![NBC's National Affairs Analyst John Heilemann said Tuesday that it's unpopular to speak positively about former President Donald Trump before going on to applaud his campaign for its organizational skills. [Screenshot MSNBC]](https://images.dailycaller.com/image/width=960,height=411,fit=cover,f=auto/https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Screenshot-2024-01-16-at-10.47.07-AM-e1705420077111.png "NBC's National Affairs Analyst John Heilemann said Tuesday that it's unpopular to speak positively about former President Donald Trump before going on to applaud his campaign for its organizational skills. [Screenshot MSNBC]")
NBC’s National Affairs Analyst John Heilemann said Tuesday that it’s unpopular to speak positively about former President Donald Trump, applauding his campaign for its organizational skills.
Trump won the Iowa caucus Monday night by a massive landslide. Trump won 98 out of 99 counties, losing Johnson County to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by one vote. Trump received 51% of the vote, while DeSantis came in second with 21.2% and Haley in third with 19.1%. Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out of the race after the results came in.
“I’m curious, what was your big takeaway this weekend on Donald Trump and his lasting power, and the Republican Party, not just in Iowa, but how they represent larger forces, as well as the movement?” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough asked. “I think people who — Democrats who say, ‘We have a candidate, Trump has a movement,’ they probably see that more in Iowa and states like that than anywhere else. What was your big takeaway this weekend?” (RELATED: MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki Pinpoints The Exact Moment Trump Appeared Certain To Trounce DeSantis)
“Number one, and I know it’s not always popular to speak well of Donald Trump, and I’m not going to speak well of Donald Trump himself, but Donald Trump, if you remember, Joe, 2016, the Trump campaign was a joke,” Heilemann responded. “It was not a serious thing. And you know, there’s a lot of people who said, if they’d had a reasonable campaign and a reasonable operation here, they should have won that race. They had come into caucus night leading in the polls. And then Ted Cruz, better organized, better campaign, more harnessed the Evangelical movement, and Ted Cruz was able to steal Iowa from them.”
“The difference to 2024 and 2016 on the Trump campaign is night and day. The campaign itself is now a professional operation. The story of Trump being able to actually organize in the caucuses, something he didn’t do in 2016, his ability to turn people out, his ability to dominate the Evangelical vote, which he never did in 2016, those are signs that — not that Trump is any more popular or that he’s any less toxic or that he doesn’t have any of the problems that you point out all the time, we all point out that he has in a general election — but the one advantage that he showed here, that I think he is going to carry forward is, that he now has an actual professional campaign operation around him.”
Heilemann then said the turnout for Trump on Monday night was a “sign” that the campaign is “more organized and more professional” and that Trump has a stronghold on the party.