of the hundredth day of the captivity of the hostages, and i ll tell you what, 1968 democratic convention in chicago, there was a lot of protests. this is protests against the biden administration, so i think that the democrats, secret service, everyone needs to be on alert for what could happen next. bill: we ll watch that. we ll wait to see whether or not there s another chapter to that in washington either today or coming up this week. that s one hour down, dana. dana: it is taye caucus crunch time iowa caucus crunch time. of it s freezing cold, but the candidates are are out in full force making their final pitch to voters. welcome to a brand new hour of america s newsroom, i m dana perino. good morning. bill: hello to you. short night. [laughter] right on. i m bill hemmer. the weather could have a major impact on turnout, so we think. we don t know. the wind chill getting as low as -45, that s cold enough to really cause a lot of health problems, right? iowans are
Still interested because you ve got to make effort to get out right now. an ec i coatally, it feels like anecdote atly, it feels like it may not be an exact match for the polls. bill: he and trump will battle for these the rural counties, the evangelical vote. they re either going to flit split it, or trump s going to go up 2 to 1 on monday night. you asked both desantis and haley a about expectations. monday is going to be the pivot point where now that people start to actually vote, i think it s going to really help change the landscape. what we ve said is we just want to come out of iowa looking strong. we want to come out of new hampshire strong, south carolina strong. bill: okay. look,ing if e were a candidate, i d say that too. you know everybody s managing expectations right now too, and we re hearing it from the trump team as well because they don t want people thinking, oh, you re up by 30 or 40, i m not taking my 90-year-old out.
Washington. there s going to be a huge learning curve for anybody else. bill: have you met most of them? i ve met all of them. i m with faith and freedom coalition. we ve had candidate forums all over the state. bill: did you ever waver from trump? initially, i flirted with desantis and ramaswamy, but my big question on trump originally was how is he going to flip pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, and thankfully joe biden s taken care of that for ugh. dana: we ll have a lot more to talk about when it comes to the general. whitney, you are leaning firmly desantis, and tell us why. i am not leaning desantis, i am desantis. [laughter] you know, governor desantis is the most proven candidate right now that we have. i trust what we says. he says what he s going to do, and he s the only candidate with a backbone who is willing to be up front and be honest with his people. dana: what s the number win issue for you? life. i am a i used to say i was
Ron desantis at 22 and noun the line are haley and ramaswamy, 12 and 8% respectively. maybe you expect this on monday night, maybe it all changes. that s why you caucus, that s why you vote, dana, and we ll find out soon enough. dana: indeed. and the candidates are out there the in force. trump was in indianola, but right now desantis is about to be on stage in dubuque, iowa. that ll be something that he kicks off will not kick off his day, sorry, the day is continuing on. and we have james upmeyer, ron desantis campaign manager. one of the things i mentioned before is one of the previous consultants, jeff roe, who had helped ted cruz organize a iowa and get to victory in 2016, he was helping the desantis campaign for a long time. do you feel like that setup and the organization, the ground game can and the strategy is on your side? absolutely. the ground game was built begin, you know, six plus months ago. it s too late. if you don t have a ground game
That she s talking about, has that actually helped him? gave him more pub are listy, not that he probably needed it. i think the timing of the lawsuits and the, you know, all drama, it s pretty suspect. dana: yeah. and i think donald trump sometimes is his worst enemy, some of the chaos he generates. it s back to electability, i m not sure he can get enough of the independents this time around to win. and so that s why i m going with nikki haley. bill: jeremy? that s why i love desantis. i think he converted 700,000 independents and democrats into republicans in the state of florida, and that s really what we need. so, to me, he s the donald trump with all the execute cushion only would want the crazy and without the lawsuits. and so that s what i love about him. dana: what about vivek and sort of bringing in new voters? trump has a lot of new voters as well, but the new voter angle, the youth with. i know a community like des moines is growing with leaps and bounds. i actually