Former Democratic Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley was in Iowa this weekend raising money for the state party — something you do if you're interested in running for president.

The trip got a bit of extra attention because he took the opportunity to visit a local mosque in Cedar Rapids and denounce President Trump's travel ban. The Iowa Starting Line blog reports:

He added a stop between his two campaign events for Iowa House Democrats to address the ban, standing outside the Mother Mosque in Cedar Rapids, the longest-standing mosque in North America. Calling Trump's executive order an "emperor-like edict," O'Malley cautioned where it might lead the country..."This presidency is going to challenge everything we learned in school about checks and balances," O'Malley predicted. "Institutions need to stand up. Despots only succeed when public institutions are weak."

Much has been said about Democrats' thin bench after their 2014 and 2016 election wipeouts. Even now, the idea of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo running for national office probably has a lot of Democrats worried about how to deal with a second Trump term.

But O'Malley was a more promising candidate in 2016 than anyone gave him credit for — he just got shut out between the establishment's rush to crown Hillary Clinton and the insurgent-Left's embrace of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT., as a socialist alternative. So in case you're wondering, there is O'Malley, in Cedar Rapids, and it seems pretty obvious his eye is on 2020.