Everything You Should Know About The Iowa Caucus

Here is a transcript of my monologue about the Iowa Caucuses.

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The Iowa caucuses happen in less than 96 hours. If you believe the polling, and most of you don't, I'm in the minority. I tend to think the polling, when you take the polling average, at least not the individual polls, but the polling average, you get a pretty good sense of where the race is and it's a dominant Trump lead. I said on Twitter a while back that I thought Ron DeSantis could win the caucuses. I expect to be humiliated on Caucus day because Donald Trump should win. Now, if you listen to the various campaigns, they will tell you why they think they're going to win, particularly the DeSantis campaign, and he does make a lot of sense because DeSantis supporters, and again, look at the average of polls, not the polls themselves. The average kind of weeds out the bad polling, the DeSantis supporters, the polling averages show are more engaged.

They're more determined than even the Trump supporters. It was notable the other day, and it was a little notice, but the McLaughlins, John and Jimmy, I know Jimmy in particular, was the very first pollster I ever worked with. They're good people and they're Donald Trump's pollster. John is in particular, John McLaughlin is Trump's pollster and put out a poll that had a 10 point race in Iowa with Nikki Haley in second place. Little notice, have you heard about this? Did you pay attention to it? Yes. A 10 point race, not a 50 point race, not a 20 point race, a 10 point race. Now, here's what I actually think is happening with this poll. They’ve got to set expectations. The polling shows like a 30 or 40 point lead for Donald Trump right now. If he does only get 10 point, if he does only win by 10 points, well, the media's going to view that as a bad thing for Donald Trump because they've been even Trump on the campaign stage. Trump's been saying, I'm 50 points ahead, I'm 30 points ahead, whatever. So if he's only 10 points ahead, so the Trump campaign's got to release a poll that shows a narrow race to incentivize his voters getting out. He's got to make sure they know about it so they get out so that he does win by 20 points.

I don't know that Nikki Haley is in second place, although she has certainly had upward momentum in that race, and the DeSantis campaign is kind of floundered about. However, here's what the DeSantis people say. This is their theory of the race. Yes, it's true that they've kind of stagnated in the polling. They're not disputing the polling. It is always funny to me how you guys dispute the polling and the campaigns never do and the polling shows DeSantis not great, but in second place in Iowa, but the polling doesn't poll operations.

DeSantis has a very strong operation in Iowa. DeSantis is organized in about 1500 and some odd precincts. He's got a better organization and more precincts than any other candidate, including Trump. According to the polls out there, DeSantis supporters are most likely to go to the polls. However, there's a wrinkle. The weather. Now, the weather in Iowa at this time of year, it's always bad. The weather in Iowa is always bad. It's never good in January. The funniest thing is that all the campaign signs are now buried under snow. They're already eight inches on the ground and it's piling up.

It's a very, very bad weather front. The thing that's moving to the southeast causing all the storms here, the drop in temperature here, it's already blowing through Iowa. Iowa Republicans, according to the Associated Press, will likely confront temperatures dripping below zero degrees when they kick off the 2024 election cycle, a record breaking forecast that might complicate candidates hopes of making their own history. If the cold depresses turnout, the candidates are publicly expressing optimism that their supporters will show up no matter how bad the weather is, but the snow and cold have already wrecked havoc on their schedules. Donald Trump's campaign had to cancel events featuring surrogates advocating for the former president, including Mike Huckabee and Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders said his car got stuck in a ditch while driving snowy weather Monday night in Des Moines from northwest Iowa. Ramaswamy canceled events Tuesday morning after ridiculing Nancy Nikki Haley for canceling events.

Nikki Haley canceled events because of the weather, and Vivek accused her of not being able to stand up to China if she couldn't stand up to snow, and then he had to cancel events because of the snow. The National Weather Service data shows there's never been a colder Iowa Caucus night than what's forecast for January 15th. The previous coldest was 2004 when the high temperature was 16 degrees. We may not warm above zero degrees on Monday, says Des Moines based meteorologist Chad Hanh. I would not be surprised if we don't get above minus 20 degrees for wind chills beginning on Sunday, temperatures will continue to drop through the rest of the week. Onset highs will be in the upper twenties, Wednesday, low twenties on Thursday and Friday, 10 on Saturday, single digit Sunday. Worse with wind chills. The frigid fuels like may make it harder for Republican candidates to turn out their supporters already a tall order with the demands of the caucus. Unlike a primary where voters cast their ballot through the day, caucus goers have to show up at a specific time and location. That's likely not their typical polling place. No snow,Rain, or sleet is expected Monday and snow tends to be less likely with temperatures.

That low barring an ice storm, Iowans shouldn't be dissuaded from low temperatures, says Jeff Kaufman, the Republican Party chair in Iowa. Now, here's the thing, Iowans are used to the cold. You and I may not be, but they are. I've been to the Iowa caucuses before. When I was at CNN, I had to cover the Iowa Caucus, and then when I was at Fox, I went to the Iowa Caucuses and it was cold. The year I went to the Iowa caucuses for CNN, I want to say it was 1920 degrees. It was cold. It was very cold. It was actually warmer the time I went for Fox, I guess that would've been 2016 for Fox. I went to the Iowa caucuses and it was above freezing, but they're used to it there.

The thing is though, the people, the candidate with the oldest supporters, they may have the hardest time going when it's that cold. Essentially, the older voters are more impacted by the very cold weather, and you listen to the Haley camp, the DeSantis camp, they both say, well, Trump's got the oldest voters, but Trump's got the most voters, so he should still win. I mean, the reality is Donald Trump should win the caucuses and he should win in New Hampshire. If Donald Trump wins the caucuses, he probably does win New Hampshire. If Donald Trump doesn't win the caucuses, it's not fatal to him, but it gives Nikki Haley life in New Hampshire. Plus you got Chris Christie's dropped out of New Hampshire. Chris Christie's dropped out of the race. A lot of his voters were drifting to Nikki Haley anyway, and with the drift in voters to Nikki Haley, she could get very close to Trump.

It depends on who you believe. Now, I will tell you the God's honest truth, Donald Trump is probably going to be the nominee. He's probably going to win the caucuses, and I don't know that you're going to see the other candidates drop out because if Donald Trump is found guilty in the documents trial, that will shake up the race and you're going to have to have a nominee. The DeSantis campaign has hinted he may not drop out. Frankly, I do think if Haley comes in ahead of DeSantis in Iowa, DeSantis should drop out. Now, I know my friends who are DeSantis supporters get very defensive. I got to tell you, the DeSantis supporters at this point are more hypersensitive on social media than the Trump supporters. Life is too short to be that hypersensitive, but my gosh, you offer any sort of criticism like the

Other day, I mentioned that debate in Iowa between DeSantis and Haley, that neither of them were playing to win. They were playing for second place and DeSantis. Oh, you used to be a conservative. You must be bought and paid for by somebody to say something like that. Not back of the road. Conservative Rod Sandis. Nope. I'm just telling you as I saw it, his campaign hadn't done very well, and if he comes in third place in Iowa, he should drop out. I don't know whether he will, but his campaign poured everything they had into building Iowa. They're telling everybody they can still win because of the structure. If he's in third place, he's toast. It doesn't matter. He's toast.

If Haley comes in second in Iowa, she might as well stay in and try to rebound in New Hampshire. But if you were a betting person, I don't know why you wouldn't be betting on Trump at this point. You may not want him. I mean, I would prefer someone else, but I see where this thing is headed. His supporters are the most committed and the most passionate. The question is, and this is the thing, this is really the thing. Donald Trump's supporters are the most likely to say, we got to be prepared to fight. We got to take it to the left. You got to stock up on guns and ammo. The country's going to hell. Fight, fight, fight. Donald Trump fights for us. Will they show up in the cold in Iowa or is it all talk? We're going to find out in less than 96 hours, can y'all believe we're finally here?

The votes are finally going to be cast and we'll see. Is it a figment? Are the polls wrong? Are you guys right? Are the polls wrong or are the polls right? And y'all wrong? Is the DeSantis theory of the race, is it going to stack up? How good is his organization? An organization on paper that's really good isn't necessarily an organization that actually is good when it comes to performance on the ground, particularly when you're having record breaking cold. We'll find out. Can DeSantis get people there? Can he hold the crowd? And what of Nikki Haley, there hasn't been a lot of last minute polling in Iowa to show any momentum shifts. The campaign is convinced that they've gotten ahead of DeSantis in Iowa. If so, DeSantis is toast, but if DeSantis wins, if his theory of the race holds, the race is completely shaken up.

If DeSantis theory of the race holds and he wins, he should get momentum out of it because he will show the polls were wrong and the base is with him. But that's if there are lots of ifs and in 96 hours there will be no more ifs. We will have a strong sense of the race. We will know what reality aligns. We will know which pollsters were right, which were wrong, who we should pay attention to, and if you're putting vets on the race, you'd be insane not to bet on Donald Trump, because Trump has a strong level of support among the grassroots Republicans. They are loyal to him and committed to him. They won't turn out for other people, but they'll turn out for Donald Trump.

The question remains, will they turn out for Donald Trump when it's negative 30 outside in 96 hours? We'll find out next Tuesday on this program. Going to be a wild ride Monday as well. It's MLK. I'm off on Monday, on Tuesday. We'll have a lot to analyze here and see what happens if Trump wins Iowa Trump's the nominee. If he doesn't win Iowa. Well, Katie Barr the door. We will see how this, he's still odds on favor, but if he doesn't win Iowa, it shakes everything up. Then that's the DeSantis theory of the race. We'll find out if it's right on Monday when the world's.