![NBC National Correspondent Steve Kornacki pinpointed the exact moment that former President Donald Trump appeared certain to trounce Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the primary race. [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-9.19.46-AM-e1705414857434.png "NBC National Correspondent Steve Kornacki pinpointed the exact moment that former President Donald Trump appeared certain to trounce Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the primary race. [Screenshot MSNBC]")
NBC National Correspondent Steve Kornacki pinpointed the exact moment that former President Donald Trump appeared certain to trounce Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the primary race.
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.
“Core Republican voters see the legal situation around Trump, and I know there were all sorts of different areas here, I’ll just say the legal situation to keep it simple, but they see the legal situation as an attack, as a politically motivated attack on Donald Trump. You can make up your own mind whether that’s fair or not, but look at this. I think this tells the story,” Kornacki said.
“This is the trend line of the national Republican race from the very beginning of 2023 until we are this morning. Again, this is like – it wasn’t that long ago, but I want to remind folks, in the early months of 2023 and the last month of 2022, December 2022, coming off that 2022 midterm where the Republicans underperformed, where the Trump-aligned candidates lost key races that cost Republicans the Senate and other major offices, Trump was running – this is the national average. DeSantis never caught him in the national average, but we would routinely see polls in January and February of 2023 that had DeSantis within 10 points of Trump.” (RELATED: ‘The Earliest I Can Remember’: Jake Tapper Appears Shocked At How Fast His Own Network Called Trump Victory In Iowa)
“There were polls, I could go find you five of them right now, that had DeSantis ahead nationally of Donald Trump. The atmosphere in early ’23 was, ‘Well, Republicans are moving on from Trump. They’re sick of the losing. They’ve had years of this act. They’re gonna look for other options here.’ That’s why so many candidates stepped forward. And look where the lines diverge. Look where the Trump line takes off. Look where the DeSantis line kind of flat lines and nobody moved up. What week was that? That is literally the week that Donald Trump was indicted on the first of the charges in Manhattan on the Stormy Daniels matter.”
“There was – it is unquestionable when you look at these numbers and if you were to apply all the legal dates that popped up throughout the year to this, they triggered a rally around Trump effect among core Republicans. Again, they clearly see this as politically motivated. They see this as Trump’s opponents using the legal system to go after him. They responded that way by rallying around him. You literally see it, the week of that first indictment.”
CNN’s Harry Enten made a similar argument regarding the impact of Trump’s legal cases on his race. Enten said Trump’s best fundraising days coincided with his court appearances.
“Trump’s two biggest days for fundraising, one was when he was in the courtroom being arranged in New York, in Manhattan court. The other one, when Trump was booked in Fulton County jail the day of the infamous mug shot. Both of those days he raised well over $1 million.”