against Russia, and voted for several U.S. aid packages for Ukraine. She’s still far from Pautsch on this issue—he has called Ukraine a “corrupt nation”—but she’s making sure there is no daylight between herself and the president.

Miller-Meeks is one of the most frequent speakers on the House floor (another incumbency advantage). She has used some of her time slots this year to congratulate Trump and Vice President JD Vance on their inauguration, to wish the president and First Lady Melania Trump “a wonderful and happy 20th anniversary,” and to applaud Trump’s border policies. I expect to see many more speeches along those lines before the June 2026 primary election.

Women’s sports, ending U.S. aid to Ukraine, and securing the southern border are all hot topics for MAGA Republicans. Miller-Meeks’ support for another Trump administration policy shift is also notable, in light of her professional background as a physician.

PANDERING TO THE ANTI-VAX CROWD

When COVID-19 vaccines first became available, Miller-Meeks was an outspoken advocate for them. She visited vaccination sites in every county in her district and administered the shots herself in at least thirteen communities.

Her office publicized those efforts. This photo was part of an April 2021 news release about her “district vaccine tour.”

Miller-Meeks’ staff posted videos to YouTube and Twitter showing the congresswoman chatting with constituents before giving them a shot. One of the recipients in Oskaloosa was her former Iowa Senate colleague, Ken Rozenboom.

In July 2021, Miller-Meeks spoke on the U.S. House floor about “vaccine hesitancy” and rising COVID-19 cases. “Given the rise in the Delta variant, I once again encourage everyone to get a vaccine as soon as possible so that we continue our path to normalcy. This vaccine IS how we get our lives back,” she said. In November of that year, she joined other doctors in Congress to urge Americans to get flu shots.

But Miller-Meeks also made gestures toward those who resented some COVID-19 mitigation practices. She repeatedly claimed (wrongly) that once a person was vaccinated, there was no need to wear a mask, even in crowded indoor spaces like the U.S. House chamber. She repeatedly claimed (wrongly) that children could not transmit the coronovirus and therefore did not need to wear masks—even if they were too young to be vaccinated. She touted “natural or infection acquired immunity” as an alternative to vaccination.

As the 2022 election approached, Miller-Meeks criticized the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for recommending that kids be vaccinated against COVID-19 and said it was “tone deaf” for then President Joe Biden to receive a COVID booster on television while Americans were facing high inflation. As a member of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in 2023, she continued to blast the Biden administration for supposedly undermining trust in public health by dismissing the value of natural immunity.

Miller-Meeks has avoided public comments about the new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. But she has dialed up the anti-vax rhetoric in recent months.

Days before the president-elect picked Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to be the next director of the National Institutes of Health, Miller-Meeks posted that he would be an “excellent choice” to run that agency. Bhattacharya co-authored a document in 2020 that “challenged policies such as lockdowns and mask mandates” and “called for speeding herd immunity by allowing people at low risk to get infected while protecting those most vulnerable, like the elderly.”

Miller-Meeks also had high praise for Trump’s “great appointment” of Dr. Dave Weldon to run the CDC, lending credence to his claims about a link between vaccines and autism.

I haven’t seen any public statements from the incumbent about the White House withdrawing Weldon’s nomination on March 13, while he was en route to his Senate confirmation hearing. He’s still claiming the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is unsafe, even as the U.S. deals with its largest measles outbreak in years.

Earlier this month, Miller-Meeks again blamed medical experts for “cementing distrust” in public health. I have not seen her criticize the conservative influencers who brought misinformation about vaccines to their huge audiences and touted ineffective COVID treatments like ivermectin.

CONVINCING THE AUDIENCE THAT MATTERS

If you’re a true MAGA believer, none of the above is likely to persuade you to vote for Miller-Meeks instead of Pautsch in the 2026 primary. But that doesn’t mean this relentless public fawning won’t improve the incumbent’s chances. The person she most needs to convince is the “audience of one” in the White House.

Trump’s endorsement in the IA-01 primary—an improbable scenario—would be a godsend for Miller-Meeks. Even neutrality from the president would be helpful, as it might keep other MAGA celebrities on the sidelines. Pautsch has had conversations with members of the House Freedom Caucus. Endorsements from a few nationally known Trump allies could multiply his fundraising, allowing him to run a strong district-wide campaign.

Isn’t it risky for Miller-Meeks to reinvent herself as a Trump loyalist, though? Midterm elections can be rough for the party in power; Iowa Democrats unseated two members of Congress the last time Trump was president in 2018. That’s presumably why Representative Zach Nunn, the Republican incumbent in Iowa’s third district, posts incessantly about his supposed bipartisan work and only rarely about Trump.

Arguably, this approach is a roll of the dice for Miller-Meeks. On the other hand, she needs to get through the next primary before she can worry about the general election.

I can’t guess how things will play out in the Congressional race, but I can confidently predict that February 17, 2025 will not be the last time Miller-Meeks shares this photo on her social media.