US News: Former President Donald Trump kicks off the sprint to the Iowa caucuses with commit-to-caucus events in Sioux Center and Mason City. He urges his supp
i have dropped seven pant sizes and i ve kept it off. golo is real, our customers are real, and our success stories are real. why not give it a try? dana: donald trump will be in iowa today for a pair of rallies. his first of the new year. three other gop candidates events are holding events around the state before the iowa caucuses. mark meredith is live in washington with more. good morning to you. former president trump is back in iowa tonight determined to hold onto his polling lead. he says it s a two-way love fest. what happens in i ve with a can set the course for the rest of the gop primary. ron desantis and nikki haley both launched fresh attacks against trump claiming they re the only ones who can win over
representative of where the voters are, and so i don t think it s necessarily a place holder for the voters of what a county chair thinks. they re an activist, organized part of a party. they re worried about their esteem. that s the first thing. don t take that as a way that signals where the voters are. the second part is this race hasn t been fluid at the top. donald trump has maintained a 40, 50 point national polling lead for the last six months here. where it has been fluid, and i ll give them credit for that, it has been fluid for second or third or fourth place. the problem with that is you and i have had this conversation before. you don t win by winning second place, and though there has been fluidity between where vivek ramaswamy rose for a time, ron desantis was in second, and now nikki haley looks like she s in second, all of that still means they re well behind donald trump, which that lead has been very stable. but if it happensanone of the things that chris christie
that first debate, as you know, matthew, because of his enormous polling lead, and what s here to say to him, gee, maybe i need to take the stage. i would argue nothing. but does that mean that they, the people who are on the stage need to reconsider what they re doing? i actually think if i were in the campaigns of some of these candidacies, i would actually begin reconsidering. the problem is not so much their polling numbers, but they re going to begin to see dollars evaporate, and they won t be able to run their campaigns. they won t be able to pay their staff. they won t be able to pay for travel. my guess is nikki haley did well enough for the big debate, but there are some on this list. my guess is this debate stage will be smaller in the end of september than it was this last time. really? because there is i think, by the time we get there, they re not going to have
numbers. how is this different than 2016? when you do something for the second time you do it better. i feel relaxed, feel comfortable and i m speaking the truth and i think that s going to matter to people. omar jimenez, cnn. thank you to omar for that. while christie will be on the debate stage, of course the front-runner will be missing. donald trump writing on sunday that the public knows who i am and what a successful presidency i had. i will, therefore, not be doing the debates. eight candidates so far have fully qualified to take part in the debates on wednesday. let s bring in jackie kucinich. i feel like this isn t surprising. that post over the weekend made it real. i m curious from your perspective. with such a big polling lead, was there any incentive for the president to get on that stage? well, so it s because former president trump is like a moth