another defendant. also a special counsel named in the hunter biden case with orders to investigate the president's son and others. the question now, who are the others? we are live in maui, where the death toll just rose sharply. some especially powerful new video is coming in, which we will bring to you, along with exclusive reporting on how hawaiian officials may have missed key opportunities to prevent a tragedy like this. good evening, everyone. john berman here in for anderson. we begin with what we learned today about how judge tanya chutkan intends to handle what could be the most important trial this country has ever seen. someone who is held and right now running to reclaim the highest office in the land. and on top of that, he's donald trump. the venue, as you know, was a hearing on how he and his legal teammate handled evidence, some of it sensitive, that prosecutors will be turning over to them, specifically what they are allowed to make public. and on that, judge chutkan granted some if not all of what the side was asking. the former president himself who has been talking and ranting about the case, about her, about the special counsel, she was unequivocal. to her, he is not a former president or a presidential candidate. he is first and foremost, a defendant, which she also made clear comes with certain restrictions, including what he can say and post online. what she did not say was when on this already crowded calendar the case will be tried. the government wants january. team trump wants after the election. earlier tonight on "the situation room," one legal expert told wolf that given manhattan d.a. alvin bragg, late march looked interesting to him. as for what happened today, jessica schneider joins us now. jessica, walk us through what the judge laid out today with the protective order. >> reporter: yeah, john. this isn't as broad of a protective order the prosecution wanted. but it does restrict trump and his team from publicly disclosing the sensitive information handed over to them during the discovery process. this is sensitive information that includes grand jury process information, also information about search warrants. and this protective order, it also governs how trump can get access to this information. for example, when he's not with his attorneys, he can't have his phone or any recording device when he views this information. and, john, there is a lot of it. prosecutors said today at the hearing, they're prepared to hand over 11.6 million pages of documents. that also includes recordings of witness interviews that trump will also not be able to share or post on his social media. the judge, john, she said she'll be scrutinizing everything that trump's team does say on social media and on media outlets. >> so, jessica, what else did the judge say about the proverbial elephant in the room, which is, you know, donald trump is not just a former president, but he is the republican front runner in the current election. >> yeah. she actually addressed this repeatedly. and she put it bluntly. she said, even though trump is a political candidate, she said, in her words, he still has to yield to the administration of justice. so, she said, if that means his political speech has to be somewhat limited, that's just how it's going to be. judge chutkan said trump does not have the absolute right to free speech as a criminal defendant. he has to play by the rules to make sure the jury pool isn't tainted and to make sure witnesses are not intimidated. >> what about the timeline? did the judge tip her hand at all? >> she's signaling throughout this process that she's ready to move quickly in this case. and she said the danger to tainting the jury pool is a big reason here. she warned trump. she said him and his team, the more comments you make about this case, the greater chance she'll have to order a quick start to this trial to ensure a fair jury pool. and, john, you mentioned it, the special counsel's team has already proposed the january 2nd start date. trump's team needs to put in a filing next week to propose their possible start date. likely, like you said, they won't want to start until the day after the election. >> jessica schneider. great to see you tonight. thank you so much. with us now, cnn chief correspondent kaitlan collins, who anchors "the source" at the top of the next hour, norm eisen, also jeremy foegele, formal federal judge for california's northern district. he currently is the executive director of the berkeley judicial institute. so, kaitlan, i know that the judge, judge chutkan, ruled specifically on procedural issues. but she also really did tip her hand about her overall attitude toward donald trump. you know, he's a defendant here. so, how is the trump team processing that? >> yeah, this is the first time that they were in the room in front of her before it had been a magistrate judge. this is the first time they were in front of judge chutkan, who, of course, trump has been attacking, his allies have been attacking. they've suggested they may ask for her to recuse herself. she made very clearly she is not treating him as a former president or a 2024 candidate but as a criminal defendant. essentially as they were trying to make arguments about him being on the campaign trail, she noted, that's basically his day job like any other defendant. >> i thought that was one of the most telling comments she made. it's your day job. >> it shed a lot of light on what the next few months could look like here and how she is going to proceed on this. that's what we've been looking for. we did it with judge cannon. judge chutkan obviously looking to see who is going to be her style here. that will determine the date, the scope on this. this is a routine thing, asking for this protective order. it's not a gag order. she did amend to go with what trump's team wanted about sensitive materials. but this just shows you there are going to be so many battles going forward. >> ambassador eisen here, sensitive material, restricting donald trump, what he can say about sensitive material, which are materials containing personally identifying information. what does that look like in practice for someone like donald trump? >> well, john, it's five, six categories of materials that they've designated as sensitive. and what that looks like, it's grand jury materials. it's the key evidence, really, that they're going to use to prove the case against donald trump. they're legally required to provide that to him. and in practice, what that means is his lawyers will show him the most important information. they'll talk to him about it. they're probably not just going to leave him in a room to read. he'll be able to react to them. but if he hears the danger, the redline, if some of that information is trapped in his brain that isn't otherwise public and then he lets it out in whole or in part in a social media posting, in a speech at one of his rallies, when he's talking to journalists. that is where they're going to go to court and say, hey, donald trump has breached this order. and depending on how often he does it, there is potentially very serious penalties for that. so, with an undisciplined individual like trump, there's danger that it's breached and danger of those penalties. >> okay. judge foegele, what happens then if donald trump does cross one of those red lines? what options are available to judge chutkan? >> well, i think most judges in the situation like this would use what people would recognize as progressive discipline. if it happens once, they would try to understand why it happened and what the motivation was, whether it was inadvertent or intentional or even if it was a violation. if it happens repeatedly, then it becomes more intense of an inquiry. you also have to look at what the nature of the breach is. if it's something that's really critical like witness intimidation or revealing information, which is clearly confidential and the defendant knows that it's confidential, that's pretty serious. that affects the integrity of the process. what the judge is trying to do here, i think, is balance mr. trump's rights as a defendant -- and every defendant has the same rights to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence. she's trying to balance those rights against the need for the integrity of the process and prevent things like confidential information being leaked, jury pools being tainted, witnesses being dissuaded or intimidated. that's the balance she's trying to strike. so, if a defendant does something that's particularly egregious, or if they do things over and over again that are clearly prohibited, the judge has the option to impose sanctions. sanctions could be a fine. the most extreme sanction could be revocation of release. the defendant could go to jail. i think the chance of that happening are very remote at this point, but it really depends how things play out. >> kaitlan, i want to go back to this day job comment when judge chutkan said running for president is donald trump's day job. she also said to the defense counsel, you are conflating what your client needs to do to defend himself and what he wants to do politically. so, do you think that and his defense team, that they understand and/or care about that decision? >> i think the point of frustration that we saw from john lauro, trump's defense attorney, was over mike pence. obviously he's at the center of the january 6th investigation. and john lauro, kind of, raised this idea of mike pence being on the debate stage and trump defending himself. the judge dismissed that. she did not say that that was -- she said it was giving her more concern that she was raising that kind of a point than it was alleviating her of her concerns. i think that is something you could potentially see. and going back to, you know, what information does he learn from these documents, they could get transcripts and everything. and what does he say publicly? i think that is where the issue is going to be. because, i mean, he could very well be on the debate stage with mike pence. he's been attacking mike pence, pushing back on his claims that he asked him to overturn the constitution. so, i think that is where the intersection of this could be. his attorney, they were very frustrated, it seemed, at those points in the hearing. >> one other way to look at that day job comment, ambassador eisen, if the iowa caucuses are your day job, there's nothing special about the iowa caucuses. between that comment and saying literally, if this guy keeps speaking out, i'm going to have to start the trial more quickly, how do you think he is dissupposed to set the trial date? >> she is going to set the trial down in the calendar for the first part of 2024. that's clear. number one, there's a legal presumption under the speedy trial act. 70 days. that would give us october. the government is already allowing more time. number two, she said that she cannot and will not factor in the effect on political campaigns, john. that means she's going to treat him like any other defendant who has a day job. and then that comment, the more inflammatory remarks there are, the faster i'll schedule this trial because of the potential effect on the jury pool. who makes more inflammatory comments than donald trump? all indications are that we are going to see this trial, i think, probably the first of the major criminal trials of donald trump that will take place. >> thank you all for being with us. a quick reminder, kaitlan's guest at the top of the hour and abby lowell, hunter biden's attorney -- what it could signal about prospects of a trial. that interview will be fascinating. also breaking news out of maui. the death toll climbing steeply tonight. a federal public health emergency just declared. we have new images from the scene, which we will bring you along with new reporting of what may have been 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and the long-time prosecutor who's been investigating the president's son. he got a new title, special counsel david weiss. what's more, quite literally, he asked for it. here to explain, cnn's sara murray. sara, what more do we know about what attorney general garland decided to elevate david weiss to special counsel. >> there aren't a lot of straight answers on this right now. we saw merrick garland give the press conference where he cited the extraordinary circumstances under this case. of course the president's son being investigated is extraordinary. this has been going on for five years. he said david weiss just came to him earlier this week and requested this special counsel designation. we saw a couple weeks ago there was a plea deal were hunter biden that went sideways where he was going to get slapped with tax misdemeanor charges that he would plead guilty to. that still doesn't fully explain why at this point in the game weiss wants the full powers of a special counsel, although it would allow him to bring charges in any venue he wants, not just delaware, where he's the u.s. attorney. >> what is exactly the new special counsel saying about the status of the hunter biden case, because, as you said, he was minutes away. i mean, hunter biden at one point a few weeks ago was perhaps minutes away from completing this plea deal. >> and things, again, spectacularly fell apart. we learned david weiss essentially saying behind the scenes they have not been able to reach a new plea agreement with hunter biden's team. so, weiss plans to go to trial. and in order to do that, he's not going to do that in delaware. he wants to do that in one of these other jurisdictions, likely d.c. or california, where crimes were committed or where hunter biden has been residing. as you know, john, once you're designated special counsel, you have more powers. you can investigate essentially anything that comes up in your investigation. so, there has to be some concern, i would imagine, on the part of hunter biden's team about this potentially ballooning this as goes on. >> perspective now from evan os knows, author of "joe biden: the life, the run, and what matters now." also with us, ashley alison, and defense attorney shan wu. shan, how big is this news, the appointment of the special counsel and maybe even bigger the fact that plea deal negotiations have collapsed? >> well, you know, substantively, john, it shouldn't change things really. sara has been pointing out, they've been investigating this case for a half decade. it's hard to imagine there's some surprise that just come up. it is a bit puzzling what garland has done here. he could have appointed special counsel from day one if he wanted to do that. it's just not clear what has changed here. and interestingly, the better designation would have been to make him a special attorney under the doj ranks, which also gives him the ability to go to other venues. usually special counsel is someone chosen from outside doj, a former dojer because you want the point to be an appearance of impartiality. so, like john durham, who barr installed as a special counsel, weiss is also a current doj employee. so, that's not the normal pick. it's pretty puzzling what's going on. >> the main reason we were told, at least, why he did it was because david weiss, for the first time, we think, asked for it. evan, you know, president biden is obviously running for re-election right now. how hard is this going to be for him not to address this on the campaign trail? >> yeah, john, you know, sort of his nature, his habit over the decades has been when he's facing a personal or a political challenge or a setback, he talks about it, talks about it out loud. it's his response to a lot of things. he talks to the public. he'll talk to columnists and authors. and this is a case where his instincts essentially are not allowed. he has been vigilant in not talking about this case in anything but the most personal terms, just talking about the fact he supports his son who has gone through a difficult period. as the president often says, he's put it behind him. the reality you're going to see him draw a line between those personal statements as a father and not weighing into the questions of criminal justice in the same way he hasn't weighed into the questions of criminal justice around his opponent donald trump. that is a line he has to be vigilant about not crossing. >> he says he's given garland and the special counsel now all the -- they want. he has also been very supportive of hunter biden, as his son, throughout this. actually, congressional republicans, many of whom had been calling for a special counsel, are now criticizing the appointment of u.s. attorney david weiss as special counsel. what do you think is driving this? >> well, the challenge with republicans is they continue to move the field goal. so, they say they want something, then they get it, and then it's not good enough. the reason why i think they're doing that, though, is because their 2024 political strategy is to sow doubt in the american public about the value of our institutions. and they were able to do that, in my belief, without credibility. but they were doing that before there was an equal special counsel on both sides. so, now that the department of justice has said, fine, if there is a question that maybe weiss has not -- even though there has been no indication from the attorney that he, that weiss, has had any issue being able to run the investigation the way he wanted to be, making him a special counsel gives people that comfort. that kind of takes the wind out of the republican sails and that strategy. so, they continue to -- and say it's insufficient, it's not enough, when in reality that was what their original ask was. >> it is worth noting also david weiss was a trump appointee, who was a holdover from the trump administration. shan, i want to go back again to the notion that at one point a few weeks ago, hunter biden's team reasonably thought they were minutes away from this being over. how do you get from there to here, and is this a failure of a defense strategy? >> i don't think it's a failure of a defense strategy. i think you have to put the blame on the prosecution here. that plea deal, there is an ambiguity, as you know, about what was really covered for hunter biden. would he still be exposed in the future? ambiguity would have been good for the defense because if they try to charge him later, they could say, hey, this violates the plea deal. it's the prosecution that needed to make sure they were very clear about what they were doing and they weren't able to answer the judge's inquires about that. and that's why it collapsed. now, it places hunter biden in a difficult position certainly because it looks like they're amping up potential other charges to try to force him into pleaing. the issue here though is he is begging -- his defense team seems to want to take a plea deal. and it's just unclear what's really going to be holding that up. so, again, i really think this is an example of doj not having gotten their ducks in order. and they could have done that. >> evan, how hard will it be, do you think, for the biden team to come up with a strategy to deal with this? >> you know, part of the reason they're in this moment, in this predicament, is if you go back to the period we're talking about, 2014, 2015, when hunter biden was embarking on these business activities and really, sort of, unraveling personally, that was a time when some of his advisers didn't feel they could talk to the vice president about it. it's a very sensitive issue personally. but that is a different period now. and obviously i think internally, they're going to be having some candid conversations about what is the political strategy about how do you be clear about your responsibilities as a father and supporting your son while also not playing into what ashley so rightly described as this effort to try and create equivalence on the republican side by saying their candidate is engulfed in investigations. but to date, we have to remind ourselves, john, there has been no evidence that any of the business activities, anything hunter biden was involved in benefitted joe biden or he did anything to advance those processes by using the power of government. >> just a few seconds left here. do you hear from any democrats who are getting nervous about this? >> no. i mean, just like donald trump's indictments actually increase his polling numbers, i don't think it will actually have a detrimental effect on joe biden because the reality is this case is not about joe biden. it's about his son. and a father is allowed to love his son. the breaking news out of hawaii. the death toll has now risen to 67. we're going to take you to the hard-hit town of lahaina next. 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(dog bark) it's just smarter, healthier pet food. it's amazing what real food can do. oh, oh, oh...i'll be the judge of that. oh, that's nice... oh!! searchable, verified reviews. that's better than the ham, and i've never said that. booking.com booking.yeah (♪) astepro allergy, steroid free allergy relief that starts working in 30 minutes, while other allergy sprays take hours. with astepro's unbeatably fast allergy relief you can astepro and go! the fires on maui tonight became the state of hawaii's deadliest natural disaster. in the last hour, the death toll rose again. 67 now confirmed dead. the government says that the fire, quote, is not yet contained. one of the hardest hit towns, of course, was lahaina. cnn's chief climate correspondent bill weir made it there by boat. this is his report. >> reporter: the trees you guys see behind you right here, this was all from the tornado that came through. no, we've never even seen a tornado in hawaii. >> reporter: in a place so familiar with weather extremes -- >> wow, it's crazy. >> reporter: -- maui locals have never seen anything like the fire storm that obliterated lahaina. >> going slow ly with the boat. we're like, the house didn't survive. now there's a brush fire. and within five minutes, the whole thing was engulfed. there was nobody there to put anything out. >> we're just pulling into lahaina now, just getting our first glimpse of this town af hearing this nightmarish stories, and it is worse than you can imagine. it looks like a bomb went off here, just utter scorched devastation everywhere. melted boats in the harbor. >> reporter: what was once the capital of the kingdom of hawaii and one of the most well preserved towns in the nation is ash, including bill wyeman's art gallery. he said he escaped the flames on his harley-davidson, riding around cars trapped. >> i took the motorcycle. flames were shooting over the top. i didn't want to look behind me because i knew they were behind me. >> there was nowhere to go. you're pinned. >> that's what happened to all the people, i think. all those cars sitting waiting for someone to move in front of them, no one was moving anywhere. you were dead in the water. they all jumped in the oceans. a lot of them didn't make it, i heard. >> if the winds were 80 miles per hour, the surf must have been -- >> it wasn't just that. there was diesel fuel floating in the water as well. a lot of people couldn't swim that far. and a lot of people died from smoke inhalation. >> this is a historic banion tree at the center of lahaina town. it looks like it may have survived. it needs water desperately to survive right now. for the locals coming down looking at the damage, this is such a sign of hope that maybe their iconic tree will have lived when so much else is gone here. but the history can never be replaced. right here, this is the first hotel in hawaii, the pioneer hotel, pioneer theater, it's completely gone. right over here was the library. it's just now a stone shell of scorched blocks. around front street there, f fleetwoods, mic fleetwood of the band fleetwood mac, his place is scorched. it's unbelievable. it's scorched like a bomb went off. >> farmer eddie garcia lost a small fortune in crop damage but now is bracing for much bigger losses. >> when i was down there early, there were uncles and people i know in the street dead. people were trying to get to the end of the street. you can tell by the cars that were parked. they say hundreds of people jumped in the water. >> you personally lost crops. >> i lost nothing compared to what people lost. i lost farm stuff and food and whatever, tiny little things compared to what people. people lost their family. they lost their houses. everything we've seen, all the landmarks, everything that we've seen for years, history, it's all gone. >> it's all gone. and bill weir joins me now. bill, authorities announced residents of west maui will be allowed back in the area today. what are you seeing? what have residents done without access to their homes? >> reporter: well, it's certainly ramped up the uncertainty and fear of the worst, people looking for proof of life of family members. but this is what it looks like since they opened up lahaina now to residents. long, miles-long line of cars here. this sheds light on the difficulty of evacuation when the grass was burning. over here, we've got a sample of what was fuel of this fire, invasive grasses in what was years ago, tropical forests here. but with those massive winds turning this into a blow torch, bringing down power lines like this, blocking roads, you had this sort of gridlock. it's one lesson learned. but they're really preparing for the worst when it comes to the fatality count. we've seen this in disasters. when you don't have the information, people fear the worst. a lot of people turn up okay. we hope that's the case here. folks are bracing for this not only to be the deadliest fire in hawaii history, but the deadliest fire in american history, which is 85 in paradise. >> bill weir, thank you for your work. behind every house and store front burned, there is a story, a family who lost a house full of memories, a business owner whose years of hard work went up in flames. iconic artist best known for this, the first mouth and tongue ever created for the rolling stones, which was featured prominently on the tumbling dice record sleeve back in 1971. he was about to open a new gallery on front street in lahaina. 100 of his paintings were lost. and ruby joins me now. ruby, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us. and we're so sorry for everything you've lost. can you explain what happened tuesday when the fires began? i know you were at home in a different community in maui. your sons were at your gallery on front street in lahaina preparing for the grand opening, right? >> correct, yeah. it was -- we'd been waiting for this maui location, which is right next to fleetwood's. and when we found it, we moved the gallery from waikiki over to maui. so, we shipped over 100 paintings here. i live up in kuala, up country. and my three sons have been working. and the track lighting and the painting and the building and the furniture and hanging the paintings. we decided, okay, we're going to be ready tuesday for the grand opening. and monday night, they were in the gallery, and people were coming in already and saying, oh, i want to buy this, i want to buy this. and my son said, you know what? my dad's going to be here tomorrow night. he would love to say hello to you and wish you happiness and whatever. come back tomorrow for the grand opening. and they said, no, we want to buy it now. and he said, no, no, no, tomorrow. so, they said, okay. and the next day, i was up -- the winds were like 100 miles per hour. and i have a 150-pound mastiff that could barely walk. my son called and said, dad, it's really getting bad. i said, well, better come on back here because it's not looking good here either. and they came up -- they tried to get out of lahaina, and they were closing down the road because of the flames. and they got out, but it was a miracle they got out. they came up to my house, and they saw all the furniture on my deck. everything was being thrown around like tooth picks. and they go, dad, we've got to go now. and i said, you know what? if it's going to be really bad, let's get a hotel room. not one hotel had a room available. nothing. we were calling 15 hotels. not one room. so, my other son said, you know what? let's get a u-haul. i said, okay. we got two u-hauls. we went to walmart, bought blowup beds. we have four dogs in the car. we bought two blowup beds, blankets, sheets, pillows, bottles of water, and we went, took two u-hauls to the parking lot of the airport to sleep there. and the next thing we knew, lahaina was gone. lahaina was completely gone. my lifelong work of 50 years painting rock stars, gone. and i've been having calls from people, collectors from all over the world. and last night, one collector called back, and she said, ruby, this painting we bought from you a couple of years ago, we paid a lot of money for it. we'd like to send it back to you so you can sell it and get some money. people are amazing. >> ruby, i can't imagine what it's like for you now. when you saw the images of front street, you know, not just your gallery in ruins but all your artwork gone, what went through your mind? >> well, john, i just beat cancer for the third time. i had bladder cancer. i had a brain tumor. they gave me six months to live. and this last year, i had a bout with throat cancer. so, i figured if i could beat cancer three times, nothing can take me down. and then losing my life's work and almost losing my three sons on front street, it's a lot to take. it's a lot to take. and a little ray of sunshine was i went off the back road today to see if my house was in ashes as well. and i pulled up around the corner, and it was smoky and stinky from the fire. and there was my house standing. it did not burn down. amongst all those burnt and downed trees and power lines, my house is still there. >> we wish you all the best. i know that so many of your fans will rally around you in this time of need. so, all the best to you, ruby. to you and your family, be well. >> john, thank you very much. one final and terribly important note here, how to help. you can find all the information in one place, at cnn.com/impact. again, that's cnn.com/impact. coming up, with a record breaking death toll, questions are mounting on could more have been done to prevent this disaster, and where there warning signs that were missed? 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(vo) la-z-boy. long live the lazy. as the death toll rises to 67 and the full scope of the destruction in hawaii continues to come into focus, questions are emerging about not just what can be done to prevent the next tragedy, but could any more have been done to prevent this one? a report released last year shows that officials in hawaii underestimated the deadly threat of wildfires. meantime, a maui county report from 2021 acknowledged that while the number of acres consumed by wildfires had spiked, that the funds to fight them were, quote, inadequate. here's cnn's chief investigative correspondent pamela brown with more. >> reporter: cnn is learning hawaii officials underestimated the risk of wildfires in a recent report, even as other documents show officials knew they lacked resources to prevent and fight fires. >> we had advanced notice coming into the summer. this week, the winds, the low humidity, and the fuels, any ignition would have sparked a pretty big fire. and that's exactly what we saw. >> reporter: in a state report out just last year ranking natural disasters, hawaii officials classified the wildfire risk to human life as low in this color-coded chart. the assessment, though, coming ye years after hurricane lane ravaged o'ahu in 2018. that highlighted the threat and how unprepared officials in hawaii were dealing with such a disaster, with a report noting hurricane lane made small -- swale, with strong winds grounding air support. that storm should have been a wakeup call according to this planning document. other state and local documents show hawaii lagged behind in preparedness for the devastating wildfires playing out now that have killed more than 50 people, left countless people missing, and triggered widespread evacuations, a cruel deja vu for some residents. >> about four years ago, we had another hurricane, and we lost our house in the fire. rebuilt. and what happened yesterday is killing me right now. we just lost our house again. twice in our years. >> reporter: a 2021 report also makes the troubling point that despite the increasing number of wildfires, fire prevention was given, quote, short shift, in a strategic plan in maui's plan for fire and safety. the plan also included, quote, nothing about what can and should be done to prevent fires, which it called a significant oversight. >> given how catastrophic this event was, i think there will be a lot of pressure on the state and other organizations to improve their fire prevention actions that they're taking state-wide. >> reporter: the increase in fires in hawaii comes as maui has faced increasing drought conditions in recent years, contributing to warnings like this. in a may webinar from -- with the hawaii wildfire management organization. >> hawaii has a big wildfire problem. we are on par with the most fire prone states in the western continental u.s. the impact of fire are broad and long lasting. >> reporter: now residents like mark are left to rebuild again, as the threat of future disasters looms with no clear plan in place. >> i mean, i know what i need to do. we've done it before. >> it's still unclear whether additional preparation and mitigation could have reduced the amount of devastation and damage we've seen from these lahaina wildfires given its speed and intensity. the governor of hawaii tells cnn, responsibility falls on all of us. john? >> all right. pam brown, thank you very much. iowa presidential politics next and republican candidates search for the biggest as yet elusive endorsement there. ♪ ♪ xxxx wherever you stay. all you need is one key. earn and use rewards across expedia, hotels.com, and vrbo. she found it. the feeling of finding the psoriasis treatment she's been looking for. sotyktu is the first-of-its-kind, once-daily pill for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis for the chance at clear or almost clear skin. it's like the feeling of finding your back... is back. or finding psoriasis can't deny the splendor of these thighs. once-daily sotyktu is proven to get more people clearer skin than the leading pill. don't take if you're allergic to sotyktu; serious reactions can occur. sotyktu can lower your ability to fight infections including tb. serious infections, cancers including lymphoma, muscle problems, and changes in certain labs have occurred. tell your doctor if you have an infection, liver or kidney problems, high triglycerides, or had a vaccine or plan to. sotyktu is a tyk2 inhibitor. tyk2 is part of the jak family. it's not known if sotyktu has the same risks as jak inhibitors. find what plaque psoriasis has been hiding. ask your dermatologist about sotyktu for clearer skin. so clearly you. sotyktu. bridgett is here. she has no clue that i'm here. she has no clue who's in the helmet. are you ready? -i'm ready! alright. xfinity rewards creates experiences big and small, and once-in-a-lifetime. that's why comcast business de is launching theal. mobile made free event. with our business internet, new and existing customers can get one year of unlimited mobile for free. it's our best internet. powered by the next generation 10g network and with 99.9% reliability. plus one line of free mobile for an entire year. it's the mobile made free event-happening now. get started for just $49.99 a month. plus, ask how to get one free line of unlimited mobile. comcast business, powering possibilities. former president trump and florida governor ron desantis are scheduled to attend the iowa state fair tomorrow. desantis told iowans at a campaign stop today he expects to bring a lot of the state lawmakers to the fair who endorsed him. this comes days after a source said the former president is planning to bring people who endorsed him over desantis, their governor. the biggest endorsement in iowa has stayed on the sidelines, though. that is popular two-term governor kim reynolds. jeff zeleny is in iowa with that story. >> reporter: governor kim reynolds reveling in the iowa state fair and the republican presidential race. she's at the center of both, rolling out a welcome mat to a parade of candidates five months before the iowa caucuses ring the opening bell of the 2024 campaign. >> this is a metaphor for all the candidates in the race. >> it is, right? get them to participate and have fun with it. >> reporter: she's showering all republican hopefuls with attention, sizing up the field along the way, but staying neutral, at least for now. >> it's really important that they feel they have a fair shot and they're welcome here in iowa. and i want iowans to have a chance to interact with them. >> you're not ruling out potentially an endorsement at the end? >> you should never say never. never never. we'll wait and see what happens. probably looking at neutral, especially at the beginning of this. it's naturally going to start to narrow, and then we'll take a look at, you know, where it's at. so, it's early for that. >> reporter: reynolds wants republicans to find the strongest candidate to win back the white house. she believes the race is far from settled. >> it's so early. people are paying so much attention to the national polls. and i can tell you, it's just not refliective of what i'm hearing from iowans as i'm traveling around. >> you think there could be surprises over the next five or six months? >> there's always surprises. that's part of the process. i can't think of one caucus where there hasn't been a surprise. >> reporter: for months she's been hosting the republican hopefuls and basking in their republican accolades. >> the best governor in the entire country, jim reynolds. >> reporter: she invited the candidates to join her own stage at the fair. all said yes except former president donald trump. he has been lashing out, taking credit for reynolds' election and attacking her for not supporting him. >> it's actually iowans who made the decision to elect me in a really tough year. 2018 was not a good year for republicans. i squeaked by. >> reporter: the 2018 midterms were, in part, a referendum on trump. last year she won re-election by nearly 19 points and is remarkably popular among republicans. trump's attacks on her are now part of an ad for desantis. >> instead of looking to america's future, trump is busy attacking american governors. >> reporter: her relationship with trump has grown more complicated. >> i just said i think it's early. our job is not to pick the winner necessarily but to start to narrow the field. and that's really what the caucus has done. >> reporter: and the former president is arriving here at the fair tomorrow, as the front runner in this race. there is no doubt about that. but as the governor said there, she believes it's early. she believes that voters do have an open mind. and, john, i can tell you, talking to many of them here this week at the fair and for the last several months, there are many republicans looking to turn a page. of course trump has many true supporters as well. but five months before the iowa caucuses, history will tell that there might be surprises, as the governor said. trump here tomorrow, desantis as well, other candidates too, john. this race is heating up, and voters are starting to pay attention. >> you will be watching. jeff zeleny, great to have you there. we'll be right back. 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