and arizona, and one month after pennsylvania voters go to the ballot boxes. the trial, of course, involving 34 felony counts related to the stormy daniels hush money case. trump has pleaded not guilty in that case. also tonight, florida governor ron desantis will announce his candidacy tomorrow in a rather unconventional way, appearing in a live conversation on twitter with elon musk. we are getting word donald trump and his allies are making plans to offend that announcement. maggie haberman will join us in a moment. just a reminder of how wide open and unpredictable these races are, take a look at the republican primary polls from this month back in 2015. marco rubio and jeb bush both led the pack. donald trump, he stood at 3%, tied with george pataki, and speaking of polls, fast forward to right now. you see the numbers show that republicans, they smell blood. president biden s approval rating just hit 40%. the lowest number since last summer. it s also lower than trump s
anderson, thank you very much. and good evening, everyone. tonight, the nation is facing a situation that has never been contemplated in its history before. a former president will sit trial as a defendant in the middle of his campaign for another term, which means that jurors and voters will be deciding his fate at exactly the same time. donald trump appearing virtually in court today as a judge sets his trial date for march 25th of next year. and in case you re wondering, that is 20 days after super tuesday, six days after florida, ohio and arizona and one month before pennsylvania voters go to the ballot boxes. the trial, of course, involving the 34 felony counts related to the stormy daniels hush money case. trump has pleaded not guilty in that case. and also tonight, florida governor ron desantis will announce his candidacy tomorrow. in a rather unconventional way, appearing in a live conversation on twitter with elon musk. we re already getting word that donald t
middle of campaign, i ll believe it when i see it. the great likelihood in my view is that that s never going to happen. but we ll see. he was just on trial in a civil case. so i just want to make the point that we have some precedent for it. just to put a final touch on this, one thing donald trump is very good at is making lemonade out of lemons. any time he is in a criminal situation, in a court situation, the fbi raid, he will find a way to make this a fundraising opportunity, a merchandise opportunity. so don t expect donald trump to hide away from this. he will absolutely leverage this as part of his campaign. the media will follow it. we saw this when he had his indictment a few weeks ago. there will be wall to wall coverage of this thing and that will drown out the other candidates. it will. we are seeing real world consequences with him legally that we haven t seen before. he was found liable in the civil trial. the judge s ruling today i think is not insignificant. he d
i just want to make that point we have some precedent for it. just to put a final touch on this, one thing donald trump is good at is making lemonade out of lemons. anytime he is in a criminal situation, in a court situation, the fbi raid, he will find a way to make this a fundraising opportunity, a merchandise opportunity. don t expect donald trump to hide away from this. he s going to leverage this as part of his campaign. the media is going to follow it. we saw this when he had his indictment a few weeks ago. there will be wall-to-wall coverage of this thing, and that ll try not the other candidates. i ll make the point we are seeing real world consequences with him, legally, on this, we haven t seen before. he was found liable in the civil trial. the judge s ruling today i think is not insignificant. he does fear, i think, certain legal consequences with we just got word that trump lawyers have requested a meeting with attorney general garland in that classified documents c