Speaker 1: There is an argument being made by opinion writer Keith Naughton in The Hill
that Donald Trump may not make it to the primaries.
Forget about Trump might not win the Republican primary.
Naughton is arguing that Trump may not even make it to the primaries.
Let's explore whether this might be possible.
One of the things that not asks is whether Trump could, quote, flame out and not even
make it to the Iowa caucuses.
And not in his article.
And I will link to it, I encourage you to read it lists a number of sort of strategic
and polling and legal issues that could affect Donald Trump to start with, not an argues.
You know, Trump's polling is kind of soft when you think about the fact that he's a
former president and that he's declared and no one else has, and that that polling support
for Trump is already getting worse since November 8th.
Trump isn't even scoring 50% against people that aren't running.
So the first question is check the facts.
Is that true?
And the answer is, it is absolutely true.
If you look at recent polling in Trump versus DeSantis, there is a newish Harris poll which
does have Trump well ahead of DeSantis.
But remember that DeSantis hasn't even announced that he's running and Trump still can't get
to 50% in a Republican primary.
This is not a national poll here.
This is the Republican primary poll.
Former president only guy who's announced not polling 50%.
That is a concern.
There is a YouGov poll from a few days prior.
This is from last week.
That one straight up has Trump losing.
Trump is losing to DeSantis who is not even running at this point in time.
So in thinking through Keith Norton's argument so far, he's correct.
Donald Trump is losing a bunch of polls and even in the polls that he's winning, he's
failing to get 50% in a primary against people who aren't even running.
That is not good for a former president.
Now, the counter to the poll story.
You all know the counter to the poll story, which was in 2015 into 2016.
During the last contested Republican primary, people were saying the same thing.
This guy can't win.
He doesn't have the polling support.
It's going to be Jeb or it's going to be Ted Cruz or it's going to be somebody else.
You know, Marco Rubio, I don't know who have Ron Paul, Rand Paul and everybody who said
that was wrong.
The difference is now.
It's a little bit weirder that Trump has such soft polling, even after announcing, despite
the fact that he's all polling against people who aren't even running because he spent four
years as president and he is, in a sense, the leader of the Republican Party, or at
least has been for a period of time.
So I think that is a concern.
The next problem that Keith Naughton points out in his article is that Trump has nothing
new to offer.
Now, the question is whether that's a problem.
It's absolutely true.
If you listen to Trump's announcement speech, it was verbatim the same speech he's been
giving for a year or even longer.
Whether it's a problem that Trump has nothing new to say remains to be seen.
Do people want something new?
And I believe the answer there is it depends who you're talking about.
Trump's hard and fast followers who buy the gear, go to the rallies, repost the memes,
those types of people.
I don't think they want anything new.
They want the exact same speech about, you know, teaching transgender and we're going
to ban men and all this different stuff.
But there is a growing faction of the Republican Party.
Some of them have been interviewed on Fox News recently who want something new and different.
The difficulty for Trump is he can't win just with his base.
That base lost him 2020 and some of them are becoming demoralized.
So you've got to find some new people and the same messaging is unlikely to capture
it.
I think he's absolutely correct there not.
And also talks about the unpredictable nature of Trump's legal troubles and how those may
impact what happens in this campaign.
I think that that is true.
It's a real consideration.
We just don't know the full scope of what will happen, which makes it difficult to say
here's how it will affect Trump's race.
Lastly.
How does not in get to.
Trump may quit before the primaries.
Not an argument is that for Trump quitting and saying I don't need this crap, it's my
choice.
I'm going back to be a rich guy or whatever.
It's better than Trump losing a primary.
And that's why.
Keith Naughton, in his piece for The Hill, argues this is not going to go well for Trump.
The polling will be so bad that even Trump will be worried because remember, if the polling
is a little bad, Trump will come up with, Oh, that's push polling, and they're trying
to get people to stay home.
I don't believe the polling the polling may be so bad that Trump will believe I've got
to get out rather than be humiliated by not even as the former president losing a primary
is very embarrassing.
There is one more interesting point here.
Can we imagine Trump winning a New Hampshire primary right now, a Republican New Hampshire
primary?
The last poll from was just one of the early primaries.
The last poll from New Hampshire was from UNHRC in June, June.
And it had two Santas up by two in New Hampshire.
Trump hadn't announced and DeSantis hadn't announced.
Trump's problems have grown since June, and Desantis's favor has increased among Republicans
since June.
If it's so difficult to imagine Trump winning a New Hampshire Republican primary, Keith
Norton's argument starts to make a lot more sense.
What do you think?
Let me know in the comments on YouTube and make
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