America's Talking - ‘Only Getting Started’: Trump Full Steam Ahead, DeSantis Faltering as Primary Moves Forward

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

 Former President Donald Trump dominated the Iowa Caucuses Monday evening, leaving little room for his opponents to forge a path forward and make the pitch they are viable candidates. Regardless, they seem intent on trying and still do have hope, since Iowa only has 40 delegates to offer and it takes 1,215 to win the GOP nomination. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign suffered this week in particular, investing heavily in time and campaign funds in Iowa, his best chance to prove his viability before New Hampshire, where he is expected to lose handily. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and Content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. We are recording this on Friday, January 19th.

The Iowa caucuses are behind us, and as expected, former President Donald Trump pretty much lapped the field. gaining more votes than his entire competition combined more than 50% of the votes there on Tuesday of this upcoming week, New Hampshire primaries, where Trump is probably expected to win again, maybe not by as much as he did the Iowa caucuses. Casey, after Tuesday, are the primary season going to be over on the Republican side? Well, it's very possible that it will be over practically, but I don't think that we're going to see those candidates drop out who have been pouring in tens of millions of dollars into Iowa, New Hampshire. I've already seeing that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, you know, he did play second in Iowa, but did not, you know, in some ways it was a disappointing finish

because he's still so far behind Trump despite spending so much money in Iowa and so much time and campaign resources. But he's eyeing South Carolina, which is an early primary state where he thinks that he can make a big impact. And he'll need to do it there because in New Hampshire, polling pretty poorly at about less than seven percent. Say that five times real fast. I know. I can't. I don't think I can say it one more time. You know, he's not polling well in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley has more than three times as much support as him. She's in the mid-20 percent support, I believe, and he's around seven. And so he's going to get really dominated by Nikki Haley in New Hampshire if the polling holds true. But even then, Trump is still expected.

to beat Nikki Haley. He's in, you know, 40 to 45 percent range in New Hampshire, which is definitely lower than Iowa and is notable. Nikki Haley is spending a lot of advertising money in New Hampshire, hoping to close that gap. But a lot of her supporters are antsy. They're saying, if you can't win New Hampshire, which is your best state, are you really going to be able to beat Trump at all? So I think there's some people holding out hope. And it's all interesting, Dan, before I hand it back to you, because these early states are big symbolic victories. But when it comes to the overall delegates, they're not that many. Iowa's only 40 delegates.

You need a little more than 1,200 delegates, 1,215 delegates to win. So Iowa is a small percentage. But when you lose so handling in these early states, it is a big moral loss, a big moral victory for the winner. And the other reason to support it is because Super Tuesday is coming up. And there are a lot of delegates on the line in Super Tuesday. Those states all vote on the same day. And so whatever momentum is created or lost leading up to Super Tuesday heavily influences all those people who vote at the same time.

And so by the time, all those, you know, they're all going to vote with the same impression of who's going to be the winner based on the early states. And once you're past Super Tuesday, it can be really hard to build momentum or come back if you haven't won any state to that point. Super Tuesday is in March, of course. Before we look forward a little bit more, Casey, let's just recap. Iowa one more time. What was interesting to me was Trump's victory speech after it was clear that he was going to win more than 50% of the vote outpacing all of his challenges. Come on his post-C caucus speech was more conciliatory than you'd expect from President Trump. He's, you know, he's been criticizing all of his opponents in the race in normal Donald Trump fashion calling Florida Governor Ron DeSanis, Ron DeSan. Ron DeSan. He kind of praised them a little bit in his speech with the ultimate goal of saying, hey, we need unite as a party so we can beat President Joe Biden, almost the guaranteed Democratic nominee

in November. You don't hear Trump speak like that a lot, do you? You know what it reminded me of, Dan? Was in 2016, when Trump had shocked the country and beaten Hillary Clinton, and he went up there and he gave his victor speech, right? And he congratulated Hillary, who he had pounded on the campaign trail, mercilessly, on the debate stage, on social media. He had just been vicious to her. But when it came time for his acceptance speech, he was very conciliatory. And he congratulated Hillary Clinton on her, you know, he didn't go after her. It was over. And so what this tells me is that in Trump's mind, this race is over. He's congratulating and giving out participation trophies to his opponents. And he's already turning his eyes towards President Joe Biden. Now, there's a lot more campaigning to be done. But I think that explains a lot of the tone is in Trump's mind, this cemented that he is the inevitable candidate. The polling in New Hampshire, as we said, has him there at the national level.

And we've, our Center Square voter's voice poll found a lot of this that Trump is beating every candidate and he's even beating President Joe Biden in the national level and in many of the key battleground states. So I think in Trump's mind, he's just congratulations. congratulating the giving people pat on the back and saying that was a great try maybe next time because I've got it. I can I can certainly see that comparison. I'm Casey. So let's talk a little bit more about New Hampshire. DeSantis, as you mentioned, he's pulling in the single digits there. How can he possible, how can he be a viable candidate if that's what the New Hampshire results are a distant second likely to Nikki Haley, who will likely still be a distant second. to Donald Trump. I know they've raised millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars, and they've spent tens of millions of dollars. But how can you even campaign fundraise if you get single digits

and you get blown out in Iowa? You get single digits in New Hampshire. I don't know the donors would think you're a viable candidate at that point. Yeah, I mean, these are all the same questions that many, I think, of DeSantis' staffers are having, unfortunately, for them. Iowa was the chance to show that, you know, polls are just polls and voters think for themselves. It was DeSantis's chance to outperform the expectations. Even if he had just tied Trump, it could have been game-changing for this race. But he's so far behind, as you said, New Hampshire is almost no chance. I think apart from some strange miracle, DeSantis is going to have a hard time. I guess what he does have going for him is Vivek Ramoswami dropped out the businessman. He dropped out right after the Iowa caucuses so that he had

received about 7 or 8% support, and he endorsed Donald Trump. Now, you know, we've talked a lot and we don't have to belabor it about Trump's nearly 100 criminal charges across several indictments in multiple states and he has court hearings. If any of those somehow ended up disqualifying him from office, it could be really important that DeSantis stuck around and picked up these delegates, even if it were just partial. Right. Because it might be a choice between Haley, who's seen as a more centrist establishment Republican and DeSantis, who is seen as potentially the heir of the America First platform. So that seems maybe the only path for DeSantis at this point is if Trump is somehow derailed and, oh, look, who's there with some of the delegates. And if Trump

could hand his delegates over to DeSantis, maybe for the promise of pardoning him. But these are pretty crazy theoreticals at this point, Dan. And it's not good for the DeSantis camp that we have to go to these links to find a path for him to take the White House. All good points. Casey, you will be covering the New Hampshire primaries Tuesday night. Listeners can watch your coverage and all of our staffs at the Center Square's coverage at the Center Square.com. But we are out of time for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKeel.

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