okay, that is not a crazy argument. we don't want political prosecution of politicians for simply doing their jobs. on the other hand, the argument that he said, well, you can't prosecute a president, when the congress of the united states says you can. excuse me, that is the most political spot in the universe right there. >> exactly, right. >> i mean, come on. it made no sense on many levels. >> that is a really excellent point. >> thank you for the backing, -- backdrop, it. help >> that, as well. george conway who was in that room himself, has been around the d.c. circuit. thank you for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >> that is all in on this one tonight. i will be back later, if you did not get enough of me, i will join rachel maddow and our all-star team to break down the sleigh ahead of mondays iowa special caucus. alex wagner tonight starts right now, good evening. >> and i will be right there

with you, my friend. an hour that is yet to be disclosed. i can't wait to see you again. i never have enough. >> in a little bit, see you. >> thank you to you at home for joining me this evening. the republican primary field has won thus canada as of this evening. former new jersey governor chris christie has officially dropped out of the race. >> it's clear to me tonight that there is not the path for me to one denomination. which is why, i am suspending my campaign tonight for president of the united states. i know, and i can see it from the faces here, that i and people by doing this. people who believe in our message and what we have been doing. i also know though, it's the right thing for me to do, because i want to promise you this, i am going to make sure that in no way do i enable

donald trump to ever be president of the united states again, and that is more important than my own personal ambition. >> christy made a number of big statements about the state of the republican party, but the one that this announcement will probably best be remembered for has been made an effort in e on a hot mic. talking to an unidentified speaker about the prospects of the other candidates in this race, christy shared his thoughts on former governor nikki haley. >> she spent 68 million so far, just on tv. she spent 68 million so far, 59 million by the sent this, and we spent 12. i mean, who's punching about their way, and who's getting return on their investment, you know? and she's gonna get smoke, and you and i both know, she's not up to this. >> she's gonna get spoke, she's not up to this. i am not sure about that last part, but chris christie may be right about nikki haley's long term prospects in the race. right now, the place where

christie's exit as the biggest chance of making an impact is new hampshire. recent polling shows that governor elliott trails donald trump by seven points in that state. and chris christie is pulling at all points in new hampshire, in that simple. could chris christie departure mean that nikki haley might eke out a win over trump in new hampshire or get very, very close to a win? maybe. kid nikki ailey turned that momentum into a win in his own state of south carolina, and then she is off to the races? unlikely. as politico's jonathan martin points out after spending time with haley on the trail, the gop traditional professional class base is eager to move on from trump, but the parties beating heart is now trump loving working class voters. the recent why haley had such high hopes on new hampshire is because the state is an outlier in the modern republican party. less religious, more educated and more welfare.

she and christy are sitting on the votes of a heavily upscale demographic. haley's challenges that new hampshire may only represent a false dawn, a blip before the primary returns to states with a down scaled demographic, more like iowa. haley may find open new hampshire, but that would only tempered to return home to south carolina and discovered that she is hootie and the blowfish to trump's taylor swift. just to be clear, that is hootie and the blowfish circuit 2023, 1994, when rudy was massive. nikki haley would probably be delighted to have hootie and the blowfish popularity. the reason why chris christie's departure and a sentence in new hampshire matters here is not because of nikki haley is going to sweep the rest of the gop primary states. it is because support for candidates like nikki haley and chris christie can still tell us something about the broader republican electorate. and five days, iowa is going to tell us the actual number of

republican people in that state that don't want to vote for donald trump the number of actual people willing to leave their homes in the middle of what looks like a midwestern ice storm and register the disapproval for the man that will probably be the party's nominee and and the new hampshire primary a week later, it will tell us about the so-called up skill independent reporters, who cannot support donald trump. those people are among the handful of voters being decided in the next election. the people who find themselves in a vanishing lee small political race. a recent announcement by the washington post found that one in four americans live in areas where democratic and republican candidates contest general elections, which is down from roughly three in four americans who lived in those areas in previous harris.

thanks to our singular undemocratic and an accurate stick democratic electoral college, the feet at the free world is probably going to come down to a handful of voters and a small number of states. . we are now handling this part of the election as canada zero in with laser focus on those voters. nbc news reports today that president biden will be heading to michigan and nevada later this month, to turn to america's mid-remaining battleground states. remember that joe biden won michigan by just over 150,000 votes in 2020. he won nevada by just 30,000 votes. and now, president biden is returning to the states to do two things. first, he has to shore up the democratic coalition. he has the reengage latino and arab american communities that were key to his victories in the states and the 2020 election. in nevada, remember, latinos make up nearly 20% of eligible voters in that state. in michigan, there are over

300,000 residents of middle eastern or norfr ancestry. president biden very much need to keep that coalition together and he needs to win over a handful of persuadable voters. the kind of people that were in attendance in chris christie's farewell speech today. the people who may yet find a candidate nikki haley. the people in this country who just know that they do not like donald trump. joining me now are jennifer palmieri, former communications director for the obama white house and director for the clinton 2016 campaign. she is the co-host of the how to win podcasts. also with me is jonathan martin, senior particle columnist for politico, who we quoted almost pornographic ali in a segment tonight. >> i'll take it! i'll take that. >> jen, let me start with you first. your reaction to christie deciding to leave this race

with what i will call a messy exit on a hot mic. >> it is classic. jonathan had his great piece this morning, the republican primary is -- it was like the best speech adulatory primary, of course, he steps on it. but by trashing the person, who was most set to gain the better from him leaving the primary. but still, given where we are, as you laid out, unlikely that trump gets less than 50% on monday night, unlikely that some of the -- but if they were, this is the kind of thing that you need to have happened. on wednesday night, before monday night in iowa, maybe this helps. it was a convincing speech. iowa did not pick donald trump in 2016. they picked ted cruz.

. this could help her get more momentum. second in iowa and then get a win in new hampshire. >> jay marched jonathan -- >> jay maher is fine. i'm good with that. >> we're all friends here. i am almost interested andy haley, kristie support as a measure of potential biden growth, as i am and nikki haley running away with this thing, for the reasons that you are much more articulately laying out in your piece. how do you read christie's exit and nikki haley is going to get smoked in terms of the broader context of the gop primary field? >> well, i think the first thing it does, alex, is that it gives nikki haley an opportunity to put one tibetan i am four more days before the caucuses to say to both to the kind of rhonda santa's leader and the on the fence iowa voter generally that don't want trump to say, you guys that want trump, give me a clean shot and

new hampshire, iowa, and the way that you give me a clean shot in new hampshire, you get a second year. that way desantis jumps out the race, and it's basically me and trump in new hampshire. so, i am curious to see, first off, how she parlay's christy leaving, not in new hampshire but in iowa first for the pragmatic voters here, who mostly want to stop trump. and then beyond that, let's see if she can actually beat trump head to head in new hampshire. i think that will be significant. i think it's not the same thing for the reasons that we talked about because it then goes to south carolina, where the demographics look more like iowa, and that's tough to survive. >> jonathan races in his piece, this sort of specter over all of this is class. this idea -- >> class and education. >> almost wrapped together or twinge in some ways. the reality is that the

republican party, as it stands on mass is not the upscale ron brownstein, he knows swelling or whatever it caused them red line -- >> red wine track, that's good. >> the wind track, and for that reason alone, it almost does not -- nikki ailey can condense the voting bloc but it will never be as big as donald trump. >> in 2020, it felt like -- we were together in 2020, covering the iowa caucuses and new hampshire primary. >> it's too much power for them to handle, too much energy. >> we broke the iowa caucuses. but it felt like very synthetic, because iowa and new hampshire for both democrats and republicans don't really reflect the demographic of the party large, the country are large. so, it's very -- also, i will mattered a lot for donald when he won in 2008. because hillary clinton was the front runner and also it was a

question about whether a black candidate can win in a white state. that was huge. it meant something. but, the last republican nominee to win the state of iowa, to win the iowa caucus and become the nominee was a george w. bush. so, these states don't reflect what the ultimate party, who really is going to decide who the nominee is. >> do you think that i am off track one suggesting that if you're joe biden, who is not on the new hampshire ticket -- >> now on the new hampshire ticket, right? >> for going a for the democratic primary process. but am i wrong and thinking that if you're biden, you look at who is in the audience of christy voters, you look at who is in the audience of heavy voters, and are like, listen, these guys ultimately will not get the republican they want on the top of the ticket, can i bring them over to my side of the table? >> that's why biden has lead in polls in new hampshire, and in a lot of battleground states, he does not do well, but jay marked will know this

ultimately, but he wins in new hampshire, and i am like, why is that, because we have been hearing chris christie beat the crap out of donald trump four months in new hampshire. >> it mattered. >> i do think that -- i think in his critique, and what he said tonight is kind of like what liz cheney said, which is that i am going to sort of do everything in my power to stop trump from becoming presint. >> the draft, the reiten campaign in new hampshire is saying, effectively, we welcome any backers of chris christie who want to truly stand against trump to join us in writing in joe biden and saying nikki haley is not the solution. do you think kristi voters are there? do you think hailie voters are thinking in the back of their mind, i might ultimately have to pull the lever for joe biden? >> well, i think absolutely. there is a significant chunk of them, and by the way that was smart of the right in biden's folks to pounce like they did

with that statement. because there are a lot of new hampshire voters who were trying to figure out right now which ballot, -- i was with nikki supporters yesterday in suburban de moines. i can tell you from talking to a lot of them but some of them were reluctantly pulling the lever for trump this fall if he's the nominee. but there's no question that some of them just can't get there again. and that, i think, gets to the key question. if this is going to be trump versus biden again, does that 20%, mostly upscale, mostly college educated, of the old bush era gop, do they get back to biden like a lot of them did four years ago? do they come back to trump, or do they find somebody else? this is why the no labels effort is so significant, because if they put a third party candidate on the ballot, it's a moderate republican, i think that's an escape hatch for the very voters that you're

talking about right now. >> what is so abundantly clear, and we say this every year, but truly the margins are going to be so tight. the washington post analysis is, we're so polarized, it's literally like, can you find me voters of their swing voters in the state of michigan? biden is going to michigan, nevada. if you're joe biden, that -- >> back to pennsylvania for the second time in one week. it's moving. >> and the light general election is now. we are going. >> when you think about the potential support he has, maybe lost, maybe not forever, but is soft in communities that really matter when margins are like this, and beyond what margins are like this. an american community outside detroit, hotel in casino workers in las vegas, nevada. how quickly can those numbers -- , i mean, what needs to happen right now? >> for everybody who's been worried about the biden

campaign you should look at the last week and feel really good because basically like, january 5th went valley forge. okay, general election has started, and it laid out the strong critique against trump, everything we expected. revenge, i am your retribution, it'll be a dictator on day one, we are reminded everyone of the greatest hits. and then he goes to south carolina, and in the south carolina speech, which is also moving because it's the sacred church in the terrible shooting there, was the argument to black voters and about the accomplishments. what they want to show people's, your vote matters. we're not saying that everything is great, but what they have to do is get back voters that supported him in 2020. that's easier than getting people who voted against you in 2020. what they have to do is say, you voted for me and it mattered. it had this impact. you see that embedded in his

remarks in south carolina, vice presidents remarks when she was in south carolina. he's going to nevada, an important hispanic audience. their michigan, arab americans in michigan. he got booed, he had a protest in south carolina. somebody who stood up and protested for a cease-fire. he handled it well. he said i hear you, i respect your passion. the expect that is gonna happen in michigan. they're going to deal with. but they are rolling. and we are making both arguments at the same time. making the big general argument pitch and then also the narrow casting, very specific democrat fix about why they should vote -- >> for people who don't know, i think the level of precision guided in these campaigns, like dunkin'donuts and pickleball, come vote, we're having a biden support group for you. >> oh, i'm being targeted here.

listening to jan, i'm thinking to myself here, obviously biden's got challenges on both flanks. he's got to get back to center right, liz cheney, republican, or take the third-party temptation. but just as important, he's going to have to face the challenge on his left flank on by jeff stein and maybe cornell west. i think biden is going to have to either find a way to get a cease-fire in the middle east and or get bb out of office. otherwise he's going to face perhaps the biggest threat, he has with voters under 40. i don't think biden can win next year. if stein and west are on the ballot and the war in the middle east is still waging. >> just a precondition to the hardest battle is get a cease-fire, get bibi eyed of odd office, to say this is going to be a challenging political environment is an understatement.

my friends, please come back. jennifer palmieri, and jonathan -- , thank you both for your time, my friends. a lot more this evening including a potential bombshell through a trump codefendant in the georgia county criminal prosecution. what does it mean for fani willis? plus, donald trump will not b allowed to turn a new york courtroom into a campaign stop tomorrow. more on that, coming up next. tomorrow more on that, coming up next more on that, coming up next >> like when it needs to be a big soft shoulder to cry on. which is why downy does more to make clothes softer, fresher, and better. downy. breathe life into your laundry. are you still struggling with your bra? it's time for you to try knix. makers of the world's comfiest wireless bras. for revolutionary support without underwires, and sizes up to a g-cup, find your new favorite bra today at knix.com

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and duckduckgo lets you browse like chrome, but it blocks cooi and creepy ads that follow youa from google and other companie. and there's no catch. it's fre. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you aroud join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on all your devices today. >> tomorrow morning closing arguments will begin in donald trump's new york civil fraud case. at stake for mr. trump is a possible 370 million dollar penalty and his ability to ever do business again in the state of new york. yesterday we learned that trump himself was planning to deliver

part of the defense team's closing argument, but today the judge presiding over this case, judge arthur enron, denied that request and posted his entire email exchange with trump's attorney, chris kise, on the court docket. for those of you who have not read it, it is colorful. judge engoron said he would allow mr. trump to speak but only if trump agreed to several limitations, includin one prohibiting a campgn speech. ump's attorney rejected those limits, calling them untenable and complaining in the most trumpy way imaginable, this is very unfair, your honor. you are not allowing president trump, who has been wrongly demeaned and belittled by an out-of-control politically motivated attorney general, to speak about things that must be spoken about. judge engoron's response, take it or leave it, now or never. you have until noon. seven minutes from now. all caps. i will not grant any further extensions. trump's lawyers did not respond and their client will not be

speaking tomorrow. joining me now, susan glasser, staff writer at the new yorker and co-writer of the divider. susan, i was really struck by a number of different exchanges in this court filing on the docket. but the first was the way in which trump has managed to puppeteer literally every single person around him, including his lawyer, in an email exchange with the judge. i am not a student of the law, but it just doesn't seem tbe a typical thing to have a lawyer writing things about a wrongfully demeaned client who has been belittled by an out-of-control politically motivated attorney general and the client needs to speak about things that must be spoken about. what do you make of the odd relationship that is being revealed here? >> alex, i have always thought and in fact our reporting

suggested that donald trump was personally dictating many of the statements. it seemed like he was personally dictating, whether that was from his white house communications office or his campaign team now or his many different teams of lawyers. i think one issue that is clearly going to come up in 2024 is that donald trump is currently employing so many different lawyers in so many different legal proceedings, and your point about how is he possibly managing to literally dictate what the content of individual email exchanges are with different lawyers and different judges in all of these cases well also running for president. it's a pretty good question. clearly he took some time out of prepping from his town hall discussion on fox news in order to get involved in the nitty-gritty of this exchange in new york. >> there's another part where the lawyer, chris kise, rights, the attorney seeks the

unconscionable and draconian penalty upper pivoting president trump who is contributed personally and officially to the real estate footprint of new york for some 50 years. i'm surprised you didn't mention the crowd size at his inauguration of this email. it was literally trump verbatim. but to your point, there are so many pieces of correspondence that trump can dictate before he won't have any more time left in the day to mount a defense. the other part of this that struck me is that trump cites the death of his mother in law as a bid for an extension on these closing arguments. as you point out, trump is still doing his fox town hall tonight and yet that, the timing of his mother-in-law's death did not affect his ability to participate in that. is trump the kind of person that mourns, in your reporting, to an unusual degree? >> there is not a lot of evidence to suggest that donald

trump was particularly close either to his wife's parents or that even, for that matter, spent an enormous amount of time with melania herself, who has been scarce in evidence in the three years since donald trump left the white house and is not regularly by his side. there is not a lot in the public record to suggest that donald trump is a grieving man tonight. if you look at him he does not seem to be in that mode. he is like the kid who's always saying he can't turn in the term paper because another grandparent died until a teacher gets suspicious and says wait a minute, how many grandparents do you have? >> and then is found at the video game arcade playing pac-man really supposed to be grieving. a few lines from the attorney general, or the attorney generals office, that explain why it's important to not allow trump to give a closing statement, the closing argument in this courtroom.

i'll just read an excerpt, what they outline. they basically say that trump is prone to giving irrelevant speeches, he lacks self control, and is evasive to responding to questions, allow him to speak would invite more speeches, campaign style, that would disrupt the proceedings. i think that nails, that hits the nail on the in terms of while it's dangerous to give trump unfettered access in these court proceedings. does beg the question. this is an instance where the judge can say trump cannot trials. there will be more trials, or at least one or two, and there are going to be a lot more courthouse steps the trump faces. i think the question is, can the judicial system manage this process in a way that it does not become effectively a series of stump speeches for the trump candidacy? >> i think this is the bigger picture context it's relevant to 2024.

it's this question of the extent to which donald trump is able to turn these court proceedings against himself, the serious charges of criminal malfeasance. it in this case he stands to be penalized hundreds of millions of dollars. yet he remains firmly of the view that there is no microphone that can't be turned to his own advantages as long as it is turned on. and i think also he is looking at the experience he had in 2023 when he had this enormous wall-to-wall coverage that attended his multiple indictments and charges in the criminal cases against him, that that was actually, as he sees it perhaps, the key to his political resurrection. breathless coverage that hang on his every little utterance and i think that that has been factored into his campaign plan for 2024 and this judge has a

pretty clear read on it, but you're right, if it's a matter of every single day in a criminal trial and standing on the steps, there is nothing to stop people from live streaming that and giving donald trump trump this unique campaigning situation. >> susan glasser, always with the deep and thoughtful insight and great reporting. thank you for joining me tonight. i appreciate it. we are still more to come tonight, including some jaw-dropping new comments from billionaire turned social media trolls, elon musk. comments that link aviation aviation accidents to corporate diversity initiatives. plus one of trump's codefendants in georgia has leveled major accusations against just attorney fani willis. we look at how that might affect the case in fulton county, coming up next. e in fulto county, coming up next >>

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d.a. fani willis hired this man, mason weighed, to be the special prosecutor to help lead a criminal investigation into trump's attempts to subvert democracy in the state of georgia. mr. wade was the one who was in that case to the grand jury, the one who ultimately indicted

trump in 18 other codefendants. and now one of those criminal codefendants, a top trump campaign official, is, without offering any agents any evidence, accusing willis and wade of engaging in a romantic relationship. the filing refers to wades ongoing divorce proceedings and undisclosed sources who claim that wade and willis vacationed together in florida, napa valley, and the caribbean, alleging the vacations were paid for using taxpayer funds that weighed received from willis's office. fulton county records show that mr. weighed has been paid over $650,000 in legal fees since january of 2022. mr. romans lawyer asks that d.a. willis, mr. wade, and the d.a.'s office be disqualified from prosecuting this case. neither willis nor wade has publicly commented on these allegations, and a spokesperson for the d.a.'s office says any

response could be made in a court filing. joining me now to explain exactly what this means for the georgia case is anthony michael crisis, a constitutional law professor at -- can you help me understand, first of all, given where these allegations are coming from, how much stock do you put in them? do you see anything potentially hazardous in the sourcing here? >> i think we have to be, cognizant of the fact that this is a parroting of a filing in a divorce proceeding. and so the divorce proceedings, family law, domestic relations issues, these are highly contentious fights that often contain documents with allegations which may or may not be substantiated which beer may not be true. and so we have to take i think all of this with a grain of salt given the source. it may be true, it may not be true. we really have to be cautious about that and wait for more

information. we have the district attorney's office, or more evidence from mr. roman's attorney to substantiate these claims. >> a lot of stuff that michael roman is a closing willis and wade of is to be found in the divorce filing for mr. wades soon-to-be ex-wife, and therefore conclusions may have drawn in that filing that aren't necessarily the ones that independent counsel would perhaps drop. but i will say, the thing i think that in the reporting on this in the wall street journal in the new york times, the figure that stands out is the payments made to mr. wade and the total of $653,000 for his services as a prosecutor. it is worth mentioning the d.a. willis's salary is $198,000. $190,000. does that sort of discrepancy seem unusual to you? >> well, i think it also should be noted that mr. wade is charging the county $250 per hour, which, for an attorney

the city of atlanta that is not a particularly high hourly rate. at the same time, i think there is a political question that must be answered as to whether there would be a better way to spend these funds or whether some other kind of contractual arrangement would've been a better use of public funds. but the funds itself i think the rate itself is not exorbitant lehigh. i think we should also be cognizant of the fact that mr. wade and all the attorneys on this case are certainly spending in an exorbitant amount of hours on it. so if you are charging an hourly rate, which is a fairly market rate, that's going to total to a lot of money. on the one hand, i don't know if it raises any alarms as something inherently corrupt or inherently not great. on the other hand, it does present i think an approval problem, and one that does raise legitimate questions as to whether there would be

better ways to spend this money or if there should be other kinds of caps in order to protect the taxpayers money. >> right. so in terms of ethics. but legally speaking, do you foresee this having an impact on fani willis or south or mr. weighed in terms of their ability to prosecute this case going forward? >> i doubt it. it really is a high bar to disqualify a prosecutors artists. you would have to show something in terms of a concrete conflict of interest. at most i think we could say that this is certainly a political problem. it certainly cloud the investigation. it creates a partisan talking point, particularly for donald trump to attack the legitimacy of the investigation and the subsequent indictments. but it doesn't really present the kind of smoking gun conflict of interest that to me at least right now would require some form of disqualification. it certainly is not the kind of evidence that would require a dismissal of the indictment as a constitutional matter. we've already seen judge

mcburney, who was overseeing the grand jury case, in judge mcafee, talk about special prosecutor waited because he failed to sign a prosecutorial oath at one point. so there was a question as to whether that somehow team to the indictment. and both judges said that there was no evidence that mr. wades involvement to the investigation and the indictment process prejudiced these defendants in any way we. so i think there will be a parallel ruling that would kind of find the same thing here. again, we don't really know all the facts. it could change if there are more salacious facts that come out. but as of now i think it's unlikely that these allegations derail the prosecution. >> your insight here is invaluable, because obviously donald trump is having a field day with this, as he has been over several weeks, with baseless accusations leveled at

the d.a.. this is certainly providing fodder for him and having some legal perspective is helpful. professor professor anthony michael kreis, thank you again for your time tonight. when we come back, the right wing's latest example of what they say is a possible peril of promoting diversity in the workplace. this involves passenger planes malfunctioning and possibly falling out of the sky. that is next. me me to work on your people skills.

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off the planes but at least they're meeting their diversity goals. we can't link the diversity efforts to what happened? that would take an exhaustive investigation. but it's worth asking at this point. >> i titled the chapter, d i e, because this can kill. >> you heard it on fox first. diversity, equity, and inclusion can kill. this segment last night was loosely about a door plug blowing out of a boeing 737 max 9 plane during an alaska airlines flight last friday. but rather than talking about safety concerns, laura ingraham asked, did this happen, did the doors blow off because airlines focus too much on diversity? maybe sort of like asking

whether the challenger exploded because a woman was on it. this nonsense did not stop fox. last night the world's richest man, elon musk, picked up this line of logic and ran with it. yesterday musk replied to this post on x, formerly known as twitter, which claims that the average iq of the average u.s. air force pilot in 120, and that of graduates of historically black hbcus, is 80 or 90. so they're just above borderline intellectual impairment. first of all, what! and is someone guessing the iqs of the iqs of the. attendance of hbcu. one other case junior, thurgood marshall, tony morrison, oprah. they're not bastions of

intellectual ineptitude, obviously. also pilots of all colors have to pass rigorous flight tests. also pilots aren't usually responsible for structural issues on airplanes. they just fly them. elon musk, however, just went with it. tweeting, it will take an airplane crashing in killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy of the i.e.. he means dei. and do you want to find an air plan where they prioritize eye dei over safety. and people will die due to dei. this is our public discourse. we are fox news heavily implying planes can crash and kill people because companies hire too many black people. and we have the richest man in the world, the owner of one of the most important global forums for communication, openly embracing and promoting paranoid racist theories. coming up, we're gonna talk

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school choice. we protected women's sports. we stood up for parents against the woke mob. we have eliminated so-called dei from a public universities. we abandon sanctuary cities to deter illegal immigration. let's continue to make florida the envy of the nation. >> that was sort of governor ron desantis but delivering his annual state of the state address. if you are in florida you probably let that speech. but what sounds good to florida republicans does not necessarily sound good to the rest of the country. understanding that truth seems to be one of the many issues for the desantis campaign and another is not admitting, as a former desantis campaign

staffer told my colleague matt dixon, it's political making of governor on desantis does not happen without donald trump. it is what made desantis hooey is today, for better or worse. joining me now, matt dixon, nbc news national political reporter and author of swamp monsters. trump versus desantis, the greatest show on earth, or at least in florida. matt, congratulations on this book. a very timely release is we're gonna be talking a lot about governor desantis today and tomorrow. for people who don't know the interesting and tangled history between donald trump and ron desantis, it goes back to 2016. can you talk a bit about it? >> the forward facing relationship between the two going back to the endorsement in 2017 when desantis first ran for governor, has been the defining messaging, the defining story between the two. but going back to even before he was governor, in the primary and early on in that race, they were sort of feeling each other

out. there was tension between the two. it was never the political relationship that we all thought it was at that time. there's been tension in sort of rifts throughout the process. they did a very good job of working together when he was president and desantis was governor. they held hands, had picnics in the park, did everything they needed to protect the idea of unity. but it wasn't always what we thought it was and we kind of now have seen that come up in the presidential race. >> well, yeah, some of us remember the campaign ads with desantis is a small child building a wall and wearing a maga onesie, but that sounds like it was more just sort of pomp and circumstance as opposed to deep-seated admiration that ron desantis had for donald trump. >> absolutely checking a box in that moment in time. that was when donald trump was a big political powers. endorsement helped desantis gain a ton in the polls. he was nationally not just relevant but everything in that moment in time. they realize they had to do what they had to do to continue

with the dog and pony show of the endorsement and making sure everyone was on the same page. even though i think, and we report in the book, the desantis camp, specifically casey desantis, wasn't necessarily in love with the ad. >> well, when your children are used as maga props, most mothers would not like like that. i want to ask about it because you're such an expert in florida in florida politics. i will enough to remember when florida was a swing state, the state the democrats stood a chance of winning, and before it became a petri disk for far white right-wing conservative policy. implicated in the sort of rise of right-wing politics in florida's the collapse of the florida democratic party. how did that happen? >> it has been a decade or so in the making. when president obama won florida twice, and in that period there were about 700,000 will ridge more registered democrats than republicans in florida.

since then republicans have taken control of every layer of state government. so there's no incentive to give support, the national money has all kind of stopped. in the same period of time, it expedited by governor desantis. he has spent $5 million or so just in voter registration. so right now republicans have a huge voter registration lead in florida over democrats and throughout the modern history of the state of florida that has been the reversal. there's been one side with money, another side that has sort of lost resources and power and we're seeing the results of that. >> in the meantime, what desantis has done to that state i think in his own behest, as democrats fleeing, or people who enjoy, i don't know, diversity, equity, and inclusion, for example, do not have a home in the state of florida where governor desantis has champion some of these arts right-wing policies. that is not work for him nationally. can you talk a bit about the gross miscalculation between what desantis imagined the

nation wanted which is florida but nationally and like how that is redundant to his -- >> i think there are several layers to what has been performing in expectations at the presidential level. but we've heard of large donors, like ken griffin who gave $10 million to governor sanders gubernatorial campaigns who said the culture war and this heavy intense focus and insistence on not moving from that has sort of turned him off and other donors as well. he has sort of lost the non-trump money, the donors who wanted to support a non-trump candidate because of that. and i think he is running out of money and the message isn't necessarily where it needs to be. >> we're going to hear more about that in a few short minutes. matt dixon, thank you so much. that is our show for tonight. special coverage of the caucus count down with my friend and colleague rachel maddow and the rest of your favorite msnbc ho