they say texas kept the feds from helping a woman and two children who died crossing the rio grande. our nbc news reporters are following all of the latest developments. we begin with donald trump getting a warm embrace from frigid iowa. nbc s garrett haake is just north of des moines. garrett, what is the former president saying in his closing pitch? reporter: good afternoon, from what will surely be a donald trump jr. event here today in ankeny as the trump team tries to lock in the results of what we have seen in poll after poll over the last couple of weeks. a dominant lead here in the hawk eye state. at his last major rally yesterday, donald trump basically tried to welcome in all the disparate elements of his movement here in this state, be they first time cause of action caucus goers, evangelicals, and warned primarily against their biggest enemy which he views as complacency. listen to what he told a call in indianola yesterday. a victory over all the liars, che
good day. i m chris jansing live at msnbc headquarters in new york city. devastatingly cold weather is making these caucuses even more unpredictable in a state known for surprises. we have the latest on former president trump s bid to run away with a win tonight and the fight facing the other candidates to have a strofrng enough showing to stay in the race. we ve got the latest straight ahead. plus, congress on the clock again. with just four days to go before a government shutdown, leaders of both parties float a plan to keep the lights on, but there s a catch. conservatives hate it. so will that sink it? iranian-backed rebels refusing to back down despite dozens of u.s. air strikes against their home base. another u.s.-owned ship attacked just a few hours ago in the red sea. this time they actually hit it. so how is the u.s. going to respond? a lot to get to on this very busy day. we start in iowa where the first votes in what will almost certainly be one of the wildest
There may be only two. If Nikki Haley is at a close third or surprises with a second place or strong second place showing, that could propel her into New Hampshire where she has a lot of momentum right now. The person with the most upside for tonight is really Nikki Haley. The problem is shes the good news for haley, shes consolidating the antitrump out there. The Bad News is theres not much antitrump vote. In conditions as brutal as they are right now, id prefer to have people who have done this before. Kathy, with a field so small, iowa is not going to force a bunch of candidates out this year. But you have long experience in this state. I wonder what is iowas role likely to be when we look back on 2024 . What are you looking for tonight . Well, first of all, we have lost a lot of candidates. We started this race with more
Thats thanks in part to the large evangelical population here. Were talking about 51 of Iowa Republican caucusgoers who identify as evangelical and say Donald Trump is their first pick. So we went down to northwestern college. We spoke to some firsttime caucusgoers. All of them tell us that they are undecided but for different reasons. Take a listen. Ive seen a lot of commercials about nikki haley, and trumps been calling her a snake, i guess. So i guess i dont know if i can trust her. Are you planning to caucus . It depends on how cold it is. The plan is tentative yes. Im leaning nikki haley. Donald trump did it all. He knows how to do it. Hes experienced. So probably lean towards him. Reporter here is why that evangelical vote is so important. Two out of three Republican Caucusgoers identified as
At this point its just wallpaper. Its hard to be distinctive at a time when all youre seeing people generally tuned it out. If you havent made an impact by now, just having a lot of tv on in the last few days of the xaip in a primary state is not going to have much impact. Kathie, are people at this point just muting when the ads come on . When you ask people are they excited for the caucuses, they say im excited to get my tv back. I dont want to see all these ads. Tv ads in the caucuses are kind of silly money in terms of the universe of people that youre actually going to reach. We mentioned that the Record Turnout is like 187,000 for a republican caucus. Probably it will be lower than that. How much money are we spending per caucusgoer . A whole lot. We will do that calculation tomorrow, i promise you