donald trump is not willing to show up on the debate stage. chaos follows him and we can t have a country this disarray. taking their shot, ron desantis and nikki haley trying to take down the frontrunner donald trump on live tv. and plus phoning it in, trump warns iowa supporters not to sit back next week over speaker phone. and joe biden heads to battleground pennsylvania today to set the tone for his 2024 re-election bid. good morning, happy friday. we made it. it is 5:00 a.m. in washington and 4:00 a.m. in des moines where ron desantis and nikki haley each made their case that they are the better choice to face president biden in the fall. the democrats want trump to be the candidate. they are going to talk about all the legal tough, january 6, that will be what the election will be about. you don t want to be a infrastructure on trufrnl and the past. you want to be a referendum on booi biden s failures and our positive vision. and you need somebody that can ser
publisher nicholas johnston. always good to see you. i m missing your family menu behind you that i ve seen before you in the past. appreciate you coming in early. let s talk about the sdddemocra messaging from president biden. this is something that i mean, they are betting that democracy will be a voting issue especially for independents in the general election. do you see that happening? i mean, i have also talked to democrats who say that they have to connect it back to the kitchen table issues people put at the top of their concern list, inflation and other things. bidenomics was a big part of the early pre-election rollout that the administration was going through. but now we re 304 days away from election day. so now let s let the real general election begin. i think what the campaign is ar horse to what they think is a more powerful issue and that is democracy.
be a woman presidential candidate. because she obviously has enjoyed this kind of surge of momentum during hillary clinton s run for president back in 2016, there was a lot of attention paid to this issue. haley herself has been attacked for having is he had things that, you know, positive things about hillary clinton as a trailblazing woman candidate, not about, you know you know, they disagree on policy obviously. but haley had a chance to answer this question for herself last night. take a look at how haley responded. as a country i think america has been ready for a woman, but it has to be the right woman. i m one of those i don t think and i think a lot of women will agree to this, we don t support women just because they are women. we love to see women do well. i think women are rock stars. i love to see women do well. but a president is a big deal. and it is a serious issue.
also try to act with enough restraint that they don t tip themselves into something much bigger than just the israel-hamas fight. so on thn the houthi questio particular, cnn has learned, officials have told us, that there actually are plans, pentagon has drawn up options for the biden campaign to strike the houthis inside yemen. but so far it seems like they have been very reluctant do that. why? they have had those plans for many months if not years.why? they have had those plans for many months if not years. that is what the pentagon does, it plans for all these things. but partly it is coming up now and much more intense now because i think there is recognition inside the pentagon that there is only so long that you can go on playing defense here trying to intercept missiles or stop the fast boats
as they attack one of the ships. and what they are fearful of, at some point one of the ships will sink or there will be a much bigger incident. the lesson of the fight with the somali pirates years ago and others suggested that you have to get at their equipment, their missiles on the land. but president biden has been very hesitant to do this in part because he doesn t want to trigger the larger war and in part because there has been a civil war in yemen to which there was a negotiated truce that was quite delicate to keep balanced. and that truce has held astoundingly for more than a year. and so they don t want to up end that and trigger off another civil war. so it is a real tight rope that they are on. but i know that there are many in the u.s. military who think that if you don t strike the houthis back at their base, you are not going to stop this series of attacks.