strategy. we re going to bring you brand new reporting from inside the campaign. i m dana bash. let s go behind the headlines and inside politics. we start today with breaking news on who qualified for cnn s iowa debate next week. last before the caucuses. the deadline to meet the polling threshold just passed, and our political director david chalian joins me now. david, who made the cut? as you noted, the deadline just passed and actually the window of qualification started way back on october 15th. we now know that for the cnn january 10th debate, the three candidates who have qualified are former president trump, nikki haley and ron desantis. we also know that donald trump has not participated in any debate yet this cycle, and he doesn t intend on participating at the cnn debate on january 10th. that leaves haley and desantis on the stage, and that would be the smallest debate stage that we have seen to date. that means that they were the only candidates to hit 10%
table and people watching have been. and what they see is that in these couple weeks, trump will be shtrying to shore up his fla on the nomination. he needs to make sure he wins those primaries. in that process, they believe they can make people focus on what trump is actually been saying. this isn t just entertaining and isn t just can you belief donald trump is running again. they can make people focus on what the other candidates have been saying and to start pressing the case. this is really extreme vision of the presidency that would be there under trump. he s talked about being a dictator, if only for one day. all those things that so far have been part of the political schedule, but not the top of people s minds. let me read you another quote from the piece. as some of the younger aids on
we are not letting the swamp keep the status quo and this hail mary isn t happening. he said he was going to talk live about it. listen to what steve bannon said on a podcast about this. one of the fights we re going to have, a big fight will take place in the spring is try to force nikki on the ticket and say trump needs a woman. if nikki haley is in this administration in any capacity, it will fail. i just want to be clear, she says i m not playing for second she s very much still a candidate for president. it doesn t mean these other conversations are not happening. what do you make of the pushback. they are trying to diminish her as a serious presidential candidate. it s one way of doing that. the pushback is extraordinary she was one of the few who newscast getted the complicateden obstacle of leaving the trump administration. she emerged stronger than she arrived, which most of his nominees were not.