and that s in large part because ron desantis, who was initially hyped up as the candidate has seen his poll numbers tank. just look at the polling averages since the start of this calendar year. desantis should come with its own slide whistle. he s almost 30 points behind trump and the average of the national poll. even a top official at a pro-desantis superpact recently conceded his campaign has been a bust so far. right now in national polling we are way behind. to be blunt and honest, it s an uphill battle. i don t think it s a winnable battle but clearly donald trump is the runaway front-runner in the first four states which matter tremendously. polls are tighter. we re clearly still down. we have work to do and wood to chop. it does seem like a bad sign when one of your top surrogates has to admit that but it s true at least and a lot of reasons the desantis campaign is doing so poorly. one reason is what some are calling a lack of charisma which seems to be alienat
we have updates in the other special counsel s investigation. jack smith issuing more subpoenas in the january 6th investigation. this time, focusing on arizona. so let s get to it. joining me now is nbc news investigative correspondent, tom winter and nbc news justice reporter, ryan reilly. let s start with the top. walt nauta, finally getting a lawyer. finally pleading not guilty. walk us through what happened. it was a short hearing. the big news is he did get this lawyer, and essentially one of the reasons i think it s more difficult to find someone is because, you know, donald trump hasn t been known to pay his bills. that s something you re on the hook for down the line if, you know, no matter where this goes, once you re on the case you re stuck with it no matter what, even if there s a dispute about payment or what have you. whoever signed on for that is in for the long haul. with donald trump, a significant retainer agreement, cash up front in order to take on that
donald trump. he is a liar, a liar about shell corporations and money from communist china and about money from ukraine. a liar about money from romania. he is a liar about documents, a and his own history, we have a man in oval office who is a liar biden signed off on fbi review of trump records. national ca archive letters reveal from august. what are they talking about? biden white house at request of department of justice signed off to have fbi and intelligence community to examine hundreds of pages of classified information of former president trump there you have merrick going to department of justice. saying you can t come directly to us, you have to go to white house, they circle back to white house. white house counsel s office and joe biden, they agree to send this matter to department of justice, knowing damn well what would happen, that is what triggered this. general warrants, that was issued by a federal magistrate judge, the framers of your constitution hat
donald trump. he is a liar, a liar about shell corporations and money from communist china and about money from ukraine. a liar about money from romania. he is a liar about documents, a and his own history, we have a man in oval office who is a liar biden signed off on fbi review of trump records. national c archive letters reveal from august. what are they talking about? biden white house at request of department of justice signed off to have fbi and intelligence community to examine hundreds of pages of classified information of former president trump there you have merrick going to department of justice. saying you can t come directly to us, you have to go to white house, they circle back to white house. white house counsel s office and joe biden, they agree to send this matter to department of justice, knowing damn well what would happen, that is what triggered this. general warrants, that was issued by a federal magistrate judge, the framers of your constitution hate
ari, you re transformed yourself on to another floor, another studio, and we ll be back around the big set together. the magic of tv. i have been seeing you a lot and look forward to seeing you. have a great show. thank you. right now our coverage continues. today the justice department arrested, booked and arraigned donald trump. this is how trump looked today according to new court sketches we just got into your newsroom. since federal courts limit cameras, we are looking at the sketches. this is how we are seeing and learning about this very new breaking news event that spilled over the late afternoon. he s the first former president ever indicted by the former government he ran. this picture is the image that donald trump worked very hard to avoid people seeing. i m going to leave it up on the screen and give you that context, because he is a former president, he is a politician, he s a candidate for office right now, and this image and this moment is something that