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--:-- John Bickley: In just eight days, the GOP presidential primary will officially kick off, with voters in Iowa making their voices heard.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips went on the ground in the Hawkeye State to hear from candidates, political leaders, and voters.
--:-- John Bickley: I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, January 7th, and this is a special edition of Morning Wire.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Hey, Cabot so this is your super bowl, I know you're excited to see this race get formally underway this week.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know I love digging into the polling data, tracking campaign trends, but all of that really goes out the window on election day when voters themselves will tell us where things stand.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As Trump's lead as large as it appears in the polls, will Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis gain momentum and score a surprise win? And how will dark horse candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie fare?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Thankfully, we don't have to answer those questions. Voters are gonna do it for us.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Right, now you're gonna be providing us in-depth coverage of every stage of the race leading up to November. But as always, the road to the White House starts in Iowa.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: You got the chance to spend some time there recently talking with voters and candidates. Give us a quick overview of where things stand there and then we'll get to what you saw on the ground.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Well, throughout the summer and fall, Donald Trump was dominating in the polls, and with just days left for the caucus, his grip on first place just shows no signs of weakening.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Nationally, he's hovering around 60%, running laps around Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who are basically in a dead heat right now for second place, around 12 or 13% nationally.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And while polling shows a slightly tighter race in Iowa, Trump still appears well ahead of the pack, pulling in around 50%, while DeSantis sits around 20%.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For her part, Haley has enjoyed some momentum in the last few months, jumping from the mid-single digits to the high teens in Iowa.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, we have seen late movement before in Iowa, where voters are notorious for waiting until the very last minute to make up their minds.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: In the 2020 Democratic caucus there, Bernie Sanders enjoyed a surge at the last minute to secure a surprise victory. And we saw a similar outcome in 2016 when Ted Cruz really outperformed expectations to beat out Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But remember, each of those races featured more crowded fields and narrow polling margins throughout the winter, which is very different from this year.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: All that to say, Trump is undoubtedly the frontrunner right now, but anything could happen.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: As Ron DeSantis said in an event I attended, voters, not polls, decide the final outcome.
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--:-- Ron DeSantis: All right, So Governor, what does a DeSantis presidency look like on day one?
--:-- Ron DeSantis: Day one, national emergency for the border. Shutting it down, putting troops there, begin border wall construction, re-deport illegals, and holding the Mexican drug cartels accountable as being foreign terrorist organizations.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: Also day one, take all the rules, regulations, executive orders involving Bidenomics, rip it out, throw it in the trash can.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: Also day one, open up all domestic energy for production, lower energy prices so that we can be energy dominant, and then have thousands of people ready to go to be in the government so that we can take this administrative state and cut it down to size and bring discipline to it so that there's accountability.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: We're going to return the government to its rightful owners. It's we, the people.
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--:-- Ron DeSantis: We've been talking to Iowans. One message that I've heard is people saying, I like Governor DeSantis, but I know what I'm getting with President Trump.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: What's your message to those kind of people?
--:-- Ron DeSantis: Well, I have a track record of success of delivering on American first policies that's actually unmatched, even more so than the former president.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: I delivered on all these things. We need somebody that can do it for two terms, not just one term.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: Also have a better electoral track record.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: I mean, I think when the media is pumping Trump up, why would they be doing? They hated him for seven years because I think they think by next November they're going to be able to beat him.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: They have a playbook that they can do. I'm not going to let that happen going forward.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: I also think I have a record of appointing much better personnel.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: He had a lot of problems with personnel. I don't think he solved that problem.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: And I think actually he'd probably have a difficult time recruiting good personnel.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: What do you view as the singular greatest threat facing America right now?
--:-- Ron DeSantis: Well, the number one security threat to the American people right now is probably the southern border.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: The number one foreign threat is the Chinese Communist Party.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: And Biden is failing on both of those.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: And those will both be issues that we address on day one.
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--:-- Ron DeSantis: So in closing, we see the polls that appear to show President Trump at the large lead.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: You talked about your organization here in the state. You said you're confident you have a lot of caucus goers and the infrastructure.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: What are you going to have to do to gain momentum in the final weeks here?
--:-- Ron DeSantis: This is how this normally happens, though. The numbers moved significantly the last two weeks.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: And so with the fact that we have all these people lined up, the fact that we visit 99 counties, that gives you the foundation to ride that into the caucus with the momentum.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: And I think what's happened is so many other candidates have fallen off.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: If you talk to Iowans, it's Trump or me.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: I mean, like, I know people, the media wants to talk about Haley, but if you go walk these neighborhoods, like, that's where I am.
--:-- Ron DeSantis: So we've got the people in play, and we're just going to outwork everyone and bring it home.
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--:-- Chip Roy: Well, I would say well, you know what you getting with Governor DeSantis because he delivered in Florida.
--:-- Chip Roy: You also know what you getting with President Trump and that is both good and bad.
--:-- Chip Roy: He's done a lot of good things. I mean, I'll support him if he's the nominee, but let's actually compare, right?
--:-- Chip Roy: It wasn't Governor DeSantis who empowered Anthony Fauci and all the bureaucrats in Washington to shut down the greatest country's economy in the history of the world.
--:-- Chip Roy: It wasn't he who created $6 to $8 trillion of additional debt.
--:-- Chip Roy: That was President Trump working with the Democratic Congress.
--:-- Chip Roy: It wasn't Governor DeSantis who has allowed our borders to stay open and was saddling up with Paul Ryan to do amnesty first instead of security first.
--:-- Chip Roy: It wasn't Governor DeSantis who walked away from health care reform in 2017 on the first month on the job, saddling up with establishment in Washington.
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--:-- Brennan Byrd: Well, I endorsed President Trump because I think he's the one who will fire Joe Biden and win our country back.
--:-- Brennan Byrd: And we were all a lot better when he was president.
--:-- Brennan Byrd: The economy was strong. The border was secure.
--:-- Brennan Byrd: He took good care of our farmers here in Iowa.
--:-- Brennan Byrd: And also, we were safe in the world.
--:-- Brennan Byrd: We need President Trump back.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, aside from lawmakers, you also got to speak with quite a few voters in the state.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: What did you learn on that front?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, it was fun. I spent a few days on the ground attending campaign events and hearing from quite a few caucus goers themselves.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now, as expected, when I asked about the biggest issues for them personally, the overwhelming answer I heard time and time again was talk of the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Number one, I think for most, is probably the economy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Everything's going up. I have four lovely children and a wife, and three, four years ago, it was a lot easier to afford stuff.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Now everything's going up.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: My oldest son went into trades. He's a welder and makes good money.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: He told me two years ago, I want to be the first in my friend group to buy a house.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Biden got elected, and now he's wondering if he'll ever be able to buy a house.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And it's unfortunate because he wants to make money and live the American dream.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And right now he's frustrated, and rightfully so.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I'm getting paid more now than what I was a couple years ago due to a good contract.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But I'm bringing home less because everything costs more.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: My gross is higher, but my net was lower.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For me, as I consider myself middle class, just yesterday, my wife sets two bags of groceries in the car.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: She goes, that's $75.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: So I think inflation's number one.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: The economy been terrible.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Inflation is just terrible.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Grocery shopping is unbelievably expensive.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Yeah, I agree the economy is probably the biggest thing.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I think we got some major issues on inflation and what it means to actually make a living in this country and how to pay your bills.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Inflation, grocery bills. Gas prices and everything being wild and, like, just grocery items going up in price.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Election season, they're gonna start printing money, printing money, printing money, so, like, the economy looks good.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: You know, it's like cleaning up the house real quick before someone visits, you know what I mean?
--:-- Cabot Phillips: You're like, no, it wasn't just messy, I promise.
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--:-- Cabot Phillips: Later on in the week, I attended a Trump rally in Waterloo, Iowa.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: It was interesting to see the different strategies between the former president and his opponents.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: While Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy have held hundreds of smaller events throughout the state, Trump has opted instead for a smaller number of very large rallies.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: For example, in the second half of 2023, Trump held just 28 total events in Iowa, compared to 45 for Haley, 144 for DeSantis, and 233 for Ramaswamy.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: But again, Trump's rallies have by far drawn the largest crowds.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I saw that firsthand as Iowans packed out a large convention center in town for his event.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: I spoke with his supporters and other undecided voters about another big issue in this race, the legal cases against Trump.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: And they were all in universal agreement on that matter.
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--:-- Supporter 1: I think it's just they're just trying to blow up something that's not there to keep them from being the president of the United States.
--:-- Supporter 1: They're trying to scuffle up something that's non-existent and creating a big cloud that's not there.
--:-- Supporter 2: I haven't followed it too closely, but it's just crazy how much they're attacking this guy about just every single thing.
--:-- Supporter 2: They're afraid. They're chicken. They're scared. They're trying to do anything they can to get in President Trump's way.
--:-- Supporter 3: Trying to make it cost a fortune. Weaponization of the DOJ is exactly what I see.
--:-- Supporter 3: I think that they're really pushing it hard.
--:-- Supporter 3: They want to do it before the election. I think it's just purely political deal.
--:-- Supporter 3: I see if he is convicted. I still don't see him. I don't, I see him still getting through it.
--:-- Supporter 3: Somebody don't want him back in office. And I feel like that's why they slammed him.
--:-- Supporter 3: They assassinated his character. So much like, what? But it makes sense.
--:-- Supporter 3: It's throwing stones in a glass house because it just feels like if they do convict him and they try to get him off the ballot, we're just going to have a record number of write-in votes because ain't no one here really going to vote for anyone else.
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--:-- John Bickley: Well, we're finally here, the first of the states in 2024.
--:-- John Bickley: We'll see who Republicans in Iowa choose.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Cabot, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Cabot Phillips: Anytime.
--:-- John Bickley: That's Daily Wire senior editor Cabot Phillips, and this has been a special edition of Morning Wire.
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