Ballot. This is a result of the.

Insurrection, this morning, the FBI is acknowledging it's working with local law enforcement investigating threats against judges on the Colorado Supreme Court. This sometimes violent rhetoric follows the court's 4-3 ruling that Trump was constitutionally ineligible to appear on the state's Republican primary ballot. This is a result of the insurrection as banned included in the 14th Amendment. Now, analysis shared with CNN shows an uptick in the heated online language about those four judges who voted to disqualify Trump. While there are no known threats at this time, there are concerns a lone actor or small group may act out. Trump's team has called the ruling undemocratic, and his lawyers have velled to file an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Those threats come after Donald Trump shared an insulting Christmas message to some politicians and prosecutors. You can see some of it. We'll pull it up here for you. Some of the attacks. There's a lot right there on truth social, writing things like deranged prosecutor, Jack Smith, or the unselect January sixth Committee. He went on to call Nancy Pelosi-Krazy and President Joe Biden-Krookid. Joining us now, former Republican strategist and pollster Lee Carter, CNN political commentator, Jamal Simmons, and politics reporter for Seymour for Shelby. Good morning, guys. Good to have you here. Good morning. One thing that I think is really striking is some of the language that Trump is using is not hurting him in Iowa among Republican voters. In fact, this Des Moines Register poll shows that when he says things like immigrants are poisoning the blood of America or the radical left thugs are like vermin, people are saying it makes him more likely to support him. 42 %, it's more likely to support him.

In Iowa. Yeah, a lot of the voters that I talk to on the ground have the mentality that A, this is just something you have to deal with when Donald Trump is involved, and B, they view this rhetoric as that fighter mentality that we talked about last week. It's been really interesting because this rhetoric isn't taken like a lot of the media is taking it. It's just taken as this guy is a fighter. He's using this language because he cares about us. And on the flip side, you've seen Trump's opponents really use these examples as reasons not to vote for him. They cite the chaos and the drama surrounding Donald Trump. And I've also heard voters on the ground in Iowa say, Well, I wish he would just stop tweeting as much and just stop using social media. And so there is this frustration, but it's not registering enough in the polls. It's not convincing voters enough to not vote for him.

Lee, to that point, why? Because I think when you listen to Nikki Haley talking constantly about we can't have the chaos, you listen to DeSantis, I'm Trump policies without the chaos. Everybody thought going into this campaign season, that was a pretty effective message. It doesn't seem to be working, though.

Yeah, it's not going to say that matters, it's what people hear. And so what I see right now in the election, and I really think it's an important point we made, two-thirds of Americans are looking for a fighter. They want someone who's going to say that it's going to fight back to a system that seems to be working against them. There's a particular sentiment among Republican voters who support Trump that the government doesn't work for them, that it works for the elite, for the few, and not for people not like them. When he does this, it actually energizes them. They don't hear it the same way everybody else does. Everybody else is hearing what he's saying as a threat to democracy, as maybe he's going to be an autocrat dictator, all of those kinds of things. The more that people call a dictator, an autocrat, the more the Republicans dig their heels in and say, we're going to support this guy because we want somebody who's going to fight for us and nobody else will. Despite the fact there are those voters out there who say that they want Trump without the chaos, those people are already supporting people like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, but the people who support Trump solidly, they want it, they love it, they live for it, and it's hard to understand if you're not part of that audience.

Just assuming a hypothetical matchup between in a general between Biden and Trump. There's reporting from The New York Times recently that Democrats in some key states are really worried about Biden being a drag on key groups of voters. They talk about Arizona, they talk about Michigan, where Biden is pulling 15 points behind the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and then they talk about a state like Georgia, where Brian Kemp is taking a lot of credit for things, investments from the infrastructure bill, et cetera. But in Michigan, for example, they talk about how Biden is losing ground, particularly among Black and Arab-American voters. And having worked in the Biden White House, you also have a read on how he is doing, particularly and what he needs to do with Black voters.

I do. And I'm from Michigan, and so let me just tell you, he has a problem. The President has a problem in many of these states. Young African Americans, also some Muslim Americans and Arab Americans who do feel like the administration is leaning too far in the direction of B. B. Netanyahu. And so maybe there's a way to pull back from the Israeli government clutch, the hug so much, and to be able to talk about the Israeli pain of October seventh, and then also the kinds of pain that's happened since then. There are people who are worried about that. Candidates should be concerned about running with anybody at the top of the ticket who's performing in terms of the polls the way they are right now. Every candidate should be. The problem is candidates always think, The lesson of this is I need to find my own voice, be my own cell, separate myself from the top of the ticket, and a 99 % never works. Because the way politics works right now, it's too big. The messages out of the White House are too strong. You've got to figure out how to run with the candidate that you're running with.

Define yourself, of course, but you're going to be running with that President, running against the President just means that the Democratic Party is shooting at each other and not running together on a ticket where everybody is making the same message and making the same call on voters. That is the way, the only way that I think any of them have a chance to win.

Shelby, you've got reporting on how Trump's team is looking at the softness in the coalitions, particularly among black voters, among younger voters, and seeing if there's opportunities, there are places they can take advantage of it. Do they really think that there are right now?

They absolutely do. They believe it's not just getting these groups of voters to not turn out for Joe Biden, which would certainly help Donald Trump. They also believe that they can sway a number of people who voted for Biden last time around, but who have become disillusioned with the Biden administration are frustrated with the economy, are frustrated with gas prices, what have you. That's what Trump's team is targeting. And they're doing it in really interesting ways, particularly with young voters. One of the ways they're doing it is by having some of these more non-traditional, like rappers and celebrities come out in support of Donald Trump. He goes to W. W. E. Events. He's been to a lot of football games. We saw him throwing a football around at one of the, at Iowa State, fraternity. These are all efforts to get A, voters who are frustrated with Biden, but also new voters who aren't as political into the mix. And we've seen in some ways in the polls so far that it's effective at this point. It's still early on, but we've seen some movement.

The democratic message, I would say this, democratic message has to be more aspirational. It really does have to talk to particularly young male voters. It's got to talk about the chance, not just to-What should they say? We got to talk about how you make money. How do businesses grow? How do people have a chance to be able to buy a nicer house and send their kids to school? Those are the things that really still animate voters, particularly with male voters. They don't want the government to solve the problems for them. They just want the government to give them a shot to solve the problems for themselves. Too often, Democrats make the government and the Democratic politicians the hero in the story and not the individual voter.

I do think, though, in addition to the aspirational message, they have to get back in touch with the voters. So most people are saying they feel like the economy is in ruins. A lot of people are saying that I've never felt worse about the future of our country. And so when you have all of that happening and you have an administration that's saying things have never been better, you feel completely.

Out of touch. Disconnected.

Totally disconnected. And younger people, I think, are really saying, I need somebody who gets my pain, who gets how angry I am and gets how frustrated I am. You can't just tell me that things have never been better. I think that is one of the biggest problems that this administration would just get their arms around how people are feeling and feel like they have a pulse on that. It could truly change things. But right now they feel completely out of touch. I think that's why you're seeing a lot of people peel off.