--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noel King: Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Whoa. New Hampshire Republican primary winner Donald Trump spoke to his supporters in Nashua last night. This is not your typical victory speech. It was not.
--:-- James Pindell: The almost certain Republican nominee talked as much about his opponent Nikki Haley and her outfits as he did about his win.
--:-- Noel King: And when I watched her in the fancy dress, it probably wasn't so fancy. Come up, I said, what's she doing? We won.
--:-- James Pindell: New Hampshire was called Nikki Haley's last stand, though it appears no one told Nikki Haley that. She's not dropping out, as some predicted, but continuing on, possibly betting that Trump's 91 felony charges may at some point turn into a hindrance rather than the help they've been so far.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up on Today Explained, New Hampshire, too, has now spoken. I find in life you can't let people get away with bullshit, OK? You can't.
--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- James Pindell: Didn't know that.
--:-- Noel King: While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business.
--:-- James Pindell: And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
--:-- Noel King: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- James Pindell: Sure, you can probably list the reasons for staying, but are they actually just excuses for not leaving?
--:-- Noel King: Let a career coach from strawberry.me help you get unstuck. Discover the benefits of having a dedicated career coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with James Pindell, the Boston Globe's man in Manchester.
--:-- James Pindell: That's New Hampshire.
--:-- Noel King: New Hampshire generally gives us some sort of surprise. It's part of the New Hampshire lore and American political lore.
--:-- James Pindell: But really, we walked in knowing that Donald Trump was likely to win, likely win by double digits. He did.
--:-- Noel King: But we also come out of this New Hampshire primary with one big question. Is the Republican primary race over?
--:-- James Pindell: Donald Trump thinks it's over. He got really upset during his acceptance speech.
--:-- Noel King: Who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and, like, claimed a victory?
--:-- James Pindell: She did very poorly, actually. She had to win. The governor said she's going to win, she's going to win, she's going to win. Then she failed badly.
--:-- Noel King: Joe Biden agrees that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, and he's already pivoting to the general election.
--:-- James Pindell: It's just Nikki Haley that says this race will go on, and I think it's something we're going to be discussing over the coming days.
--:-- Noel King: Now you've all heard the chatter among the political class. They're falling all over themselves, saying this race is over.
--:-- James Pindell: Well, I have news for all of them. New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation.
--:-- Noel King: Trump won by double digits, you said. Were the double digits 10, 15, 80, 90? What did that look like?
--:-- James Pindell: Around 11.
--:-- Noel King: Now, part of American politics when it comes to the presidential primary is all about the expectations game.
--:-- James Pindell: Yeah.
--:-- Noel King: It's not exactly where you finish. Did you surprise people? Did you do better than expected?
--:-- James Pindell: And in this case, Nikki Haley was expected to lose by 20 points. So in that case, she's happy that it was only 11.
--:-- Noel King: Or you could say the polls were wrong.
--:-- James Pindell: And today we got close to half of the vote. We still have a ways to go, but we keep moving up.
--:-- Noel King: But nonetheless, this is the spot where Nikki Haley, if you look on a map, where could she win? Anywhere in the country, all 50 states, all the territories.
--:-- James Pindell: This was demographically made up for her to win, and she did not.
--:-- Noel King: So now she faces a map looking at the other 48 states saying, sure, when she says New Hampshire is first in the nation, not last in the nation, and everyone should have a vote, fair enough.
--:-- James Pindell: I accept the premise. The question is, where are you going to win? Is there a single state you're going to win?
--:-- Noel King: Because at the end of the day, this process is about accumulating about 1,200 votes you need or delegates you need at the Republican National Convention to become the nominee.
--:-- James Pindell: And she's on a path to get creamed in that process.
--:-- Noel King: And so she's got to talk to her donors. I mean, is people going to continue to fund her as a vehicle as the anti Trump or not?
--:-- James Pindell: And that's sort of where we're at for the next, I don't know, two or three weeks.
--:-- Noel King: This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go.
--:-- James Pindell: And the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.
--:-- Noel King: How many New Hampshire primaries have you covered?
--:-- James Pindell: This is my seventh New Hampshire primary.
--:-- Noel King: Seventh time around.
--:-- James Pindell: Was there anything different about this one?
--:-- Noel King: Absolutely.
--:-- James Pindell: While the stakes were really high, it felt like everything was really low, low energy.
--:-- Noel King: Obviously, a smaller field than we've ever had before, really, or used to in a presidential primary here.
--:-- James Pindell: Very few events. We're talking about literally one or two events a day.
--:-- Noel King: Donald Trump spent more time in a New York courtroom than he did on the campaign trail in the New Hampshire primary week.
--:-- James Pindell: Let's just point that out.
--:-- Noel King: And then smaller crowd sizes.
--:-- James Pindell: I mean, you're putting things in context of this campaign.
--:-- Noel King: Oh, wow, we have 300 people or we have 400 people.
--:-- James Pindell: I think Nikki Haley's closing rallies were 1,500.
--:-- Noel King: And the baseline, If you just go back to pictures from four years ago, Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts who is running for president, getting in fourth place.
--:-- James Pindell: And she's getting 2,500 to 3,000 people at her closing rallies.
--:-- Noel King: So there was this sort of inevitability here that like this race is decided and I made up my mind.
--:-- James Pindell: And so I guess it was driving it but you had to kind of square the low energy feel here that was just not at all like the New Hampshire primary that we're used to.
--:-- Noel King: One of the things that surprised me about a lot of the coverage of the New Hampshire primary was that you couldn't really tell what the issues were.
--:-- James Pindell: And I'm not a political reporter, and it's been four years since we've done this.
--:-- Noel King: But is that normal that so much becomes about, can the second place candidate, can Nikki Haley take out the first place candidate?
--:-- James Pindell: What's he saying? Who's he yelling at? Is she yelling?
--:-- Noel King: Do we never discuss issues in the New Hampshire primary?
--:-- James Pindell: You are so astute to pick up on that.
--:-- Noel King: That was another really, really weird thing.
--:-- James Pindell: I mean, in the Iowa caucuses, not to go back to that, but it was kind of an illuminating moment where Ron DeSantis comes out for a flat tax and everyone looks around at each other like, really?
--:-- Noel King: He supports a flat tax?
--:-- James Pindell: I would eliminate the IRS, have a single rate and just do like a flat tax.
--:-- Noel King: That's a big deal. We should discuss that.
--:-- James Pindell: A flat doesn't mean a flat income tax, right? It's an old idea, but we didn't know.
--:-- Noel King: And then Vivek Ramaswamy is like, well, yeah, I'm for a flat tax also.
--:-- James Pindell: I favor a 12% flat tax across the board. Eliminate the crony deductions. And no, we don't need an IRS.
--:-- Noel King: Oh, well, okay.
--:-- James Pindell: Here, there was one issue, really, immigration.
--:-- Noel King: Which might seem a little odd, given that New Hampshire is quite far away from the southern border with Mexico.
--:-- James Pindell: Then when it comes to the border, it doesn't even look like the United States of America anymore.
--:-- Noel King: It is a complete dereliction of duty.
--:-- James Pindell: They're poisoning the blood of our country.
--:-- Noel King: That's what they've done.
--:-- James Pindell: They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world.
--:-- Noel King: But you're right. In previous primaries, this is where in the mix of town hall meetings and being on the ground that these candidates get to understand the future of American politics and the future issues of American politics.
--:-- James Pindell: This is where Bill Clinton said he learned it was the economy stupid when he was walking along Elm Street in Manchester.
--:-- Noel King: It's where other folks, including Donald Trump, figured out that America had an opioid crisis in 2016.
--:-- James Pindell: The problem of heroin in New Hampshire is unbelievable. It's like an unbelievable problem that you have.
--:-- Noel King: And you know where that stuff comes from.
--:-- James Pindell: And we're going to work on with all of our friends here with so many the clinics that they want to get involved with and the rehab centers.
--:-- Noel King: But it's really it's not unique to new hampshire but i think you have it bigger and and tougher than anybody else it just seems.
--:-- James Pindell: And we had an open conversation about what to do about that.
--:-- Noel King: That is one thing that was definitely lost the cycle look
--:-- James Pindell: There's a lot of disagreement that Iowa and New Hampshire have started this process since 1976.
--:-- Noel King: There are two whites. There are two rural, though New Hampshire is basically one big suburb of Boston these days.
--:-- James Pindell: And you can go through the criticism.
--:-- Noel King: And in New Hampshire's case, it's very well educated and it's rich. It's always one of the top three or four states in terms of per capita income.
--:-- James Pindell: But if you believe in the concept that a person running for president, who typically is a vice president or a U.S. senator or a governor or really successful in business, look, they do not live like you and me.
--:-- Noel King: They live in a rarefied air.
--:-- James Pindell: Who they talk to at night, who they vacation with, who they hang out with, it's not the regular everyday folks.
--:-- Noel King: So if the idea is before they become president, before they make decisions on who wins and who loses in the tax code, before they make decisions on sending kids off into war, that they should have to interact with everyday people just for like 20 or 30 days actually on the campaign trail and understand everyday Americans.
--:-- James Pindell: That is the romance of the New Hampshire primary.
--:-- Noel King: And we did not have much of that romance at all this particular cycle.
--:-- James Pindell: What are the consequences? You've been doing this for a long time.
--:-- Noel King: What are the consequences of a primary without a focus on issues where the focus is on personalities?
--:-- James Pindell: Does this say something about the general election or about whomever wins the general election that you think might be kind of worth thinking about?
--:-- Noel King: It really, really does.
--:-- James Pindell: You know, the 2020 election was really only about a few things, even though there were a number of issues we could talk about.
--:-- Noel King: We could have talked about the Supreme Court, no doubt about it.
--:-- James Pindell: And we did. We talked about climate change. We talked about tax cuts. We talked about COVID a lot in 2020.
--:-- Noel King: But what we really talked about was Donald Trump.
--:-- James Pindell: It was a referendum on, did you want this man out of office or is this man speaking for you and all your grievances and you want to keep him in office?
--:-- Noel King: And I think that what's ironic is the 2024 election, which is always kind of about the incumbent, in this case, Joe Biden and his record, is still going to be about Donald Trump and his record in office and how he handled the country.
--:-- James Pindell: And so as a force of nature and a force of personality, I do think that we are not going to be talking about issues as much as we have in the past.
--:-- Noel King: And remember, last time, Republicans didn't even put out a policy platform at their national convention.
--:-- James Pindell: They may this time. But nonetheless, I think issues is something that is going to suffer.
--:-- Noel King: And it's something, to be honest with you, I'm focusing on for the rest of the general election, largely because it's a contrarian take about where we're at in American politics.
--:-- James Pindell: James Pindell of the Boston Globe from Manchester, New Hampshire.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up, a self-described former Republican voter and member of Donald Trump's administration on those 91 felony counts.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from Macy's. It's almost fall and that means it's time to cycle your wardrobe to the cold setting.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for the show today comes from Life Kit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: What's in your Life Kit? I'm asking.
--:-- Noel King: They didn't ask that.
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--:-- Noel King: Explained. 2024 Explained.
--:-- Noel King: Sarah, go ahead, give me your full name, please, and tell me what you do.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Sarah Isger, and I'm a senior editor at The Dispatch and ABC News contributor.
--:-- Noel King: All right, so you work in news media now, but you did used to work on political campaigns.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Absolutely. So I was in Republican politics and campaigns for almost 20 years.
--:-- Noel King: Many, many Senate campaigns, three presidential campaigns, Mitt Romney in 2008, 2012, and I ran Carly Fiorina's campaign in 2016.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You also spent some time in the Trump administration.
--:-- Noel King: What are your thoughts on Donald Trump at this moment?
--:-- Sarah Isger: I was the head of public affairs at the Department of Justice and senior counsel to the deputy attorney general during the Russia investigation.
--:-- Noel King: So, you know, the Mueller special counsel stuff.
--:-- Sarah Isger: And look, I think it would be a big mistake for the country to reelect Donald Trump.
--:-- Noel King: Okay. All right. That said, I think the big question after New Hampshire is this. Should Nikki Haley drop out?
--:-- Sarah Isger: What do you think?
--:-- Noel King: You know, you talk to the Haley campaign, and what they'll tell you is they feel like the New Hampshire primary was day one of their campaign.
--:-- Sarah Isger: That, yes, they understand they need to make inroads with, you know, sort of more harder core Republican primary voters, but that they see this as a jumping off point.
--:-- Noel King: Of course, there's something to that. They came in third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You know, there's some momentum is building argument there.
--:-- Noel King: But the problem is the path forward. She's expected to, in fact, have a wider margin losing to Donald Trump in her home state of South Carolina.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Then you head into Super Tuesday, which is really seen as more of a national primary.
--:-- Noel King: Lots of states all at once. It's not really a retail politics thing anymore.
--:-- Sarah Isger: So in that sense, New Hampshire was kind of her last stand.
--:-- Noel King: She needed to win it or at least come within, you know, a couple points of Donald Trump.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Instead, it was an 11-point race.
--:-- Noel King: And so it's hard to see that path forward at this point for Nikki Haley, aside from just biding her time in case, you know, the Supreme Court says Donald Trump's disqualified or there's a criminal trial that could change something or a, you know, very small asteroid that hits Earth in a very specific place.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You're a Republican voter who does not want to reelect Donald Trump.
--:-- Noel King: How do you feel today?
--:-- Sarah Isger: So I don't know that I would describe myself as a Republican voter at this point, but I would say that, you know, it's fascinating to live in a time where the parties are realigning so quickly.
--:-- Noel King: And I am one of those people who does not think that Donald Trump is the cause of that so much as the symptom, right?
--:-- Sarah Isger: Because we've seen the same thing happen in so many countries across the world.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, my own view is that probably the 2008 financial collapse, among other causes, had that worldwide effect of really ushering in an era of populism, and that Donald Trump is just the manifestation of that in the United States.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You know, as you tear down institutions, though, which is what sort of populism does in its manifestations, usually.
--:-- Noel King: That's a real problem for the future of the United States.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You know, we've been around for 250 years, and at this point, the Supreme Court is dropping in people's esteem.
--:-- Noel King: Congress couldn't really go lower, but there it is, still somehow going lower and becoming even more ineffectual.
--:-- Sarah Isger: I mean, what is Congress even doing?
--:-- Noel King: And you also have Americans, I think, losing a lot of trust in this negative polarization where people aren't voting for candidates.
--:-- Sarah Isger: They're voting against the other people because they think that they're a threat to their way of life.
--:-- Noel King: That's a real problem in a pluralistic society, you know, based on everyone being different.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Let talk about Donald Trump legal troubles because one of the things that I think the smart money was telling us even a couple of months ago is that a candidate running for president who is in as much potential legal peril as Donald Trump simply going to be a good candidate.
--:-- Noel King: And again, that was either the smart or the relatively smart money.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Why hasn't that turned out to be the case?
--:-- Noel King: Well, I mean, there's a real argument that this primary ended the second that Alvin Bragg in New York indicted Donald Trump up there.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Republican primary voters felt like Donald Trump was being targeted, not because of any potential crime that he had committed, but because of who he was and that he was a threat to the Democratic establishment.
--:-- Noel King: After Iowa, we talked a bit on the show about Ron DeSantis' apparent inability to go after Trump on his legal record.
--:-- Sarah Isger: The sense that if DeSantis attacked, it was only going to alienate the people who might have chosen him, DeSantis, over Trump.
--:-- Noel King: DeSantis is now out of the race. Nikki Haley still in it.
--:-- Sarah Isger: At what point do you think Nikki Haley brings up the legal jeopardy, the 91 felony charges?
--:-- Noel King: Look, I'm a big fan of reminding people that a losing campaign didn't do everything wrong, and a winning campaign didn't do everything right, of course.
--:-- Sarah Isger: But the idea that, for instance, if only Ron DeSantis had done X, Y, or Z, he could have won the race.
--:-- Noel King: Sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Now, I don't happen to think that the DeSantis campaign did everything right, but the idea that he should have run a campaign like Chris Christie's is sort of undermined by Chris Christie's race.
--:-- Noel King: And I think Chris Christie said a lot of really important things in the Republican primary, but obviously it did not resonate with Republican primary voters.
--:-- Sarah Isger: I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.
--:-- Noel King: And that's more important than my own personal ambition.
--:-- Sarah Isger: And those are the polls and the focus groups and everything else that the DeSantis team was looking at.
--:-- Noel King: So I'm not surprised where Haley and DeSantis landed on Trump.
--:-- Sarah Isger: What is funny, maybe, and we saw it in 2016 also, is that as they get closer to losing, or maybe you could say after the whole game has already been lost, they start telling the truth about what they think about Donald Trump.
--:-- Noel King: We've seen Ron DeSantis be more honest about what he thinks Donald Trump's chances in the general election are than he was during the entire primary season.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Nikki Haley is starting to go after Donald Trump very forcefully at this point.
--:-- Noel King: With Donald Trump, you have one bout of chaos after another.
--:-- Sarah Isger: This court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment.
--:-- Noel King: You can't fix Joe Biden's chaos with Republican chaos.
--:-- Sarah Isger: But now is it too late?
--:-- Noel King: And is that why they're going after Donald Trump? Because they no longer see actually winning the primary and winning over those voters as possible.
--:-- Sarah Isger: Absolutely.
--:-- Noel King: Did you notice the same thing? Did you notice anything similar?
--:-- Sarah Isger: Absolutely. But I think the interesting question is not, is this campaign devoid of policies? Because it just is.
--:-- Noel King: There's no argument.
--:-- Sarah Isger: I mean, James is a brilliant political reporter, knows every inch of New Hampshire.
--:-- Noel King: He's incredible.
--:-- Sarah Isger: But the question really is, was it ever about policies?
--:-- Noel King: Voters would tell you it was about policy. But, you know, was Ronald Reagan actually about policy or was it about vibes?
--:-- Sarah Isger: It's morning again in America.
--:-- Noel King: Bill Clinton. That seemed pretty vibey at the time as well.
--:-- Noel King: And so I think, you know, as the two parties became much, much weaker in the last 20 years as a result of campaign finance reform and other sort of trends within American politics, we've seen parties no longer be able to choose their standard bears, which means that the parties no longer have those carrots and sticks to say, like, this is our platform, these are our issues.
--:-- Sarah Isger: And at the same time, individuals have basically started running our politics.
--:-- Noel King: It's why Donald Trump arguably didn't just defeat the Democratic Party when he won in 2016.
--:-- Sarah Isger: He first defeated the Republican Party in the primary.
--:-- Noel King: So we're tempted to fret about losing the focus on substance in favor of personalities.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You're saying maybe we never had it, which seems very dark to me.
--:-- Noel King: Yeah, I think it's a little dark to me, too, honestly.
--:-- Sarah Isger: But I need to think about how to, say this succinctly.
--:-- Noel King: But basically, the presidency has become so important as Congress has faded into the background.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You know, why would congressmen take hard votes if at any given point, 50% of them, you know, can call up their friends in the White House and try to do it through executive action?
--:-- Noel King: So my, like, hopeful future is that our problems will fester and stagnate and get much, much worse, and voters will realize that they don't want cable news pundits in Congress, that they actually want legislators.
--:-- Sarah Isger: You know, I don't think there's a lot of people in Congress who are going to change who they are, but you can replace them with people who actually want to go and compromise and do the hard work and the, I mean, grueling, it takes a long time to get legislation done.
--:-- Noel King: You can't get everything you want. You got to give up on some stuff. You need people there who want to do that, and you don't right now.
--:-- Sarah Isger: That was Sarah Isger of The Dispatch.
--:-- Noel King: Today's episode was produced by Miles Bryan and Isabel Angel.
--:-- Noel King: It was edited by Matthew Collette and engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Herman.
--:-- Noel King: Laura Bullard and Amanda Llewellyn fact-checked today's show.
--:-- Noel King: The rest of our team includes Amina El-Sadi and Rob Byers, Hadi Muagdi, Halima Shah, Victoria Chamberlain, Jesse Alejandro Cottrell, EP Miranda Kennedy, and Sean Ramosford.
--:-- Noel King: We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld, and we're distributed to public radio stations by WNYC in New York.
--:-- Noel King: We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Noel King: I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Noel King: This has been Today Explained.
