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CNN This Morning

Trump Wins Big In Iowa, DeSantis Projected To Edge Out Haley For Second; GOP Race Heads To New Hampshire After Trump Dominates In Iowa. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired January 16, 2024 - 05:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[05:00:52]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. So glad you're with us on a big Tuesday for in America. I'm Poppy Harlow, with Phil Mattingly in New York.

The race to the White House is heading to New Hampshire. That is where our Kasie Hunt has moved to after flying overnight.

And Donald Trump heads into the New Hampshire primary with a dominant victory in the Iowa caucuses, winning by an overwhelming and a historic margin. It's a clear sign still he has an iron grip on the Republican Party and America is now one step closer to a Trump/Biden rematch.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Now, it's worth noting, for months now, Iowa Republicans have been telling pollsters they wanted Donald Trump. Last night, they showed us they wanted Donald Trump. CNN projecting Ron DeSantis has come in second place after a tight battle with Nikki Haley.

Take a look at the map of Iowa. It's a sea of red, and that means it's a sea of Trump wins. County by county, winning all of them except for one where Nikki Haley is leading by a single vote.

Now, Trump dominated Iowa, even though he didn't spend much time there compared to his rivals. Just breakdown of his campaign events he held versus his competitors. Now, in his victory speech, Trump praised DeSantis and Haley as smart and very capable people, almost acting as if they conceded and the race is a done deal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: I want to congratulate Ron and Nikki for having a good time together. We're all having a good time together. And I think they both did very well. I really do. They both did very well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: We have team coverage from Iowa, New Hampshire, our political analysts also standing by to break down this landslide victory for Trump. Let's start with Kylie Atwood. She joins us in Des Moines.

I mean, even better -- he did better than that poll for him a couple of days ago, pretty much as expected.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's right, Poppy. Topping more than 50 percent of the vote here in Iowa, it was a commanding and historic win for former President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(CHANTING)

ATWOOD (voice-over): An overwhelming victory for Donald Trump.

TRUMP: We want to thank the great people of Iowa.

ATWOOD: The former president winning the Iowa caucuses by a considerable margin, solidifying his status as the front runner of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Speaking from his Iowa headquarters, Trump gave a rare message of unity.

TRUMP: This is time now for everybody, our country to come together. We want to come together, whether it's Republican or Democrat or liberal or conservative.

ATWOOD: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis nearly beat out Nikki Haley for second place.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In spite of all of that that they threw at us, everyone against us, we've got our ticket punched out of Iowa.

ATWOOD: A DeSantis senior campaign official says he will stay in the race.

DESANTIS: People want to have hope for this country's future. And that's what we represent. We represent a chance to reverse the madness that we have seen in this country.

ATWOOD: Despite placing third, Nikki Haley predicts that this race will come down to her and Trump, based on recent positive polling out of New Hampshire.

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When you look at how we're doing, in New Hampshire, in South Carolina, and beyond -- I can safely tonight, Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race.

ATWOOD: Haley is continuing her message that the GOP needs a new generation of leadership.

HALEY: Seventy percent of Americans don't want another Trump/Biden rematch. ATWOOD: And entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy suspending his campaign for

president after placing a disappointing fourth. He called Trump to offer his endorsement.

VIVEK RAMASWAMY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're going to do our part now going forward to make sure that America first lives on, to make sure that Donald Trump is successful as the next president of the United States.

ATWOOD: Entrance polling providing insights into how Trump locked in his victory. Two-thirds of caucusgoers believe that Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

[05:05:07]

And nearly half of caucusgoers say they identify with Trump's MAGA movement.

TRUMP: We have an invasion of millions and millions of people that are coming into our country. We can't have that. We can't have that. It's not sustainable as a country. It's horrible.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ATWOOD: All three candidates will end up in New Hampshire tonight. Nikki Haley for her part went directly there from Iowa last night. We're going to see Ron DeSantis stop in South Carolina before going to New Hampshire later today. And with former President Trump, for whom the courthouse has become a central piece of his campaign, he's stopping in New York for appearance as part of the E. Jean Carroll civil damages trial before heading to New Hampshire later today -- Poppy, Phil.

HARLOW: It's a great point. He chose not to go to her initial trial, but yet after this huge win in Iowa, he chooses to be in that courtroom today.

Kylie, thank you for the reporting.

MATTINGLY: Well, Kasie Hunt is also in New Hampshire and also with us, CNN political commentator Bakari Sellers, former deputy of chief to former Congressman Adam Kinzinger, Maura Gillespie, and Republican strategist Doug Heye.

Kasie hunt, I want to start with you since you've done the overnight flight. A lot of the candidates doing the same type of thing over the course of the next 24 hours or so.

There has been a frame by Donald Trump and his supporters that this is done. This is a done deal. This is over. Tell me what you're hearing from your Republican sources on the ground in New Hampshire. Is that the case?

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR, EARLY START: So, Phil, I think the reality here is that it's more of the same than different to be quite honest. I think there's a real sense that had Nikki Haley managed to edge out Ron DeSantis, she would be coming into New Hampshire with a much more significant head of steam than she is right now.

I can tell you the last time I landed on this tarmac here in New Hampshire after Iowa, it was 2016. Ted Cruz's plane, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, we all landed at the same time. All kinds of excitement.

The only person to come with us this time was Nikki Haley, who we ran into at the sort of small airport where charter planes fly out of in Des Moines. She was heading here. Her staff seemed to have a steely mood about them the. It was obviously the end of a very long night, but I wouldn't say that it was ebullient either, right? You could the really tell when a candidate and a group of staff feel like they have absolutely won the night, usually somebody is looking for a glass of wine. That wasn't the feeling among her staffers, as they headed out into the night.

And they do have a chance here, if it she can pull off -- the polling showed her within single digits of Trump. That was before Chris Christie dropped out. If she can actually perform that way here in a week, then perhaps there will be some way to dent Trump's inevitability. But I got to tell you, guys, it doesn't this feel like the conversation we have been having for a year about Trump's dominance in the primary?

HARLOW: It certainly does. And those numbers, Doug Heye, are just really stunning. I mean, yes, it's the solid red Iowa, but of 66 percent don't think Biden won legitimately, 65 percent of those entrance polls to the caucuses says it's okay if Trump is convicted, by the way. And Nikki Haley, not exceeding DeSantis. Where does this leave us?

DOUG HEYE, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, you know, that number that they support Donald Trump if he was convicted, that's actually lower than Republican candidates running for president. Almost all of them except Chris Christie raised their hand and said they would support him.

That's where the Republican Party is. If I'm Nikki Haley, I'm feeling pretty good about things today. Politics is so often about the expectations game. Maybe your expectations were built up a little too high --

HARLOW: Because of that --

HEYE: Because of the last polling, but the reality is she had no organization in Iowa. She didn't do a lot of campaigning in Iowa. A lot of people said she made a gaffe when she said New Hampshire corrects Iowa.

It turns out that I think she was probably pretty right. And to come just two points away from Ron DeSantis, who put all of his eggs in 99 baskets and didn't get any of the 99 counties in Iowa, and Nikki Haley actually winning one. Ron DeSantis has to do explaining why his campaign continues to exist. Nikki Haley doesn't have to do that explaining.

HARLOW: She's right when she says this is a two-person race, meaning me and Trump?

HEYE: Maybe a two and a half person race, she doesn't have to explain why she's still in it.

HARLOW: What kind of person --

HEYE: Ron DeSantis does. Well, he campaigned as mini Trump. So, he's a mini me, half a candidate at this point.

MATTINGLY: Bakari, you've been on TV all night which I'm going to keep coming back to you see how far --

(LAUGHTER)

MATTINGLY: We're both employed by the end of the night.

But the question I had, Nikki Haley in her remarks, Kylie's piece had some of it, saying, you know, it's not only a two-person race, New Hampshire, South Carolina, where she's from, but also the framing that voters don't want the rematch. She called it a nightmare. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HALEY: Trump and Biden both lack a vision for our country's future, because both are consumed by the past, by investigations, by vendettas, by grievances.

Our campaign is the last best hope of stopping the Trump/Biden nightmare.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's actually good messaging. If you're going to attack Donald Trump, this is the way you have to do it, it has to be thematic, but it has to be like a 50,000- foot view.

You're not going to out-abortion Donald Trump like DeSantis is trying to do. I mean, the man killed Roe v. Wade. I mean, you're not going to out-immigration Donald Trump.

And so, you have to have these large thematic issues, which Nikki Haley is trying to do. I do think it's extremely late. I think it's not a two-person race or two and half person race. I think it's a one- person race.

I'm not sure why Ron DeSantis is going to South Carolina and then New Hampshire. He needs to go straight to Tallahassee. And I think the only thing --

MATTINGLY: For the primary or just to back the governor --

SELLERS: He probably just go home really. But, you know, the other thing is that he crushed Governor Reynolds

operation in Iowa, Donald Trump. She has Governor Sununu in New Hampshire. It's going to be a nip and tuck. But then he's going to crush her operation in South Carolina. So I don't see a path for anybody. This is just a vanity project.

HARLOW: Maura, Lindsey Graham says this thing is over. Trump has got this locked in.

SELLERS: And I'm agreeing with Lindsey Graham.

HARLOW: There you are, there you are, at 5:00 a.m.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: Mark it down.

SELLERS: Mark it down.

(LAUGHTER)

MAURA GILLESPIE, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, FORMER REP. ADAM KINZINGER: I will say, with all the Republicans who have come out and said they support Trump after he's either called them a RINO and taken their gavel, which he did to Tom Emmer, made fun of their wives, I mean, the list goes on.

I feel like Mugatu in "Zoolander", I'm taking crazy pills because I don't understand how you can go with a straight face to talk to your constituents and say, yep, I support this guy who just talked poorly about me, my family and everything, also he's convicted -- you know, he's got 91 counts against him, all these things and say it with a straight face.

We are in a really sad time in our politics if we think this is all okay, and to Nikki Haley's point, the Trump/Biden matchup of 2020 again, and doing this all over again, people don't want it. Like American people don't want -- they are not excited.

Unfortunately, I think when you don't have enthusiasm to go out and vote for someone -- somebody like Donald Trump is going to swoop in and feed off that disappointment and he's going to capitalize on people being frustrated and angry about different topics. He really does capitalize on those things, and these members of Congress and the Republican who is have just sold their principles and let their ambition govern their decision making, it's -- it's really sad.

MATTINGLY: Kasie, besides my disappointment the that the first Mugatu reference on this show was not made by me, which I failed.

HUNT: Failed, Phil, failed.

MATTINGLY: Can I take the other side for a second? Because, you know, Nikki Haley east campaign had a state of the race memo. You had could view Donald Trump as an incumbent, right? An incumbent pulling 51 at an Iowa caucus or caucuses, not exactly great, and an incumbent that has 30 percent of the party that doesn't feel like voters that feel like if he's convicted they don't want to support him. That's problematic.

When you have the numbers split, we say a huge weakness here. Why is that not the case this time around?

HUNT: Because no one else in the field has shown that they have the strength to beat him is the reality. It's absolutely the case that, you know, every Republican that I talk to who would refer Trump not get the nomination is arguing, hey, one in two Republicans in Iowa approximately said they didn't want him, but as we just spent the last five minutes discussing, it's really unclear that anyone who has actually run against him can to it.

Now, the run thing I'm interested in, and at the beginning of the primary, polling showed that Republicans were open to a Trump alternative. Nobody really took Trump on directly. Now you have this slightly new message from Nikki Haley that is very tailored to New Hampshire, right? That Trump/Biden nightmare, not something she could really say in Iowa where it was harder to attack Trump, but here, don't forget undeclared voters can vote in the primary.

And polling shows overwhelmingly, especially independents, they are unhappy with that choice. She's going to have an opportunity to try to convince them that, hey, you should come and give me a shot basically. But again, you know, we run straight into the rest of the map. It just gets so much harder.

And I think for DeSantis, Bakari was talking about him going to South Carolina. I mean, if you look at the Real Clear average of polls in South Carolina, he's down at like 6-1/2 percent. Nikki Haley is around 20 percent.

I mean, my big question going in here is how long does -- do Ron DeSantis' donors continue to fund him? Because that I think really -- ego often prevents people from getting out of politics, but running out of money can, in fact, end presidential campaigns.

[05:15:07]

HARLOW: Yeah, nothing you can do about that.

Kasie, thank you. Stay with us, everyone. We've got a lot ahead.

MATTINGLY: And we are going to dig in a little bit deeper in the Iowa results, maybe Zoolander as well, where each candidate performed well and what that could tell us about future primaries.

HARLOW: Also looking ahead to New Hampshire, how voters feel about the final results of the 2024 election season and what's ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They've all been watching CNN's coverage of the Iowa caucus with me today. The first question I want to ask all 10 of you, one sentence headline of what you think this caucus was all about?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems and straighten all of the death and destruction that we're witnessing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: That was President Trump last night attempting to send a message of unity of sorts after a landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses. Now, Trump finished the Republican caucuses with a historic 51 percent of the vote.

[05:20:02]

You're looking at it here. Significantly more than Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, second and third place totals combined. DeSantis coming in at 21.2 percent. Nikki Haley, a little above 19 percent.

So how did Donald Trump do it? This is the math that we're looking at right now. Everywhere you see red is a county that Donald Trump won. You might think Donald Trump is predominant in the Republican Party, we've seen the polling. It looked like it was going to look like this.

This is why this is a surprise. This is why the Trump team feels like they hit exactly the type of place they needed to be heading into New Hampshire.

Just flash back to 2016. Donald Trump didn't win the caucus because he lost to Ted Cruz. And everywhere you see yellow or brighter red, those are counties that Donald Trump lost.

Let's go back to 2024. All of them saved for one, Donald Trump won. Now, what does it actually mean? Think about the overperformance where Donald Trump did better than he did in 2016.

Trump outperforming 2016 literally all 99 counties he did better than in 2016. Here's maybe a different way to put this. Where did Trump actually underperform in 2016?

That would be none. Trump win margin above 10 percent -- 10 percent higher than everybody else in the actual primary, every county except for two. Ames is a more a college town, which he actually ended up winning, unlike in 2016.

And in Johnson County, where Iowa City, University of Iowa, where Nikki Haley won by all of 1 vote. That's not a sweeping victory based on my math. Not a math guy, but pretty confident in that.

So, how did he do it? Well, there are two things we were watching coming into this caucus experience. One was up here, the northwest area of the state. This is evangelical country. This is country that Donald Trump struggled mightily with in 2016.

Donald Trump winning all four of those counties, flip back into 2016, he lost all of them. And not only he lost all of them, he, for the most part, didn't really place well at all, not even in the top three in some of those counties. In Sioux County, I wasn't even in the top three, flip to 2024, he wins by 14 points.

This is the type of county that Ron DeSantis focused heavily on with his operation, heavily on with visits as well. Donald Trump blew him out of the water. What about the suburbs? This is an area that Marco Rubio pulled off, suburb after suburb after suburb.

Well, this was supposed to be where Nikki Haley is supposed to have big wins. Not this time around. In 13 of the counties CNN label as suburbs, Donald Trump won 12 of them, again, only losing one, Johnson County, where Iowa City, University of Iowa is, losing it by one vote. Back in 2016, if you look at how he did -- he lost 10 of those 13 counties.

So across the board, whether it's evangelicals, whether it's suburbs, where it's educated voters, Donald Trump winning almost every single place 98 of 99 counties. And that's why he won 51 percent of the vote -- Poppy.

HARLOW: All right. Phil, thank you so much.

Coming back to the table, let's bring in Doug Heye, Bakari Sellers, Maura Gillespie.

Doug, to you. Not only did he win, but he won so many evangelical voters in Iowa. I mean, he took like a fourth of them last time around. That's 63 percent, why?

HEYE: Because he's been able to have those voters really identify with him. Donald Trump is not angel call by any means. He's not a strong Christian, but evangelical and religious conservatives identify with Trump as a lifestyle, as a brand. And that's been very hard to shake.

It's why those counties that Phil pointed out in northwestern Iowa turned so dramatically. I think it's what's going to make not so much New Hampshire, but South Carolina very interesting. If Nikki Haley has a strong showing in New Hampshire, religious conservatives in South Carolina, I think we can learn a lot from with what happened in Iowa.

MATTINGLY: When you look at kind of New Hampshire, the modern vote, the independent vote and the suburbs, the college educated, that's not supposed to be Trump's base, college educated voter, more Trump than they did for Haley. Trump picked up every single suburb, suburban county except for one.

How does that not translate into problems for Nikki Haley in New Hampshire?

GILLESPIE: You're talking about Iowa?

MATTINGLY: Yeah, yeah, in Iowa, when they go to New Hampshire.

GILLESPIE: OK, so in Iowa, I mean, what 65 plus was the majority of the group that voted in the caucus, right? And 97 percent of them were white. I think it's roughly the estimate.

So in New Hampshire, they have long said more than half of the GOP voters have said they would take anybody but Trump. It does help her even beyond the suburbs. I mean, it does help her coming at it from a different approach. She's now trying to talk about Trump and Biden nightmare, things like that. It's helpful to her messaging.

In Iowa, though, I think also, their focus was just Trump. I mean, it doesn't matter. They put immigration as number four on their issue list when it came to Trump. They put economy's number two. You know, that's a stark difference.

HARLOW: Took place where Biden, by the way, if this is a head to head, is polling so terribly, on the abortion -- I mean, on immigration and economy.

GILLESPIE: Immigration -- yeah, absolutely.

HARLOW: Bakari, can we move to your home state, because Doug brought up what does this portend for Nikki Haley and Trump in South Carolina?

[05:25:05]

Tim Scott is a big question mark this morning. Our reporting is that he may officially get behind Trump. It would be a big blow to Nikki Haley inside of her state.

SELLERS: Every one -- every one of the major political figures in South Carolina outside of a few state House members, good friends of mine, Nathan Valentine, Tom Davis, for example, and Ralph Norman, they actually went to Iowa to caucus with her. Those are good friends to have.

But Tim Scott is an interesting character because he's the only one who has that gravitas who's kind of stayed out of it. Tim Scott also, whether or not you're talking to people in Trump orbit, you'd probably know this better than I, but people talk about the names of Ben Carson, they talk about Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and they talk about Tim Scott for vice president of the United States. Those are some of the favorites that are floating.

So, what does Tim Scott do? It really is a death knell to Nikki Haley if she does well in New Hampshire and then Tim takes the wind out of her sails like that. You have to think about their history. She's the person who appointed him to the United States Senate.

HARLOW: Right.

SELLERS: So it's a very close relationship. We go back to 2010 when Tim got elected to the state house. He, myself and Nikki were all in the state house together. So that's a very fascinating dynamic. But he is that evangelical. He does speak to what the future of the

Republican Party hopes to be. He is a consummate conservative. He does have opportunity zones and he can talk about issues that matter.

He supports Donald Trump. I mean, I think it's over already, but you can start packing up the bus.

HEYE: This is where the politics get personal. If we go back to 2016, the Jeb Bush campaign loathed Marco Rubio for the shear audacity of running. It wasn't Marco's turn they thought. That same dynamic was true with the Haley and Scott campaigns throughout the process while Tim Scott was still running.

HARLOW: Thank you. Appreciate it, everyone. Good to be with you.

And today at noon, don't miss "INSIDE POLITICS" with Dana Bash. She's going to sit down with Nikki Haley and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu.

MATTINGLY: Well, it's been more than 700 days since New York City has seen 1 inch of snow. That streak could end today. The forecast, next.

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