closing in. candidates make their final pitches and sparks fly. donald trump has been throwing temper tantrums about me. donald trump is running for his issues. nikki haley is runner for her donor s issues. one week before iowa decides, do they have any hope. and an urgent warning. as we begin this election year, we must be clear. democracy is on the ballot. three years after the capitol attack, the president tries to reframe the race. as trump defends the rioters. nobody has been treated ever in history so badly as those people. plus deal or no deal? what we see here is absolute mayhem. some republicans threaten to shut down over the border. l i will not vote for the funding of the government. and new deetails on plans to impeach secretary mayorkas. inside politics starts now. good morning and welcome to inside politics sunday. i m manu raju. it is almost time for iowans to have their say at who should be president. in just eight days iowa repu
strategy. we re going to bring you brand new reporting from inside the campaign. i m dana bash. let s go behind the headlines and inside politics. we start today with breaking news on who qualified for cnn s iowa debate next week. last before the caucuses. the deadline to meet the polling threshold just passed, and our political director david chalian joins me now. david, who made the cut? as you noted, the deadline just passed and actually the window of qualification started way back on october 15th. we now know that for the cnn january 10th debate, the three candidates who have qualified are former president trump, nikki haley and ron desantis. we also know that donald trump has not participated in any debate yet this cycle, and he doesn t intend on participating at the cnn debate on january 10th. that leaves haley and desantis on the stage, and that would be the smallest debate stage that we have seen to date. that means that they were the only candidates to hit 10%
tactics from ron desantis has been interesting. if you re talking about in the last five days or so, he has been going hard after trump in a way that we haven t seen before. i think it really started with the cnn town halls on wednesday night and you re where he said, of course, trump is trump isn t pro-life. trying to get at that segment of the republican. he said of course not, he s not pro-life. right. right. and when he was campaigning in iowa over weekend, he talked about how while in 2016 he may have campaigned on america first but nos this is trump first. that is pretty personal for a guy who has been so unwilling to go after the former president, probably because he doesn t want to anger supporters and it shows you he s kind of trying everything to grab that strong second position ahead of the 15th caucus. and you re seeing more directed attacks. and you wrote about trump s campaign, isaac, for the washington post, about just everything that he s been doing. this is
cnn s alana treen has been following trump on the campaign trail. what has trump s tone been throughout this weekend? yeah, well, manu, the former president has really spent this weekend delivering his closing arguments to iowa voters in the final week before the january 15th caucus. and a key part of that message has been warning voters no the to get complacent and to assume that trump has iowa in the bag. just because he is up so high in the polls. and i could tell you, manu, from my conversations with trump advisers that this is a bit of a concern for them. a key part of the ground game strategy here in the state has been to focus on turning out as many caucus-goers as they can. and so we ve seen them really issue a lot of presentations, trying to teach iowans how to caucus. but i want to point your attention during his remarks in
months, all you will see are ads attacking ron desantis from nikki haley s side and ads attacking nikki haley, but you won t see any attacking the front runner in this race. that s because the candidates are exiting 2023 having failed to establish themselves as the sole alternative to trump. thousand their mission in the final days before the january 15th caucus is to push one of each other out of this race. if you take a look at these ads airing now in iowa, where we see desantis and haley superpacs going head to head over the issue of china. desantis called china s florida s most important trading partner. only ron desantis, too lame to lead, too weak to win. tricky nikki pretends she s tough on china but she promise