Host begins right now. E msnb host begins right now. Good evening. Welcome to tonight Special Coverage. Im Rachel Maddow here at the msnbc mothership with my colleagues joy reid and Lawrence Odonnell and jen psaki and ari melber. I friends chris hayes and alex wagner and Stephanie Ruhle or are gonna be joining us later. Its going to be fun. Were less than a week out from the republican president ial caucuses in iowa. Theast eye or a public can debate is underway tonight with oddly a sort of random selection of two of the remaining five republican president ial candidates. Taking part in that debate. If you can, right now, name all five remaining republican president ial candidates at the top of your head without looking anything up, congratulations. And ill say you need to get out more. Two are debating tonight. Nikki haley and ron desantis. Also tonight, two miles away from that iowa debate, fox news conducted a live town hall with the front running republican candidate, who, of cours
host begins right now. e msnb host begins right now. good evening. welcome to tonight special coverage. i m rachel maddow here at the msnbc mothership with my colleagues joy reid and lawrence o donnell and jen psaki and ari melber. i friends chris hayes and alex wagner and stephanie ruhle or are gonna be joining us later. it s going to be fun. we re less than a week out from the republican presidential caucuses in iowa. theast eye or a public can debate is underway tonight with oddly a sort of random selection of two of the remaining five republican presidential candidates. taking part in that debate. if you can, right now, name all five remaining republican presidential candidates at the top of your head without looking anything up, congratulations. and i ll say you need to get out more. two are debating tonight. nikki haley and ron desantis. also tonight, two miles away from that iowa debate, fox news conducted a live town hall with the front running republican candida
getting them to commit to caucus. all of that is important. but what they continue to show is that by bucking the traditional, he can still find success. i think it is a reminder that the national trends seemed to set the tone here more in this primary state than the traditional way of campaigning here. i do think that it forces a lot of us on the strategy side to rethink the way that you have to be successful in iowa. especially given the test, test. fact that trump has clearly been here, desantis has, as you mentioned, completely planted his flag in this state and try to make it his own. he has gotten all of the right, so called endorsements that you should need, a popular governor here in the state of iowa and kim reynolds, one of the leading evangelical voices here in bob vander plaats. all of that should be amounting to a stronger second place, frankly it should be amounting to a challenge to first place. yet, that is not what we are seeing on the ground here. so for nikki haley,