change as we go further into the campaign season. and in an interview with npr this past week, you said you were optimistic that trump s grip on the gop could loosen. let s show that poll, though, that shows how things are going in iowa. a new poll of iowa republicans who say they re voting for trump shows that more than half of them are only considering him. he s also leading his next closest rival, ron desantis, by double digits in that state. you re out there in iowa. you re talking to people out there. when you talk to them, does the name trump come up? are they talking about other things? what makes you think you can change the dynamic there in iowa? i talked to hundreds of iowa voters tonight, incredible event. and i asked them, one, do you want donald trump on the debate stage? most of them say yes because they want to see them all together and how they respond to each other. and they take they know
statement is the name trump. what may be missing from the second statement is the name trump and what will he do if that s the case. let s talk about this with pence and more. joining us cnn political analyst and national politics reporter for the new york times, ted herndon. and anchor equally fabulous, john avlon. you have a column coming out. we got a sneak peek. imminently. here is the first line. if a perfect republican adv candidate was created in a lab it would look a lot like mike pence, but? he is uniquely suited to bridge everything. evangelical. fiscally conservative, national security hawk, but the base doesn t like him because they are not being motivated by those traditional politics. in the wake of trump, who can articulate the accumulation of
the name trump or desantis or pence. he is purely focused on being that like-minded fiscal conservative. the question is, coming in at 1% of the vote, and not having a national profile, can he do that? burgum believes there s a silent majority that exists in this country that wants a guy like him. that s what he is focused on starting today. steve kornacki, how rare is it for the vice president, the former vice president mike pence, to take on his former boss? he was completely loyal to him up until january 6, when there was a huge choice, a legal choice, a moral choice for him. despite the threats to his life and all the rest. yeah, it s a rare occurrence. you got to dust off the history books to find the examples. there s three of them where something like this has
going into a certain direction and he had to ferris bueller himself and get out ahead of it. it was also a swipe at donald trump, this retribution stuff. vendetta stuff. yeah. when you listened to her last night, a lot of her attacks on trump, she didn t put the name trump in the attack. it was very sort of leading the horse to water, but not making them drink kind of attacks. i don t think that s going to work in the primary. she also jumped to a series of statements that are very moderate for the current republican party. again, that s not the republican party base. talking about as a south carolina governor wanting to expand access to contraception. let s get into the details. do you mean in high school? do you mean planned parenthood?
nothing. jim, good to be with you. nothing. ron desantis spent yesterday in iowa, jim, and right now donald trump is the clear front-runner. he s the overwhelming favorite to get the nomination, and there s desantis in iowa yesterday, and he never mentions the name trump. he never attacks donald trump. jim, desantis has the same problem all of these republican challengers do. they re afraid to go after the front-runner because they want the front-runner s voters. you can t win the nomination doing that. mondier, what do you think? i would go further and just say that with the possible exception of ron desantis, they don t want to criticize donald trump because they re all looking to be his vice presidential nominee. i think with very few exceptions, these people know they cannot defeat him in the