99 counties, despite visiting only 15 of them. florida governor ron desantis came in a distant second, receiving 21% of support in the hawkeye state. 30 points behind trump and just 2 points ahead of former south carolina governor nikki haley. this year s republican caucuses had the lowest turnout since the year 2000, drawing around 108,000 voters. that s about 14% of the state s registered republicans. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it is tuesday, january 16th. how did the results reflect compared to the polls? i think there was a big winner, and i think there was a big loser. the big winner, of course, donald trump. he got over 50% of the vote. the big loser, of course, the republican party, who is strapped with a republican loser, a seven-time loser. the problem for republicans is they started in iowa. this is just a perennial problem for the gop. it really, willie, is a problem that the democrats fixed, but you go back and look. who won in 2008? mike huckabee.
first votes. a key poll shows donald trump far ahead in iowa, with just hours before the kickoff to the 2024 primary race. one candidate jumped in with sky high expectations, now he s feegtsing for his political life. now is our time. will his iowa focus pay off? candidate governor ron desantis joins me next. and tundra on the trail. caucusgoers and candidates brave subzero temperatures in the coldest iowa contest ever. i worry about that. wear layers. mthey can throw a blizzard a us, and we ll have a fight. who will have the advantage in turnout? plus, rough waters. an escalation in the middle east to now a key senator is the to press joe biden on the u.s. role there. is biden s stance widening the rift on the left? the united states is deeply complicit. bernie sanders joins me exclusively. hello. i m jake tapper in washington where the state of our union is frozen. tomorrow is one of the single most consequential days in this year s calendar, t
yesterday s hearings. expert legal analysis straight ahead on all of that. meanwhile the former president is floating another birther conspiracy. we ll tell you who he is targeting this time and on capitol hill, how republicans will hold two hearings today focused on hunter biden and homeland security secretary mayorkas. we ll have reporting on that. plus, the new developments out of the middle east following secretary of state blinken s meeting yesterday in israel, the two sides appear to be at odds over plans for a post-war gaza. and days after a mid-air explosion on a boeing max 9 jet, the ceo is acknowledging the company s mistakes. we ll have the latest on that investigation and the very latest on secretary of defense austin and what is going on with his health. good morning. welcome to morning joe. it s a very busy wednesday, january 10th. joe? yeah, it s very busy, as far as boeing goes, not a great stretch that if your plane blow aparts in mid-air you take respo
as trump s lawyers are arguing? or is that claim not just constitutionally wrong, but also say license for future presidents to commit crimes while in office, as the justice department argues? and on the eve of a hearing on the question of whether trump can be prosecuted for his actions while in office, we are learning incredible new details about what donald trump said on january 6 and what h did and did not do. thanks t testimony, to the special l closest aides, the deputy chief of staff dan scavino. from that reporting, quote, sources say scavino told smith s investigators as the violence began to escalate that day, trump was just not interested in doing more to stop it sources also say that the former trump aidk luna told federal investigators that when trump wa informed that then-vice president mike pence had to be ush rushed to a secure location, trump responded so what. luna saw an unexpected willingness by trump to let potential harm come to a long time loyalist. and
back upstream, you can t really see what is left of the dam and hydroelectric plant. so who did this? russia controls this area, but blames ukraine. kyiv is in no doubt. translation: the kakhovka hydroelectric power station. l it was an absolutely deliberate, prepared explosion. they knew exactly what they were doing. translation: tonight, i the kyiv regime committed another terrorist crime. the kakhovka hydroelectric dam was blown up, which led to the flooding of significant territories. so what is the significance of the dam? it provides water to huge swathes of agricultural land, including in crimea, and the reservoir behind it provides water to cool the zaporizhzhia nuclear plant further up river. both areas are under russia control. the reservoir is huge. the dnipro river is especially wide here. 150 miles long, and up to m miles across. this is what the dam looks like undamaged. our colleagues at bbc verify say this image of a smaller breach was taken just days ago. but