Donald Trump is widely expected to win the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus, but possibly not by as much as his campaign team had expected.
The expected margin of victory has thinned a bit heading into Monday's Republican primary vote, and MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire noted the situation has caused some internal anxiety among Trump allies.
"I think we've seen a little bit of anxiety from Trump folks in the last few days because they were so boldly, confidently predicting this blowout," Lemire told "Morning Joe." "Polls suggest he'll win by a sizable margin but maybe not by the number they had put out there, as you say, over 50 percent. There's a couple of reasons for that. One would be, of course, the weather ... there is concerns that people are going to stay home tonight because it'll be dangerous to be outside – legitimate reasons to stay home."
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"Trump, for the first time all campaign, the last 24, 36 hours, went on the attack against Vivek Ramaswamy, of all people," Lemire added. "Ramaswamy has been supportive of Trump throughout his campaign. He's never criticized him, but the Trump people have really turned on him in recent days because Ramaswamy is still sticking in the 7 percent, 8 percent, 9 percent. His people who are for him are really for him, there's a lot of enthusiasm. Trump is trying to bang those people down, trying to switch them over to him for his margins. DeSantis' people think they have the best ground game. What that means for a campaign that seems to be half dead, we'll see, but some think he'll have a better than expected number because his team is motivated and organized to get people to caucus sites despite the bad weather. Yes, all eyes will be on the number that [Nikki] Haley comes up with."
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