Admiring butter sculpture as well,
buttering up some voters.
That's tradition at the Iowa State Fair.
Presidential candidate's favorite place
to try to win over the Hawkeye State
this year is no different.
Most of the GOP
hopefuls hit the stage
to sell their platforms and prove
just how much they love Iowa.
Everything starts in Iowa.
We all know that, don't we?
Y'all have chicken in a waffle
on a stick. Whew.
I got to try that one.
And he stops and he says,
Daddy, is this heaven?
I said, No, son, it's Iowa.
Frontrunner President Trump
skipped out on those stump speeches,
but that did not stop him
from becoming the famed
fair's main attraction.
He was swarmed with cheering crowds
and some questions
about his mounting legal troubles
President Trump.
Did you intend to overturn the 2020 election?
You know, the answer
is we comply with the protective order
from the judge.
No one else
All right, let's discuss.
Molly Ball,
you were just back
from the Iowa State Fair.
I think you brought the story
and my personal view of it.
I was really sad to miss that this year.
Actually, I've been to God knows
how many of them at this point,
but it's since her regards.
Thank you. I really appreciate it.
The visuals that we have
from the ground there
and I know you
you talked to Ron DeSantis last night
and I would like to hear about that.
But I kind of want to give people a sense
this is a view
from the Ferris wheel
of the crowd surrounding Donald Trump,
that he took this
image so
that for people who are uninitiated,
I mean, the state fair.
Yes.
Is crowded,
but it's like any fair,
there's plenty of room to walk typically.
Like you wouldn't
really have too much trouble
getting close to the candidate Trump.
That's not the case.
And look, just absolutely look at that.
Crowd.
And I think
we also have some pictures
we can show of a
slightly more manageable crowd
that was present at the quote
unquote fireside chat with Ron DeSantis.
Is that what we're looking at right now,
or is this still Trump?
Okay, so this is
this is the crowd
that was there for Ron DeSantis.
Not bad.
Not bad,
but not quite the swarm that you saw for
for Trump.
Was that
how you experienced it on the ground?
And what does that say
about the state of the race?
Yeah, I mean,
clearly, Trump
is just a magnet for attention.
Now, I will say he was appearing
in a rather
small sort of restaurant
on the grounds of the fair, of the fair.
And so there wasn't room
for a lot of people inside.
And so for people to be in his vicinity,
they had to sort of crowd around outside.
And I counted,
as you could see in those photos,
there were 30 30 deep
at one point
on all sides of that venue,
just straining to catch a glimpse
or hear
a little snippet of what he was saying.
He spoke very briefly
and roamed around very briefly
and then was back off on his plane.
But it really symbolizes
the way in which Donald Trump
is the center of attention
in the primary
and the way that his sort of quasi
incumbent status
gives him a platform
that none of the other candidates have.
They are just not going to be able
to compete with that level of attention
You know,
as I remember
trying to teach my three year
old at one point,
attention can be good or bad.
Not all attention is put attention.
Right.
A lesson that seemingly Donald Trump
never learned in his childhood. But
but but that being
said, that is
I think the biggest problem
for all these candidates
is you say Trump.
Trump just has that ability
to draw a crowd
although in some ways, you know,
all press is good press.
The old adage
also says that the toddler version of
good intentions is that anything
anything goes.
I mean, one of the challenges
as you were kind of outlining
that is also that these
these people
that are running against Trump
are sort of constrained
in their ability
to criticize him
because the base is so fervent.
I mean, the trolling from the Trump
campaign in Iowa.
Do we have the airplane
that flew with the bee? Likable, Ron?
There's a lot of jokes in there.
It's a reference to his
you know, his own notes to himself.
But also, Ron,
that's the same font
as Jeb exclamation point from 2016
who was the first
major candidate to Trump
a crushed on his way to the White House.
This isn't
this kind of thing
this is a Trump campaign
going after his top rival Ron DeSantis.
Ron DeSantis can't do anything like this.
Well that's what they
view obviously as his biggest fault
is that those trying to make him seem
not that personable awkward
but you see the Trump
people bring that up repeatedly
But you're right, Casey in that Trump
is imagining
any other Republican in the field
had been indicted.
What Trump would say about that.
I mean, when
others have gotten
in trouble in the past, he slash Jeb.
I mean, he's attacked
people for far less.
And, you know, one of them
a lot of them are defending Trump.
I mean, you have Chris Christie out there
who who's been
pretty critical of Trump pretty regularly
and pretty slashing terms.
Asa Hutchinson.
But I don't think
he has a lot of relevance right now
in the Republican primary field.
A lot of these guys,
even Mike Pence at times,
has been critical of Trump,
but has defended him at times as well.
He sort of has straddled the line.
A lot of these others
want to keep Trump's voters
as slighting them
potentially maybe as a second choice.
I'm not exactly
sure what the strategy is,
but they don't want to alienate
these people,
so they refuse to criticize him.
So you sort of
have him blanketing the airwaves
and criticizing everyone else.
And he criticizes dissenters
sometimes ten or 15 times a day
with all sorts of monikers,
nicknames, policy, which is everything.
He goes after Mike Pence,
he goes after everyone
and the response back is fairly muted.
And I don't understand
and maybe others are smarter than me.
And we'll figure this out
how you will beat someone
if you're unwilling to take them on.
But I guess it's the point.
You can't beat someone with nothing,
something with with nothing.
And I want to play
Sara has been talking
to Republican voters
about Ron DeSantis
and that banner really underscores
one of the central problems
that we are hearing from
some of these voters.
Take a look at what they had to say.
When DeSantis said he was running.
I was pretty happy about that.
But he's getting killed in the polls.
He's kind of action weird.
Just seems like he lost all
his confidence that he used to have
when he was a governor.
Something weird is going on.
His whole personality just change.
He's not as mouthy as he used to be.
There might be
a couple of things about his personality
that seem a little wooden,
weird, wooden.
What else have you learned?
I got to tell you,
he has been getting
killed in the focus groups
and not even it's
not even that kind of criticism.
We always ask people,
who do you want to see
be the 20, 24 nominee?
And six months ago, Ron DeSantis,
he would always come up.
He was the first one.
If it wasn't Trump, it was him
people don't even mention him right now.
We've had two groups in a row
where nobody's even said his name.
They've said to him, Scott,
they've said Drake Ramaswamy,
and he's just not even getting mentioned.
There was one guy who liked him
and he said, You know, he's fine,
he's fine.
That is brutal ringing endorsement.
This is so interesting, too,
because is there another candidate
in the GOP right now
who has tried to compete
with Trump
in almost the Trump
lane as much as DeSantis?
And though
and we're hearing comments like that
and we're seeing his campaign go
this way,
he's almost tried
throughout this campaign to out
Trump, Trump to compete
with them on the right.
And you're still seeing voters
disappointed
with his performance as well.
And this is all, of course,
heading into the first debate.
We're going to learn this week
whether or not Donald Trump
is going to participate.
But I just
want to remind everybody what it was like
last time when Donald Trump was on stage
with some of these other candidates
and how we saw this phenomenon
that we've just been talking about
play out, watch
I think you're on the wrong side of this
if you're still arguing
for a single player.
I'm not.
I'm not I don't think you're hurting me.
You're having a hard time tonight.
Give me one second.
No, I didn't want just
you could not take more energy tonight.
I like that.
I really don't.
Donald, relax.
I'm relaxed
about it a little.
Marco is there.
Oh, God, I'm having PTSD from 2016.
But here's the problem.
They're all doing that again, right?
Like Ron DeSantis,
and these other candidates are building
the permission structure
for voters
to not care
about Donald Trump's indictment
because they rush to his defense.
And as a result,
as you were saying earlier,
they become these big players
in the central drama around Donald Trump.
And he's just like,
at the center of the stage,
and there's no oxygen for anybody else.
And this is how Trump is
walking to this nomination.