this is particularly true for people whose life s constituents or conservatives and neighbors who are trump devotee, so this extremism, this acceptance of coercion, political violence to the threat thereof of terror, of just insane harassment as a tactic. it is really powerful. i think it is fair to say, i really believe this, and that it is completely subverted the ability of the republican party themselves to genuinely run a free and fair election within their own party to choose their own nominee. because not only is there this ever-present threat, you know, everyone in the upper echelons of the party also understands that donald trump will never accept defeat. you are having a contest with a guy who is he going to accept a feat? they understand it because of january, six but they understand it before. that they understand it be because of 2016. when trump lost the iowa caucuses and reportedly pressured state republicans to
trump is polling at 54%, or 30 points ahead of haley. his closest challenger, not even close enough to say it s not even close. the only poll that matters is the one on election day, as we like to say here. but there is already a lot of discussion about sort of how we got here. on the threshold of this moment. and there is a lot of factors that have brought us to this point in which trump is leading by 30 or 40 points. there is the terrible, i mean truly almost historically terrible campaign of ron desantis, who once looked like a formidable challenger. there is the growing desire in the republican electorate for authoritarian politics. that is fueled by this ever sort of radicalizing conservative media industry. there is, of course, the complete personal cowardice of republican leaders, who could have voted to convict trump during impeachment and we wouldn t have this problem. it would also have brought interference to trump all along. all those factors are here. but one factor on the
consolidating support because of it. joining me now is cornell belcher, democratic pollster and strategist and msnbc political an l. kimberly atkins stohr, boston globe columnist and cohost of the sisters in law podcast. and george conway, conservative attorney and contributing writer for the atlantic. thank you all for being here. so, i mean, the point being, cornell, that donald trump should be worried about going to jail. he is worried about going to jail. i think that s all he cares about, honestly. he doesn t have to were aabout the politics, trump has figured out outlets won t cover his campaign rallies but they will cover him being in court, so campaign rallies are out, court rants in. hogan gidley who works for trump, if donald trump were in iowa this week, he would suck all the oxygen out of the state and the race. but he has to go into court.
hampshire either. he s focused on criminal and civil court. donald trump s principal purpose in life, his entire focus right now, is not becoming the leader of the free world or making america great again or whatever other bs he tells himaga fans at his rallies. it s staying out of prison. that is the purpose of his politics right now. that is the end goal. sorry if you thought it was making your lives better or safer or more prosperous. that is what he wants for himself, for sure. along with making sure he can sleep soundly at night without the fear of hearing the clank of a cell door closing behind him. by now, we know how trump reacts to adversity. former republican congresswoman liz cheney shared in her recent memoir how then speaker kevin mccarthy told her the reason he ran down to mar-a-lago for that secret rendezvous three weeks after trump left office is because trump was really depressed about losing the
states will be under a second trump term with no guardrails and frightening and that s the number one case democrats need to make. let s not forget mark esper did say he wanted him to shoot people at protests. let s talk about roger stone for a moment. roger stone is the guy who in the summer of 2020 looked at the polls, saw that his guy was losing, that donald trump was losing, and said you know what we re going to do. we re just going to declare victory and say we won anyway. this is the guy in on the idea beforehand that they were going to lie because they were going to lose. how you have him talking with a cop, a former cop, about killing two democratic representatives. will there be any fallout from that? well, i don t know. i don t know what you can do to roger stone. if he s just talking about it, i don t know that it suffices for a conspiracy. you need an agreement to put somebody in jail. but it just goes to show, if this is real, i mean, the fact we can even think it s re