William: The presidential primary season could effectively come to a close later this week after voters in South Carolina finish casting their votes Saturday. Meanwhile, there's no end in sight for former president trump's legal troubles or for the debate on capitol hill over continuing funding for Ukraine's defense. For more, we turn to our politics Monday analysts. Amy Walter of "The cook political report with Amy Walter" and Tamara Keith of NPR. Welcome to you both. So nice to see you. Thanks
for being here on the holiday. Tam, let's talk about south Carolina. Trump has a commanding 30 point lead, if you believe all the polls, over former U.S. Ambassador and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley. If she gets totally blown out of the water in her home state, how does she go forward? >> She just proceeds forward without a mandate to proceed, which has been her entire time in this primary. She says we've got it down to the race I want. It is me against trump. Republican primary
voters seem to want trump. So, she is saying she will keep competing through super Tuesday at least. That is in early March, March 5. She has been out to several of those states to hold events. She has been holding a lot of events in South Carolina. Trump has held very few but he may not need to it turns out. So, she can keep going as long as she has the money to keep going and as long as she is willing to sort of take whatever political damage comes from losing a lot. >> Is it political damage
or is she positioning herself in a way that she can get something politically from doing this? William: Like what? >> Is she going to be the voice, somebody wrote the other day, the voice of I told you so after the election. She has been saying over and over again on the campaign trail, he cannot win. Every time trump has been on the ballot, he has lost, our candidates have lost. If he does lose in 2024, people look to her and say, oh, she was the one who told us all along and we will now look
to her for other political advice going forward. It may not happen but that is one pathway. The other is you are hearing from folks, from the wing of the party, some known as the anti-Trump wing, others in this former establishment wing, the Reagan wing of the party, that she will continue to carry that torch going forward. That there always be this element in the Republican party of a strong interventionist, culturally but mostly fiscally conservative party. And that even though trump is ascend
ed now, she will be the one carrying that piece of the party and their agenda forward in whatever form that takes. Theoretically, you could go forward and amassed a bunch of delegates and have some leverage going into a party convention. But the way that the process works, South Carolina -- it is a winner take all system so even getting 40% of the vote gets you nothing. William: Empty-handed. You think that is her calculation here? I understand the theory you are describing. It seems that the GO
P is not interested in having a principled republican-esque critic in its midst. >> Certainly not. Look at who former president trump wants to lead the Republican party. He wants to get rid of an RNC chairwoman who has been pretty darn loyal to him, and replace him -- William: Ronna Mcdaniel. >> And replace her with-- William: His daughter-in-law. >> The longer Nikki Haley stays in this primary -- it is not that it helps her with the delegate math, but the longer she stays in, the more trump's c
hallenges, legal, financial challenges, the longer they have to come to light. Now we know there is a trial that will start in New York on March 25, as long as it sticks. These have this big ruling against him, huge fines he has to pay. She's able to more clearly make the argument she's been making all along, which is like is this really who we want to nominate? Then, it still comes back to the same problem in the Republican primary, the answer is yes. William: The primary voters have been cryst
al clear about that. Let's talk about that, some of the legal troubles that tam is bringing up. Huge, hundreds of millions of dollars, which could be a potential dent on his ability to spend money going forward but also the stormy Daniels case, the January 6 case potentially, maybe Georgia, maybe mar-a-lago with the classified documents. I know you are always reluctant to say this will have an impact or not, but do you think any of those cases could meaningfully change the selection? >> Yeah, so
, it is a question that will get asked a lot throughout the entirety of this campaign. Right now, it feels like for so many voters, this is white noise. Even these judgments against Donald Trump have not gotten any sort of traction, it has not changed the method the Republican primary and not in the general election. The question becomes if there's a criminal -- if there's criminal liability, he is found guilty one of these cases, the documents case or January 6, will that change people's minds?
What is fascinating to watch is how this question gets asked of voters. Now, it is very hypothetical. If something does happen, do voters opinions of a change over time? That the immediate reaction may be different from, are we really going to do this? Once we get to October and November, where you can see voters rallying behind trump maybe. You can also see them saying I will not vote for him but then rally around him at the end. This is going to take an effort, I think, on the Biden campaign'
s part to make this part of the campaign. This event is going to happen and then organically voters will end up will they end up. The job of the opposition campaign is to make that certainly a centerpiece. William: Is Biden going to do that? He has thus far been reluctant to touch trump's legal woes when they have been obvious targets the Schuette. -- To shoot at. >>'S campaign has been extremely reluctant. They feel like the legal challenges that trump has get a lot of attention. Just think abo
ut, there were dueling court hearings last week. He got to hold court outside of the courthouse, both before the trial date was set and then afterwards. He's getting a lot of attention about this. For now at least, they think it is getting enough attention. They would like voters to focus on what does this mean for them rather than what does this mean for Donald Trump, and they are struggling to get voters to focus on that. They are struggling with that message. I think that for trump, these fir
st cases on the calendar, if you look at it, the civil cases and penalties that he's faced in New York. The next case being the stormy Daniels hush money/ campaign-finance violation and cooking the books -- that is not the right phrase. But those cases are all in new York. He has done a fairly good job of convincing definitely Republican voters, but even people who are not Republican voters -- William: These are New York City liberals that hate me. >> Yes. These cases should not count against me
. This is particularly a witchhunt. You don't necessarily get to a case where voters haven't had -- haven't been convinced of this. You don't get out of New York for quite some time in the calendar. William: Let's shift across the atlantic for a second. The Munich security conference just wrapped up this week. The Poland foreign minister talk about this yearning for Europe to know where America stands. Are we going to support Ukraine or not? They just lost a city to the Russians because they ran
out of ammunition. What do you think comes out of that? We saw very dueling views. >> Quite clear dueling visions. You had the vice president saying we are standing with Ukraine. And then you saw someone like J.D. Vance, the senator from Ohio, basically as a trump surrogate who said in his remarks that, yes, we like Europe, we like nato, but don't se in as an existential threat to Europe. If you are European, you probably don't like to hear that. He basically said we will stay part of nato but
we don't see that as important as we do other places in the world, especially the fight with China. William: Do you see that the Republican move away from supporting Ukraine -- it used to be they were lockstep with Democrats and now they are not -- does that hurt them in the election? >> Generally speaking, foreign policy is not what decides elections. This could be the year where that changes, but it also could be the year where that does not change, where you continue the pattern where people
think about their own lives. They look inward, they look to the U.S. And not looking at foreign policy. >> Unless Putin, something really does happen in Europe, that is a different calculation. William: Amy Walter and Tamra Keith, thank you both. >> Thanks to you. ♪♪
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