Jared Yates Sexton managed to make it to Iowa despite UNGODLY conditions. Anyway. He went to a Nikki Haley rally, talked with a GOP strategist, and got the lay of the land in Iowa, where the race is getting very, very weird. To gain access to the full episode and support The Muckrake Podcast, head over to Patreon and become a patron. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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| Hey, everybody. | |
| What you're about to listen to is an exclusive preview of the Montgomery podcast coverage from the Iowa caucuses. | |
| Jared Yates Saxton and I am on the ground in I'm in Iowa right now, so this is going to be a little bit of a preview. | |
| If you want to hear more while I'm here in Iowa and more of these exclusive dispatches, you need to go over to patreon.com slash muckrikepodcast, become a subscriber. | |
| It supports the show, it keeps us ad-free, editorially independent, which, you know, as we're watching all of our Really good journalists lose their platforms recently for telling the truth that editorial independence is more important than ever. | |
| But it also helps the show grow. | |
| It helps us to continue to expand things like this coverage. | |
| I think you're going to want to listen to what I've learned so far in Iowa. | |
| It is changing rapidly. | |
| So again, go over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast so you can listen to the entirety of this episode. | |
| And yeah, and so you can also get the weekly extra episode on Friday, The Weekender, and all of our exclusive coverage. | |
| This week, we also did a post-GOP debate analysis reaction show, as we're always doing. | |
| Nick and I are going to be absolutely dedicated to giving you our analysis and our opinions and our exclusive coverage. | |
| So again, that is patreon.com slash muckreggpodcast. | |
| And yeah, let's get to the preview. | |
| Hey, everybody. | |
| Welcome to exclusive Patreon coverage from the state of Iowa, where I am on the ground reporting from the Iowa caucuses. | |
| This is already an incredibly interesting story that is developing. | |
| I can't wait to tell you some of the information I got today. | |
| It changed my perspective. | |
| Also, it gave me a lot more of an idea what's going on within the Republican Party, what to expect on Monday, what different storylines are coming together. | |
| Thank you for your support as always. | |
| This is one of our busiest weeks. | |
| As I talked about earlier, we had our live coverage from the debate on Wednesday and I'm going to have reportage today, tomorrow, and then on Monday from the actual caucus. | |
| Yeah, I can't wait for it and thank you again for all your support. | |
| So first off, there is no other way to put it. | |
| I've been coming to Iowa for a while now for the caucuses and This is some of the worst weather that I have ever seen. | |
| I have been cold before. | |
| I have dealt with harsh conditions before. | |
| It is brutal out there. | |
| I knew that it was going to be cold. | |
| I had read the reports of this winter storm that came through the area. | |
| I knew it was going to be a difficult task to traverse the landscape. | |
| Boy howdy was it ever. | |
| Driving through Iowa, just huge drifts of snow, an incredible gust of wind that went over the highway. | |
| It was treacherous. | |
| I'll just say that. | |
| I was able to get in earlier today. | |
| I ended up going to a Nikki Haley rally. | |
| I had some conversations with some Republicans, a strategist in particular that I can't wait to tell you about. | |
| It was a really interesting, telling conversation. | |
| And on top of that I was able to talk to some insiders to get an idea of what's going on on the ground here. | |
| This is a quickly shifting situation here in Iowa. | |
| Iowa is always a very weird state. | |
| These caucuses are a strange ordeal. | |
| Iowans, as I say all the time, they pride themselves on having this position as, if not the first state, one of the first states to cast their votes and have their say in these primaries. | |
| And the Iowans take that very seriously, and it turns into an incredible hub of activity. | |
| And that's where we are right now. | |
| Iowans are very, very excited. | |
| You know, these conditions today were awful. | |
| Absolutely awful. | |
| I cannot tell you, like standing outside in this, my beard froze almost immediately. | |
| Painful, painful cold. | |
| Winds, the likes of which can chill you to your very core. | |
| There were big crowds out today. | |
| Every candidate in Iowa enjoyed big crowds in blizzard conditions. | |
| That says a lot about what is happening right now in this race and maybe what to expect Monday, but we'll talk more about the weather here after a while. | |
| I'll go ahead and start with my experience at the Nikki Haley rally. | |
| Um, Haley and her team feel very much right now like they have momentum. | |
| Just within the last hour-ish, the Des Moines Register released what is going to be their final poll. | |
| This is seen as a huge bellwether when it comes to the Iowa caucuses. | |
| Of course, nobody knows this area like the Des Moines Register. | |
| And things are shifting. | |
| So right now, Trump is underneath 50%. | |
| He's at 48%. | |
| Nikki Haley has overtaken Ron DeSantis, according to the Des Moines Register, in second place here in Iowa. | |
| Currently sitting at 20%. | |
| DeSantis is at 16%. | |
| That tracks with what has been happening over the past few weeks. | |
| As Ron DeSantis's political career has just absolutely flamed out, Nikki Haley has gained more and more traction. | |
| But there are feelings right now that DeSantis could surprise some people, particularly considering the numbers. | |
| The Des Moines Register not only looks at support, people who say that they're going to caucus for a particular candidate, they also go ahead and gauge the enthusiasm. | |
| Nikki Haley has a 9% enthusiasm number. | |
| That's not great. | |
| That means that things could shift. | |
| Ron DeSantis has been all over the state in the past couple days despite the weather. | |
| He was out today with Kim Reynolds and also Chip Roy. | |
| I don't know. | |
| We'll talk more about that later, what happened, because there were some interesting things being said by DeSantis today, you know, throwing everything at Donald Trump and at Nikki Haley, which I'm going to talk more about what's happening with the GOP in general and that civil war that I keep talking about. | |
| It is changing. | |
| And the conversation I had with one of the strategists on the campaign kind of blew my hair back, I'll be honest with you. | |
| Nikki Haley had a good crowd. | |
| Her stump speech is strange. | |
| It's a strange, strange thing. | |
| She is trying very hard to both be the anti-Trump. | |
| It is dotted consistently with references to Donald Trump being old and being chaotic. | |
| Chaos is the word you keep hearing. | |
| You can't Take two steps without hearing Nikki Haley say that Donald Trump, chaos follows him wherever he goes. | |
| But on top of that, as she's doing that, she's still trying to appeal to the fear-mongering base of the Republican Party. | |
| Trans people in sports, still a huge issue for her. | |
| She's talking consistently about her veteran husband and his struggles with PTSD, but is also talking a lot about term limits for older politicians, which has a rhetorical effect of reminding people that she is younger than Trump and Biden. | |
| She was talking about competency tests for older politicians. | |
| She also Has started to dot her speeches with a lot of religious militarism. | |
| She talked about Israel being the quote tip of the spear against terrorism, which is a very, very thinly veiled white supremacist, anti Muslim, anti Middle Eastern appeal. | |
| On top of that, she has started to refer to China and Russia and Iran, who she is still basically calling for war with, as a, quote, unholy alliance. | |
| If you've read any of my writing, if you've heard any of my podcasts, if you have any experience with my analysis, you know that this has cult of the shining city, American militaristic, white Christian nationalism written all over it. | |
| It is disturbing. | |
| She has consistently said that not only does she have quote-unquote leads against Biden in theoretical matchups, but that it would lead to a mandate which is probably going to be one of her main appeals over the next few months as it turns into probably her and Donald Trump squaring off for the nomination. | |
| It was strange. | |
| It was not the most perfectly put together rally I've ever seen. | |
| Her strategist and her consultants and her writers are very, very cognizant of pushing. | |
| I'm younger. | |
| I can beat Biden. | |
| Trump is chaotic. | |
| And I'm the right woman for a job. | |
| There are her and she pronouns throughout these speeches consistently trying to make a hard sell. | |
| At the end of her rally, American Girl by Tom Petty played. | |
| And what I saw and what I've seen from watching her previous efforts, they have a real tendency To always keep a young girl off to the side of the stage so that Nikki Haley can meet with her. | |
| There is of course a subliminal appeal that she would be the first female president, which is an interesting thing for a Republican to do. | |
| The question now, and by the way, she has not only had her ads all throughout Iowa and she's been running around Iowa left and right, the ads from her supportive super PACs Unbelievable. | |
| They are inescapable at this point. | |
| They tout Donald Trump again as dangerous, too old, the leader of the right time, but he needs to go now. | |
| And DeSantis as a Trump suck-up. | |
| It's pretty incredible actually to watch this stuff. | |
| They take a bunch of the old clips from DeSantis' old political ads where he was like teaching his daughter how to read the word Trump. | |
| It's some real slick, nasty stuff. | |
| This feud between her and DeSantis is just growing and growing and growing. | |
| You know, the question here is, are people going to show up for Nikki Haley at the caucuses? | |
| People who are tired of Trump are looking for an alternative. | |
| Are they going to show up for DeSantis? | |
| Are they going to show up for Haley? | |
| A lot of the people that I've talked to think that DeSantis has more enthusiasm behind him with the people who support him than Nikki Haley has for her. | |
| She is seen by a lot of people as, okay, well, DeSantis isn't going to win. | |
| He's a loser. | |
| We have to find somebody else besides Trump. | |
| Oh, I guess we'll go with Nikki Haley, which checks out. | |
| I mean, that has largely been the narrative and the trajectory on all of this. | |
| So, it's looking like, if you actually take a look at what the weather is going to be, on Monday, the night of the caucuses, the wind chill is supposed to get down to negative 50. | |
| That's cold. | |
| I don't think you need much more analysis from me. | |
| That's deathly cold. | |
| And the question now, and this is what I've been hearing from a lot of people, Iowans are going to come out. | |
| They're going to layer up. | |
| They're going to put on their long johns and their thickest coats and their ski masks and they're going to show up and they're going to caucus. | |
| What about the older Iowans? | |
| People who literally could die if they are out in the elements. | |
| What about the people who are just kind of lukewarm about this? | |
| Trump's people are diehards. | |
| And they always have been. | |
| The question a lot of people have been asking is, well, maybe the Trump people will think he's going to win by so much that some of them will think that I don't have to go out. | |
| And that's a possibility. | |
| That happens. |