--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- Noel King: Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will debate on CNN in Iowa tonight. The Iowa caucus is less than a week away. Donald Trump will not be there. He doesn't have to be. He's so far ahead. He is unbossed and unbothered by the others.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, wait. He's going after Haley? Nikki Haley has been in the pocket of the open borders establishment donors her entire career. And she's a globalist, you know, she likes to globe. I like America first.
--:-- Noel King: Oh, and just last night, Trump promoted a new birtherism conspiracy. He says Nikki Haley can't be president because her parents weren't citizens when she was born in South Carolina.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, maybe Trump saw that CNN polling from yesterday. Nikki Haley has trimmed Donald Trump's lead to single digits in New Hampshire. Because he seems shook.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up on Today Explained, Nikki Haley maybe?
--:-- [Sound effects: Upbeat music starts playing]
--:-- 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.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Didn't know that. While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business.
--:-- Noel King: And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most. I've never met an AI agent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: 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?
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained.
--:-- [Sound effects: Upbeat music continues]
--:-- Noel King: Andrew Prokop has just written for Vox.com a piece called Nikki Haley, the one candidate who could still make the GOP primary kind of interesting, explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Therefore, and of course, we were going to call Andrew to explain how Nikki Haley has made the GOP primary kind of interesting.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Thanks for having me on the show.
--:-- Noel King: Donald Trump has been the obvious overwhelming frontrunner for this presidential race for a long time. All of his opponents have either gone down in flames or have failed to get off the ground.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's been one exception who's had just a glimmer of improvement, and that has been Nikki Haley.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Nikki Haley is now beating Ron DeSantis in the national GOP average.
--:-- Noel King: We have signs that Trump views Haley now as his main possible threat. He's attacking her by name.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Here we are with Nikki Haley appearing to be the main challenger to Donald Trump right now in this moment today as you and I speak.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Soon we will see whether or not that's really the case because there's the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.
--:-- Noel King: How is she selling herself to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I think it's interesting to contrast her approach with Ron DeSantis' approach. DeSantis has really been trying to outflank Trump from the right, to argue to conservative activists, to real, you know, hardcore partisan warriors that, you know, he's tougher than Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's with Trump on everything, but he's going to do even better. And he's maybe with them even more on some issues.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You know, when he was president, we were all supportive of securing the border. He tried to push through an amnesty in 2018. I oppose that. It's not a Republican thing to do to push through an amnesty.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Haley hasn't really done that at all. She has been running in, I guess, what we could call the lane of the much more traditional Republican.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You could even say that she is running as a pre-Trump Republican. As governor, I took a double digit unemployment state and I turned it into an economic powerhouse.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Businesses were my partners because if you take care of your businesses, you take care of your economy, your economy takes care of the people and everyone wins.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: If Disney would like to move their hundreds of thousands of jobs to South Carolina and bring the billions of dollars with them, I'll be happy to meet them in South Carolina.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Most of her campaign would fit in quite perfectly to the early 2010s when she first rose to prominence.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She hasn't really updated her issue positioning or her political style in any kind of obvious attempt to appeal to Trump voters.
--:-- Noel King: She's very much a pre-Trump Republican.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: When my kids were little, even when I was governor, I would still be home five days a week to have dinner with them because I thought the family dinner mattered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sundays were our days. We always were together on Sunday. And Friday nights were Haley Family Fun Night.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: OK, this is interesting. So no no threatening to imprison her enemies if she gets elected. No slap fights with the Disney Corporation.
--:-- Noel King: She is a throwback.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She's somebody who, it sounds like you're saying, is potentially acting as if the Republican party and Republican voters haven't changed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's right.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And I think she has the support of many Republican donors who would like the party to revert to its pre-Trump positioning.
--:-- Noel King: Nikki Haley reportedly holding private conversations with J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon about the global economy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Axios is reporting that Diamond admires Haley's grasp of the economy, specifically that she believes government and business can drive growth by working together.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's pretty evident in a couple of issue areas where she has stuck with those old line Republican positions and not embraced the new Trump repositioning of the party.
--:-- Noel King: I think there are two issues where that's clearest. One is on entitlements back in the early 2010s. Pretends entitlement cutting, Social Security and Medicare reform were all the rage among Republicans pushed by Paul Ryan.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Donors love this. But when Trump ran, he said, I'm not going to do any of this.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Haley has been going out on the trail saying we've got an issue. We need to fix it And the way we fix it is no one has to worry that you going to lose what you paid in or what you gave But what we will do is make changes to those like my kids in their 20s those coming into the system We will change their retirement age to reflect life expectancy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We will change rather than doing cost of living increases, we'll do increases based on inflation.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The other area is foreign policy in which, you know, the issue of the Ukraine war has kind of loomed the largest.
--:-- Noel King: It's been the clearest issue of contrast among the contenders on the debate stage this year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's one where Haley contrasts with Trump a lot as well.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly.
--:-- Noel King: Haley wants to keep arming Ukraine to give more aid. She says this is an extremely important conflict for the United States to be involved in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But more broadly than that, she is a more traditional Republican hawk supporting a broad American leadership role in the world.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Nikki Haley is running like the kind of Republican that Republican voters would have really liked 10, 15 years ago.
--:-- Noel King: How is it going over with Republican voters?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: For now, Haley has not been any sort of a roaring success in the national contest.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She's still, you know, around 10 or 11 percent in the polls nationally, whereas Trump is somewhere around 50 or 60 generally.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: That is obviously quite a big gap.
--:-- Noel King: But what does give her campaign perhaps the faintest glimmer of hope are the polls that have been coming out of the early Republican primary state of New Hampshire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: New polling from CNN and the University of New Hampshire shows Trump with support from 39 percent of likely Republican primary voters in the state.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Haley has 32 percent.
--:-- Noel King: Another poll was less encouraging. It showed Trump with a 20 point lead, 46 to 26 over Haley.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Christie again with 12.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She's got some other things going for her in New Hampshire, too.
--:-- Noel King: She has the endorsement of the state's governor, Chris Sununu.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In New Hampshire, we're the live free die state, right? So we want limited government. We want local control. We want low taxes, individual responsibility.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And to kind of have someone really understand that they can carry that to the White House.
--:-- Noel King: In New Hampshire, that's really what's moving her numbers more than anything.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Notably in New Hampshire, independents are allowed to vote in the Republican primary.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And there's not a serious Democratic primary going on at the same time.
--:-- Noel King: So many of them might. And there have been arguments that they should vote for Haley instead of Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She has a lot of outside spending on her side. Groups supporting Haley have been outspending groups supporting either Trump or DeSantis on the airwaves in Iowa and in New Hampshire.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Haley had won the endorsement of the political network founded by billionaire Charles Koch, and that has been helpful to her in giving her this outside money.
--:-- Noel King: So she has a lot of things going for her.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you can kind of see, while she's still the underdog in New Hampshire, there are the conditions there if things go right for her over the next couple weeks for something interesting to happen.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Maybe.
--:-- Noel King: For that reason, for that precise reason, let's stay in New Hampshire for a second.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So a couple weeks back, Nikki Haley is in New Hampshire. She's doing a town hall. She's taking questions.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Someone asks her, What was the cause of the United States Civil War?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, don't come with an easy question or anything.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn't do.
--:-- Noel King: And that answer creates a firestorm.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you just walk us through that scandal and what you think it really says?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, Haley is a very good politician most of the time, which means she is kind of calculating for the answer that she thinks voters will want to hear from her.
--:-- Noel King: And so my assumption is that she heard that question and, you know, she's from South Carolina, state with a very troubled racial history, to put it mildly, state from the former Confederacy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: She's obviously had these questions, questions about race come up in the past.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And I think that she got the question and it was a bit of a kind of deer in the headlights moment and she tried to avoid saying what she thought would be the wrong thing but she didn't expect that it would go viral and that she would look like such a shifty, dodgy politician.
--:-- Noel King: So she tried to roll it back very quickly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I had black friends growing up.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It is a very talked about thing. I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward.
--:-- Noel King: It's really just a classic gaffe that hands ammunition to her opponents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now you've seen everyone from Ron DeSantis to Donald Trump to Joe Biden piling on and saying, oh, this proves that she's not a straight-talking politician, that she's dodging the real answers.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She didn't use the word slavery, which was interesting.
--:-- Noel King: I don't know that it's going to have an impact.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But, you know, I'd say slavery is sort of the obvious answer.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I'm supposed to about three paragraphs of bull.
--:-- Noel King: Lastly, Andrew, let me ask you about Donald Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we're all paying attention to Nikki Haley.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: You and I are doing a whole episode about her.
--:-- Noel King: How is Trump responding to all of this?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Well, you know, Haley was a Trump appointee as UN ambassador.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They were always said to get along pretty well during that time.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: She's been very careful about how she has criticized Trump.
--:-- Noel King: She's kind of mostly used kids' gloves about it and stuck to the issues.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Trump has been more focused on DeSantis for most of the past year, just hammering away at DeSantis, ripping him to shreds.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But, you know, now Haley appears to be the threat.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He has been saying that Haley was in the pocket of establishment donors that it really Democrats who are trying to make her the nominee
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The subtext for a lot of what going on here is that many are wondering whether Haley might in fact, have a different office on her mind, the vice presidency under Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because Trump is obviously in the market for a new vice president due to his falling out with Mike Pence, who refused to steal the 2020 election for him.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So according to many reports, Trump advisors would prefer to pick a woman as the VP nominee because of the abortion issue and a desire to appeal to suburban voters who might not be on board with Trump anyway.
--:-- Noel King: So there are a few possibilities, but Haley has always loomed pretty large on that list.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there is a question, If she refuses to go after Trump too hard, if things end relatively well between them, she may have positioned herself pretty well to be his pick for VP.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The question is whether Haley is truly in it for the vice presidency and whether Trump would actually pick her for that.
--:-- Noel King: Vox's Andrew Prokop.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Ahead, we're going to Iowa after a weather delay in O'Hare Airport.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Thank you.
--:-- [Sound effects: Upbeat music continues]
--:-- Noel King: Chime says with qualifying direct deposits, you can be eligible for free overdraft, up to $200 on debit card purchases and cash withdrawals.
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--:-- Noel King: You can work on your financial goals through Chime today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You can open an account in two minutes at Chime.com slash explained.
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--:-- Noel King: Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Maybe it's the deals that are new each time you drop by.
--:-- Noel King: Maybe it's the brand names you'll be shocked Burlington has in store.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Or maybe it's the quality of the items, the amazing selection, and the newest trends.
--:-- Noel King: If you like to save but also like to stay in style, Burlington is your answer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the question you'll be asking yourself is, why go anywhere else?
--:-- Noel King: Burlington. Deals. Brands. Wow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: What's in your LifeKit?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm asking.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They didn't ask that.
--:-- Noel King: Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Instead, you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: Life Kit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, Life Kit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change.
--:-- Noel King: From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Life Kit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away.
--:-- Noel King: Enough from me. Go listen to the show, Life Kit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: Explained. 2024 Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm Scott Jennings, and I'm a partner at Run Switch Public Relations.
--:-- Noel King: I'm a senior political contributor for CNN and was special assistant to President George W. Bush and worked on both of his campaigns.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right. For color, tell me where are you right now and why are you there?
--:-- Noel King: Well, I am currently in the Chicago O'Hare Airport, and I've been here for several hours because it's snowing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I'm trying to get to Des Moines because CNN, my employer, is having a big debate, and they want me there to talk about it.
--:-- Noel King: And God willing, we'll make it sometime in the next 24 hours.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So let's talk right now about a new CNN poll that has everyone in my Slack excited.
--:-- Noel King: Nikki Haley is running at 32 percent of likely Republican voters in New Hampshire to Donald Trump's 39 percent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Of course, everyone's excited because what? Haley's within 7 percent of Trump.
--:-- Noel King: Should we care about these polls? Should we care about these numbers?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think you should care about it.
--:-- Noel King: Of course, I also think you should average them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was another survey showing Trump much further ahead.
--:-- Noel King: So the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The glaring issue with the CNN poll, of course, is that Nikki Haley is close to Trump.
--:-- Noel King: But if you were to toss on Chris Christie's percentage in that survey combined, they'd be ahead of Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you don't always get a one for one conversion on things like that.
--:-- Noel King: But you can see that if that's to be believed, there is the possibility that someone could get on top of the Republican frontrunner in at least in New Hampshire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Iowa caucuses are next week.
--:-- Noel King: How important are the next seven to 10 days for Nikki Haley?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, pretty important.
--:-- Noel King: They're really important for everybody, of course, and it's because of whether or not expectations are going to be met.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think for Donald Trump, the expectation is that he wins.
--:-- Noel King: And so how to spend the margin of victory and what is the margin of victory is going to be a big deal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For Ron DeSantis, a competitive second place seems very necessary for him to keep the ball bouncing.
--:-- Noel King: For Haley, who seems to be peaking at the right time, if she were able to move in front of DeSantis in Iowa, even if she fell farther back from Trump but was still in second place, she could spin that as some momentum heading into friendlier terrain in New Hampshire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So the expectations game here, mostly based on the margins, is vital, I think, for all three of these campaigns moving forward.
--:-- Noel King: Hey, why has New Hampshire been friendlier terrain for Nikki Haley?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why do the people there seem to like her a bit more than in Iowa?
--:-- Noel King: I think it a more moderate electorate less friendly to Trump There also independents in New Hampshire that aren necessarily affiliated with either party or maybe more moderate in nature that can come in to that primary
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think some of these folks are Northeastern Republicans I think they probably the most likely people on the map to want to go back to a Nikki Haley type nominee, a pre-Trump type nominee, if you will, than when you're going to get into some other states like Iowa or even South Carolina, which is obviously coming up pretty soon where Nikki Haley used to be the governor.
--:-- Noel King: And that's really been one of the core questions of this primary, are there enough Republicans who'd like to go back to a pre-Trump style nominee? Or is this now Donald Trump's party and only Trump or Trump era Republicans viable for the nomination?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What do you think Nikki Haley has been doing well so far? And what has she been doing not well?
--:-- Noel King: Well, she's been the most polished person on most of the stages.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, for most of these debates and town halls, she gives a very compelling and polished presentation.
--:-- Noel King: She's got a good answer for things. She's had, in many cases, the ability to fend off attacks and to deliver some attacks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I frankly think she was at her best when she was spanking Vivek Ramaswamy and some of their exchanges over foreign policy and other issues.
--:-- Noel King: Under your watch, you would make America less so you have no foreign policy experience, and it shows.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And you know what? There's a foreign policy experience. Where she's had some stumbles lately, a few gaffes where she was tricked up by a person asking her about the cause of the civil war in New Hampshire.
--:-- Noel King: She made a gaffe when she told people in New Hampshire that they needed to, quote, correct the votes of the people in Iowa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Of course, the folks in Iowa don't really want to hear that.
--:-- Noel King: And then she gave an interview where she talked about needing to change personalities when you go from state to state.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Iowa starts it. You change personalities, you go into New Hampshire, and they continue it on.
--:-- Noel King: By the time-
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you could encapsulate the knock on Nikki Haley, it's that right there, the idea that she's malleable, The idea that she's whatever she needs to be in the moment, and that's obviously not something that voters want to hear.
--:-- Noel King: But on the whole, she's been a very polished person.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And if you're looking for someone who sounds the part the way we've usually understood it, she's it.
--:-- Noel King: Now, whether that is in opposition to the idea of authenticity that some voters crave today that sort of embodies Trump's appeal to the Republicans, we'll wait and see.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But there's been a real polish with her public appearances.
--:-- Noel King: She was probably telling the truth when she said you have to change who you are depending on what state you're in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And somehow telling the truth and authenticity are, in this case, a bit at odds with each other.
--:-- Noel King: Well, I think the knock on her as a candidate has always been that she just morphs into whatever the prevailing Republican shape is of the day.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So when she started, then when she goes to work for Trump, now when she's running for this office, and it causes people to wonder, who is Nikki Haley?
--:-- Noel King: And so then when she says to an interviewer, oh, yeah, you just change personalities when you go over to another state, it does cause people to say, well, wait a minute.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't want somebody to change personalities. I want to know who they are, what they stand for, and that they're going to be strong enough to be that no matter what state they're in, no matter what situation they're in.
--:-- Noel King: And so I do think that was a real stumble, honestly, because it's just not what Republicans are looking for these days, somebody who's malleable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's what they would say about the pre-Trump Republican era.
--:-- Noel King: People were too weak. They were too soft. They were too willing to give up on their values and principles. They wouldn't fight enough.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that little statement, you know, sort of was a was an embodiment of of of what people would say about that era versus the Trump era when everybody seems to know what they believe and have a willingness to fight for it.
--:-- Noel King: You know, we heard that same sentiment from Andrew Prokop in the first half of our show that Nikki Haley is a pre Trump Republican, that she's an old timey Republican.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Republicans like Donald Trump.
--:-- Noel King: It's early to call this. You can tell me how foolish it is to ask you this question right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But do you think Nikki Haley could beat Donald Trump?
--:-- Noel King: I think it's possible she could get close to him in New Hampshire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If Chris Christie were to drop out, which it doesn't sound like he's going to, that would help her mathematical possibility.
--:-- Noel King: So I think it's possible in a state where the terrain is the friendliest and you have the possibility of some independents coming in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sure, you know, the conditions could strike on a given day.
--:-- Noel King: I think the trouble is when you look at the landscape at large, nationally, about two-thirds of Republicans want Donald Trump to be the nominee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's had a grip on this party for years.
--:-- Noel King: The idea that it would turn on a dime when it hasn't really moved an inch since he came onto the scene strikes me as highly improbable.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you would think, look, Trump's going to win Iowa.
--:-- Noel King: He bounces out of that. Maybe he has a brush with a close race in New Hampshire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then you start to get into a bunch of other states where he's going to run really strong, including South Carolina, where she was governor.
--:-- Noel King: And I suspect Donald Trump would have no trouble dispatching her if they had the primary there today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Why is that?
--:-- Noel King: She was governor. People in South Carolina elected her. Why would she have so much trouble?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, this is this is the difference between the modern party that exists in the image of Donald Trump and the party that existed prior to Trump in the era when she was governor.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, this has been the great question. Are there enough Republicans left who want to do something like nominate a Nikki Haley pre-Trump Republican, or do they just want to keep going down this path?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think South Carolina, like a lot of other southern and rural states, have fully embraced the Trump era of the Republican Party.
--:-- Noel King: And based on the polling I've seen down there right now, he's in really strong shape.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, if she were to win New Hampshire and get a little momentum in a narrative shift, maybe that state gets a little more interesting.
--:-- Noel King: But I would think Trump is destined to run strong in South Carolina and states that are similarly positioned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: All right, Scott Jennings from O'Hare Airport.
--:-- Noel King: Good luck making your way to Iowa. We really appreciate this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Take good care.
--:-- Noel King: We got our snow boots in the luggage. We just need the plane to take off.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today's episode was produced by Miles Bryan and edited by Matthew Collette.
--:-- Noel King: It was engineered by David Herman and fact-checked by Laura Bullard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Scott Jennings made it to Iowa at 1.30 this morning.
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. Thank you.
--:-- [Theme music fades in]
