Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman recorded this immediately after the Iowa Caucus wrapped up its voting, weighing in on the surge by Nikki Haley only to still finish behind Ron DeSantis. Trump got over 50% of the vote to finish with a strong showing despite hardly campaigning in Iowa, and now it's on to New Hampshire where DeSantis will most likely end his campaign while Haley will hold on for dear life until at least South Carolina.
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Nick, we are doing a live Iowa results reaction and analysis show.
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If you want to do something like this, and by the way, people know this.
I was putting out special coverage from Iowa on the ground all weekend.
People were able to get those Dispatches by going to patreon.com slash my great podcast.
Thank you all for tuning in.
We're gonna talk about Iowa We're gonna talk about my experiences in Iowa the results what they mean what's gonna look like going forward Also, we're gonna take your questions another advantage of being a patron of the month great podcast so if you have any feel free to Put a question in here.
We'll get to it before the end of the program Nick.
I am back home after surviving, Iowa it It was rough, man.
As I said to you before I started recording, it was negative 20 on Sunday morning.
Nick Halsman would not have made it.
I would not have made it.
If you had to wait more than a few minutes outside in that weather for anything, I would have had to have not been there anymore.
Nick, I was wearing... I can't remember if I put this in my special coverage.
I was wearing long underwear, top to bottom.
I was wearing, like, fleece-lined mountain climbing pants.
I was wearing, you know, a couple pairs of socks, boots.
I was wearing a thermal on top of that.
I was wearing a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a flannel.
On top of that, a heavy, heavy coat, a hat, a hood.
I wrapped a scarf around my head.
It still was not enough for those people who want to know just how cold Iowa was this weekend.
Well, that reminds me, I went to the two Bears games in 1985 in December, the NFC title game and the game before that.
Similar conditions, you know, two and a half, three hours straight, and I'm still cold from that.
Oh my god.
Well, guys, I gotta tell you, we're reporting right now, we're recording this on Monday, January 15th.
It's all done but the singing and crying.
We're still trying to find out if Nikki Haley or Rhonda Santos is going to come in second.
I'll let you know what I've heard, what people are telling me.
But Donald Trump, as predicted, is going to walk away with the Iowa caucus.
It looks like now that he probably will get over 50%.
Congratulations, Nick.
You did predict that.
There's a lot to talk about from these results, from what I saw on the ground in Iowa.
But Nick, what an incredible thing.
Donald Trump barely spent any time in Iowa.
I'll talk about this later.
He constantly attacked the quote-unquote popular governor of Iowa, Republican governor of Iowa.
He basically spent all of his time in courtrooms.
He's facing 91 counts against him, multiple indictments.
He spends more time in the courtroom than he does on the campaign trail.
And what we have seen tonight, Nick, is that not only does Donald Trump own this nomination, but that things have shifted to a point where the support for Donald Trump has become not just terminal, but accelerated.
I think they've been waiting for this moment.
Like, this has been the culmination.
And so, well, maybe we didn't even grasp at the time, obviously it was detrimental to our democracy to question the way he did the results, right?
And that kind of throws into a lot of things.
But I think maybe just now I'm starting to realize is what has happened out of this.
Is that he's created this excitement, right?
Since 2020, you know, for four straight years to get to this point where now they cannot wait to like vote for him again and right the wrong, correct the record, all the things that he had spread about that were lies.
And I think this is what we're seeing.
Like, like, uh, it's a spout that has just begun to open and will be, you know, shooting out at a very high pressure, uh, the kind of energy and excitement that we certainly don't see on the other side.
Yeah, I've got stories from what I experienced at the Trump rally and with a little bit of time since then, and for those of you who didn't hear the special reports, I'll recount them and let you know what happened because it was ugly.
Since that rally, since the conversations I had, the things I overheard, the things I saw, Nick, what I've come to realize.
Is that 2016, 2020, and 2024 are three very different elections.
2016 was an aggrieved white Republican base that believed that Donald Trump could go to Washington DC, drain the swamp, and put everything to right.
They believe that for four years, that's what he did.
They live in a fantasy world where he kept every promise that he gave.
He made everything better.
They now look at it almost like that cherished 1950s, you know, the sepia-toned white suburbia that everybody wants to get back to before civil rights.
In 2020, of course, he lost.
They believe that he won.
The exit polls, by the way, Nick, I don't know if you've seen this, in every exit poll that you look at, over 60% of Republican voters, and not just Donald Trump voters, believe that 2020 was stolen by the Democratic Party and that Joe Biden is not the rightful president of the United States.
2020 changed the Donald Trump MAGA movement.
For 2024, Nick, it's not that they're interested in getting someone elected who is going to pass legislation that they want passed or to achieve political goals that they want achieved.
They now believe that the system is so corrupted that there is absolutely nothing they can do to save it, save for electing a dictator who is willing to spill blood.
That's where this is.
That's what they want.
And as long as that is what's happening, You're not going to be sitting here talking about Nikki Haley.
You're not going to be sitting here talking about Ron DeSantis.
And I'll tell you why in a second.
I have new perspective on this.
They are interested and excited and jacked up for the possibility of something akin to a Trump dictatorship. - You know, he keeps pushing this whole notion about why I'm gonna be there for a day, but then he's added now and he keeps talking about four years and then beyond.
So, you know, listen, you could just say he's talking shit like, you know, Roger Stone was talking shit about killing, you know, Eric Swalwell.
But at some point we have to believe him And even if we're not, even if he's not going to seriously do that, it just indicates what he is willing to do, which is anything and everything he wants to enrich himself.
So, yeah, I suppose in 2015, we wouldn't have been able to say to each other that we would get to this point where this many people would want this, right?
They would want a dictatorship.
But, you know, there's something that he was able to light a fuse under.
And I didn't think that the lie about the 2020 election would continue to increase the base that he has.
And that's sort of what it feels like, right?
I think that's been an alluring thing to even more of the electorate who had never participated before.
And they all look alike.
And so they've been able to mine, I think, more, more votes now.
And so again, I don't know what the landscape's going to end up looking like because we keep saying it's going to be three states and 50,000 votes.
It might not be that.
It might need to be a lot more to flip that because he's got maybe a bigger advantage this year.
You know, Nick, you and I, we first talked back in 2016.
The Seed for the McCray Podcast was planted in 2016 after I went to Trump rallies, and you took me seriously.
You wanted to talk to me, ask me what I thought was happening, and when I told you that something really bad was brewing in this country and that it could get a lot worse, you believed me.
Uh, there were some people who did.
There were other people who laughed about it and believed that, you know, at the same way they, they were like, oh, there's no way he's going to refuse to leave the White House.
That's insane.
Right.
What we're seeing now in 2024, and this is unfortunate, Nick, and, and I don't, I don't like saying this.
I don't take any joy from saying this.
The thesis of the Muckrake podcast, the thesis of our show and our work and our advocacy, what we do on, uh, with this program.
We've been telling people we're going to take a long, hard look at what's going on in this country and tell you where it's going.
And why did we do that?
Because we wanted to avoid it.
Because we wanted to move out of the way.
You and I have joked about this all the time.
We wish that we could get unemployed.
We wish that this wasn't something that needed done.
What is happening now?
Is that what we've been talking about and what we've been warning about for the past eight years, it has metastasized.
And there's no way for it not to, Nick.
Like you just said, Trump, and this was at the rally that I went to on Sunday, Trump made the joke for the next four years and maybe beyond.
He told everybody like he, and if you listen to him, he means it.
He really does mean, I'll be president until I don't want to be president anymore or I die.
They heard him.
And guess what, Nick, they encouraged it.
And you know what happens when the MAGA crowd encourages Donald Trump?
He gets worse.
And then he encourages them and it goes back and forth and back and forth.
And so this continues to grow and develop and get worse.
What I heard from Trump.
And what I heard from his supporters in Iowa, it confirmed our thesis, which is this is getting worse and this is getting more and more unmanageable.
And what is happening as this continues to grow is that, Nick, I want to tell people these numbers in case they don't remember it, because political memory in this country is terrible.
In 2016, who won the Republican caucus in Iowa?
Oh, uh, was it Cruz?
It was Ted Cruz with 27%.
Donald Trump had 24% and Marco Rubio had 23%.
We're looking at an Iowa tonight where Donald Trump, and by the way, the reason Ted Cruz won Iowa is because it is a deeply evangelical state.
Donald Trump has completely taken over the evangelical vote, top to bottom.
There's no room anymore for anyone else.
He is going to cruise to probably a 52 to 53% win here.
That is wild.
Wild.
Yeah.
And Haley, well, first, I really want to hear your experience at the rally a little bit more about what that was like.
So let's, let's dive into that real quick before I forget.
Was he on time?
Donald Trump?
No, he wasn't.
He was not on time.
I know that's a shocker to everybody, but no.
How late was he?
How long did he have to wait in there?
Well, it depends on what you think.
Like, he made his supporters stay outside.
I mean, I waited out in negative 20 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes.
I lost track.
I lost track of time.
I thought I was dying.
But he was incredibly late for his actual speech.
Um, Nikki Haley was a little bit late.
Ron DeSantis, man, I saw DeSantis today.
I've got some thoughts, uh, on what happened with DeSantis.
DeSantis is like a clock.
I don't think he could be late to something if he had to.
Uh, but yeah, Trump, Trump was absolutely late.
Now, did it ever get to the point where he keeps going way too long, everyone loses interest, they start to walk out?
Like, that's still happening, right?
Oh yeah!
And you know, McKay Coppins, I love this thing where he's like, everybody needs to go to a Trump rally and see that he bores everybody.
That has happened for eight years, Nick!
This man is a petty narcissist who rambles his ass off.
He doesn't care at all if he makes any type of sense.
Like, that's who he is.
He's going to ramble.
He's going to say crazy shit the entire time.
That's what happened.
He drugged... By the way, did you know that Doug Burgum endorsed him in Iowa?
Uh, no.
Really?
He pulled Doug Burgum out on stage and humiliated him in front of the crowd.
Like, okay, thanks Doug.
You gotta go.
You gotta go.
And pushed him off.
And then just rambled about, like, groceries for 29 minutes.
Because Burgum was the one guy who seemed a little bit, like, rational out there.
So, you know, it's like, here's where we're at, where the people who should be adamantly against him, like the Liz Cheney type of people, are now realizing that maybe they can benefit from being around the guy.
Jeff wants to know if Doug Burgum, he's the governor of... North Dakota.
Where?
North Dakota, right.
And it was on stage for at least for one of the debates, you know, so he was viably, you know, running to be, you know, the GOP nominee and just seemed somewhat normal, I have to tell you.
But, you know, even these people are worried.
Doug Burgum, for the record, for people who don't know Doug Burgum, Doug Burgum looks like he walked into a car wash and got the premium deluxe wax on his face.
Like this is a person who, man, looked very strange, but he was drug out on stage with his wife.
Doug Burgum has said that Donald Trump is akin to a cancer in the Republican Party, and he made him come out and just absolutely pledge fealty for him.
Donald Trump is in total control of the Republican Party.
The establishment Republicans may hate him.
Matter of fact, they might even get the Supreme Court to rule against him and keep him off the ballots.
That's what we talked about the other day.
But Donald Trump is in complete and utter control of the Republican Party.
Okay.
Now, anything else that might have been notable that happened while you were out and about?
Were you, like, in the media place?
No, I was in the crowd.
The Trump situation was really not good for me.
I wanted to give a couple of...
A couple of feelings, some vibes from what happened.
When I was covering this back in 2016, Nick, occasionally you would hear people say some really screwed up shit.
You would hear them talk about threats and fantasies of hurting people, but they kind of did it in hushed tones.
You know what I mean?
Like occasionally they would yell it and they would do all that.
But this was an ongoing conversation.
I said this on my report the other day.
It seemed like in 2016 they were feeling each other out, like they were kind of surprised that they were able to do this stuff in public and they had other like-minded people that they could do it with.
Now it's just the ecosystem.
It's openly fantasizing about violence.
I cannot tell you how many people I heard fantasizing about a civil war, how excited they are to put their weapons to use.
Right?
Oh, if they think January 6th was a coup, I can't wait for them to see what happens when it happens.
Like, actual open fantasizing about it.
Threatening journalists.
Talking openly about hurting journalists.
And on top of that, they were so aggressive.
There were protesters at this rally.
They got very, very aggressive with them.
I actually had an incident, Nick, where a couple of Trump supporters recognized me, got in my face, and were screaming that I was a Marxist pervert.
Which, by the way, that's one of the new things that is happening.
Trump, of course, on top of talking about poisoning of blood, he's talking a lot about how immigrants are sick.
There's a lot of disease talk, Nazi talk.
He is also now talking about the left as, quote, perverts, creeps, sickos, and thugs.
That's the new thing.
It's going to start rolling and growing and doing that.
Yeah, I was called a Marxist pervert.
I'm what's wrong with the country.
I'm going to get mine.
It really got bad very, very quickly.
It was a really unsafe situation, which I've had people yell at me at Trump rallies before.
I've had people yell at me at political events.
This was a thing of a different stripe.
I'll just say that.
So you got reckoned, I mean, were you wearing your muck rake?
Hat?
I did not have on my Muckrake merchandise, I'll tell you.
So they recognize you because they must have, you know, like those cards like they used to do in Iraq, right?
The playing cards with everyone's face on it.
Oh god, yeah.
I'm probably on there with like, you know, the Kupfenstein cards.
And so, like, how close in their face were they to you?
Pretty close.
Pretty close.
I think if it was a different situation there, it could have been bad.
And the whole point of me talking about this is the vibe has changed.
And by the way, Carol in the chat says, I want to hear about the God Made Trump stuff.
It was everywhere.
They didn't just play the God Made Trump video.
The God Made Trump people were VIPs there.
Everybody was watching it in the audience.
There was so, so much talk.
About Donald Trump being an emissary from God.
Like, that is not just Christian nationalism now.
That is ballooning out.
That is, like, really, really growing to be a problem.
Well, this is the one we could have also predicted to some degree.
Once he started to tap into the evangelical, and with a guy whose makeup is like Trump's, and they were so magnetized to him, it just seems like, yes, this was going to continue to grow.
You know, yeah, it does feel, it does feel different even just from the observing on the outside and then what I'm hearing from you right now in a way that, um... Well, this is what we have seen from our research and our, you know, and watching this, like, and observing this.
We know it, like, we felt it.
But to be among it was different.
You know, and I like we talked about in 2016, Nick, I said, if we get out of this without people losing their lives, if we get out of this without blood being shed, we're going to be extremely lucky.
People have already lost their lives.
Blood has already been shed.
Democracy has already been wounded.
The stakes are growing every single day.
You know, I'm thinking like the reactions of people like me would be like, well, if he wins, we need to leave the country.
But that just makes it worse, you know?
And that's what they want, right?
They want people to leave, or at least to be consolidated in the smaller pockets, you know, all these blue areas, so they can maybe once and for all get a better chance at winning, like the Electoral College would say.
I mean, the general election, which they can't do.
But, you know, that's what my reaction is.
I want to leave, and they're, like, excited about that.
But please, get the hell out of here.
Well, that's been the push, right?
I mean, that was something that the Heritage Foundation and all these other, you know, All of them have been putting together these plans.
This is one of the reasons you've seen the major migration from California to Texas to Florida.
And then, of course, from Florida and Texas to California, that sort of moving around politically.
But one thing that we have to understand, Nick.
This is going to November.
I mean, Donald Trump may be thrown off the ballots.
I don't know.
I, again, I told you, I don't know how the Supreme Court is going to rule on that.
If they did, by the way, it would, it would, it would be bad.
It would be really, really bad in terms of violence.
I'm just telling you that right now.
But, you know, we are going to ride this thing to its conclusion.
And Nikki Haley is not going to catch Trump.
I went to a Nikki Haley event on, let me see, I guess it would have been Saturday.
And first of all, she doesn't know who she is.
She has no clue who she actually is as a candidate.
She's got crack top-notch staff that have been paid for by the Koch brothers, by, you know, every mainstream Republican and even some mainstream Democrats.
She is stiff.
She has no identity.
She is pushing like this, you know, call to the shining city, Christian nationalism shit, neoconservativism and war.
But Nick, I'll tell you what, there's not a person in Iowa That hasn't already bought into Trump's version of who Nikki Haley is, which is a globalist and a shrill, hysterical woman.
The sexism there, the xenophobia there, it is already in full force.
She's not going to beat that.
And the enthusiasm for her, it's almost non-existent.
You basically have a group of people in Iowa and probably around the country who don't want to vote for Trump again.
They were trying to pick between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.
And they're just like, who do I choose?
They don't have a loyalty to them.
There's absolutely no push there.
There's nothing there for her to give that is going to make her an alternative to Trump.
And he, quite frankly, is going to grind her into dust.
Right.
Like, that's the thing.
We really haven't... I'm trying to rack my brain right now to think about the soundbites that Trump has against Nikki Haley.
I don't think he's gone after her yet.
Oh, no.
He's gone after her hard in the past few days.
Oh, absolutely.
She's a globalist.
She's incompetent.
The sexism is off the charts.
What I heard from Trump on Sunday, like everything he basically said about her was consistently like, oh, if I said that about a man, it would be fine.
Like he is going to, I mean, it's going to be a double barrel of sexism that's going to be unloaded on her in the next few weeks.
Right.
And whether or not he even needs to do that is up for debate, because again, I think that what you're tapping into, what you're feeling, is that there is a groundswell of, you know, decades in the making of somebody, they're waiting for someone like this to activate that.
And it required someone like Trump to do that, or maybe only Trump, because we had talked about this before.
If Trump dies, It's gone, like, I don't know if someone can, like, take the same kind of mantle and just keep going right with, like, the same playbook and go right with it without, you know, being him.
On that point, by the way, I want to put this on the record, Trump looks terrible.
I was going to say, there's a photo I just saw, he's wearing the caucus captain hat, but he looks orange.
He looks bad.
And there's a lot of talk right now about his physicality has changed.
People are starting to talk about his health.
And, you know, the thing about it is, though, and I want to break this down for people because this is important.
From the exit polls, Nick, 60% of the people who went into the caucuses tonight said that even if Trump is convicted, he should serve as president.
They don't care what his health is.
They don't care whether he's been convicted.
It is simply that he has become a rallying point For saying that this system is so corrupted that it needs to be burned to the ground.
And we want to elect somebody who will burn it to the ground.
And by the way, I don't even think they're actually that interested in electing him, Nick.
I think they're interested in getting him to the election so he can claim that the election has been stolen and then let the cards fall where they may.
I don't even think they're actually that interested in politics anymore.
I think they're more interested in destruction.
Okay.
And the other thing I would think is, you know, it's not that they won't care that he got convicted of all these crimes.
They will simply reject the notion that he ever committed them in the first place.
And that is the other problem we have, because then that becomes a very malleable, you know, you've said this before in The Last Pie, like, you know, that our laws mean nothing at that point.
Um, you know, and so, um, and the activation of the Department of Justice in his favor will be disgusting and terrible.
And again, a different type of government that we do not, we didn't want to have and shouldn't be living in.
Um, the, okay, so the Haley rally, or Haley rally you went to, um, she, she doesn't know who she is.
She's kind of all over the place.
I mean, I think, again, she's probably trying to ride some sort of weird, being really aggressively conservative in some vein, and also trying to be, you know, the rational, normal, somewhat to the center candidate as well, right?
That's where she's got a stake out there.
She's not going to be able to get around.
The Santas is now firmly the right and will never move at all for the left.
Well, I can't wait.
I can't wait to basically discuss Ron DeSantis's political obituary here in a little bit.
So I think that that that lane is going to be open for her.
But Nick, to listen to her speech and to listen to her presentation, what she's trying to do, it is so unfocused.
It is, it is actually a really macabre stump speech and presentation.
We're, we're already at war with like eight or nine different countries.
We've discussed this from the debates.
Um, there's a lot of conversation about maiming of people, uh, of like, uh, people being injured and hurt and, and, and like, it is really, um, It's a really nightmarish portrait of the country, but what is she trying to give them, Nick?
She's saying, Donald Trump is chaotic, it's my turn.
And that, who is that even going to begin to get over to her side?
There's nobody that is going to go along with that.
And I don't know if you saw this, Nick, the final Des Moines Register poll, like before tonight, and that is like the Bible, what to expect from the caucuses.
She had, for her enthusiasm, like how many people were actually enthusiastic about her.
And she took second in that poll.
She was number two behind Donald Trump in that poll.
Think about that for a second.
She was the main alternative to Donald Trump.
Do you know how many of the people planning on caucusing for Nikki Haley described themselves as enthusiastic for her?
5%?
9%.
Yeah.
That tracks.
Yeah.
That's bad.
Well, the other part of the issue here is that the more opponents Trump has, the better it works for him.
Everyone else divides, whatever's left.
And so that's what got him in 2016, right?
There were so many people and he kept, was able to capitalize with 25%, right?
He could win some of those until finally it went down.
But that was too late.
He already had the momentum.
And probably the same thing here.
And listen, there's absolutely no way anyone is going to overtake him short of him having some, you know, horrible health problem, you know, in the primaries.
So Nikki Haley has to be banking on the fact that DeSantis has to drop out.
Like, that's the only way she can gain any kind of momentum that way and jump up and maybe go from 20% to, I don't know, 28%, you know, while he gets his, you know, 50, whatever it's going to be.
I mean, let's say right now the caucus that just got updated is, she is one point behind DeSantis.
It's kind of really close.
I really hope.
You think that DeSantis would drop out if he's third by a hair?
Yeah, I think that's it.
Matter of fact, I think there's a possibility DeSantis even drops out if he takes second.
Yeah, you really?
Yeah, I do.
I do.
Everything was put on this.
He has no game in New Hampshire.
He has no game in South Carolina.
Actually, the more that we gain distance from this absolute abysmal campaign, the more you realize, like, this was a bad strategy for Ron DeSantis.
Like, he really thought he was going to win in Iowa, and suddenly, you know, people would just flock to him.
He might take second tonight because the people supporting him know that his career is on the line, so they might actually show up to the caucuses, whereas the people who want to support Nikki Haley are like, ah, she's going to take second, I'm not going to worry about it.
On top of that, like, I'm not really excited about her, and it's negative 20 right now.
So I could even see Ron DeSantis squeaking out second and dropping out.
Like, there's just really no path forward for him.
You know, and that's the other problem is it's like how many people didn't even bother coming out because it was so cold.
You know, I'm looking at the numbers right now.
It's way down.
45,000 people voted, I guess.
Is that if I'm reading this correctly?
Oh, it's more than that.
The estimates are that this is going to be low turnout, probably roughly around 60,000 less people than in 2016.
Yeah, I mean, you know, and then for some reason this little state, no offense to the people out in Iowa, gets to have this huge, you know, influence on everybody.
I love Iowa.
I love Iowans.
I love Iowa.
It was so cold, but it was tough out there.
Well, there are Iowans out there that understand what we're talking about, right?
And are going to be activated for the Democratic primary, right?
They're out there.
Sure, yes, there are.
I mean, it's not, yeah, they have a proud tradition of having democratic politics in that state.
But I do want to go ahead and say, and I was talking about this in the lead up to the caucuses, Nick, Iowans really take this seriously and they don't like to get behind the main Group of people, you know, they don't like getting behind the main campaign.
The fact that they have flocked to Donald Trump like this, the fact that these voters who consider themselves very, very serious people, the fact that they have gotten behind him, it is, it is really telling, I think, of what has happened in this body.
I want to talk, by the way, real quick, really, really quickly.
I talked about this on my special report.
I talked to a member of the Nikki Haley staff, Nick, who told me in no uncertain terms that their strategy is that Donald Trump's going to get convicted and thrown off the ballot.
That is what they believe.
She is not trying to be the vice president.
She has no interest whatsoever in serving with Donald Trump.
Of course, that's what everybody says.
And then Doug Burgum and his wife is on stage, right?
But they truly and honestly believe in their hearts that he is going to get thrown off the ballot.
That is what they think is their path forward.
She will be the last person standing.
That is what they believe.
Now whether or not that's going to happen or if that's the direction we're going to go in, that's a different thing, but they truly and honestly believe it.
So, what they think that is, okay, again, it's not going to happen.
The Supreme Court of the United States is not going to take him up about it.
I'm telling you.
You don't know that.
I do know that.
You don't know that.
You don't know that.
I agree that they probably won't, but you don't know that.
All right, fine.
I mean, listen, I will wallow in my bombasticity of what I think about what they're going to do.
So, it's actually cynicism.
But, you know, They'd have to...
Okay, every blue state would have to take him off the ballot, right?
So Colorado upholds, right?
They hold it up and they take him off the ballot.
And then it goes...
Who else did it?
Maine?
I'm forgetting that.
Anyway.
Sorry, I'm crunching some numbers on a couple of things.
Go ahead.
It would have to be every single blue state.
We have to count the Electoral College votes up.
And I'm still not sure that he loses the general like that.
You know what I mean?
There might still be enough electoral votes.
It doesn't seem like there would be, but like maybe, right?
Someone do the math, maybe in the comments they have the math out there with electoral votes.
I just wanted to say, Nick, by the way, I just got a report from somebody I know in Iowa who knows these things, and I'm looking at the numbers too.
There's a very real possibility that DeSantis and Haley finish within two points of each other.
Like real photo finish stuff.
There's a real possibility of it.
Well, right now it's 10,000 to 9,400.
It's like a 600-vote difference, which is probably big enough where DeSantis is going to hold on at this point.
I don't think that's true necessarily, but I think it could be very, very close between the two of them.
You think it's going to be close to a 600-vote gap?
Maybe.
I don't know.
I think it's going to be pretty close.
But they do.
They legitimately believe that that's their path to victory and I think they've convinced themselves.
I think they've totally convinced themselves that that's how they're going to win the nomination.
Well, that is true.
That is the only way they are going to win a nomination.
So, if they think it's going to happen is a little different than how they can win is that.
Either way, and I guess if you tell yourself that to give yourself a boost.
And that said, she should be happy.
Remember, she was polling a lot lower than this overall in Iowa up until this point.
No, the momentum is with Nikki Haley right now.
And again, I'm going to talk about what I saw from Ron DeSantis and what I've heard about Ron DeSantis.
And also, we need to talk about what this campaign is going to look like moving forward.
A reminder to people watching this live as we're recording it, feel free to send us questions.
Happy to answer them when we get past these segments.
Oh yeah, I see they're talking about why SCOTUS would not do it.
They would require a conviction of insurrection of Trump.
Well, that's what Jack Smith is doing.
And the problem is they're not going to get that done before they're going to weigh in on this one.
And then the question then becomes, all right, what if Jack Smith does, is successful in having that, uh, getting conviction for, for what he's doing with Trump?
Um, does it have to go back to SCOTUS then?
And then they say, okay, well now he's convicted.
Now we take him off the ballots.
It's a whole other thing.
The things, for the record, I heard people say about Jack Smith and also Fannie Willis this weekend, unbelievable.
Like, some of the most vitriolic, racist, sexist shit that I have ever heard.
Like, it, it, it, Nick, the fantasizing about using The the the might of government to commit violence against your political enemies.
It is it's inescapable right now among these people.
Yeah, that that's that's the worst part.
It's not enough to have like these policies.
We don't like we're talking about.
Well, I long for the days where we would argue about tax rates, you know, like can we go back to that?
And so it's now turned into yes fearing for your life.
the other side uh with the rhetoric and i don't think trump wants to ever acknowledge that what he's saying and how he's saying it has that kind of effect even though we've seen people murdered people attacked uh over and over again um i don't think he has what is that he's he whatever he lacks in terms of um humility and all those things it's the same idea where he can't have any self reflection or i notice that anything he does is detrimental to the country so no no capability uh
I want to talk and we'll get to where we think the race is going to go here in a second.
Nick, I want to talk about seeing Ron DeSantis today.
Before I get going, Iowa reveals something about people.
There's a thing that happens when you get to Iowa where you kind of have to present yourself sometimes as a human being.
I call it the Howard Dean sweater.
When everybody was talking about how angry Howard Dean was, so he started wearing sweaters to every rally to show his soft side.
Ron DeSantis has had to show that he's a quote-unquote person.
I'm a real human person!
The thing I saw, and he's done this stunt with his wife and his children, Where his wife will come out with his child almost like it's, you know, it's a scripted sort of off-the-cuff moment where she's like, Oh, I gotta take my kid out.
Excuse me, everybody.
I got to do this.
And by the way, she is so much more talented than he is at this whole thing.
DeSantis wants nothing to do with it.
He's like, Oh, I guess it's my children.
Okay, go, go, go, go.
Like he, he, he has no desire whatsoever.
Or any of the human aspects of politics.
And Nick, he is so tremendously untalented.
You can feel the bad vibes off of him.
Like in the room.
It's like being at a bad wake.
You know what I mean?
Where everybody's there, they know the person in the coffin didn't have a good life.
But you still need to go and see them.
Give them a goodbye.
That's what he feels like.
And on top of that, Nick, what has become clear, and this also made the Trump phenomenon even more obvious to me, and this is something I've always felt, but I was never able to put the words on.
They are not interested in someone to solve their problems.
They are not interested in having a strong executive in office.
Ron DeSantis' entire appeal was, I do a lot of things.
I can do a lot of things for you.
And they didn't give a shit.
What they want is to hurt the people they hate.
And not only do they want to hurt the people they hate, they want to have fun while they do it.
That's what the Republican Party is now.
It is a bunch of white, evangelical, wealthy people who want desperately to ground their enemies into dust and they want to laugh while they do it.
Ron DeSantis never stood a chance.
Right, well only because Trump already existed, right?
Like, you know, that's the problem I think he had, was he was doing the Trump playbook pretty well, like following it exactly as well as he could, doing all the woke, anti-woke stuff, you know, and we were worried that that would be the thing that would galvanize people around someone who's more disciplined, yadda yadda, but as long as there was a guy who already had done it and done it better anyway, right, he never stood a chance.
You know, I didn't have Thai food until I was in graduate school.
Thai food, it was something I never thought.
I didn't even know Thai food was out there.
Like, I was raised in a sheltered environment.
I came from the Midwest.
I had a bunch of bland food.
I didn't know I liked to eat.
I didn't know that I liked Thai cuisine.
The first time I had Thai food, Nick, I pushed away from the table and I decided I'm going to make up for lost time.
I'm going to have as much Thai food for the rest of my life as I possibly can.
You know what I mean?
I want some tonight now.
Yeah.
Tell me about it.
I wish I would have got Thai food tonight.
But here's the thing, Nick.
The Republican base didn't even know that they wanted Donald Trump until they got Donald Trump.
They didn't know that that's what they could get out of politics.
You know, that dopamine hit of hurting people and that gleeful bullying of it and not being tied down by expectations and social niceties and shame, as you talk about all the time.
And they got there.
They're not going to look back.
They're not going to have some weird talking executive come in and tell them, Hey, I'm going to assign more homework.
They don't want homework.
They don't want to be asked more of them.
They don't want anything to happen besides their enemies to be destroyed.
And they want to have a good time doing it.
There was no chance.
Once they had Donald Trump, there was no chance that Ron DeSantis was going to come along and usurp him.
Right.
And yeah, and so again, like I guess we could argue or whatever, like this sort of disagree on whether or not he drops out.
But you're, I mean, listen, it does make sense to me because he doesn't have a ground game anywhere else.
And so that, of course, like, okay, do we, where do we go?
Do we have a headquarters in New Hampshire?
Do we have an office?
Do we have anything set up?
Like probably something to go do, right?
So, so that, I guess I hear you on that one, but if it's this close to Haley, they knew, okay, how about this?
How long had they known they were going to get trounced by Trump in Iowa?
I think, I think that it started to be clear to them about a month ago.
Wow.
That late in the game?
I would have thought... So then they lost their donors to Nikki Haley.
I think that's when they figured it out.
Do you know what I mean?
I think when that happened, they were like, okay, I think something's going wrong here, but you want to believe, you know what I mean?
And by the way, you brought up a headquarters in New Hampshire.
There is no one in the world who is lonelier and more afraid than a New Hampshire A campaign staffer the night of the Iowa caucuses.
It is cold tonight in New Hampshire.
You're watching these results.
You don't know if you're going to have a job tomorrow.
It could be done.
And the DeSantis New Hampshire people, I assume that they are sitting there with their heads in their hands.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, if he drops out and then Nikki Haley starts to generate, you know, more of the anybody but Trump people, right?
Which is one of the keys.
Well, right.
That's the thing.
Anybody but Trump.
I wonder how that splits between DeSantis and Haley, right?
That's another interesting thing.
Most of them are going to go to Trump, probably, is the thing.
And a chunk will go to Haley, but Right.
So she, but again, she starts to galvanize and getting into the upper twenties, early thirties, gets to South Carolina with maybe like a better, a better showing out of that.
You know, like, right.
I guess you could kind of see some sort of momentum, but again, we were waiting for some sort of deus ex machina that happens with Trump that becomes really loathsome if it's out of these, out of the, out of the, Well, I don't know at this point if there's any such thing as an October surprise with Donald Trump.
I think everything's on the board.
I think everything would have got thrown at him in 2016.
Who knows?
Maybe there's some out there that they could still, you know, or maybe the Democrats have it and they're just waiting to drop it in October.
Well, I don't know at this point if there's any such thing as an October surprise with Donald Trump.
I think everything's on the board.
I think everything would have got thrown at him in 2016.
I don't think there's anything to do.
But I will tell you, I had a feeling going into this and I wrote about it on my Substack, I said, a one-on-one contest between Trump and Haley is going to mutate the Republican Party in ways that I don't think people are all that ready for.
I think it's going to get even worse than that.
What I saw from Donald Trump and what I saw from his supporters this weekend, like Nikki Haley is going to lob bombs at him.
And she is going to basically paint him as a chaotic old man who is dangerous.
Right.
And she's going to talk about needing the military to solve.
By the way, Nick, we haven't even talked about the regional war in the Middle East has grown.
Like in, in, uh, Iran lobbed missiles at the U S and Iraq today.
Uh, there was another incident, uh, with Red Sea.
I mean, it's a mess and that's only going to get worse.
And Nikki Haley is only going to get more and more aggressive calling for multiple wars.
Donald Trump's talk about poisoning of blood and again perverts, creeps, sickos, and thugs.
There was a prayer.
The prayer before the Trump rally was for God to expose their enemies so they could quote unquote handle them.
Like that type of shit is only going to get worse.
Worse.
And that's going to cross-pollinate with the Nikki Haley campaign.
And it's, I'm sorry, but the political scene over the next few months, at least until Super Tuesday, is going to be, for lack of a better word, Nick, mucky.
Yeah, that's the worry when you have two candidates now, or even if it's three, trying to one-up each other in Trumpism.
And then that becomes the baseline, and then they go worse from there after whoever gets the nomination, Trump does.
And we already know what they're planning to do, how they've already got it ready to go, and much more disciplined.
Trump will be much more disciplined to get more of his agenda through.
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know how we do this.
I can only hope that somehow there's a latent energy that will suddenly come alive to put an end to this once and for all, right?
Because if Trump loses another one, then he goes away, right?
I don't think so.
If Trump loses to Biden in 2024, you don't think he goes away?
I mean, what does that mean for you?
Does that mean he just gives up?
Says, thanks for the memories?
I mean, I guess it means he ain't running in 2028.
I think that's, that's, we could say.
Oh, I don't know.
Okay.
Um, I would hope he disappears from the political landscape.
Um, I don't think he goes away.
No, I, I don't think he can quit.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
It's too much, too much of a cash cow for him.
Well, it's a cash cow.
It's his entire job.
I mean, on top of that, like, why would he quit?
Like, Donald Trump has enough?
Like, I'm sick of all this attention, everybody.
I'm going to slink back to where I want to go.
I'm good.
Yeah, I hear you.
I hear you.
I mean, man, is there anything we can talk about that's good tonight?
Well, I don't know about that.
I did get a question.
You seem deflated, Nick.
I, you know, it's a long day and, um, and it's deflating.
And then hearing your, even people like- We knew, we knew this wasn't going to turn out well.
Do you know what I mean?
We, we, we, we knew all along that we were heading to this point.
It's, it's one of those things, Nick.
It's like, um, again, I don't like to fly.
I'll look at like a turbulence predictor and it's like over these mountains, you're going to hit bad turbulence.
We knew we were going for turbulence.
We knew that this night was going to come.
We told everybody in our preview shows, we said, Donald Trump is going to win this.
He's going to win it in a landslide.
It's not going to be pretty.
Now we're looking at it, now we're understanding it.
I will say, by the way, I got an email from Steve with a question for the show.
He asked for both of us, what are the odds tonight of a Trump victory in November?
What do you think?
You know, I never had to do that plus 100 stuff, so I'll just do the... Oh yeah, I always do percentage.
Yeah, so...
I mean, as far as I know, the polls say he'd beat Biden at this point.
It depends on the poll, for sure.
All right.
I mean, I'm going, I don't know, I feel like he's going to be favored if it's even slightly, let's say, 52-48 Trump wins.
That's how you're feeling tonight?
That's how I feel tonight.
And by the way, remember, we always change when we start to have more Democratic events and then, you know, things start looking, oh, OK, we're going to get ready to vote and all that stuff.
So that changes.
But as of tonight, yes, 52-48 Trump.
I don't know that I could give it a number right now.
I keep saying this, 2024, we're only halfway through January and it's already been a wild, wild month.
What's happening in the Middle East is totally unpredictable.
I mean, we have no idea what's going to happen there and how that's going to shape things.
We know that international crises favor Republicans because of this bullshit myth That Republicans are stronger and keep us safer, you know, and which has never been true.
The economy, listen, this economy is strange.
It is all over the place.
It's, it's, it's, it's like a, an uneven EKG.
It is a very, very strange economy we're dealing with right now.
Donald Trump is also historically unpopular.
People hate his ass and he's only getting worse.
Do you know what I mean?
I don't know.
I don't know what's going to happen at this point, but one thing that I am, I am certain of is unless he is kept off of a ballot, unless he has ruled ineligible, he's going to be the nominee for the Republican Party.
And this movement's going to grow.
Yep.
That is the reality.
And you don't have to even say, I believe that's going to happen.
I just think that is the reality.
You're certain at this point?
Like that's where you are?
Yes.
I mean, you know, again, I don't think he's going to throw off the ballot.
So that's one thing.
I mean, listen, is he going to have a health crisis?
Like, it seems like he would.
That's a possibility.
I mean, that is a possibility.
Yeah, but like, you know, I tend to kind of just err on the side of thinking that people are going to be able to live at least, you know, for the next several months.
He seems like he'll be able to make it through there at least.
So, uh, we know that nothing will matter with these lawsuits because his people who vote for him don't give a shit and don't believe in them anyway.
They do not care.
As a matter of fact, Nick, I, I had never, I never thought I would see so much merchandise.
Sorry, yeah, finish your thought.
I never ever thought I would see so much merchandise of people wearing of Donald Trump's mugshot.
It supports it.
They support it.
They love it.
They absolutely love it.
I figured out the thing that's going to take him down.
I can't wait.
Epstein.
No, it's not.
Well, it's come out, right?
Some of it's come out.
But if that came out and they have the proof or evidence, whatever, that he was with the younger girls who were under 18, well, first of all, then he'd be in prison.
Although, I mean, I don't, I, again, I've seen way too many powerful, wealthy white men avoid prosecution.
Right.
I don't know.
That would be the one thing I think that would maybe do something.
You know, like Nixon was afraid that they had evidence of him, you know, involved in JFK assassinations.
That's why they created QAnon!
QAnon is all about just absolutely running out ahead of Donald Trump and keeping him from being implicated in the Epstein stuff.
It's pointing the finger at the other side so you don't have to, like, take responsibility for the fact that Donald Trump has been globe-hopping with Epstein.
I, yeah, okay.
I guess, I mean, listen, is there more that's gonna come out?
Like, maybe, right?
I don't even know, or that was it, and nothing really came of it anyway, besides some innuendo.
But, and by the way, just how, it's just icky, and awful, and disgusting, and like, I don't know.
I think at some point their onus was on those people who were going to his island, and even if they didn't do anything, they shouldn't have been there.
They should have known.
By the way, speaking of icky and gross, I was next to Jim Jordan at the Trump rally.
Shut up.
You were.
I stood next to him for a few minutes.
I stood next to two notable people.
And by the way, Nigel Farage was at the rally because, fantastic.
I just looked up at one point and I was like, oh, I'm standing next to Kane, the WWE wrestler.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Who spoke at this thing.
Oh.
Yeah.
So you probably liked him as a wrestler?
I didn't support him as a wrestler.
Oh, okay.
I was an undertaker in your day.
But, no, and Jim Jordan.
Yeah, could you smell the desperation and... Ick!
An ick off of that man.
Like an ick.
Didn't feel good standing next to him.
That sucked.
It was a lot like how I felt standing next to Roger Stone.
There was an ugly to it.
You know what I mean?
You know, if I were with you and I also found myself standing next to Jim Jordan, you know what I would do, right?
I can't wait.
I'd probably like chat the shit out of him.
I would be like, hey, hey, how's it going?
Like, you know, and just really, really, I would like to inhale it.
I would love to just, you know, bite into the apple and really feel it and just to get that sense.
You know, I wouldn't say anything derogatory or anything like that.
I would just be like, hey, you know, whatever.
You know, I'd shake the guy's hand.
I really want to feel what that essence is like, so.
So real fast, I am hearing from one of my people in Iowa that basically Since 7pm, which is when the caucuses began.
Before I tell people this information, MSNBC, in one of the craziest cable news things I've seen in years, at 7pm, before a single vote had been cast, they categorized the race as, quote, too early to call, Trump has a lead.
Before a single vote had been cast in the entire state of Iowa.
It is like one of the craziest cable news things I've ever seen.
But from the very beginning, everybody said that Donald Trump was going to win this.
Apparently, Ron DeSantis and his surrogates within his campaign are burning down the phone lines, complaining to people that the caucus was fixed by the media.
Which tells me either A, DeSantis is going to continue on and, I don't know, humiliate himself further in New Hampshire, or this is, you know, I don't participate in rigged contests, therefore I'm done.
And that's his way of leaving, you know?
And I don't know.
I don't know, but apparently anybody who will listen is being told right now by DeSantis and his staff that the election was rigged by the media.
I mean, I don't know.
New York Times is giving him, DeSantis is basically calling second place for him.
Have they called it?
I mean, they're saying it's 90% chance of securing second place, which, you know.
If DeSantis takes second and he beats Nikki Haley by more than two to three points, that is wild.
That is a different thing.
By the way, nobody is excited.
I said it, but nobody is excited about Nikki Haley, Nick.
Nobody is excited about her.
There is no juice to that campaign.
There is absolutely no message and no argument being made of why she should be elected.
And I mean, it is, it's really crazy.
And this is, I'm telling you this, Nick, I watched Rick Santorum, who's one of the most disgusting candidates that America has ever belched up.
Like, give more of a reason.
To be elected than Nikki Haley.
Like Rick Santorum had actual momentum coming out of Iowa.
Nikki Haley was anointed the new challenger to Donald Trump and has done nothing with it.
Absolutely.
She ain't dropping out at the third place.
She's not dropping out, no.
I suppose she'll drop out after like South Carolina.
Yeah.
What was I going to say?
I forgot.
Anyway.
Trump will probably beat her in South Carolina.
She might win New Hampshire.
I mean, but then again, she might not get a bounce out of Iowa.
But she just absolutely has swung.
She's been given all the money in the world.
The amount of money, for the record, Nick, the amount of money that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have burned through in Iowa, all that Koch money, all the establishment Republican oligarch money, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I'm just trying to figure, okay, that's the case.
Well, Nikki Haley would have to drop out after she can't win her own state, right?
Right, so it's just a matter of when, I think at this point, the way this is going.
Either way, just the numbers, the math, the enthusiasm, all the things.
There isn't a way, there isn't a normal path.
Right, unless you said he is thrown off the ballots.
There's not enough states that can do that that will make that happen.
But you'd have to be thrown off the ballot in the primaries is what she's got to rely on.
Is that what she's relying on?
I'm so sorry, I was reading this message.
What was the question?
Well, because you know what?
The case in Colorado was about the general election throwing him off the ballot, right?
Yeah.
But he'd have to be thrown off the ballot in the primary for Nikki Haley to have that chance, right?
I think she's going to make the argument that – He's not electable, so you have to elect me because – all right, I guess.
You have to elect me because he's not going to be on the ballot in November.
Someone's got to do it.
Nick, I'm being told that the anger emanating out of the DeSantis campaign is more than this person has ever seen out of the – Out of a, out of a campaign in Iowa.
And that's including like, I don't know if people remember this, but in 2020, the Democratic caucus was one of the biggest disasters that has ever occurred.
Everybody had a reason to be pissed off.
This feels so performative.
And if I had to guess Nick, let me go ahead and throw this out.
Cause if I'm reading my tea leaves correctly, what is being done here?
If the expectation is that DeSantis squeaks out a second place, which is still a disappointment.
Then maybe he goes into New Hampshire trying to brand himself as the anti-media candidate.
And because who he keeps going after the most, Nick, is Fox News.
Which is really interesting because Fox News wanted DeSantis bad.
I mean, they basically were, you know, lining him up to be the next Trump.
But if that's the case, that's...
That's an interesting strategy.
I don't know that that's going to pay off, but that maybe maybe this is all strategy, but apparently he's apoplectic.
You know, it's weird because like, okay, the whole plan was Iowa, right?
Like I'm trying to think like in 2021 after going through we just did the last couple selection cycles.
If you were to tell me that somebody was going to try and craft a primary campaign around only Iowa, right?
And that's the big one.
We're going to just focus on that.
We're not going to work with anywhere else and just really build a program there.
Like that just seems ridiculous, right?
It doesn't seem like a good idea at all.
But I thought the DeSantis campaign already had come to grips with how poorly run it was.
So are they mad about the candidate or are they mad about how poorly run it was?
That's a great question.
Probably column A, column B.
Right.
Cause like if they just, just figuring out now that he's a terrible candidate, I mean, geez, you should be mad at yourself.
But, um, you know, the other thing that's interesting, I wanted to pivot to if we could, is, you know, uh, Trump, uh, attacked Vivek, uh, this week.
Oh yeah, it went hard after Vivek, absolutely.
It was a little bit strange only because Vivek has been this guy who's been the mouthpiece, clearly angling for something, you know, not obviously going to make the nomination, but he wanted a cabinet position, you know, something that he's not qualified for.
Um, my take on it was they reached out and they're like, we want to do something and Trump decided to let him know and put him in his place publicly that that was their answer.
Nobody is entirely sure what caused the rift with Vivek.
Nobody's really sure what happened.
And it appears that something happened.
I bet he got up in front of his keys.
He probably went to him and said, hey, or his people went to him and said, hey, how about, like, Secretary of State?
I bet you he did something insane like that.
And Trump's reaction was like, are you effing kidding me?
All right, now I need to do something.
So I would imagine it could be something related to that word.
But Vic obviously was just asked for something so ridiculous and insulting, almost insulting, disrespectful, that Trump had to do that.
There's not a lot of other explanations as to why, because this guy's been a mouthpiece for Trump and has done everything he can to whitewash whatever Trump has done and make it seem nice and good.
I doubt we'll ever find out exactly what happened there.
Yeah.
So we're nearing the end of our election night coverage, Nick.
If I had to make a prediction right now, My guess is that DeSantis wins this by a point and a half.
This is my guess.
If he wins it by a point and a half, if he wins it by two points, I think he goes to New Hampshire.
Yeah.
And by the way, at that point, you're just playing with house money.
You know what I mean?
You're just, you're, you're throwing it at the wall.
You're seeing if something sticks.
I bet he'll rage against Fox News and Republican media for a while, and he'll see if maybe people want to throw some votes his way.
But Nick, if that does happen, if DeSantis does make it to New Hampshire, Nikki Haley can kiss any chance of winning New Hampshire goodbye.
That's done.
That's, that's probably more than likely done.
And at that point, I don't, I don't know.
I, I, I, I don't even, I don't even see her putting... Wait, I'm sorry.
You're thinking that if DeSantis hangs on and goes to New Hampshire, he'll beat Haley?
No, I think Haley would lose any chance of possibly winning New Hampshire at that point.
Oh, right.
She needs all those extra votes.
That's right.
But by the way, I'm looking at, um, you know, one of these websites that has a lot of polling that averages together.
We won't call it and tell you what it is, but, um, She's polling at 30.3% and Trump is at 43.4%.
Which is interesting.
And DeSantis is only at 5.8%.
So even if she flipped every single one of DeSantis' voters, that makes her 35.
And the 36, it's a little bit closer, but it's still 7 points behind.
The polls are always weird and Iowa changes the polls.
And the fact that she, if she comes in third and, and it looks like there's a real possibility she comes in third, if she finishes third in Iowa, after she gains all that quote unquote momentum, um, that stagnates any momentum she has in New Hampshire.
And if DeSantis stays in, that takes away some of those votes.
At that point, I mean, Donald Trump probably moonwalks out of there with 45, 46% of the vote.
Right.
And then you go into South Carolina, and if she is... We might have already seen, and this is kind of amazing to think about, Nick, we might have already seen the peak of Nikki Haley's campaign.
Yeah, right.
I mean, I guess that had to be the calculation.
She'd do really, really well in Iowa, get second place.
Maybe DeSantis didn't have to drive out.
For her to finish second in Iowa, she would have overachieved what everyone thought was possible.
That was the best situation for her.
And now, it just appears that she gained no momentum.
I mean, she gained momentum from where she was for a while.
I mean, she was neck and neck with Chris Christie there for a while, and now she's neck and neck with DeSantis.
But if she doesn't come out of Iowa with momentum, and she goes into New Hampshire with no momentum, and also DeSantis to fend off, by the time you get to South Carolina, Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, she might be lucky to even have a campaign office.
Right.
And by the way, the polling in South Carolina is already so bad against her in favor of Trump.
And it's her state.
You've got to have a better result in your state like that, in polling even.
So I would already say that she's not going to win South Carolina either.
Then what happens on Tuesday?
I guess nothing.
Do you ever, because you're a basketball guy, do you ever see a franchise that's run so terribly that you get kind of interested in how you would fix it?
Do you ever do that sometimes you start thinking about like the moves you would make and how you would try and make things go down?
I hate that I'm always having to offer advice to the Ron DeSantis campaign.
It's such a disaster.
Yeah, you know.
If I if I am on the DeSantis team.
I go into New Hampshire downplaying what those results are going to be.
New Hampshire was never my state.
I don't even campaign in South Carolina.
I'm not interested in South Carolina.
You put all of your chips into the middle of the table for Super Tuesday.
Right.
You go down to Florida.
You make sure that you can at least compete.
I mean, I think Trump's up 40 points in the state where Ron DeSantis is governor.
But that's your Hail Mary, I guess.
But you don't really win the nomination without winning South Carolina.
But at this point, there's no... This is like playing chess, Nick, and you have like your king and one pawn and the other guy hasn't lost any.
Like this is, the board is not good.
Do you know what I mean?
And I said, they're not making the playoffs.
Oh, there's lots of games left.
There's a whole season, a whole half, whatever.
I'm like, look up the number of teams that started two and six.
And how did they, who got in the playoffs?
It's like one or two, right?
Like, so it was okay.
Maybe there was like, you know, an exception to the rule.
But when I look at it that way, and I look at these numbers now, there's simply no way to do a 40 point turnaround.
Or a 30-point turnaround.
Or even a 20-point turnaround, based on the polls that you see.
The only thing that would happen is, yes, if he dies, or is incapacitated, or... You know, again, it's not even the...
The trials he's involved in.
None of those guilty verdicts is going to have an effect either.
So if that's what you're hinging it on, then you're not getting him a campaign.
It's just a waste of time and money and all that stuff.
But I like your idea about the Super Tuesday thing where maybe that would have been what DeSantis needs to do at this point and focus on those because otherwise he's out.
He's completely out.
It doesn't matter.
This is all moving forward.
I'll say this.
And you know, maybe this is the theme of the episode, Nick.
This is a really, really bad night for anybody who thinks that Donald Trump stands a chance of not winning the nomination.
Everything has turned out bad for the possibility that Trump could be defeated.
Nikki Haley, somehow or another, Ron DeSantis had a disappointing night.
Nikki Haley had a disappointing night.
Like, that's tough.
And nobody, like in no way, shape or form, can anybody in any way, shape or form see some way forward to cobble something together that could be positive and could detract from Donald Trump?
Like every, Donald Trump basically drew a royal flush tonight.
Yeah.
What happened?
He held the line, you know, was able to.
He held the line.
He advanced the line.
He, the line has been eaten.
Regurgitated and eaten again.
Right.
I only had to go to Iowa once.
I think you went to Iowa three or four times.
Okay.
Yeah, man.
Donald Trump, winner of the Iowa caucuses and just absolutely destroying his competition and rendering them useless.
Wow.
Man, these results are something.
Nikki Haley, really?
And I knew this!
You go into these things, Nick.
I knew in 2016 when I went to a Hillary Clinton rally and I went to a Bernie Sanders rally, I knew what was up.
You know what I mean?
Like, immediately I was like, oh, this is going to be closer than everybody thinks it's going to be.
I knew going into Nikki Haley's rally that it was, it was like a quiche that hadn't risen.
You know, it just, it couldn't do it.
It just couldn't go.
And then DeSantis, it was like, Looking at just like festering rot and just being like, who wants this?
Who wants to like, you know, affix themselves to this?
And that's what you got.
You have an unrisen quiche and a festering rot, and then you got a fascist wanting to take over the government.
Yeah.
Rotting orange.
Thanks for the hospitality and good food.
I enjoyed it.
Yeah.
Hashtag good times.
All right, everybody.
We are going to be back here on Friday for The Weekender.
Go over to patreon.com slash Mike Craig Podcast.
This race is going to be strange, and it's going to take some turns.
This is a strange night.
I'll just say that.
Yeah.
Well, listen, I'll be looking forward to all those turns.
It'll be great.
We are political sickos, Nick.
That's what we're here to do.
That's why you play the game.
All right, everybody.
We'll be back on Friday.
You can answer before then.
I'm Nick, you can hear me.
I'm J-West Sexton.
Thank you everybody that came out, watched, questions, all that good stuff.
