i think it has, to be honest. the math shows there s one candidate that can compete with donald trump for the nomination. that s ron desantis. that s why $46 million has been dropped gechbs ron desantis in false negative ads. both from nikki haley and donald trump. and i think we are running to beat donald trump for the nomination. and we re trying to go right through him and directly at him. while nikki haley goes on the outside and has spent most of her money, over $25 million in this state, attacking ron desantis. taking incoming. and we re excited to see where we are at tonight. rely on the ground game and our organization here. this is to outwork the competition.
Million in iowa for tonight s caucuses. what does that say about the importance of what s about to happen? well, it s important to win the votes, but also, what are they buying? narrative? momentum? they re buying a story line. if you re donald trump, you re trying to buy dominance. if you re nikki haley, you re trying to buy momentum. and if you re ron desantis, you might have been trying to buy the comeback kid narrative. i would point out inside that spending, the candidate who by far has been the biggest recipient of negative ads, ron desantis. i think outside groups have spent about $48 million on negative ads against desantis which is more than trump and biden have faced combined. so you can see at least early on, that was a candidate they were worried about, and they did bury him with it. as we say in politics, money talks for sure. jamal simmons, trump bureau this on his social media site earlier. he said nikki haley could never win in the general election because she does
Found had they been unable or unwilling to make an argument that makes them a serious threat to trump. i mean that is that is the big point here, that what they re doing is not working. i mean, if you look at where they are spending their money on television, i believe the two of them are now approaching $40 million in negative ads against each other compared to $1 million in ads against trump. and you have haley somewhat dialled up her criticism of trump at the cnn debate a couple nights ago but has reverted back to her very valued judgment-freeway of talking about him. chaos follows him rightly or wrongly. this would be a good result for her. it would show she has filled the space desantis left open by trying to run to trump s right. but ultimately i think as you are suggesting, it suggests it says to her as clearly as to desantis that if they are going to make this a race, they have
It s engaging with biden on the terms of biden setting out. as you noted, right now donald trump is engaged in the nominating process with iowa a week and a day away. there s a big debate i m told in iowa this week. pretty sure you re going to be there, dana bash, between nikki haley and ron desantis, it s really interesting. we just checked on this. all the spending from donald trump s super pac in the campaign, negative ads on nikki haley, zero dollars in new spending against ron desantis. so what does that tell us? reporter: that he sees nikki haley as a threat, not just in iowa but even more so in new hampshire. he did spend a lot of money to discredit and tried to really eliminate ron desantis early on. you remember the super pacs supporting donald trump in particular, and even the campaign really went after ron desantis very hard, even before desantis was an official candidate.
Were very close in the poll. and then every indictment, you see pulling away, pulling away, pulling away. it happened at the same time desantis chose to wait. we sat here and desantis was riding high. and in the immediate aftermath, it looked like people were ready to dump trump and go in a different direction. they chose to wait. he waits several months. and in that intervening period pounded him with tens of millions of dollars of negative ads. he s been attacked more than donald trump and joe biden combined. keep in mind too many of us were here for the night trump relaunched his campaign. you couldn t find a prominent republican in sight. i think matz gaetz was the biggest republican represented there. he has the endorsement of all the house leadership. he s got vanilla ice. he s got vanilla ice. he has really taken advantage of these indictments, turned it on its head, used the martyr complex, and it s somehow