Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. He's made it very clear. There's no mystery to what he wants to do. He started off his campaign by saying, I am your retribution. Eight years ago, he said, I am your voice. This is an angry, bitter man.
who now wants to be back as president because he wants to exact retribution on anyone who has disagreed with him, anyone who has tried to hold him to account for his own conduct. And every one of these policies that he's talking about are about pursuing a plan of retribution. And yet, at the first debate...
My three colleagues on this stage, when asked if he would be convicted of federal felonies, would they still support him, raise their hand, look into the camera, and let everybody know that they would still support him, even if convicted of federal felonies. Federal felonies, by the way. Federal felonies which involve crime.
our election process, federal felonies, which involve the most sensitive of our governmental secrets. Robert Gibbs, another one in the books, another big silver medal debate.
among the Republican contenders. I'm detecting that Chris Christie might not be supportive of Donald Trump. Yeah. Well, it stood out on that stage because he's really, I mean, a few people sideswiped Trump. Nikki Haley did and DeSantis on DeSantis and Haley, both on the budgetary stuff and DeSantis a little bit on age, but you know, they went, they didn't go for the jugular. They went for the capillary. Yeah.
Now, we should just say right now that we are not joined as we normally would be by our buddy Mike Murphy, who has been felled by the COVID bug.
And we'll share with you his observations, which he texted at great pain and before he totally collapsed. But I think watching tonight probably made him feel a lot better. Yeah, I'm sure. Just what the doctor ordered, I'm sure. Yeah. I don't know if there's a test for how you feel after this. There should be. So let me just get your...
overall sense of this thing and i'll give you mine and then we can read murphy's and then we can get into the individual back and forth of this i think you and i probably are going to agree a lot on this look i think i agree it was a strong debate for a chris christie um the challenge for him obviously is he's playing in just an enormously small pool of voters um
You know, he you could and you could tell it from the crowd in in in Alabama. I thought Nikki Haley, who had used these debates, used the earlier debates to grab the momentum and to begin to ascend as she has did did not have a strong debate. This was probably the weaker debate.
or weakest of her performances across these four debates. I think it was obvious that everybody has read their own polling and read their debate books because they sort of emptied them on Nikki Haley tonight. I think she probably spent a lot of time mentally thinking, what do I respond to? What do I ignore? How do I play through all this? And I thought, I do think though, she was probably helped a little bit by Vivek being such a jerk
that I do think people probably felt for her. DeSantis still incredibly awkward, but I thought had probably a better night and played off some things pretty well. You could tell again that in the crowd. Didn't think that Christie had an interesting line of attack on him of him not answering the question. And then Vivek is just, I mean, wow. Talk about a guy who's...
likely to get cornered in the alley and beaten up. That's the guy. I mean, and you can tell, look, I think it takes a lot to be as pro-Trump as he is and get booed at a Republican event in Alabama. And I just think the group it had by far enough. But boy, you can tell who they think is...
is in danger of leaving them behind 40 days from, from today in Iowa. And, and they sure, they sure took out their, uh, debate bullets to shoot at the Haley balloon, uh, and try to knock it to her. I mean, that's, so that's a, that's a big tell in politics when, uh,
You are the target. We experienced that when you and I worked together on the Obama campaign. You know you're making headway. People start shooting at you. But I don't think that, I think Haley, who had three really superior debates, seemed strangely passive tonight and never was in the kind of sync that we saw in the first debates where she really was kind of a,
commanding figure. Ron DeSantis is not my cup of tea.
But he's not trying to be my cup of tea. And the one thing that he looked here, you know, most of the night, I mean, Christie did have him on his back heels trying to get him to say that Trump wasn't fit for office and DeSantis wouldn't say it because DeSantis is actually going after the Trump type voter, which is one of his problems. But I thought that he was much more energetic. Maybe sparring with Gavin Newsom helped him.
But, you know, he looked at least alive in his own weird way. And I, you know, my impression of this whole thing, and, you know, I could be dead wrong. We'll see. Voters are great at thwarting fat ass pundits like us. But I think this was...
The combination of DeSantis looking like he had a pulse and Haley being not quite as good as she's been was not good for her because she really needs to close on DeSantis. And Christie having his best debate of the four was not particularly good for her either because, you know, he is running it. Both of them are looking for that moderate vote.
that, uh, independent voter in, uh, in New Hampshire. And, uh, you know, I think Christie probably helped himself, uh, in that regard. Well, not to bury the lead to what you and I are now both saying without having said it yet is the winner in debate for is Donald Trump. We say it every time. Yes. I mean, yes, there was a lot of discussion and I remember our partner, I can take
all kinds of liberties with Murphy since he's not here. But I remember him arguing with me about whether it was smart for Trump to miss these debates. I think it's beyond a doubt, any doubt now that he did the right thing. And you saw it again tonight. Other than Christie's attacks, which you heard there, which did draw boo-boos in the room. Right.
Most of the night was spent with these people attacking each other. Right. Couldn't be better news for Donald Trump. And, you know, I, like you, thought it didn't make any sense for him to show up for the first couple of days. I wasn't totally convinced. I think I said on one of these podcasts, I wasn't convinced he could make it through the end of this debate cycle without showing up. And he did. And it was smart of him, you know, strategically, politically, politically.
Nobody got a chance to corner him. Nobody got a chance to even have him respond to the sort of subtle budget deficits. How come he didn't finish the wall? How come Mexico didn't pay for all those sort of things that you could tell they kind of wanted to try the land, but did it in a really soft way? You know, I wonder, I've been wondering about this axe for a few days.
I'd love to get your take on it. Murphy's take would be great, too, if we if we could ask him about it in the future. You know, Republicans have unlike Democrats, Democrats usually you get one good chance at running for president. And if you don't if you don't catch that, it's it's hard to come back. Now, Joe Biden obviously did many years later, but the Republicans have a
a pretty good scenario where you run and you don't win the nomination and you get a second turn. And sometimes you get a much better look the second time Reagan did it. You know, Mitt Romney did it. So there's a, there's a, and I've been wondering, are these guys just out there playing,
you know, for 2028 in a way, you know, I always thought they, you know, and we thought maybe are they playing for vice president? What are they trying to do? I think they're most assuredly playing. Could it just be as simple as they know that Trump has a big voter share?
and that he's got an 80% approval rating in the Republican Party, and they don't think it's profitable to poke the bear. I think absolutely in the short term. I think the reason, though, that they're still playing this thing out, knowing that the likelihood that any of those people we saw on the stage tonight is going to be accepting the nomination in the summer is really, really small. I think that they continue to play that out in a serious way, even...
He is because they're thinking long game in this. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the question I have here is no one's explained to me what happens if the unexpected happens. Let's say Nikki Haley pulls a surprise in Iowa and then draws close to Trump in New Hampshire. You know, the Murphy thing.
Um, and, and others, I just did five events with our friend Carl Rove and he, you know, he's also in that camp. Well, this could happen. I'm not saying it will happen, but it could happen. Then she, you know, she takes him South Carolina and we're off to the races and so on. Maybe she's the nominee. And I'm trying to think to myself, uh, what are the odds of Donald Trump saying, you know, we fought the good fight, uh, but Nikki, uh, won, uh,
Now we have to, as a party, we have to rally behind her. We've talked about this in the past, but it's dawning on me again. That, you know, that is like so...
alien to who he is so i don't know maybe they maybe these people think they can soften the blow but at this point i don't know why they're doing uh what they're doing but let's uh let's first of all read what murphy had to here's what murphy had to say he didn't put any circa 60s you know shecky green kind of jokes in here because he's feeling so bad
But he did say, my take before I pass out, Christie's best debate, but it doesn't matter. Maybe he did a little damage to T. That would be Trump.
i think at the margins he should he should drop out it's meaningless nikki was solid as usual but a little off tonight tired unnerved not bad just not as strong as usual but i think the rudeness shown by desantis and that human fly rama swami probably helped her iowans are polite i think she's moved into second place there he tantalizingly said
Saw some private polling that indicates the same. We will see. So who knows who saw this other than people working on offshore oil rigs, orchids screaming at their TVs because the CW programming got bumped or weirdos living in an underground bunker in rural Idaho with a huge satellite dish.
I think Christie is going to wind up supporting Nikki if she beats DeSantis in Iowa. Early on in the debate, there were some winks and nods between them over at the corner of the screen. He must have a big screen TV. And he defended nicely. And he defended, I think it meant he's really not feeling well. I think it says nicely, but I think it means Nikki. In a good moment for both of them, DeSantis remains voter poison.
Whole thing was a great ad for Biden. Also love the irony of the TikTok commercials all over it. Signing off, your friend, Mike Murphy. I added the last part. Anyway, that's Murphy's take on it. Let's dive into some of these. No, I think it tracks pretty closely with ours. And look, I think... Look, I think...
Obviously, if she finishes second in Iowa, DeSantis is dead. And then, yeah, to your point and Murphy's point, it'd be a ton of pressure on Christie to get out. And then you force that one-on-one early. The challenge is, again, I still have a harder time seeing...
anybody beating him in those two states. And if he, if he wins those two states. Yeah. I mean, we'll find out. I mean, but that is the scenario.
I think it's a faint scenario. And the one slight disagreement I had with Murphy is I don't think that this was a particularly helpful night for her unless people thought that she looked... She just didn't counterpunch very well. And I guess that's the thing. And why do you think that was? I have no idea. I really don't know. I don't know. And Murphy said this. I think you said it looked a little tired. Do you think...
I couldn't tell if she was just was, you know, and look, we've been through these. You just have an off night or whether, you know, there was a strategy of like, look, here's what we don't want to do is just get into this just mud throwing contest and look like all the other people on the stage. So it'd be interesting to see what the spin is from some of her people post this. Yeah, I remember the last debate she called Ramaswamy scum.
And maybe they said, don't go to no more of the S word. And she kind of rattled herself. I don't know. Listen, I think she's a good, maybe great political athlete. And as you say, everybody has an off night. And the pressure is building on her a little bit. I mean, the expectations are higher. It's always good to come from nowhere. And now she's somewhere. And that makes it.
That makes it harder. So let's go to that. We're featuring Christie right at the top here because Christie, I think, made more things happen. Yeah, more memorable quotes. One of them was when the insufferable Ramaswami was lording it over everyone and went after Haley in a particularly personal way.
Okay? You say this. You do this. You do this at every debate. You go out on the stump and you say something. All of us see it on video. We confront you on the debate stage. You say you didn't say it, and then you back away. And I want to say one. I'm not done yet. Now look. This man is stealing. This man is stealing nonsense. Let me tell you something.
This is the fourth debate. The fourth debate that you would be voted in the first 20 minutes as the most obnoxious blowhard in America. Shut up for a little while.
So that was the first part of the answer. Got quite a bit of applause there. I was going to say, you love the Roman Colosseum feel of that sort of back and forth. I myself found my hands clapping almost reflexively when that happened. And you got to love him going all Ralph Cramden on Ramaswami and telling him.
I'm not done. But the second part of the answer was maybe more interesting. That was entertaining. But let's listen to the second part of the answer. I want to say something else. We're now 25 minutes into this debate, and he has insulted Nikki Haley's basic intelligence skills.
Not her positions, her basic intelligence. She doesn't know regions. She wouldn't be able to find something on a map that his three-year-old could find. Look, if you want to disagree on issues, that's fine. And Nikki and I disagree on some issues. But I'll tell you this, I've known her for 12 years, which is longer than he's even started to vote in a Republican primary.
And while we disagree about some issues and we disagree about who should be president of the United States, what we don't disagree on is this is a smart, accomplished woman. You should stop insulting her. So I'm going to take this. I'm going to take several times over.
I couldn't figure out, Haley was quiet during all of this, and I couldn't figure out what she was thinking. Was she grateful to Christie, or was she thinking, he is using me to score some points here for himself, and that helps him, not me? He looks strong, even if people don't necessarily like him in the Republican primary. He sort of flexed his muscles. My guess is he finally played the
I think he wanted to have that exchange with Donald Trump on one of these stages, hasn't, and has saved a lot of those verbal bullets and unloaded them tonight. Well, that was obviously the bullet was aimed at Ramaswamy, but the beneficiary ostensibly was
was Haley, and I'm sure it played well at home. This is the thing that caused people to say, including Mike Murphy there, that he's going to ultimately support her, that he's setting up to support her. And I don't know that it means that. I think it was a really good sort of debate pivot. And she may have been sort of collateral to the thing. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah, I totally do. I thought I saw a little nod at one point, not sort of what Murphy was talking about, but just sort of right after that exchange when they went back to Ramaswamy and I think she did sort of nod to him a little bit. I have no doubt that she probably has a little bit of mixed feelings about being in the, you know, being in the sort of demolition derby there and being in the middle of it all. A strong moment for Fox,
For Christy, I did wonder at some point, and again, this is why I feel like there was some sort of strategy tonight by Haley just not to get down into it. And it may be, as you said, that they detected what she'd said last time about Ramaswami, which lots of people showed for days after that, just didn't help her overall. And then, you know, she just wasn't going to get into the mud on Haley.
And Ramaswamy is just rapid fire. And look, he didn't let it go all night long. I mean, you know, even 40, you know, an hour 40 into the debate, he's holding up the sign that says, you know, Nikki equals corrupt. I mean, it's he's clearly doing a lot of Trump bidding there. Let's go ahead and give Ramaswamy his bite, because that's this is the one you're talking about.
mosquito bite. Nikki, you were bankrupt when you left the UN. After you left the UN, you became a military contractor. You actually started joining service on the board of Boeing, whose back you scratched for a very long time and then gave four multinational speeches like Hillary Clinton is. And now you're a multimillionaire. That math does not add up. It adds up to the fact that you are corrupt. And when I said they were bought and paid for, I meant the Republican establishment.
not the democratic establishment. So this was basically his theme all night, that both parties are corrupt, that he is the avenger. It's very, you know, it's sort of a Harvard parlor version of Trumpism. Very. Well, and I think he's probably doing Trump's bidding there by entering into this idea of her being corrupt, you know, throwing out a lot of the, you know,
throwing out the Hillary Clinton speeches, you know, lots of sort of, you know, bright, shiny objects for Republican voters. I don't think obviously it scored all that well. I think he made her look somewhat sympathetic, if not very sympathetic by the end. She did talk about, we don't have the tape, I don't think, but she did talk about that she was on the board of Boeing, that she worked with them when she was governor. She was on their board for 10 months. Right. Yeah.
She did answer at one point. Another point, she was given a chance to respond to him. And she said, you know, he's not worth responding to. All right. Hold that thought. We're going to take a short break. And now a word from our sponsors. But it wasn't just him. Like in his first answer, Ron DeSantis went after. Yeah.
Haley, which tells you something. We should take a listen to that. And you have other candidates up here like Nikki Haley. She caves anytime the left comes after her, anytime the media comes after her. I did a bill in Florida to stop the gender mutilation of minors. It's child abuse and it's wrong. She opposes that bill. She thinks it's fine and the law shouldn't get involved with it. If you're not willing to stand up for the kids, if you're not willing to stand up and say that it is wrong to mutilate these kids...
then you're not going to fight for the people back home. I will fight for you and I will win for you. She disputed his characterization of her record. But even there, you know, the retort was not
No. Hayley, as we've seen, can level people when she wants to. She didn't do that as much in this. So here's my question on this. You know, this is, I mean, DeSantis, he has his strategy and he's sticking to it, which is culture war stuff. And here you heard some of it. This was on trans issues and children.
This is Iowa. This is the Iowa Republican Party. It's dominated by evangelicals. He's been endorsed by both the governor and significant leaders in the
evangelical community. Did he help himself to that? You know, I think he did a little bit. I'm not sure he helped himself a ton, but I think, look, I think if you just watch that debate, I think you would look at him and her and think, to your point, he felt a bit punchier tonight. He felt present tonight in a way that I don't think he felt in the other debates. He sort of, other debates, he kind of got his talking points in and his question and then sort of
was kind of happy to kind of watch it all happen. Tonight, he was a bit more forward. Look, her polling has to show the same thing that all these other guys' polling shows, which is she's on the move. You know, clearly the DeSantis campaign decided they were going to do something about it tonight or at least start trying to. Again, we have 40 days before Iowa. We don't have a lot of, we don't have a ton of time left. I think strategically that was what he was going to do. Again,
A little surprised, to your point, that when she did punch back, it didn't feel altogether great. It didn't feel all that strong. And the truth is, she had to know almost all of this was coming. She'd have one line ready. The thanks for the attention. Yeah, let's listen to it. That math does not add up. I love all the attention, fellas. Thank you for that. I mean, that was clearly something that she had in her mind.
And I thought that was a pretty effective retort. You know, one thing that does distinguish Haley from the others is, I mean, not necessarily from Christy, who shares positions on this, but, you know, she's very comfortable on these national security issues, having been in the UN, and she's very much a sort of neoconish hawk. And here you hear her tie up
Russia and Israel together. The problem is you have to see that all of these are related. If you look at the fact Russia was losing that war with Ukraine, Putin had hit rock bottom, they had raised the draft age to 65, he was getting drones and missiles, drones from Iran, missiles from North Korea, and so what happened? When he hit rock bottom, all of a sudden,
his other friend, Iran, Hamas goes and invades Israel and butchers those people on Putin's birthday. There is no one happier right now than Putin because all of the attention America had on Ukraine suddenly went to Israel. And that's what they were hoping is going to happen. We need to make sure that we have full clarity that there is a reason, again, that Taiwanese want to help Ukrainians because they know if Ukraine wins, China won't invade Ukraine.
Taiwan. There's a reason the Ukrainians want to help Israelis because they know that if Iran wins, Russia wins. These are all connected. But what wins all of that is a strong America, not a weak America. And that's what Joe Biden's given us. I'm not sure all of that. I mean, she tied it all together. I'm not sure that people grasped all that. But what they did grasp is there are bad guys out there. Russia's one of them. Iran's the other. China's another. And she wove them together. And
And, you know, my question about this is in the polling that, you know, most of the polling that I see, support for Ukraine is waning among Republicans. And that's why Biden is struggling here to get aid through the Congress. Is this a winning position for her? It may be that her slice of the Republican Party is still very much in Ukraine's corner, but it's not a majority of the Republican Party.
No. And, you know, she came back to this in an answer I think she gave later in the debate on China comparing, you know, Taiwan and Ukraine, which you hear obviously a lot. So this is, you know, something, look, you have to give it to her that she's not shying away from it. To your point, David, I think it's she understands what her strength is.
And she's trying to leverage it. Whether it is hugely popular, I'm like you, I have my doubts looking at Republican polling. But I think she's probably, with the people particularly on that stage, pretty comfortable to have that fight. We know that DeSantis fails, just doesn't really answer the question when he gets asked about it. Ramaswamy, as we saw, attacked her on this.
And is very sort of, you know, anti-Ufraine in this. And I think she's very happy to get into a foreign policy fight with him on this as a way of showing knowledge, strength, poise, all of the things that, again, she's using these debates to gather momentum. What's surprising to me was that she didn't call DeSantis out on it.
Because he is not a supporter of aid to Ukraine. And all this adds up to, like, feels like a strategic decision that they made that she wasn't going to. I think so. I think she was a little bit not on her game, but I also think she...
I think they clearly decided, look, we do not want this is going to end up being a food fight in the animal house cafeteria. And we just don't want to be part of it. One of the other things we should talk about, David, is I don't know how many people are going to see this debate. You know, I don't know how you watched it. I took me, you know, 10 minutes to find find the place to watch it on streaming. I'm sitting in a hotel room in San Antonio.
And I watched it on my phone, which is why I couldn't see, I didn't see any interplay between Haley and Christie because- Damn phone's too small. Yeah. So- Right. No, but you're right. I mean, News Nation doesn't have a huge audience. Listen, the audience for these debates has been diminishing right along. The question is whether there's more interest now in people trying to
But, you know, one from 13 and a half million for the first debate to seven and a half million for the last debate. Almost as many people watched DeSantis debate Gavin Newsom on Fox the other day than watched the last Republican debate. God knows how many watched here, but likely there were people in Iowa who might have been watching this who were trying to make their minds. And there'll be a lot of loviators like us talking about it. And now the word from our sponsors.
Just getting back to DeSantis, he tried to make a big stand on Israel. As I said, he's not taking a position on Israel.
strong position on Ukraine, but on Israel, he was all in, or it seemed that way. So let's listen to that. We have to look out for our people when there are hostages. Commander-in-Chief, you have to do whatever you can to get them done. But the overall issue with this is this administration is trying to hobble Israel from being able to defend itself. They have a right to eliminate Hamas and win a
total and complete victory so that they never have to deal with this again. Hamas wants nothing less than a second Holocaust. They would wipe off every single Jew off the map. They would destroy the state of Israel if we could. Joe Biden will say they support Israel, and then they do nothing but try to kneecap them every step of the way. You should not try to
to direct their war effort. We should work together with them so that they can bring Hamas to heel. That's a Trumpian answer at the end, but he was asked a question, which was would you send American troops in to get these hostages? And that gave Christie an opening to challenge DeSantis. This is the problem with the first three debates. Ron gets asked the question and he doesn't answer it. Your question was very specific.
You said, would you send American troops as commander in chief? And he went on to this minute and 30 second hosanna about his knowledge of the military and what we need to do and didn't answer your question. Look, when you're president of the United States, you're not going to have a choice whether to answer that question or not.
Your generals, your secretary of defense, your secretary of state, your national security advisor are going to present plans to you. They're going to look at you and say, do we go or don't we, Mr. President? And you can't give a 90 second speech about your military service. Would you send American troops in to rescue those hostages? Absolutely. And this Christie came back to this refrain a couple of times on DeSantis, including on whether he thought.
that Trump was fit for office. I don't think we have that tape, but he clearly, he was giving them the full Marco Rubio treatment, like from 2016 when he went after Rubio in New Hampshire. It demonstrated, look again, another great moment for Christie, you know, put DeSantis on the defensive. And look, one thing we've known, as you said, going back a
a dozen years or 10 years or so is Chris Christie's a really good counterpuncher in these debates. He listens. He pounces. He clearly did there. I thought it had DeSantis looking very much like a politician. Look, I think one of the things that helped Trump in 2016 rise from where he was to becoming the nominee is lots of people in the Republican Party, lots of the base thought,
Donald Trump wasn't afraid to say what others weren't going to say. And I thought DeSantis looked very much like a politician trying to slightly have it both ways. Not a great moment for him. Another strong moment for Christie.
And, you know, a memorable outtake that my guess is you'll hear a lot more of. Yeah. We'll gauge how much impact this has in the days to come. I think everybody's going to be waiting for that last big register poll. Yeah. You've done statewide races in Iowa. Obviously, you know, we spent a long time there in 2008. Yeah.
You're a longtime watcher of this. Where do you think we sit 40 days out? You know, the question I have, I think Nikki Haley does have momentum and I think it's late momentum, which is the kind you want.
in recent Iowa. The question is, does she have the organization to capture that momentum? As you know, we caught momentum in 2008 with Obama. We also had a massive field organization that started working the previous March that was banking commitments all along to go to the
caucuses. And, you know, so the question is, she's got Americans for Prosperity, now the Koch Brothers organization. Yeah. But it isn't what it was, what it once was.
I know there are, I spoke to a friend yesterday who, a woman who was going to Iowa to knock doors for Haley. So maybe she'll have an influx of volunteers. But the holidays are coming up and the caucuses come up hard after the holidays. Yeah. On the 15th of January. The question is, does she have the organizational capacity to get people to go and caucus for her? And how many will just...
organize themselves and come, which is always a crapshoot. I think DeSantis has thrown every dime he has into this. He's got, as I said, major endorsements. He's clearly trying to consolidate the Christian nationalist right and the culture warriors. So we'll see. But it could all play to Trump's advantage because, you know, right now, if you look at the polling averages, they're dividing the vote up.
Yeah, he's got a nice cushion. You know, one of the things I think she's doing effectively, we did this and we did this more toward the end, David, but I've seen clips of her
you know, starting out these town hall meetings that we all go to and that Iowans flock to to take measure of the candidates. And I love that she's doing this. Again, we did this a lot. You know, raise your hand if this is the first time you've ever come to an event to hear me talk. And you have a lot of hands going up. And so to your point, there's a lot of fish in that pot, right? So she's got to do two things. She's got to convince them with
Her energy and her answers and her platform and her knowledge and experience. And then to your point, you've got to have that apparatus that surrounds those people. Does she know who all those people are? Is her team calling them? Are they sending that person to knock on that door? Who do they have in that room?
who is capturing people as they leave the meeting and getting commitments to caucus or at least to allow them to follow up. I mean, there is a real mechanical kind of process that has to happen to harvest support.
I mean, I'm excited to see. Now, there were rumors that there was going to be another debate in Iowa before the caucuses and one in New Hampshire before the primary, but I have not heard any, and no one I know has heard any plans for this. So-
This may be the last debate. Well, I think this is definitely the last RNC sanctioned debate. And there's been talk, obviously, of the RNC granting others the ability to host a debate. So, you know, to your point, it'll be interesting to see
do they, does the RNC do that? Do they want to, do they want to get out of the debate business and sort of leave it to somebody, maybe the Iowa Republican party or whatnot to organize something that I would assume? I don't know. Do you, does, is that something if you did it 10 days out with Donald Trump have to be at that? If you did it two weeks out with Donald Trump have to be at that? I don't know. It feels like
He's made his decision here. His decision is to say, this is over. I am going to be the nominee and I'm not going to mess around with these guys. But it's interesting. It comes at a time when he's actually doing a lot more than you'd expect campaigning in Iowa. Yeah, buying TV. Yeah, the message is, well,
Yes, it's over, but I better make sure. And we know this, you know, a big part of Iowa is participating in it and getting out there and seeing voters and answering questions two, three, four, five, six times. You know, obviously, I think a lot of these folks have their minds made up. I think a trickier thing to sort of skip out 10 days or two weeks before. But look, we'll see. I think there's...
I think it's going to be an interesting 40 days. If Chris Christie thinks that Donald Trump at any point in this campaign is going to debate his primary opponents, I think that alone will keep him in the race. Totally. Absolutely. He wants to be on that stage for that. Spoiling for that fight. Let's take a short break and hear from our sponsors. How did you feel about the way the debate was moderated?
Because Megyn Kelly, I thought she was going to get more time than any of the candidates at the beginning. She has some really, you know, sort of, she went right for the
throats of everyone and went at their biggest vulnerability. Which, you know, in some ways is good because you want to see the candidates a little off their talking points, you know? And I think, again, I think that's one of the reasons that Christie counterpunched DeSantis on that because what DeSantis is really used to is hearing what the question is about and taking it to the
100 words that he- Chris is quite right. He memorizes answers. And then his go-to line here was, you can't beat father time. This was about Trump's age. By the way, Trump's age, it's a legitimate issue. He's almost as old as Biden. But honestly, is that the biggest problem with Trump? And I think that's Christie's point. It's like, come on, dude.
You're kind of missing the main issue here. I thought they had some good questions. Obviously, you know, no mention of abortion tonight. You know, we got into cryptocurrency before we got into Trump. You know, so some weird stuff, too. And, you know, so I thought altogether it was fine. It's obviously hard to watch at points because it just really felt like Ramaswamy, you know, just was going to take...
take any question and try to turn it on Haley. And I think it became uncomfortable. I felt a little uncomfortable to watch because it just felt so smarmy. And again, I'll be interested tomorrow morning or in the next couple of days to see what that what they think the viewership numbers are.
Obviously, that doesn't count resourceful people like you flipping their phones on and watching the debate and seeing clips. So lots to play out, 40 days to go, and we'll be here to cover it. And the most important thing is get well, Mike Murphy.
Yeah, I mean, who's going to vote twice in Chicago if you're going to be lying in bed? Yeah, I know. I think he's going to have to send Secretary Raimondo to vote for him. There we go. We got both his go-to lines. And that's our homage to Mike Murphy as we say goodnight until next week. And we're into it, folks. We're into the final stretch. See you, Gibbs. Have a good one. ♪
♪