Here's the latest from the 2024 campaign trail:
- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are holding campaign events in Iowa on Wednesday. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem will also hold an event to boost former President Donald Trump. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is campaigning in New Hampshire.
- House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., endorsed Trump today. With Emmer's backing, every member of House Republican leadership has now endorsed Trump.
- President Joe Biden's campaign announced that a speech initially planned for Saturday, the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, will now be delivered Friday on account of an approaching winter storm. In his remarks, Biden will cast Trump as a threat to democracy.
- The Trump campaign is going after Haley for the first time on New Hampshire airwaves with a new ad focused on immigration.
Live coverage of this event has ended. Get the latest election news here.
In an interview with NBC News' Dasha Burns and Des Moines Register chief politics reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel, Ramaswamy rejected a question that he’s using conspiracy theories to get attention on the campaign trail.
Haley draws another big crowd at town hall event in New Hampshire
About 700 people attended Haley’s town hall tonight in Milford, New Hampshire, while some were turned away at the door because of capacity limits.
Haley’s crowds have grown considerably over the past few weeks in New Hampshire, where there's clear momentum for her.
“There is consolidation going on among the public. You can hear it at the dinner tables. Nikki Haley is the talk of the town in New Hampshire,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist. “Trump could be on thin ice in New Hampshire, and that is a dangerous place to be in early winter."
Hutchinson blasts GOP rivals for saying they would pardon Trump
DES MOINES, Iowa — At a campaign stop tonight, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he’s the only Republican candidate campaigning in Iowa who has not promised to pardon Trump.
DeSantis and Haley have both said they’d pardon Trump if he’s convicted. Christie has said he wouldn't pardon Trump, but he hasn't campaigned in Iowa this election cycle.
“I’ve set myself apart. I stand alone in Iowa as being clear that Donald Trump is a risk to our democracy in the future. Now, I think Joe Biden’s a risk to our democracy, as well, with a weak border security and other challenges,” Hutchinson said. “But Donald Trump being motivated by revenge, by being autocratic and by saying he’s going to weaponize the Department of Justice against his political enemies, this is bad for America.”
Hutchinson kicked off his “Return to Normal” tour with an event at a brewery in Des Moines. More than 25 people were in attendance, many of them students from Cal Poly Pomona, who came to learn more about the caucus process.
Hutchinson, who has failed to qualify for the recent GOP primary debates, said that he now has a condo in Iowa and that his wife and dog will be coming to stay ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses.
Trump campaign targets Haley for first time on New Hampshire airwaves
The Trump campaign is taking direct aim at Haley in a new advertisement airing in New Hampshire in a shift in strategy just weeks before the state’s primary.
The 30-second ad, viewed by NBC News, marks the first time the campaign has gone after Haley, a former Trump administration official, on the airwaves in the state ahead of its Jan. 23 primary.
The ad tries to connect Haley’s immigration positions with those of President Joe Biden by arguing that both opposed “Trump’s border wall” and “Trump’s visitor ban from terrorist nations.”
“Confirmed warnings of terrorists sneaking in through our southern border,” the ad’s narrator says. “Yet Haley joined Biden in opposing Trump’s visitor ban from terrorist nations. Haley’s weakness puts us in grave danger. Trump’s strength protects us.”
Trump boasts a 30-point lead over his rivals in Iowa as the Republican caucuses approach. NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard reports from Des Moines on what to expect in the final weeks leading up to the critical caucuses as candidates hit the campaign trail in the Hawkeye State.
Biden campaign moves Jan. 6 speech up a day over weather concerns
With a winter storm threatening to disrupt travel in the Northeast this weekend, the Biden campaign announced tonight that it is moving Biden’s major speech marking the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection up a day, to Friday.
The event will take place at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, near the Revolutionary War encampment at Valley Forge.
Top Trump adviser raps Ramaswamy for 'whining'
A top aide to Trump who once admired Ramaswamy is getting annoyed with the biotech entrepreneur’s recent moves.
In a joint interview today with NBC News and The Des Moines Register, Ramaswamy said Trump was “wounded” and not best positioned to lead the GOP in 2024.
The criticism is an escalation from Ramaswamy, who earlier in the race spoke more favorably of Trump. And it came a day after Ramaswamy announced that, like Trump, he will counterprogram CNN’s Republican debate in Iowa between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley. (Trump had met the polling thresholds to qualify for the debate, but he has yet to participate in one this election cycle. Ramaswamy failed to qualify for next week’s debate.)
Asked tonight whether Trump’s team was frustrated with Ramaswamy’s increasingly caustic approach, Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser, offered a rebuke.
“Playing and whining in a sandbox is not a good place to start the job interview process,” he said.
LaCivita declined to elaborate, but Ramaswamy’s rise on the national GOP scene has stoked speculation that he could be in line for a post in a second Trump administration. Polls show him behind Trump, DeSantis and Haley in Iowa, which holds its first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 15.
For months Ramaswamy was the Republican primary challenger whom high-ranking Trump hands and other allies loved to promote, seeing him as a friendly combatant who did more damage to Trump’s higher-polling challengers. After the first debate last summer in Milwaukee, LaCivita held court in the spin room, delighting in how Ramaswamy had aggressively attacked Haley onstage.
“Vivek,” LaCivita said at the time, “clearly showed that he wanted to be up there and that he wanted to be a part of it and took the opportunity that was presented to him and really made a fight for it.”
Haley super PAC strategist says DeSantis must be 'measured against' expectations he set for Iowa
Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the pro-Haley super PAC Stand for America Inc., told reporters on a conference call today that DeSantis' performance in Iowa must be weighed against the expectations he and his team set there.
The super PAC has cut an ad compiling the times DeSantis and his allies talked up their ability to win this month's Iowa caucuses.
“I know now it’s been a while that people have accepted that Ron and Nikki are in a tough fight right now in Iowa," Harris said. "But if we step back to six or eight months ago, certainly that would have been a sort of ludicrous argument. The DeSantis people have repeatedly, including up into the last few days, reiterated that they have to win Iowa. They have to come in first. That certainly was their posture throughout much of last year.
“Think back to where we were in April or May," he continued. "To be in a position where Nikki is competitive and was in a position to finish well and even, potentially, with a little luck, to beat Ron DeSantis in Iowa, I mean, that would have been an unthinkable situation even a few months ago. And the fact we’ve been able to have a spending advantage, a significant spending advantage, in the state the last few weeks I’m sure was something that if you asked Never Back Down or the DeSantis campaign about at the start, they would have thought is absolutely ludicrous.”
Haley and DeSantis are polling neck and neck in Iowa, where both trail Trump by significant margins. On Wednesday, DeSantis' campaign released a statement targeting the significant spending by Haley and on her behalf in Iowa over the past few weeks, saying she was trying to "spend her way" to a second-place finish.
“I do think it’s important to think back to where things started, which is certainly a DeSantis campaign that was sort of ascendant and triumphal and that is certainly not the position they’re in today," Harris said. "Iowa remains a state that has structural advantages for Ron. He spent a lot of time there. He has repeatedly laid the marker down that he is going to win in Iowa. … And I think it’s important that since him and his team have set that marker that that’s the marker that they’re measured against.”
Harris was also asked about the impact Christie's candidacy was having on Haley in New Hampshire, where she is polling closer to Trump, while Christie has built up a support base that could bolster her bid should he withdraw from the race.
"It’s up to him what he wants to do," Harris said. "He can stay in the race; he cannot. Obviously, the data does indicate that his voters overwhelmingly would head towards Nikki should he get out. Him being in certainly has some helpful impact for Trump; I’m not going to lie about that. But we absolutely believe whether he’s in or out that there’s a clear path for us to win in New Hampshire.
“He’ll have to decide what he wants his legacy to be," he added. "But we’ll be focused on winning over as many as his voters as possible."
Harris said Trump’s biggest weakness is among voters who would like to see less "chaos," a message Haley has repeated on the trail.
"I would take it from what Nikki says on the stump, which is you can’t solve Democratic chaos with Republican chaos and that people want to move on to the future, be future-looking, get over the drama of the past," he said. "And so I think you’re going to hear more of that messaging, thematic messaging, which clearly she believes is key to her candidacy, and we believe that, as well."
Vivek Ramaswamy argues Trump is ‘wounded’ and his movement needs a new leader
DES MOINES, Iowa — Ramaswamy repeatedly described Trump as “wounded” today and said he was the best candidate to lead the MAGA movement forward as he makes a final attempt to sway Republican voters still enthusiastic about Trump.
The comments, which Ramaswamy made in a joint interview with NBC News and The Des Moines Register, are part of a complicated balancing act he is trying to strike ahead of the Iowa caucuses: praising Trump and his policies while suggesting he could push them further or implement them better — and also saying Trump can’t win the election because of forces lined up against him, leaving Ramaswamy as the best choice for Trump fans.
“They don’t have on me what they have on him,” Ramaswamy said when he was asked why he would fare better than Trump while running against the same “system.” “You can just look right now. They’ve got four different wars they’ve waged on this man,” he added, referring, among other things, to Trump’s indictments and the 14th Amendment challenges to his ballot access in some states.
Trump asks Supreme Court to overturn Colorado ballot eligibility ruling
Trump today asked the Supreme Court to overturn a state court ruling in Colorado that said he is ineligible to appear on the state primary ballot because of his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The Colorado Republican Party had already filed its own appeal in the case. Based on language in the state court ruling, Trump for now remains on the Colorado ballot until the Supreme Court acts.
The Colorado Supreme Court based its Dec. 19 ruling on language in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment that prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from running for various federal offices. The case raises various novel legal questions, including whether the language applies to those running for president.