The crowd cheered. The pork was charred. And then someone shouted at former President Donald J. Trump, asking him to identify his biggest challenger in the 2024 Republican primary.
“Don’t see him,” Mr. Trump replied.
Mr. Trump signaled that he was looking past his leading rival, Ron DeSantis, on Saturday, as the two candidates converged at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. But his campaign team took every opportunity to needle the Florida governor.
Though the two candidates never crossed paths, Mr. Trump’s appearance was scheduled to coincide with Mr. DeSantis’s visit. Mr. Trump engineered a boisterous arrival, which included his private plane buzzing overhead, as Mr. DeSantis finished flipping pork chops. And Mr. Trump brought with him a bevy of Florida House members who had endorsed him over their own governor.
It was a rare moment of side-by-side comparison for Mr. Trump and his main opponent, and the mob of supporters following Mr. Trump’s every move underscored his superior standing. Mr. Trump leads Mr. DeSantis by an average of more than 30 percentage points nationally, though his margin is slightly smaller in Iowa — a gap that his rivals hope will narrow, as the criminal cases against him proceed. The first contest in 2024 is widely seen as the best opportunity to slow Mr. Trump’s march to the nomination.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly tried to assert his dominance as the front-runner, citing his polling advantage in social media posts and nearly every speech. But the overlapping appearances on Saturday marked just the latest instance of Mr. Trump’s trying to overshadow Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, a sign of how his team views Mr. DeSantis: as his lone serious rival.
The two men cut strikingly different paths at the fairgrounds, as they wound their way through the pens of pigs, past the 600-pound sculpture of a cow carved in butter, and stands selling local delicacies, like deep-fried balls of bacon and cheese.
Mr. DeSantis, joined by his wife, Casey, and their…