Video shows Trump mocking McCain's physical disability while on campaign trail

It's almost time for Iowans to have their say on who should be president. In just eight days, Iowa Republicans will caucus and set the course for the 2024 GOP nomination and the final chance for the candidates to prove themselves in the first in the nation caucus state. Even former President Donald Trump has been crisscrossing Iowa this weekend to make sure his supporters have his back. But his appearances have once again put the spotlight on his rhetoric and viability as a general election candidate. CNN's Alina Treene has been following Trump on the campaign trail. She joins us from Des Moines. Elaina, what has Trump's tone been throughout this weekend? Yeah, well, Manu, the former president, has really spent this weekend delivering his closing arguments to Iowa voters in the final week before the January 15th caucuses. And a key part of that message has been warning voters not to get complacent and to assume that Trump has Iowa in the bag just because he is up so high in the polls. And I can tell you from my conversations with Trump's advisers that this is a bit of a concern from them. A key part of their ground game strategy here in the state has really been focusing on turning out as many caucus goers as they can. And so we've seen them really issue a lot of presentations trying to teach Iowa's Iowans how to caucus. But I also want to point your attention to something I found really interesting, and it came up during his remarks in Newton, Iowa, yesterday. He vowed to find an alternative to Obamacare if elected in 2024. And as part of those remarks, he criticized the late Senator John McCain and blamed him for Republicans failure to repeal and replace the law in 2017 and part of that delivery. Trump mocked McCain's injuries. Take a listen to what he said. So we're going to fight for much better health care than Obamacare. Obamacare is a catastrophe. Nobody talks about it. You know, without John McCain, we would have had it done. But John McCain, for some reason couldn't get his arm up that I remember. He goes that like that. That was the end of that. Now, money, we, of course, need to point out that McCain sustained a series of injuries while serving in the Vietnam War. And many of those stemmed from his time as a prisoner of war for five years. But look, I think the broader context of these remarks is really interesting to note. Trump has really revived talk of trying to find an alternative to Obamacare in recent months. And it's something that has alarmed a lot of Republicans. People in the party are still scarred by their failure to dismantle the law while Trump was in office. And they view this issue as a political loser. But of course, Trump is not heeding that advice and still talking about it on the campaign trail. Yeah, and mocking the late John McCain, who, of course, voted against repealing Obamacare because they didn't have a replacement for Obamacare at the time. Some facts there for the former president. Alina Train from Des Moines, thank you. And let's break this all down with my great panel this morning. Segment, Kim and the Associated Press, Jackie Kucinich from The Boston Globe and Isaac or from The Washington Post, who is the author of the upcoming book Finish What We Started the MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy. I look forward to reading that. Thank you guys for joining us. It's a it's a busy, consequential morning. And Donald Trump has been busy as well as we heard from Elaina going all across the state. And as Trump does when he appears before audiences, he says controversial eyebrow raising claims. And one of the things was about the civil War from this week. We know this whole hour we'll go through the different parts of his comments. But one of the things we're not talking about right now is the civil war, because this has become an issue suddenly in the Republican primary after Nikki Haley failed to say slavery was the reason for the Civil War, she tried to clean it up at a CNN town hall last week. She stepped in it some more. Donald Trump yesterday, too, was talking about the Civil War and made some curious comments that may have historians scratching their heads. I was reading something and I said, this is something that could have been negotiated. You know, it was just for all those people to die and they died viciously. That was a vicious, vicious war. And in many ways, look there, all of this, nothing nice about it. But, boy, that was a that was a tough one for our country. But I think it's, you know, Abraham Lincoln, of course, if he negotiated it, you probably wouldn't even know who Abraham Lincoln was. Okay. So if we negotiate the Civil War, we don't have to get into the history of the Civil War and the Missouri Compromise and the fact that the Civil War ultimately happened because of the fact that slavery was still happening in southern states. But the larger point is about Trump's comments, and voters are now starting to tune in. Perhaps this may not matter in a primary, but when we get into the general election, how much are Trump's words going to matter? Or are voters just are these kind of things just baked in among the electorate? I think the thing that's striking is just how backward looking I mean, so backward that we're talking about the Civil War, but how backward looking this campaign has been so far relitigating January six, relitigating Obamacare, relitigating his feud with John McCain years after John McCain had passed away. I mean, it just it's just constantly looking to what happened rather than looking forward. And and elections tend to be about what's next, not what just happened. Yeah. And that's one of the points that DeSantis himself has been trying to make. This is the issue and others, too, that Trump is focused on the past is about the future. Let's talk about just look at the nature of this race and the significance of what's going to happen a week from Monday is about the margin of victory here, that if Trump if polls are correct, Trump is headed to a likely victim in Iowa. We'll see. Voters, of course, will have their ultimate say. Polls don't cast votes, but the margin of victory is significant here because if Trump does win by a significant amount, what does that mean for a Haley or DeSantis in particular? DeSantis, who has put all of his eggs essentially in the Iowa basket? Right. And especially after in the last several weeks, you've heard a lot of stories about his campaign and his related superPAC being in shambles. He really does have to show that in Iowa, that he comes in a strong second and try to really blunt, particularly Nikki Haley's momentum as they head into New Hampshire, which is a state where Nikki Haley has put a lot of focus in terms of providing that momentum for the campaign. And I do think the recent tactics from Ronda Santos have been really interesting. If you're talking about in the last maybe five days or so, he really actually has been going hard after Trump in a way that we haven't seen before. I think it really started with the CNN town halls on Wednesday night. And you're where he said, of course, Trump is a pro or Trump isn't pro-life trying to get at that. A segment of the Republicans said. Of course not. He's not pro-life. Right. Right. And he was you know, when he was campaigning in Iowa over the weekend, he talked about how while in 2016 he may have campaigned on America first, but now this is Trump first. That's actually pretty personal for a guy who has been so unwilling to go after the former president, probably because he doesn't want to anger supporters. And it shows you he's kind of trying everything to really grab that strong second place position ahead of the 15th caucus. Yeah, you are seeing the more and more direct attacks. We'll see if there's any difference here. You wrote about Trump's campaign, Isaac, for The Washington Post, about just everything that he's been doing. This is the headline on the screen from your piece from a couple of days ago How Trump reignited his base and took control of the Republican primary. He has been very active in Iowa despite what the polls are saying, that he is the strong frontrunner. Just in the last couple of days. You can see he's criss cross the state across Iowa, four cities in two days. How different is this campaign effort from the past two efforts? Well, he's really still not campaigning in Iowa that month. I mean, he was there this weekend. He'll be there next weekend in between. He's going to sit in on oral arguments here in Washington for the appeal of his claim of presidential immunity. So this is not like 2016 where it was multiple rallies every day. He's not putting in that kind of time. And arguably, it's because he doesn't need to. If you look at the polls, it's also you know, it's harder when you're the former president and you have a much larger Secret Service footprint. But the campaign has really found that they they the traditional Trump rally is kind of more and more a throwback. And I mean. Do you think of the Iowa voters? You know, they like that retail politics politicking, which Trump doesn't do. He doesn't do the town halls. Do they do they care about it as the former president is doing the rallies out there. They have been trying to put him into smaller settings and these unplanned stops where he'll, you know, drop in at a diner or something like that. And he has been doing more of working the rope line. And that's actually something that the campaign has been playing up because he's a lot stronger in those settings, to be frank about it, than DeSantis is the contrast that they're trying to draw. Interesting and look is DeSantis and Haley have been trying to draw the contrast to Trump in the recent days, as you're just mentioning, some of the criticism has blown back on Nikki Haley herself. She has had a couple of unfortunate episodes. If you're in the Nikki Haley cab one about slavery, what about talking about how Iowa she said that Iowa starts the caucus and New Hampshire fixes that. Then she tried to clean it up. And there's a been questions about some clean up her comments. But this is how she tried to walk those back. Saying that I had black friends is a source of pride, saying that I had white friends as a source of pride. Iowa starts it. You change personalities. You go into New Hampshire and they continue it on. And by the time it gets to South Carolina, it gets bigger going into Super Tuesday. There's something very cool about the process. You're an Iowa native. How do they feel about that? Well, do you change personalities? Are you do that? I mean, that's kind of if you're talking about authenticity, I mean, that's been kind of one of Nikki Haley's what her critics have said about the lack thereof of that. But no, I mean, not as nice when you should never insult Iowans. While perhaps not the best way to get there. It's you can't just you are actively campaigning in Iowa, The last I checked when it comes to Nikki Haley is are you really she is still trying to get Iowans support in the caucuses. If you look at her initial comments, it didn't seem like it was a gaffe or unforced error. She really was trying to get a laugh or some reaction out of that New Hampshire audience. But it's just it's a lot of these little errors or mistakes have kind of mounted for her in recent days. Now, how that stacks up and whether that ultimately matters at the end of the day, because Donald Trump has such a commanding lead, if you look at polling in the early states, we'll see. But it really has punctured that image of this really disciplined campaigner from Nikki Haley over the past time. And they try to use the candidate that is questioning her viability as a general election candidate. We'll see if that works. We'll see if that matters.