Here’s the latest from the 2024 campaign trail:
- Winter storm conditions in Iowa are presenting challenges for Republican candidates as they try to make their final pitches three days out from the caucuses. Former President Donald Trump, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson were all forced to cancel campaign events.
- Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is trying to forge ahead with in-person events.
- DeSantis plans to fly to South Carolina, not New Hampshire, immediately after the Iowa caucuses.
- Polls show Trump has the potential to smash the Republican record for the largest victory margin in a contested Iowa caucus.
- President Joe Biden traveled to the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
Haley's secret weapon in Iowa
DeSantis has declared he will win Iowa. Trump says he’ll capture the state, with his advisers promising a victory by at least 12 points. And Ramaswamy’s team has said he’ll come in third.
Haley hasn’t been as easy to pin down.
Just four days before the caucuses, Haley on Thursday remained vague about just where she expects she’ll finish Monday or what she needs to do to have momentum going into New Hampshire.
“What I want is I want to be strong in Iowa, strong in New Hampshire, strong in South Carolina. We don’t know what strong looks like until we see the results, right?” Haley told NBC News. “But I think it’s important that if we show that we’re strong in Iowa, that gives us momentum going into New Hampshire. That’s what I’m focused on for Monday.”
It’s the kind of answer Haley and her team have been giving when it comes to anticipating her performance in the first caucus state. In doing so, they have tried to insulate Haley from an expectations game that has the potential to drive momentum out of Iowa.
But it also allows her more room to falter in Iowa and still keep an aura of momentum moving into New Hampshire, where her polling is strong, some Republicans say. Haley has increasingly made her argument one of electability — that she is the inevitable candidate to take on Trump one on one — and some observers say that was bolstered by Chris Christie’s departure from the race Wednesday. Also helping Haley’s argument is that, as the former governor of South Carolina, she is known to voters in the important early-primary state.
Ramaswamy campaign still facing voter questions on race and religion
FORT MADISON, Iowa — Apoorva Ramaswamy had a simple ask for two supporters of her husband’s presidential campaign: “What do people say” about why they’re not supporting Vivek Ramaswamy, and “what answers can I help you provide?”
“Well, the only one I have and I couldn’t even remember who said it to me, but they mentioned his dark skin and they think he’s Muslim,” a supporter named Theresa Fowler told her at a restaurant meet-and-greet yesterday. “I kind of set them straight on that. I don’t know if they believe me or think I was covering for him, I don’t know.”
Apoorva Ramaswamy listened intently before responding, “Not much we can do about that one.”
But the interaction foreshadowed comments Apoorva Ramaswamy, a physician, faced throughout the day as she held events in a final push by the Ramaswamy campaign to meet prospective caucusgoers.
The questions made clear that despite holding nearly 300 events in the state, more than any other presidential campaign, a number of Iowa Republicans still have questions about the Ramaswamys’ faith, nationality and race, though he has addressed all of those factors of his personal life repeatedly during the campaign.
Trump shifts to 'tele-rallies' as Iowa weather forecast worsens
The former president has canceled three of his four scheduled in-person rallies this weekend due to weather concerns.
Trump will now campaign mainly through "tele-rallies" where potential caucus goers have the chance to hear from the former president on their cellphones at designated times for an abbreviated speech. He still plans on holding an in-person rally in Indianola.
Surrogates like state Rep. Bobby Kauffman, Donald Trump Jr and Kimberly Guilfoyle will also be campaigning for the former president in the final days before Monday's caucuses.
The candidates are barnstorming Iowa in a last-ditch effort to campaign before the critical caucuses Monday.
'What the f--- is NBD thinking': Former Jeb Bush advisers furious at pro-DeSantis super PAC
Former advisers to Jeb Bush are furious over a new ad from Never Back Down, a pro-Ron DeSantis’ super PAC, comparing the former Florida governor to Nikki Haley, a slight considering Bush’s 2016 presidential bid did not go well.
The group cobbled together clips comparing things Bush said during his 2016 race to things Haley has said recently. In a post on X, the DeSantis-backed super PAC said, “Nikki Haley is the Jeb Bush of 2024.” The tweet was later deleted.
A former Bush adviser told NBC News: “In about a week DeSantis and his entire team are going to find themselves on the a-- end of history even if they are lucky to get a second place win [in Iowa], and no amount of emergency survival groveling is going to rebuild the bridges they’ve burned.”
Another veteran Florida GOP operative noted that Bush has endorsed and generally praised DeSantis, both helping him publicly and introducing him to “his network” early in his political career.
“What the f--- is NBD thinking here?” the person said. “Jeb endorsed Ron long ago, and there are Jeb supporters on their way to Iowa on their own dime right now.”
In May 2022, Bush penned a short item in Time calling DeSantis one of the most “influential people of 2022,” and praised the Covid pandemic response that made DeSantis a star with many conservatives across the country.
“Despite relentless criticism, Governor Ron DeSantis kept schools open, ensured Florida’s economy remained open for business, and allowed individuals to determine their own risk tolerance,” Bush wrote.
Bush entered the 2016 presidential contest as the perceived front-runner, but much like DeSantis’ own presidential campaign he drastically underperformed expectations. Bush has faced frequent criticism from Trump supporters and has fallen out of favor with many Republicans, but has never had a bad relationship or faced criticism from DeSantis.
“I get it, some dips--- staffer being cut, but leaving it up is not never backing down, it’s being intentionally a d---head.”
Sen. Mike Lee endorses Trump, casting decision as a 'binary choice'
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, became the latest Republican lawmaker to throw his support behind Trump's bid for another term, announcing in a post on X tonight that he is endorsing the former president.
"Whether you like Trump or not, Americans face a binary choice," Lee wrote. "Biden refuses to enforce our border, prosecutes his opponents, & embraces policies that make life unaffordable for hardworking Americans. I’ll take the mean tweets. I choose Trump."
It was Trump’s 21st Senate endorsement this election cycle.
Trump endorsed Lee during his Senate re-election bid in 2022.
Swing state Republican parties are engulfed in turmoil
Republican parties in three battleground states are navigating turbulence that has many in the GOP concerned that the discord and dysfunction will jeopardize their candidates up and down the ballot in critical races this fall.
In Michigan, Nevada and Florida — three states that will feature competitive presidential and Senate contests — state parties have been gripped with leadership strife in recent weeks. In Florida, the GOP chairman was ousted after facing a rape accusation. In Nevada, the top two state party officials have been indicted for their alleged role as “fake electors” for Trump after he lost the 2020 election there.
Nowhere has the chaos been more pronounced than in Michigan, though, where rivalrous factions can’t agree on who’s in charge.
The John McCain trap looms for Haley in New Hampshire
The prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination looks to be on the verge of victory in Iowa and leads by wide margins in national polls and in other key states — except for one: New Hampshire, where one challenger has been gaining steam in recent polls, raising the possibility the Granite State may turn a coronation into a genuine competition.
If it sounds like a description of the current GOP proceedings, well, it is. But it was also the set-up more than two decades ago for a Republican primary season that could offer a useful lens through which to view the current race.
There are, obviously, glaring differences in tone and substance between George W. Bush and Trump. But the trajectory of Bush’s candidacy in the lead-up to the 2000 primary season is practically identical to Trump’s this time around.
DeSantis to head to South Carolina immediately after Iowa caucuses
DeSantis plans to fly to South Carolina, not New Hampshire, immediately after Monday night’s caucuses in Iowa, campaign spokesperson Bryan Griffin confirmed to NBC News.
Griffin stressed that DeSantis is not skipping New Hampshire entirely — the Florida governor will campaign in the Granite State ahead of the Jan. 23 primary, including participating in a CNN town hall there Tuesday night. But DeSantis' first campaign event after Iowa will take place in Greenville, South Carolina.
This will be DeSantis’ fourth visit to Greenville since launching his White House bid, and his 20th campaign event in the state, which he last visited on Dec. 1.
The AP was first to report DeSantis' plans.
The Republican primary in South Carolina, Haley's home state, won't take place until Feb. 24. Polls show DeSantis is locked in a battle with Haley for second place in Iowa behind Trump. But DeSantis has fallen well behind both of them in New Hampshire.
“This campaign is built for the long-haul. We intend to compete for every single available delegate in New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and then into March,” DeSantis campaign communications director Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “That begins on Monday’s Iowa Caucus, and the next day we will kick our campaign into overdrive in both South Carolina and New Hampshire. We hope Donald Trump is ready for a long, scrappy campaign as we work to share Ron DeSantis’ vision across America. Game on.”
RFK Jr.’s super PAC ramps up ballot access efforts
Allies of RFK Jr. are taking a major step toward putting him on the presidential ballot in several key battleground states, hiring multiple signature-gathering vendors to begin the massive undertaking of circulating petitions to submit on the independent candidate’s behalf.
American Values 2024, the super PAC supporting Kennedy, formally contracted three firms to collect voter signatures in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, according to Tony Lyons, a co-founder of the group.
Workers hired by the firms are set to begin collecting signatures in Georgia on Jan. 20, with the efforts in Arizona and Michigan slated to commence soon after. Lyons says it will finance and lead the signature-gathering charge for Kennedy in 10 of the states with the largest threshold of voter petitions required.