at every single stop now, reporters are looking, is he interacting with the crowd? is he take shaking hands, tae staying long enough? if you re advanced staff, you have to stay at least an extra 30 minutes to show, hey, he likes people. i saw tweets, what pizza is he having? is he talking to voters? do we have a timetable as to when other candidates will jump in? rumors about tim scott, mike pence and others. i think tim scott will come in. may 22nd is the date where they re circling. you ll see his super pac get bolstered. mike pence also in the next month. those are the two main candidates. national political correspondent for axios, alex thompson covering a lot of ground. thank you for being here. thank you for all of you for getting up way too early on this monday morning. morning joe starts right now. we must reject the culture of losing that has infected our party in recent year. the time for excuses is over. if we get distracted, focus the election on
midwest. i started watching more what they did during this legislative session. i thought, man, they ve done an awful lot. maybe it s that florida is the iowa of the southeast. i don t know. florida ron desantis laying it on thick with praise for iowa during a barnstorm trip over the weekend as he takes advantage of donald trump canceling a campaign event in that state, and that comes as there s new polling in several states with hypothetical matchups between president joe biden, trump, and desantis. we ll take a look at the latest numbers. we ll also have an update on the debt ceiling negotiations as the clock is ticking before president biden takes a trip to january for the g7 summit. good morning and welcome to way too early on this monday, may 15th. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for starting your day and week with us. the two front-runners for the 2024 republican nomination were both expected to be in iowa over the weekend, but concerns about extreme weather kept
iowa. helped trump wasn t there. give us a sense as to where you think things stand for the florida governor, who may be a couple weeks from announcing a run. he wanted to do this legislative session where he signed a bunch of bills, conservative priorities. i think his team saw this as a way to contrast himself with donald trump. look, i m getting stuff done. what actually happened, he was half in as a candidate, half out, and that enabled donald trump to pummel him day after day without really an infrastructure to beat back. going to iowa, having this super pac go out and defend him on the airwaves and online, you re seeing them steady ship a little bit. with all the races, his expectations are much lower than they were six months. i bet there s going to be a comeback narrative in two, three weeks. the other interesting thing i d point out is there is this narrative that desantis is awkward.