Reuters World News - What to know ahead of the New Hampshire primary

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

Trump and Haley are sharpening their attacks as the New Hampshire primary approaches. But after Trump's big win in Iowa, is it all over? Or might the Granite State throw him a curve ball? Political correspondents James Oliphant, Gram Slattery and Jarrett Renshaw join the podcast to preview Tuesday's primary, unpack Trump's strategy of campaigning from his court appearances and speak with Biden's sole Democratic challenger. *This podcast was updated after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced he was dropping out of the Republican presidential primary. A reference to DeSantis being in the race has been removed. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Iowa, Donald Trump has quite a head start in his quest to become the Republican nominee once again. But to paraphrase Nikki Haley, while Iowa starts it, New Hampshire, corrects it. Or that's her hope at least. Trump will face a more moderate crowd here in Tuesday's primary, one which might be more friendly to Haley, or not. His hold on the GOP, after all, is stronger than Velcro, which, fun fact, is a kind of. company that's actually based here in Manchester. For this weekend episode, I'm in New Hampshire to preview what's at stake, what to expect, and where we are in the 2024 race. As always, our brilliant and very patient political correspondence will hold my hand as we venture forth into the messy world of retail politics.

I'm Jonah Green in New Hampshire. So it's a Sunday before the primary, and I'm at a diner in Derry, New Hampshire called Mary Ann's, where, as it happens, Nikki Haley is also here. There you go. Take your friends. You all be fair. Take your friends to the polls, too. Take here.

Thank you. Good to see. I didn't have his chance. It's time. It's time. It's tough. And I'm here because I figured, before we get into the horse race stuff, I'd like to hear from people actually live here about, you know, who they are and what they're looking for on Tuesday.

Do you guys like Haley? I love her. I think it's time for change. Did you know she was going to be here? I did not. No, a woman in the parking lot, I said, is a... It was a nice surprise. Is somebody here? She goes, yeah.

Nikki Haley, I go, no way. She goes, yeah. Are you going to vote on Tuesday? I don't think so, honestly. I actually don't feel like it's talked about enough here because I didn't even know that it was happening until I saw a sign up the road off the highway. We were going to vote for on Tuesday.

Me? I'm Trump. I got to vote for Trump. He's already been there four years. He knows his way around now. He won't be tricked like he was the last time. How do you guys feel about all these? attention because of the primary? Most people who care about it are the people who don't live here. Like me?

Like I grew up a little bit in California. I was born out there and everyone's like, oh, New Hampshire is first of them. I'm like, okay. That's not what you think of it. Yeah, I'm thinking like, because I grew up on a farm here, like after my parents moved back. So I was always more like agriculture, like maple syrup, big on maple syrup. How would you describe New Hampshire for anybody who doesn't really know anything about it?

I don't know. It's colds. Most of the people here are working class. A lot of trees, a lot of cows. Lots of queer people, which is nice. It's a confusing state. They vote a Republican governor, and yet they vote Democratic senators and congressmen,

which I don't understand whatsoever. A really short coastline. I read that. I googled that. Yeah, you can drive the whole thing in like an hour. That's a lot less. Even less if he speed. That was Sabrina Berenas, John Banoit, Ari, and Stephen Luk.

John Arnold, Pamela Chamberlain and Wayne Kerto. For a sense of where we're at politically as we approach Tuesday, I'm joined now by our national political correspondent, James Oliphant. So, Jim, Trump trounced his opponents in Iowa. Does that mean this race is already over, or might New Hampshire throw him a curveball? Well, despite Trump's big win in Iowa, the race is not entirely over.

New Hampshire is a different battlefield with a different electorate. And Nikki Haley has a shot here. It doesn't mean necessarily that she's going to win, but it does mean that she has a better chance of landing a blow against Trump than anybody had in Iowa. And the reason being for that is just the composition of the voters here in New Hampshire. You have a lot of moderate Republicans, establishment Republicans, college grads, suburbanites, and independents who can vote.

vote in the Republican primary. That's unusual. So you could see some former Democrats as long as they registered as independents prior to the deadline, they could come and vote for Nikki Haley in a bid to stop Trump. And in fact, there are more independent voters here in New Hampshire than there are Republicans or Democrats. So she's got a shot. And presidential campaigns are all about momentum. and if she can hit him hard here, she has an argument as the race goes on. Who are these moderate voters? Well, if you talk to some of these more moderate Republicans, it might be helpful to think of someone like Mitt Romney or a John McCain as the kind of Republican we're talking about,

former presidential candidates. One big thing with them is they're really looking for a return to civility. They just are exhausted by Trump. They were not fans of what happened after the 2020 election or on, January 6, 2021 in the siege of the Capitol, they're looking for stability. And interestingly, I spoke to some people at a Haley rally last night here in New Hampshire. Some of the people in the crowd were Democrats who were checking her out and interested in voting with her against Joe Biden if Haley becomes a Republican nominee. So that's really where Haley's appeal lies right now

is in that middle ground, that centrist Brown. And of course, Haley's argument in up here, in New Hampshire, is that she can beat Biden and that Trump can. You hear a similar pitch to voters on electability, not from a Republican, but from the sole Democrat who was running in Tuesday's presidential primary. And no, it's not Joe Biden. He's actually not on the ballot here Tuesday, for reasons we'll get to in a minute. But Democrat Dean Phillips is. The wealthy congressman from Minnesota is challenging the president from within his own party in a long-shot bid to become the nominee. I think he should have passed the torch.

That was my first call. Then I called others to join the stage. They wouldn't do it. That's why I ultimately decided to do it myself. Jared Renshaw recently sat down with him at his campaign headquarters in Manchester. Jared, who is Dean Phillips? So, Dean Phillips is a three-term congressman out of Minnesota. He fashions himself a centrist blue-dog Democrat.

He made his money selling alcohol and gelato. And now he's kind of risking it all in New Hampshire. And so why did he tell you he's doing this? His central theme is that he doesn't think Biden's electable. He looks at the polls. His numbers are so four at Biden's four. He looks at steep concerns over his age, Biden's age, Phillips is 54, and does not see a path back to the White House.

So in some way, he's making the argument that by virtue of Biden running knowingly, this is his argument, knowingly that he's going to lose, he's actually enabling Trump. So speaking of electability, how is Phillips doing? Not well. The crowds he's getting at certain events are not large. He held a coffee and voter event outside this Manchester hotel, and nobody showed up. Poll show 7, 8%, some polls show as high as 15, 20.

So his prospects don't look great. But the one thing he's got going for them is, and we see this in polls across the country, is just not a lot of enthusiasm for Joe Biden. So I did talk to voters who simply are going to vote for Dean Phillips because it's somewhat of an inconsequential protest vote of Joe Biden. So that's his base, I think, at the moment. And why put such a big emphasis on New Hampshire? Biden's not on the ballot because he asked New Hampshire Democrats to step aside for

South Carolina. They didn't. So Dean Phillips is looking to take advantage of that vacuum. Biden's not there campaigning. So he is all in on New Hampshire. And if he's successful, springboards to other states. If he's not, it's all over for Dean Phillips. Ah, yes, the elusive springboard.

As Jim mentioned, that's Haley's hope for Tuesday as well, that a strong showing will provide enough momentum to somehow topple Trump. But an overseas colleague of mine recently asked me, why are we so focused on who gets the number two spot in the Republican contest? Jim, is it because they could actually surpass Trump, or is this all about who becomes VP? Well, Haley certainly has gotten that criticism that she is just making a pitch to be Trump's VP, especially since it's widely expected that Trump will choose a woman. Now, she has denied it, and Trump has really stepped up his attacks on her.

So it's hard to see. I mean, really the situation is this, and that is, with Donald Trump, you never know what's going to happen. And so it's not a bad idea to try to stick around. I mean, got a bunch of trials this year. I mean, you know, nobody's really expecting him to be hauled off in manacles. But the strategy of a Haley or DeSantis has always been to get this down to a two-person race with the idea that when there were a bunch of candidates, the anti-Trump vote was all spread out. And there was no way to consolidate it.

And so Nikki Haley is hoping that she can get every single voter in the Republican Party who doesn't want Donald Trump, and maybe a few Trump voters who are ready for something different, and then that can carry the day, that it just becomes a binary choice. So it's not a bad idea right now to stick around. But she's sort of positioned herself as the most critical against Trump right now, but she's not exactly an anti-Trump Republican. So how is she threading the needle on those attacks? Well, it's tough for Haley because she, of course, worked for Trump as ambassador to the United

nations. So she can only go so far without sounding like a hypocrite. And she's been very careful in her criticisms. She tends to praise his time as president, saying basically he was the right president for the time. But now she says, well, just look, he brings chaos with him. And we don't need four more years of chaos. We don't need the circus that surrounds him. And interestingly, one of the ads she's been running here in New Hampshire on television pairs Trump with With Biden, both of them in the ad, with her arguing saying, basically, aren't you tired of these guys? Do you want more of the same? Or do you want a new generation of conservative leadership?

And, you know, I mean, I think that's the kind of ad that probably resonates with a lot of voters both here in New Hampshire and outside of New Hampshire. And we'll see if Haley ever gets a chance to carry that message forward. You mentioned that the Trump campaign sees Haley as a threat here. How have they been upping the ante against her? There are sort of whisper campaigns going on that sort of remind people that her name isn't Nikki, that she's Indian American. There's a little bit of the, you know, talking about her as if she's the other, quote, unquote. And what else are they doing?

Well, they're hitting her a couple ways. They're suggesting that she's not tough enough on border security and that she opposed the building of the wall, which she denies. They're also interestingly hitting a lot. her claiming that she wants to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits. And that's usually an attack we hear from Democrats against a Republican. So they're basically trying to hit Haley from the left on benefits and hit Haley from the right on immigration. Is immigration a big topic in New Hampshire, given that it's over 2,000 miles from the southern border? Well, you're always going to hear about

immigration and border security. Hear a lot about the economy and how it's not working for folks, about affordability, energy prices. There's a significant veterans population in New Hampshire, and Haley talks a lot about taking care of vets, so does Trump. And always there's the problem with fentanyl and other drug-related deaths that have hit some communities New Hampshire hard and have for several years. I mean, one of the dynamics here in New Hampshire is you're not going to find a lot of voters who are trying to pick between Trump and Haley.

There are different ends of the poll, I mean, at least in terms of style, Maybe not so much in terms of policy. And so it's not so much about trying to convert a voter to vote for Trump or to vote for Haley. It's more about convincing voters to come out next Tuesday and vote. And on the Haley side, it's really trying to get those independent voters to come and vote for her. As Trump tries to mount his political comeback, he's also a defendant in quite a few legal proceedings. The former president is facing a flood of federal and state criminal charges, as well as a civil defamation trial and a civil fraud trial.

And it's creating this unprecedented type of split-screen candidacy, where the candidate may spend the morning in the defendant's chair and then zip off to a political rally to complain about it. Graham's slattery covers Trump. So Graham, a lot of these court appearances are optional, right? So why is Trump spending so much time in court? Right. So a lot of these court appearances are optional.

there's little apparent legal benefit from him actually appearing. However, the Trump campaign has really enmeshed or combined his legal strategy with his campaign strategy. And he's trying to portray to his supporters that he is being pursued unjustly. This whole thing is rigged election interference by Democrats, by his detractors, by the legal system. He's a nasty judge. He's a Trump-hating guy. and that he's really just fighting back against all this perceived corruption, both in the government and the Department of Justice and amongst his enemies. And he's really, he really believes, his team really believes that portraying him as a martyr, one that's going to be seeking vengeance and retribution should he win the election ultimately. They think that that's a winning strategy.

And some of his supporters like that. Some voters don't. But that's certainly a big part of Trump's campaign at the moment. And there have been times where he's made a little bit of a scene inside the courtroom or outside the courtroom. Often to that effect, you know, he's saying they're attacking me, just like the system is attacking you. And in that way, he's trying, in some cases, succeeding to create a certain degree of empathy with some potential voters. This happened on Wednesday when Judge Kaplan reprimanded Trump for speaking during the testimony of Eging Carroll, who was the writer suing him for defamation for denying he sexually assaulted her. And when Kaplan threatened to throw Trump out, he said he'd love it.

I mean, that kind of gives away the game in a way, right? Oh, absolutely. Trump and his team, they really want there to be a certain degree of conspicuous friction, a certain degree of drama, because that they believe helps motivate their supporters, helps turn them out. Again, helps create that certain degree of empathy. And I, frankly, am the one that suffered damages. I should be giving money, given damages.

It doesn't seem like the indictments or the, The court cases have hurt him yet. It seems like they might be having the opposite effect. Do we have any idea how voters feel about convictions? The polls indicate right now that Trump were to be convicted at one of his upcoming criminal trials, and this would happen before the election. It would impact voter preferences quite significantly, including among self-identified Republicans. There's ample polling that shows that that would be very, very detrimental for his chances

for being elected in November. Now, that said, I take those polls with a certain grain of salt. Because many things that have occurred in the Trump era, if a pollster were to have asked voters before they had occurred, if that would impact their vote, they would have said yes. And the norms have always been shifting. He's always shifted these norms. And with that being said, I'm heading out to New Hampshire.

Thank you very much for being back there. So presumably these court fights get him some earned media and attention online. But how is this tactic playing right now in New Hampshire? It's really interesting in New Hampshire twice now for these rallies. You know, the relatively small rallies, more like events. He's shown up just extravagantly late, hours late. And it's because of these trials he's been attending in New York, which he doesn't really have to attend.

And it's possible he's overplaying his hand. I was at a rally of his in Port Smith, New Hampshire, and he was more than a couple hours late. And I have to say that a number of people left. A number of people were quite upset. So it's an interesting tactic. We'll see if voters. care if it has any impact on Tuesday, but he successfully defied campaign conventions in the past.

Thanks to Jim, Jared, and Graham for their reporting and their time. Reuters World News is produced by myself, Tara Oakes, David Spencer, Kim Vinell, and Christopher Waljasper. Our senior producer is Carmel Crimmons. Our executive producer is Lila Decretzer, engineering and sound design by Josh Summer. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show. Don't forget to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.