Hey, good morning. I'm Playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Thursday, January 11th. It's been a rather sleepy GOP primary season with Donald Trump leading the pack by a significant margin all year. But yesterday we saw probably the biggest campaign shake-up since Trump's indictments. Chris Christie, the New Jersey

governor, is dropping out of the race before a single voter has even headed to the polls. The question

now is whether that will matter in the long run as the anti-Trump wing of the party tries to

rally behind a Trump alternative. And joining me now this morning to discuss that, as well as the

latest in Iowa, is my esteemed colleague, Ryan Liza. Good morning, Ryan.

Good morning, Rich.

Ryan is in Iowa, and are you freezing right now, Ryan?

You know, it is a little cold out, and I came here unprepared for the weather.

So I'm like one of those people I always used to make fun of when I was in Iowa that doesn't

have the proper footwear or clothing for the winter storm here. Go get some of those feet warmers

when you get a second. So what was your reaction to Christy dropping out yesterday? Let's start there.

I guess I would say I was a little surprised that he did it earlier than I thought. I think there was a good chance this was going to happen if he remained at the bottom of the pack with extremely high negative ratings from Republicans. He had no chance of winning, as he pointed out today. I just thought he would do it after Iowa. So, you know, maybe he would see the results in Iowa and then do it on the eve of New Hampshire, you know, add a little drama going into New Hampshire because, frankly, it's, you know, it's going to be basically forgotten between now and New Hampshire. So I thought he would wait a little bit and do it at a slightly more dramatic moment. He had fundraisers lined up over the next

couple days and he had been saying in town halls that he was going to stay through New Hampshire,

swearing up and down that he would. But I did talk to someone close to him who said he decided

to do this now for maximum impact to try to help any Trump alternative. Obviously, that would potentially be Nikki Haley,

although he didn't endorse her. And yet at the same time, he dissed her on a hot mic moment.

Doesn't seem to think. Yeah, God, I was just going to say, yeah. She's going to get smoked. And you and I both know it.

She's not up to this. So, I mean, clearly he doesn't have a lot of

faith there. Just one final point on Christy, it does, it gets at the strategic box that all the

non-Trump candidates have been in. You try and go full frontal attack at Trump and Republicans

hate you. And Christy had the highest negatives in the race because of his anti-Trump

disposition. So that strategy didn't work. And then the DeSanta strategy and the Haley strategy

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