Donald Trump cruised to an easy victory in the Iowa caucus, and MSNBC's Steve Kornacki identified a surprising shift in the polling that showed him pulling away from his Republican rivals.
The former president has become the clear frontrunner for the GOP nomination, despite four indictments on 91 felony charges, two impeachments and looming penalties after he was found liable for business fraud and defaming his sex abuse victim, and Kornacki told "Morning Joe" that those legal problems were actually a political benefit to him.
"We've been seeing this a long time, it is a story that is fundamental to Donald Trump's dominance that we saw last night and his dominance in the national polls right now," Kornacki said. "Core Republican voters see the legal situation around Trump – I know there were all sorts of different areas here – I'll just say the legal situation to keep it simple. They see the legal situation as an attack, as a politically motivated attack on Donald Trump."
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"You can make up your own mind whether that's fair or not, but look at this," Kornacki added. "I think this tells the story. This is the trend line of the national Republican race from the very beginning of 2023 until where we are this morning. Again, it wasn't long ago, but in the early months of 2023 and the last month of 2022, December 2022, coming off the 2022 midterm where Republicans underperformed, where the Trump-aligned candidates lost key races that cost Republicans the Senate and major offices, Trump was running -- this is the national average. [Ron] DeSantis never caught him in the national average, but we'd routinely see polls in January and February of 2023 that had DeSantis within 10 points of Trump. Five polls I could find now had DeSantis ahead nationally of Trump. The atmosphere was, Republicans are moving on from Trump, they're sick of the losing. They've had years of this act, they'll look for other options here. That's why so many candidates stepped forward."
However, there is a point where the trend lines begin to diverge, and Kornacki was surprised when that shift began to emerge.
"Look where the lines diverge," Kornacki said, showing a line graph. "Look where the Trump line takes off, look where the DeSantis line flatlines. Nobody moved up. What week was that? That is literally the week that 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 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 the first indictment, that has been the story since."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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