Trump Wins New Hampshire, Rages at Haley

Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Lovett.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Tommy Vitor.

Gang's all here.

Here we are.

Big night.

Huge night.

Donald Trump has won the New Hampshire primary, though his margin over Nikki Haley looks like it'll end up being smaller than the polls suggested, somewhere between 8 and 12 points. We're recording this Tuesday night, so we're still counting some vote. But it was apparently enough for Haley to decide that she's staying in the race. Here's what she said shortly after they called it for Trump. Now you've all heard the chatter among the political class.

This race is far from over, there are dozens of states left to go.

I love the yelling guy.

I love the yelling guy. I love that guy. Go Nikki. I mean, are we political class? Because this member of the political class does not think it's over.

12 points? That's fucking, that's this big. Some people might say that in any other election on earth, that's a landslide. Not me. This razor thin margin.

11 points. All the way to Milwaukee.

Come on, Nikki. I wonder what the last primary is. I'll Google it.

Yeah, you Google that. Why do you guys think she decided to stay in?

Dan? I don't think she did.

What are you talking about? Wait, hold on a second, Dan. We watched this whole thing. You know, she got dressed up, she went down there, she said, here we go.

Okay, I'm going to flash you back to eight days ago. We sat in your office. eight days ago, we watched Ron DeSantis give a speech.

That was not a stay in the race speech.

That was absolutely a stay in the race speech.

Four minutes, no message.

That was pathetic.

Look, maybe she will stay in the race. Maybe she will, but I don't think that matters one iota.

I find myself rooting so hard for her to stay in the race. I don't think it matters. Nikki Haley is not going to win the Republican nomination unless we get the hamburger from heaven. But I think the longer she's in this race attacking Donald Trump, pissing him off, absolutely, I'll take it.

I mean, maybe she will stay in. The month between New Hampshire and South Carolina is traditionally a death march for Republican politics. George W. Bush, in some of the dirtiest politics of that time, seems like, frankly, nothing. now.

What has she got to lose?

Well, I think the big question is how much money she can raise in the next 24, 48 hours. If she can't raise money, she's got to get out. There's just no two ways about it.

Her campaign is billionaire dependent. She has no grassroots fundraising base. And there's these billionaires who are holding this fundraiser for her in a week, and we'll see if they're still holding it a few days from now.

Apparently she's going to campaign in the Virgin Islands tomorrow. Tomorrow, yeah. For their February 8th caucus. And there's Nevada. I figured it out.

June 4th.

Oh, please.

Tell me, when is the.

Damn. That's a superstition.

That is the one primary she has a legitimate chance to win.

Their argument, the Haley team, they put out a memo this morning signaling that they were not going.

That is true, but it's far less important than the fact that the Trump team has completely rigged the rules, so that now, if he gets 51% of the vote in some of these states, he will take all the delegates, including states like California.

It is true that some of these states have open primaries, but none of them have open primaries with the tradition of independent participation. like New Hampshire. Half of the voters in this election were either independents or Democrats, who re-registered as independents to participate in this process. Right?

It almost sounds like independents and Democrats infiltrated to take a clean victory away from Donald Trump.

Who managed to stop the steal.

Yeah, it does seem as though if your campaign memo is about how, don't worry, the Republican primary has lots of opportunities for people who aren't Republicans to vote. You do have a deeper problem that can't be overcome by the calendar.

That would be the memo written by the campaign that lost Republicans by 50 points in this election tonight.

She didn't do so well with Republican voters. She's running for the Republican primary.

At some point, presumably, she has to, at some point, just to win Republicans, to win the Republican primary. That would be sort of a... I don't know. I'm not listening.

This is what you guys pay the big bucks for. Yeah.

I'm a speech writer. I'm not a data guy. I'm not a data... I was more poetry than poetry. But I have to say, I also was a math person, and I do think at some point, just to win Republicans.

I'm just trying to get inside the campaigns, her head, the campaigns. I think what they might be thinking is, as Tommy said, Trump has rigged the rules. So a lot of these are like either winner, take all, or you hit a 50% threshold in the primary, and then you take all the delegates. But maybe she's thinking, if I can just keep picking up a few delegates here and there, and then March 5th comes along, or whenever Trump is tried in DC, then Trump is convicted. Suddenly, the polls start shifting.

I think what's going through their heads is everyone gets up in a campaign, and they care passionately about it, and they can't make the decision to drop out between when the votes are counted and when she speaks. So they do this, and then, this is exactly what happened with DeSantis, then, over the course of time, the checks stop coming in, start having to lay staff off, your endorsers start calling and saying, you know what?

How many does she have?

Sununu. He's just like stuck to her.

Sununu and Ralph. She's got Ralph, Norman.

Yeah, not even. I guess that's right. They start calling and saying, you know, I'm kind of thinking, or the billionaires who are funding this thing say, it's time to get on board with Trump, and then you drop out. Like this is the process they all go through.

Yeah, I think that would help explain why she spoke so early. It's like, you know what? Let's just go out there, get it over with, give the speech we need to give for tonight, get to tomorrow, do some thinking, spend time with your family, and then really decide.

I also think they must have seen the numbers and said, your lead is never, Trump's lead is never going to get smaller than it is right now. Get out there before there's a one in front of that number.

That's right.

Trump noticed that, too.

He's furious. We'll get to it.

The speech hit different when she was down seven, I suppose, now she's down 14, or whatever it is at this moment.

I think she's going to stay in all the way to South Carolina. I'm pulling for her.

Look, I hope it happens.

It's a total wish cast.

What we want and what we think will happen are unfortunately different.

We all light a candle to Saint Isidore of content, but look, I want her to stay in, too. I think, Dan, look, obviously you're making the right, that's the most sensible, obvious path, but hey, we've got to put something before the Helix mattress ad, and I feel like-.

I just also think that people on campaigns and people when you're in it, you don't make sensible decisions. I don't. I just don't.

Well, every campaign manager has to go. tell their boss to drop out is saying, lay me off. That's not a message. people deliver that easily. And all these other people who've been in the trench with us for a year now, we're all going to become unemployed and possibly unemployable.

If you are someone who is spending a ton of money, if you would put money behind Nikki Haley, you are a person who has deluded yourself into believing that at some point, the Republican Party is going to come to its senses. That is core to your being, that you believe that something is going to shift, the fever is going to break. A year ago, it wasn't true. What's to say? these people won't keep believing that for another three or four months?

She's also, she's bored. She likes running for president. She's, you know, she's getting some attention.

She likes it now in New Hampshire, where 48% of the voters are independent Democrats.

I don't know where she's going to be able to sign up if she can't fill an event in South Carolina.

I mean, just one proof why. I mean, one of her big donors was the CEO of Home Depot, Ken Langone, I think is his name. He said that his financial support for Haley would be contingent on New Hampshire results. Yeah. So you're going to have guys like that deciding whether they're going to light 10 million more on fire and give it to a super PAC or not, and I think that's going to make the decision for her.

Yeah. I believe he said at some point you stop throwing money down a rat hole, which begs the question why you ever start throwing money down a rat hole.

Yeah. And what's a rat hole?

Yeah. And these guys also know that the longer they wait, the longer they support Nikki Haley, the more expensive it's going to be to get back in Trump's good graces. Yeah. Yeah.

I will say it's her home state. She can run a pretty lean campaign in South Carolina. She doesn't have to go anywhere.

Well, you know, she makes a point in that-.

She's down 50.

In her victory speech, she's given two victory speeches and she hasn't won a thing. That's amazing.

This is what I'm saying. I love it. I love it. We're acting like this is on the level and she's going to be like, oh, look at my data.

Hey, John, I'm on your side of this fucking table. But in her speech, she makes this point. like, you know, I'm from... She speaks... She's really...

Sure, they can.

Well, but also she's like, they know me in South Carolina. South Carolina is my home state. Where you're polling, it's 6%. You know, the argument goes both ways. If they know you, they've already decided on you, right?

She's going to wake up tomorrow and figure out.

And you know what? And she can do it. And Nikki, I believe you can do it.

So Trump was none too happy about Haley's decision to stay in the race. Gone was the low energy, somewhat gracious Trump we saw during his Iowa victory speech. Thank God. Instead, we got our guy back.

I can go up and I can say to everybody, oh, thank you for the victory. It's wonderful. Or I can go up and say, who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and like, claimed a victory? She did very poorly, actually. We won in 2016..

By more.

Ron beat her also. You know, Ron came in second and he left. She came in third and she's still hanging around. And just a little note to Nikki. She's not going to win.

You just can't do that.

And when I watched her in a fancy dress, that probably wasn't so fancy come up, I said, what's she doing?

We won.

Just classic. Classic Trump.

Before we get to all of it, can we just talk about one piece of it, which is, did he forget that Ron DeSantis endorsed him one second? He just got mad and kept going. What's going on there? He was supposed to be nice to Ron. Ron's emotionally on that stage with him now.

There are some legislators in Florida who are trying to pass a bill to give Donald Trump $5 million in taxpayer money to pay for his legal bills. And Ron DeSantis declared on Twitter that he would veto that bill.

And how was that?

He also gave his in his first interview, I think, with Steve Deist. He said that Trump's got a real problem with swing voters and he's going to have to fix it. Like he kind of went after Trump today in his interview.

They don't like each other.

Yeah, I think it's. I don't know if he forgot. I think he fucking hates Ron DeSantis. He was in no respect for Ron DeSantis. He was in his flow.

Ron DeSantis offers him. nothing. Like Tim Scott could be a valuable asset in his campaign. Right. Nikki Haley would actually.

Trump's big Trump's big victory speech.

He was pissed. I mean, that came through loud and clear. Yeah, he suggested Haley be investigated. He also suggested that Governor Sununu is on drugs.

Yeah, he did. You guys got to be. he's got to be on something.

This guy has got to be on something. There was the mocking of the dress, which was just petty, dickish stuff. Then he said to Tim Scott, you must really hate her about Nikki Haley, because Tim Scott endorsed him. So, yeah, it was a old school raging Trump.

He also, yeah, he let all of his new supplicants give a give a quick little speech. Vivek did a minute. Tight, tight.

Sixty seconds.

Yeah. Vivek did a tight 60.. And then Tim Scott was clearly not prepared that he was going to be asked to say something. And he got up there and sort of mumbled through. And then, when Trump said, you must really hate her.

The I just so that's your, that's your guy.

That's love. It's got you know what? What do you think?

Well, here's what I think. Here's what I think. Here's what I think. Do you want to do? you want to live in a world where you don't open up your heart to somebody?

But you know what? I was like and I know MSNBC and CNN. after we complained about this. They did take Trump's speech tonight. Although then they cut away and they're like, see, this is the problem with taking Trump's speech, because he lies.

I also, I, just I also I, I was thinking about this, too, because, you know, look, we've gone through so many fucking endless conversations about platforming. And, you know, you can't show Trump because it spreads misinformation. But if you don't show Trump, people forget how threatening is. And I do think like what I was taking away from because I heard you guys talking about it. I agree.

I think we might be in a different place politically if Trump had not been essentially exiled from public view on January 7th, 2021.

I think, I just think that he has been rage, truthing and also doing these rallies the whole time. But the rallies aren't being covered and no one sees the truth, really.

And as viewership of cable declines, we're an increasing share of the audience. So we want to see it. So just give it. give the people what they want.

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I thought it was interesting that Trump did best among the 18 to 29-year-old cohort. Did he really? He got 61% versus 52%, or 53% of the older voters. That was interesting and I think does say something about his super fans and the people who like him.

And also, it says something about the self-selecting sample of young Republican voters too, that they're the more radical, the TPUSA types.

Also, the most important issues were the economy, 36%, immigration, 31%. Trump mopped up with immigration voters. 77% of that cohort went for him. No surprise there, but it does tell you what issues are really driving this primary. and then the general election for Republicans.

I think you can sum up how Trump won by these numbers is Haley won moderates by 50 points and Trump won conservatives by 42 points, but conservatives made up two-thirds of the electorate and moderates one-third.

Do you think that portends anything for the general election? I mean, I thought, if you're going to look for numbers that might say that Trump is a weaker candidate, they again asked in the exits, is Trump fit to be president if he's convicted? 52% said yes. 44% said no. Your feelings if Trump wins the nomination?

There are many, many flaws in our presidential nomination process. One may be the fact that Trump is going to receive about 200,000 votes and basically be the nominee by tomorrow in a country with 80 million Republicans.

That's something more about the Republican primary.

But one thing where the New Hampshire primary is useful for at least projecting forward for the general election is you do get a pretty significant sample of prototypical swing voters participating in this, right? It is suburban, college-educated, moderate, the largest group of voters in the state by far are undeclared voters. And those are the exact voters that Trump lost ground with from 2016 to 2020.. Those voters are overrepresented in some of the states he lost, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona. And if he is going to win, and we talk all the time about all the things Biden has to do, Trump has to do better with college-educated, suburban voters.

And we don't know if any of these Haley voters, we don't know how many of them are going to, if Trump's the nominee, vote for Trump or vote for Biden or not vote for either of them. But certainly, it doesn't show a lot of strength.

Yeah. I feel like there's two things that I took from this. One is actually just how strong and dangerous a general election candidate Nikki Haley would be. That's one. That's one.

It's also notable that they asked in the exits, would you favor or oppose a federal law banning most or all abortions nationwide? And only 27% of voters favor banning most or all abortions nationwide.

One concerning point in that number is that Trump only lost the people who opposed a nationwide ban by 10%.

55, 44.

Yep. But here's one other thing on the electability number. Yes, I do think it gets under Trump's skin because down deep in his very dark soul, he knows he lost the 2020 election, and that haunts him. But only 15% of voters in the exit poll listed defeating Joe Biden as the quality they cared most about in a candidate. Yeah.

Tells everything about why he's walking away with it.

Yeah, but there is this sort of like, you know, voters aren't good at telling you how they're going to feel about something in the future. And that could be a double edged sword. But we are in this strange scenario where a bunch of Republicans voted for Donald Trump today and also told a pollster that if he's convicted of a crime, he's unfit and they won't vote for him again. And he is on track, you know, to our minds, to be convicted, hopefully before the election, but we don't know. And so it's like, we don't know.

We know they think he wouldn't be fit, but we don't know if they wouldn't vote for him. Because they didn't ask, would you vote for him?

Which they did ask in CNN's poll, right?

No, they asked in the Des Moines Register poll.

I didn't look at it in the New Hampshire poll. And I just got a text from Reid that said, who we work with, who said, organic polar coaster pitch, which I think means right now. I'm supposed to mention that we're going to dig deeper into these exit poll numbers in the episode of Polar Coaster that's coming out in two days.

Wow, seamless. That's how the magic happens. Look at that.

It just felt like it was right there, part of the conversation.

All right, well, let's talk about the Democratic primary in New Hampshire. There was one. And Joe Biden won it despite not appearing on the ballot. Again, he did not appear on the ballot. since Biden and the DNC decided that South Carolina will be the Democrats' first primary.

The mercury's in retrograde.

I kind of think that Biden, look, they were hoping to avoid embarrassment, but I think they also demonstrated some enthusiasm. I don't think it's easy to organize a write-in campaign. And, like, if you're a Democratic primary voter and you know there's not much of a primary to get up, walk out of your house, go to the polls, write in Joe Biden's name, that tells you something.

Yeah, I think it definitely demonstrates some enthusiasm. But I think it demonstrates even more is organization. And for all of the Democratic complaining and worrying and everything about the state of the Biden campaign, whether Biden can win. And one thing that the Biden campaign has been very, very good at from the very beginning, right, going back to the primary when they overperformed in the Nevada caucuses, is organization. And so this is something that I think that they would be very good at helping engineer is something like this.

Dean Phillips and Dean Phillips-affiliated Super PAC spent $5 million in New Hampshire for his 20 percent. Here's what he said tonight about his loss. What I'm saying is this. I don't know what my name recognition is. It was zero just 10 weeks ago.

What a waste of time.

He got in because of polls. He's going to get out because of polls. He's going to stay in because of polls. Whatever the polls say, that's what Dean Phillips is doing with his life.

I'm going to suggest that perhaps Dean Phillips' strategy to campaign in a state, relentlessly, to move to a state where the president.

Where he did go to summer camp.

He did go to summer camp. That's where he discovered his passion for America and public service, at summer camp, as one does. To go to base the entirety of his campaign and this $10 million, or whatever he's spending in a state with no delegates, was not the right choice.

I will also say, too, we have worried a lot about Joe Biden as the nominee. What if another Democrat challenges him in New Hampshire and Joe Biden's not even on the ballot? and the Democratic voters in New Hampshire went out and said, no, I don't want Dean Phillips. I want Joe Biden. They had the alternative.

I don't know. It's like, I do think like, oh, you know, we look back on this moment. If, a year from now and Donald Trump has won, we look back on this moment, I want to make sure that, like, you know, were we too cavalier about this specific challenger? And I actually think the answer is no. Like, there are legitimate and very real concerns about Joe Biden's ability to get reelected, and the issues that made Dean Phillips so anxious about the polls to get in are not invalid.

He also did a terrible job. Like, if you really had these concerns, you had to get in a year earlier. You had to actually run hard. You had to know when deadlines, like getting on the ballots in various states occurred. Instead, he waited too long.

You're hurting.

It's not helping.

And perhaps you should not decide to run for president because you get a DM on Twitter from Steve Schmidt, which is how this happened.

Yeah. Good advice, Dan.

In the United States Congress, extremists are trying to pass a national abortion ban to outlaw abortion in every single state.

But what they need to know is that if Congress passes a national abortion ban, President Joe Biden will veto it. Donald Trump is betting. we won't, you won't vote on this issue. But guess what? He's betting.

I think they certainly got more. You never get the attention you're hoping for. They certainly got more attention than any other.

Just love it.

It's a daily grind.

It got more attention than your typical White House event.

Yeah. So this is it. This is going to be the longest general election in history.

What a remarkable stat.

There is an ongoing competitive Republican primary. I don't know what we're doing. Three pods a week.

I know it was timed because of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, but I do think it was telling that as we kick off the general election, they started with them. I mean, he did the January 6th speech on the anniversary of that, and then he just did a series of events and ads around abortion. You know, I think that seems to be what they're going to, that's going to be the message, the main message for the campaign, and I'm guessing there'll be an economic component as well soon.

Yeah, I think jobs, freedom, and democracy. I mean, it seems like the three things.

Yeah. Jobs, freedom, and democracy.

I mean, that's the ultimate question here, right? They've called it jobs, and democracy is their strategy, and the question is how much do they have to narrow the gap on the economy to have that strategy work? And we don't have the answer to that, and I think it is the source of probably the biggest debate within the Democratic Party right now. The question is whether the larger general election electorate is going to place a higher premium on economic performance and economic approval than the midterm electorate who clearly voted on abortion, freedom, democracy, and those issues, and that. we don't have the answer to that.

And how persuadable those voters are.

Even though there is technically still a Republican primary going on, technically, the Biden campaign did put out a statement tonight basically saying that the general is here, we know Donald Trump is going to.

I think they're constantly striking a balance, right? I mean, they're doing official events in swing states. I imagine they'll continue to do a lot of those because it saves you money. But I don't know. Dan, are you thinking of doing a big-ass rally in Michigan soon, or something to really kick this thing off?

I don't know what they're going to do. I imagine it's going to be a relatively slow but steady ramp up. And just there's so much other stuff going on in the world that he has to attend to.

And again, I don't think the Biden campaign has to choose between, do we go out there and have a positive message from Joe Biden and accomplishments and what he's going to do? Or do we just go out there and hit Donald Trump every day? I think they could do a contrast message, right? And so every time they go out there, here's something Joe Biden did. Here's what he wants to do if he's going to get a second term.

I think it probably begins after the State of the Union.

That's my guess too.

Ideally, that's going to be his biggest audience. That, the convention, and then the debates. And hopefully, I think, in the State of the Union, they'll lay out an economic agenda for the second term that they'll be able to then use on the campaign trail. So that'll be, hopefully, the third leg of the Democracy. Dobbs stool, if you will.

Go get him, Nicky.

Go get him, Nicky.

Tim, you broke my heart.

You got this, Nicky.

All right. And I don't know that I can love again. That may be it. I'm out.

Congrats on the engagement.

I don't know why that came from me.

God, Trump can't say that without laughing. He just can't help himself. He just laughs.

Can we just talk about the fucking Tim Scott engagement? Just the idea that nothing says love to me more than proposing to your girlfriend on Friday and then endorsing Donald Trump and going to a rally over the weekend.

Auditioning for a DP. And then telling him you love him.

And then telling him you love him. I was, I think, his heart is big enough for two. And the other thing, too, is it's like, I don't know Tim Scott's life. None of us does. Right?

Tell me my favorite thing about that picture of Tim Scott getting engaged. The photo caption says this is, you know, Tim Scott getting engaged with a photo courtesy of Tim Scott. Courtesy of Tim Scott.

He's like, I really hate that this news broke, but here you go. Here's a pic.

Yeah, he also, like, did this interview. He was like, I'm such an introvert. He's like, are you such an introvert? publicizing your engagement?

You just ran for president.

You just ran for president. What kind of, you're, not really, you're fucking up being an introvert, Tim Scott.

All right, we're out. Fucking asshole. Pod over. Bye, everyone. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our Friends of the Pod subscription community at crooked.com slash friends.