The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, Welcome, welcome. It’s Ed Martin here. On the Pro America Report well. What an interesting time up in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are completed. Donald Trump romped over 50% of the caucus goers voted for Donald Trump. Vivek Ramaswamy underperformed and had dropped out actually and said he’s endorsing Donald Trump. And both Nikki Haley and and Ron DeSantis, who got 20% each about are saying they’re in it for the long haul. We’ll see about that. But we’ll get to that in a minute. What you need to know and all that.
Welcome. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report and.
It’s a very interesting week right after the caucus, as Donald Trump had to go off to New York. He’s in court again, a different case, this one by that Jean Carroll lady suing him for some alleged impropriety 30 years ago. That is way past the statute of limitations. But she brought, she brought a civil suit in New York courts. Courts that are antithetical and hostile to Donald Trump, and so by bringing the cases there, she has a chance to. Make his life miserable. What I think this is the case that’s funded by Reed Hoffman, the multi gazillionaire LinkedIn founder who is also a leftist, left-leaning political supporter, including, by the way, Nikki Haley gave her a bunch of money to her super PAC, her regular campaign. So Donald Trump off to court, you know, lawfare.
Continuing on and on and on, we’ve got an interview with Mike Davis. I just recorded it because he’s in between travels. I’m not sure if we’ll use it on this show or maybe tomorrow, but we’ll get to that and a lot of other stuff going on. But
So let’s talk about Iowa and the results. You know, I am still, here’s the number one take away. What you need to know is Iowa and the result by Trump is an indication of a big league campaign.
Now what do I mean by that? Well, it’s always easy to be the the incumbent and whether you like it or not, it’s in some ways Donald Trump is a sort of non incumbent incumbent, right? He’s got 100% name ID. He people have already voted for him in these caucuses, et cetera, et cetera.
But to get from where he was eight years ago. There wasn’t really a caucus in 2020, 8 years ago in in 2016, Donald Trump didn’t win the caucuses, and so he’s gone from whatever number he got in the in the low 20s, maybe teens up to 51-52%. It’s um.
It means he’s got a real campaign, a systematic campaign, because. He wasn’t even in Iowa that much compared to Vivek or even Ron DeSantis. And yet the details coming out of Iowa, of how well run the campaign was. I I saw the text of the template that caucus captains –
So the caucus captains for each of the campaigns gets up at a caucus. Let’s say you go to a caucus that’s in the Firehouse and in Iowa you go to the Firehouse. At 7:00 the caucus starts and someone for Trump gets up and walks to the center of the room and says I’m for Trump. Here’s why. And then he finishes. I don’t know if it’s five or 10 minutes, and then he finishes it when that person. This is somebody for DeSantis has a caucus captain. He comes out and says I’m forward DeSantis and then Nikki Haley has a caucus captain and she comes out and says, Blah blah blah, Vivek. And in this case, I think there were four. There might have been a couple of places been a fifth, as Asa Hutchinson still is in the race or whatever. So that’s the system.
Donald Trump’s caucus Captains had a template speech that hit all the right button. And was prepared in advance and circulated to the Member, to the caucus captains across the country, across the state of Iowa. And he won 98 out of 99 counties. Donald Trump did a resounding victory. Nobody’s ever done that. Now it’s a little deceptive because every time you have an incumbent, he wins, you know, 100%. You know whether Bill Clinton, second term, Obama’s second term? You know Donald Trump’s second term is second run. This being his third, it’s kind of a hybrid, but still. My point is the take away from Iowa caucus is the Trump campaign. If you could criticize the Trump campaign in 2020, you could do it by saying they didn’t seem to be broadly serious, running a broad and deep campaign. They seem to be just a personality driven campaign. Which kind of worked in 2016 but didn’t work in 2020. You could also blame that on COVID, by the way, COVID made it impossible for the campaign to really run the way it could have. And therefore, you know when when you were done, you watched the irregularities in the in the election cycle, you know, mail in ballots and dropboxes and all. But be that as it may, when you see somebody get 51-52% in Iowa caucus in the Iowa caucuses like Trump did. This is a seriously organized campaign. It’s not just the money. Although he’s got lots of money, it’s also knowing what to do with the money. Knowing how to build out the right guys and gals, the right people. And it’s a very successful opening salvo in the 2024 campaign.
That’s one of the things about this cycle that’s shaping up in Trump’s favor because he has had to run this primary. And even though he’s way ahead, he still had to go through it. It gives him attention. It gets him better. It gets his team better. I don’t think Iowa, Iowa was up for grabs in 2024. I think it’s a Republican state, especially in presidential years. You know the governor, the governor, Branstad, was there for years. And now Governor Kim Reynolds, I mean it, it’s a pretty it’s a pretty solidly Red State. So I don’t think it.
But if there was ever any doubt, I was Trump country.
And so. You start to see a campaign. That is skilled and now in practice. It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. You get better by doing something over and over again.
Now. Another other take away from Iowa is Vivek Ramaswamy has impeccable impeccable timing. He has impeccable judgment and timing. He lost. He could have complained about how he lost. He could have railed against the fact that he was never included in the list of candidates and all these cheap shots that they did do against him. And he came in fourth, 7 or 8%, and instead of being a complainer and having his his last image as being a guy giving a speech where he says this is a broken system and all that, he’s got a huge smile. He’s thanking everybody. He says, you know what? I’m, I’m not going to be the guy, but I know who is going to be. It’s going to be Trump and I’m totally for him. Smiling, laughing, joyful. Smart. There’s nobody who came Out of this with a higher Shift, a bigger shift from zero to whatever you want to call it 75 miles an hour. Unbelievable. He was a zero. He was nothing. And he didn’t succeed in any conventional measurement in terms of caucus goers or anything. But he succeeded in becoming a a leader, in becoming a fu- and his timing and his judgment are impeccable. How he did that? Nikki Haley was up there saying this is a two man race. You know, it’s me and Trump and everybody and DeSantis’s team is like, what you came in third Nikki. Only barely third. By 1/2 a point or a point. But it’s just so insulting. And So what you have is Nikki Haley is gaining hate from the DeSantis people from others. And Vivek Ramaswamy is just saying, hey, I know what time it is. I know where I am. I’m moving. I’m moving this way and I’m done.
I think actually the guy who benefited other than Vivek, I think DeSantis has the most interesting. You, you. You. You have to have an argument now that Trump is the nominee, unless something happens, you know Trump is the nominee, unless something you know, dramatic goes down, Trump gets sick, Trump gets assassinated, whatever it is. But the fact is. The the fact is. That DeSantis is is treading Water more than I thought he’d be. I actually thought he would Do worse. I thought he would do worse and the pressure would be to quit. But I don’t know how Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis continue for, you know, they’re gonna have to spend millions of dollars. They’re gonna have to up their spending of millions and millions of dollars, and they can see that They’re going broke. And you can see that you’re going to run out of money.
So now it’s a strategy of how do you end well.
See, Vivek Ramaswamy ended well. He figured out how to end in a way that gives him more upside than down. And that’s the that’s the thing that’s is very difficult to see how DeSantis and and Nikki Haley do, how do you finish Well, how do you finish where you’re not really making enemies. It’s going to be up for grabs.
Our last thing on Iowa, I I don’t know how you know you if you watch the television shows I only want jumped in and out of them. CNN, MSNBC. They were on a rampage because they basically said Iowa shouldn’t be allowed to pick. Iowa’s too conservative. Iowa’s too evangelical. Iowa’s too white. All this stuff, they shouldn’t be I. There’s gonna be a lot of Pressure to try to push Iowa out as the first in the country that these caucuses and the Democrats have already done that.
And some of the Republicans will start to do that based on the fact that Trump. Carried the day instead of the people with the muscle and the money. See the usual play in Iowa is if you’ve got the money and the establishment muscle, you can win- Romney. McCain. Of course, Ted Cruz won, but you Can do well enough that you hold your own and they’re getting sick of it. The establishment is saying, you know what? We’re sick of having to compete in a place where we don’t. We don’t, really. Believe in these values of these people. And I think there’s gonna be a lot of pressure. I will not be surprised. Trump will defend Iowa. Especially if he’s president. But I would not be surprised if Iowa doesn’t have a tough time holding on to its spot as first in the nation. So there you have it. There’s a little wrap up on Iowa. That’s what you need to know. Thank you.
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All right, we’ll take a break and be right back. Ed Martin here. On the Pro America Report, talk to you in a moment.
