help himself later on. just as you re saying, chris w this idea that he is running for the presidency largely so that if he gets elected he could try to destroy the justice department as he s pledged to do and destroy our rule of law, and intimidate people who he thinks have wronged him throughout his life and particularly in this episode. i ll say with the greatest understatement that i can possibly use that this may not have been exactly what the founders of our country intended the presidency to be used for. so trump has been able to leverage these criminal indictments into a dominant lead over his republican rivals against any expectation, right. there is a new political poll and it shows half of americans think trump should go to prison if convicted in the doj case on these alleged efforts to overturn the election, even more, 61% favor a trial. i was looking back to 1974,
president trump through no fault of his own in my view, in large part, when he s in office, about 30% of this country loses their mind. they become psychiatrically ill, disagreeing with once agreed with, agreeing with things they never agreed with, and i m not having that effect on people. reporter: as for capitalizing on that momentum post debate, of course iowa is his first stop, which is no surprise, considering their investing heavily in the state. of course he s making four stops here today, and i ll tell you this morning, it was a packed house. they said they got a whole lot more rsvps after that debate performance. they had their biggest ever single day fundraising haul that they ve had yesterday that day, post debate, they are riding high right now, how long can they take advantage of it. we ll have to see in the coming days, chris. dasha, thank you so much. all right. vivek getting a lot of
walk us through this very crowded calendar, ken. yeah, at this point, chris, donald trump s most important legal strategy is to seek delays in all of these cases any way he can because if he s elected president, it s possible that none of them can move forward. he could order his justice department to drop the federal cases, and it s official doj policy that a sitting president can t be prosecuted and that would include state cases. in the atlanta case, he s making clear that he will try to slow things down. his lawyer filed a motion telling the judge that mr. trump wants no part of the bid by one of his codefendants to have the trial in october. he will ask to sever his case from that defendant, kenneth chesebro and any other defendant who makes such a demand. given the number of defendants in the atlanta case it may take a while to get that one to trial, especially because it will be competing against three other cases against mr. trump, all of which have a head start.
defendants who face multiple prosecutions are in desperate positions and they often listen to the wrong people. they re understandably nervous, state and federal prosecutors, when the vast majority of their cases to face one criminal charge that could send you to prison and trump faces 91 charges in four jurisdictions, and for trump, chris, his problems are compounded because of his spectacularly bad judgment about the people he goes to for advice. so roger stone was a convicted felon for lying to congress before trump pardoned him. steve bannon was facing serious federal charges before trump pardoned him. so people who have been accused of convicted of multiple felonies might not give the most reliable advice. one last thing from jackie s
hawaii electric company, accusing them of starting those deadly wildfires. the company already faces numerous negligence lawsuits, but this is the first to say that their utility wires caused that blaze. nbc s steve patterson is on the ground there. what more can you tell us? just that, chris, that their utility caused that fire, that it was the significant wind event and messages that were ignored about the possibility of maybe deenergizing those lines that came down in the wind, in dry brush, all of this was stated by the national weather service. it was really bad weather for fire, and caused those fires. not only that, but there was deepening allegations of negligence going back years that the it should have been hardened and stabilized, some of the routine maintenance issues were ignored. there was no automatic shutoff, that a lot of utilities carry in case of a wind event.