it s like frank. be there, be wild. it s calling on his supporters to do something. too frequently over the last six, seven years, they have done something. president biden said you can t be proinsurrectionist and pro american. that seems like a pretty simple dichotomy. yes, absolutely right. sorry. no, it does. i m happy to see that the biden campaign, president biden has been out there aggressively prosecuting that case. i think looking that the with a political hat on, you know, there s some who have argued that pro-democracy is a little too ephemeral of a topic and that, you know, some kitchen-table issues, and i don t think that s true. that didn t bear out in the midterms. i think when it comes to the threats to our democracy, president biden has been strong on this. also political violence affects everybody.
continue to stay above the fray. the fact that desantis and haley will be in a slugfest tonight and trump will be able to continue to float above it on fox news for a friendly interview really tells you everything about this primary and the way that even voters seem to be looking at. even if they want someone else, most of the republicans i ve spoke tonno at the end of the day they re still going to come home to the republican party even if it s trump. michael, less than a minute left. you alluded to something i want to pull the carpet back on, which is the party infrastructure in new hampshire trying to pressure christie to drop out. it s an important aspect of this. people are saying if christie is out, to the point simone made earlier, that support will go to nikki. what i think will be important to watch after this moment is what they do whether they capture that 70% that s out there. they can do that and create that sort of momentum downstream going into south carolina and
the same time. so, they have a close relationship. but you watch the way, for example, that he has talked about her on the campaign trail, even just this morning saying something to the effect that she says things nicely but doesn t actually take positions on things. so, christie, even on his way out the door, still attacking the people who could be heir apearns to trump and who are attempting to be the trump alternative here. i think when you talk about the desantis narrative on this debate stage, michael, desantis needs to continue to make the case that he can win iowa despite the fact that the polls here show that that s likely not to happen. you talk to voters here on the ground, and the assumption really is that this is trump s state to lose. for desantis, he had made the promise early on, iowa suz going to be his key springboard to the rest of the early states. he went all in here, all of the cash, all of the resources, all the people on the ground, doing the grassroots motivatin
elections during the trump white house era and going back even recently to 2022 when trump was still selecting his favored candidates in the states and watching those candidates sometimes fall to democratic rivals. those are the arguments that they ve been making. but frankly, even as their competing against each other in second, their attacks are much sharp sharper for each other than they are for the former president. it comes down to the sort of delicate dance that every single candidate has had to do this entire time which is try to get trump voters to their cause without alienating them but somehow telling them they re the better candidate despite the fact that trump is front-runner. it s a firing squad that gets them nowhere and it s why we re watching another debate stage where trump is not on it and they re picking at each other even though it s not going to fail the front-runner at all. late last week, nikki haley said that she would potentially consider desantis as a vp pic
i don t know if he d ever endorse him. but maybe he can speak to the gettable soft republicans, a small number of people, honestly, but the 2%, 3%, 4% of people in the swing states that have been traditionally republicans that don t like donald trump that don t want somebody that s borderline constitutionally ineligible to be the president. can chris christie carry a message that will land with them in the speech about just how unfit donald trump is and how that is the rationale for his decision today and for his candidacy. i hope he can do that effectively. tim, what do you think about the time og of this? why today? does it have anything to do with the debate tonight? my sense is he s been getting pressure. i think there are a lot of people in christie s ear of good faith. i think it s been a judgment call, right? do you keep him in because he s been the one person speaking truth, or is the right thing to