reporter: yeah, ana, good morning, and welcome to iowa. we are at casey s general store. this is an iowa staple, and we re here talking to average iowans to get a sense of how engaged they are this caucus cycle, and i will tell you the things we re hearing. we have heard from the die hard trump supporter who says no matter what, they will be showing up on caucus night to caucus for him. i also spoke to a woman who one week out is still undecided. she caucused for trump in the past, but while she likes his policies, she doesn t like the wake he talks. that said, she has still not decided on one of the other candidates. and again, one week out from caucus night. i will tell you the vast majority of folks that we ve spoken to here say that they don t plan to caucus. i spoke to one independent voter, nancy, about why she s not caucusing, and also what her top issues are, and i want to play a little bit of that conversation. they just they seem to grand stand a little when they re cau
and are actually afraid of their voters and are afraid of the other candidates they re campaigning against, to try to come up with a way to tell them what they want to hear and reflect back to them what they want to hear and win votes that way. that s the tragedy of ron desantis. everyone was excited in the beginning. we have this young florida governor, young family, doing great in the state. you may disagree with him on covid policies, but he won the argument there. maybe this is the way to move past trump. but he didn t have it in him to project that better version on his own merits. he wanted to look at what trump had carved out and say, how can i pick up the pieces of that and draft behind him? so that s a mistake. until we find a candidate who can break free from this and find their own way to talk to voters about the hard issues, like they re adults, like they believe in these values again, remind them. you saw glimmers of that last night. you saw glimmers of it with christie. y
donald trump was morally disqualified from being president again as a result to what happened on january 6th. more people are understanding the importance of that, including conservative legal scholars who says he may be disqualified under the 14th amendment from being president again. when it comes to whether president trump should serve or not, i trust the american people. let them vote. let them decide. we have to look at the fact that three quarters of americans don t want a rematch between trump and biden. and we have to face the fact that trump is the most disliked politician in america. we can t win a general election that way. you do learn a lot about these people watching the answers, especially the pitiful answers from ron desantis, tim scott and vivek ramaswamy. mike barnicle, i m curious, chris christie made an interesting and, i think, powerful point, that whether or
i think the reason you saw three almost shocked faces as you came out of the clip with nikki haley is we don t hear it from republicans often. it was part of why, arguably, governor haley, ambassador haley, was the most interesting person on the stage last night, because she was, in her moments, telling some truth about donald trump. saying he was the least popular politician in america. america does not want a trump/biden rematch. that s born out in the polls. she cited the numbers. she said he added $8 trillion to the debt. she scolded in that moment right there vivek ramaswamy about continuing support for ukraine and why that s important. will it matter? we don t know, guys. but for sure, she had a good night. let s bring into the conversation absolutely. msnbc contributor, our good friend mike barnicle. senior political columnist for politico, jonathan martin. editor of protect democracy, amanda carpenter. elise jordan is still with us, as well. amanda, i ll start with yo
is down behind trump. they re all behind trump 20, 30, 40 points. everybody kind of wants to look past that. i mean, even fox news, the way they set up that debate was like, we re not going to talk about anything tough. we re not going to address the really hard question until maybe the second hour. we re going to get through this section really briefly. bret baier had to turn to the audience and sort of stop them from booing, saying, like, we re just going to get through this section quickly. if you care about democracy, the threat that donald trump poses to the rule of law, coming back as a returning president after having campaigned on an entire platform of grievance and contempt for the rule of law and our political processesdebate, t they all should be talking about. not brushing it as an aside to something we just have to get through, because that is what he is campaigning on and winning with. poor ron desantis melted