Welcome to the Bulwark podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is January 16th, 2024. This is the morning after the big, big

Iowa caucuses. The suspense did not kill me last night. I think we kind of knew how it was going

to turn out. You know, short version,

Donald Trump wins. He gets 51% of the vote in an incredibly low turnout election.

I think he got something like 56 to 60,000 votes.

There are some legislative races that get more votes than that.

But a win is a win.

He wins Iowa.

He wins Iowa by 30 points.

Ron Desantis keeps hope sort of barely twitching alive says he got his ticket

punched he finishes second Nicki Haley finishes third declares that there's a two-person race and then says she's not going to be

debating anymore in New Hampshire.

So after all of these big events, I'm always joined, I'm always lucky to be joined by

AB Stoddard, our new colleague at the Bullwork.

AB, how are you this morning?

I, ha ha.

The Iowa Hangover?

Yeah, I'm disappointed, not surprised.

It is a weird numbness, Charlie, right? Like, I don't know how many months I've been saying that New Hampshire wouldn't matter because he would say it was rigged and diluted by rhinos and socialists and so it is weird though right to be here now that it's

actually officially begun and officially kind of ended after all the time we've spent talking.

Yeah, I mean, Will Salitan and I talked about this yesterday, you know, before even the

first vote had been cast, the Republican Normies had already surrendered, but let's

...