Welcome to the biggest week of the Republican presidential campaign so far. Even without Donald Trump on the stage, this Wednesday’s G.O.P. debate in Milwaukee will be our first opportunity to see if Ron DeSantis—and the rest of the Republican field—is actually up to the titanic challenge of taking on Trump for the nomination. Despite what you may have seen on MSNBC, DeSantis isn’t dead yet, which is something I learned during a reporting trip to Iowa last week. And it turns out Trump might actually be more vulnerable than you think. More on that below.

But first, a dispatch from Tara Palmeri…

• The Youngkin Fantasy Returns: As Ron DeSantis’s campaign sputters, the prospect of Glenn Youngkin joining the race is electrifying the megadonor class. Among them is Putnam Investments C.E.O. Bob Reynolds, who recently hosted the former Carlyle chief and term-limited Virginia governor at his Nantucket house for a meet-and-greet with donors. Also in attendance was Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman, who is currently playing it coy this election cycle.

  Youngkin, of course, has been pushed by everyone from Rupert Murdoch to Thomas Peterffy to run for president. But he claims he wants to focus on this November’s legislative elections in Virginia before he considers entering the G.O.P. primary. Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall that he can’t beat Trump, or maybe he’s waiting to see if Trump flames out and he can enter the race as a darkhorse, propped up by his wealthy friends. If DeSantis exits the race, perhaps he could acquire the backing of Never Back Down, DeSantis’s Jeff Roe-led super PAC, as NBC’s Jon Allen mused on my new podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win, which debuts tomorrow.

And now, the latest Capitol Hill chatter…

• Mission Accomplished: Is Kevin McCarthy… winning? Eight months after his harrowing speakership campaign (15 rounds of voting on live television), I’ve spoken to multiple G.O.P. sources who have praised McCarthy for holding the line against House hardliners, outfoxing his right flank on the debt ceiling, and emerging stronger than before. His standing has been reinforced again this August, in part because the summer recess plays to his strengths: fundraising, glad-handing, and visiting members and candidates in their districts. Remember, McCarthy ascended the ranks as a close mentor to the zillions of House Republicans who defeated Democrats in 2010.

  Of course, the late summer goodwill will be tested this fall, with Congress on track for a government shutdown on October 1 and House Freedom Caucus members pushing for impeachments for everyone from Joe Biden to Merrick Garland and Alejandro Mayorkas, despite leadership attempts to slow their roll. Then there’s ongoing fights over the Farm Bill, Ukraine funding, and the NDAA, all with Trump threatening to throw wrenches into negotiations. Good luck to McCarthy playing traffic cop during what promises to be a multi-car pileup.

• Recipe for Chaos: Adding to the instability is the fact that Capitol Hill is still working through the shifting power dynamic between its four top leaders: McCarthy is still new in the Speaker gig and faces an unruly conference; Mitch McConnell is dramatically weakened (physically and politically) after his press conference freeze-up; Chuck Schumer is still Chuck Schumer; and Hakeem Jeffries is essentially untested on corralling tough votes. As one smart Republican told me today, vote counting has never been harder than it’s expected to be this fall.
• Kneecapping McCormick: Pennsylvania Democrats are attempting to poison the well ahead of another expected Senate campaign from David McCormick, highlighting questions about his residence on bright red billboards across the state, per Punchbowl, featuring McCromick’s frowning mug alongside the text: “Connecticut, Home of David McCormick.”

  Yes, as the AP reported last week, McCormick appears to be living in his $16 million mansion in Westport, despite also owning a home in Pittsburgh. (He also had at least two apartments in Manhattan, possibly investment properties, which he sold in February for $14.3 million.) It’s the same one-percent problem that befell Dr. Mehmet Oz—who went on to lose the Senate race to John Fetterman in part because he couldn’t escape his reputation for living in New Jersey—and one that McCormick is desperate to avoid.

  Residency questions aside, McCormick fits a broader pattern of recent G.O.P. Senate recruitment: self-funders who can offset Democrats’ ActBlue fundraising juggernaut, like Wisconsin’s Eric Hovde, West Virginia’s Jim Justice, and Montana’s Tim Sheehy. But Open Secrets’ tally of self-funders over the years reveals that these candidates often lose. Deep pockets can mask serious campaign problems and block out important donor signals, while also making candidates appear out of touch or unrelatable (e.g. McCormick’s multiple properties, or Mitt Romney’s car elevator). Then again, Republicans only need a net gain of one seat to win, so perhaps the larger strategy is to bleed Democratic money across the map.

The New York Times, which broke the story, said the documents had been sitting on the Axiom website for days, until reporters were “alerted to the existence of the documents by a person not connected to the DeSantis campaign or the super PAC.” NBC News also reported on the story shortly after the Times scoop, but they characterized their source in the exact same way, suggesting someone was eager to get these documents in the hands of multiple media outlets.

The documents were an embarrassing leak. They revealed new data showing DeSantis slipping in the polls, and offered blunt advice for the candidate from afar, urging him in a messaging memo to “take a sledgehammer” to the rising Vivek Ramaswamy and to defend Donald Trump against likely attacks from Chris Christie.

But even as the rest of the press took the memo at face value, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Roe and his team intentionally left the memo waving in the breeze on purpose. “Half-helpful, half-headfake, but Axiom doesn’t upload shit by accident,” said one Republican who has worked with Roe in the past.

To be clear: Whoever discovered the memo was likely an eagle-eyed researcher from another campaign. None of the veteran reporters involved in breaking the story are the types to get duped by bankshot trickery. And no one is suggesting the substance of the memo is fake. The advice seems mostly aligned with what DeSantis needs to do in the debate, given the stalled-in-second state of his campaign.

But there’s another possibility here. The memo could just be a sneaky way to keep DeSantis’s rivals off balance as they prepare for Wednesday’s debate, to make them think DeSantis will say one thing before he does another. Maybe he wants to bait Ramaswamy or Christie ahead of time, and make them look like the aggressors. Or maybe Roe just wants to flex his supposed wisdom from afar. But even if he wants to be the Wizard of Oz, remember: It’s DeSantis and his immediate advisers who will ultimately decide which tactics the candidate employs in Milwaukee. We’ll see if that strategy memo actually comes to life on the debate stage on Wednesday.

The Des Moines Register dropped its first, eagerly-awaited poll of the 2024 cycle this morning, and it bears out much of what I learned on the ground. While Trump is averaging a 40-something-point lead in national polls, his advantage in Iowa is less certain. According to the Register poll, with five months until the caucuses, Trump is up by 23 points over DeSantis. That’s a big lead, yes, but more than half of Iowa Republicans say they might change their minds. And when asked to factor in second choices, about the same number of Iowa Republicans said they are considering DeSantis (61 percent) as said the same about Trump (63 percent). The poll also undercut the national media narrative about DeSantis—that he’s disliked, awkward, and suffering from a barrage of attacks from Trump. In fact, in Iowa, DeSantis has the highest favorable ratings of any candidate in the race.

So here’s some added texture from my reporting at the state fair, and at a local G.O.P. dinner I attended in Cambridge, a town in Story County. Over and over again, Republicans told me they still admire Trump and believe his indictments are a political witch hunt designed to keep him out of the White House. But many also told me they were shopping around, concerned that Trump’s baggage will compromise his ability to defeat Joe Biden next year. The sentiment from Rebecca Cordray, a retired grandmother from Nevada, Iowa who attended the Story County dinner, was a common one. “I’ve been a Trump supporter. I have been appalled by how he’s been treated,” Cordray told me. “But I haven’t decided on anyone. It’s a real conundrum for us. I am scared to death of what would happen if we don’t have a Republican in the White House. So all of us are grasping with how this is going to shake out.”

Another Republican I met at the state fair, Keith Hoksbergen of Pella, was wearing a “FIRE BIDEN” t-shirt while waiting for an appearance by Tim Scott. He said he was considering Trump, DeSantis, and Scott. “Who is going to unite us? That’s what we need,” he told me. “So as Iowans, it’s our duty to stay open until caucus day. We don’t want to jump on this wagon or that wagon. We need to see them all and give them a fair shake.” When I asked Hoksbergen if Trump would have a harder time against Biden than the other Republicans, he said no. But his wife interrupted from a nearby bench in the shade. “Yes,” she told me. “I don’t think he’s gonna make it.”

I should add a caveat here, which is that the kind of Republicans that national reporters were talking to last week were naturally inclined to be considering other candidates. If you’re showing up to a campaign event for a Republican other than Trump, chances are you’re not a hardcore Trumper. And it’s worth remembering that many Trump supporters aren’t necessarily Republicans. They just love Trump. But in conversations with about 30 different Republicans—or at least people calling themselves Republicans—the non-Trump names that surfaced most frequently were DeSantis, Scott, and Ramaswamy.

Despite enduring months of bad headlines, DeSantis appears to have put his supposed death march on pause. His campaign “reset” from last month, and his pivot to Iowa retail, seems to have stopped the bleeding for now. He’s close to visiting almost half of Iowa’s 99 counties—“the full Grassley”—and along with his super PAC he’s building the kind of precinct-by-precinct organization a candidate needs to actually mobilize supporters in all corners of the state and win a caucus. Remember: Trump lost Iowa in 2016 to Cruz, who had more boots on the ground. “Trump is realizing he has to spend some more time here because it has the potential to slip away from him,” said Steve Scheffler, the Republican National Committeeman from Iowa. “It’s not probable he loses Iowa, but it’s possible.”

Importantly, DeSantis has a level of genuine fame and built-in conservative goodwill that other candidates so far lack. When I asked people why they liked him, they cited his crusades against “wokeness” and “cancel culture,” as well as his high-wattage fights against lockdowns during the pandemic. I did chuckle, though, every time a person who professed to like DeSantis mangled the pronunciation of his name. Two people called him “Rob” DeSantis. One called him “Ron DeSantos,” and another called him “DeSinus.”

A Fox News poll late last week found that Ramaswamy is creeping up behind DeSantis as the second choice behind Trump among Republicans. That’s precisely why that leaked Never Back Down memo advised DeSantis to take a “sledgehammer” to the untested millennial from Cincinnati. If that moment arrives and Ramaswamy can hold his own, maybe he’s more than just a karaoke rapper.

Ramaswamy is also being rewarded for something else: He defends Trump at every turn, after every indictment, and Republicans are lapping it up. When Trump was indicted in June by Special Counsel Jack Smith for mishandling classified documents, Ramaswamy even traveled to Miami for a press conference outside the courthouse where Trump was being arraigned, promising to pardon Trump if elected president. Joe Mitchell, a former G.O.P. state representative from Mount Pleasant who is neutral in the race, said Ramaswamy is winning over caucus-goers with a strange but effective two-step. “Primary voters want to see a candidate who zealously defends Trump from the bias of the Biden D.O.J., while also making a legitimate argument they’re the viable candidate that can win a general election,” Mitchell told me.

It’s an odd dynamic. Many of the Iowans I spoke to were open to new candidates and several told me outright they want a nominee other than Trump. But in the next breath, almost all of them dismissed the indictments as a political witch hunt. They were turned off by the idea of other Republicans attacking Trump—or each other. Going negative seems like it’s destined to backfire, which is probably why that super PAC memo urged DeSantis to defend Trump. That raises an important question, though: How in the world do you take down the frontrunner without criticizing him? “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a campaign where everyone’s running against someone, but they don’t want to say anything bad about the guy,” said Rob Sand, the Iowa State Auditor, also the lone Democrat elected statewide.

I was asking myself that question when I watched Scott, the South Carolina Senator and lone Black candidate in the field, take questions from Story County Republicans on Tuesday. His calling card is his personal story—raised by a poor single mother, up from nothing, the product of hard work and unyielding faith in Christ. He hasn’t had a competitive race in years, but on the stump, Scott is certainly a charmer. From what I witnessed, the Iowa audiences loved his southern preacher impression, his old-school conservative calls to shrink the size of government, and his alliterative one-liners. “You can be a victim, or you can be the victor,” he said in Cambridge. The audience lapped it up. Scott’s ability to quote scripture is almost certain to box out Mike Pence with the evangelical set, if he hasn’t already.

But unlike Ramaswamy, who goes out of his way to defend Trump, Scott has zero interest in talking about Trump whatsoever, let alone attacking him. He’s all about the American Dream—God, guns, and country, with a side of lowcountry grits. During his Story County event, I snapped a pic of Scott and texted it to a Trump adviser with the words, “VEEP.”

It’s conventional wisdom at this point, but it’s pretty clear Scott would love to be Trump’s running mate, and maybe help Republicans next year peel off some Black male voters, a group that’s been drifting ever so slightly away from Democrats in recent cycles. Can Scott somehow soar 40 points in the polls to win the Republican nomination on a message of morality, kindness and optimism? Or, to use an old South Carolina saying, is he just a dog on linoleum? Right now he’s somewhere in between. It’s actually not insane to think he could win Iowa, but I could also see him cutting a deal to be Trump’s running mate along the way.

None of this is to say that Trump will lose. He might, but he also might just end up having a closer-than-expected race in Iowa, winning in the end by a few points. In thinking about the outcomes, I was reminded of a story I wrote for CNN back at the very end of 2014, when Hillary Clinton was already the presumed Democratic nominee for the coming election. I went to Iowa around Christmas-time and talked to a couple dozen state legislators, operatives and activists at a few Democratic holiday dinners. The consensus take: Clinton was liked but not loved in Iowa, with its rural populist traditions and liberal college towns. Democrats told me she would face a potential primary fight if anyone new or progressive stepped up to challenge her. When I filed my story—“Hillary’s Iowa Problem”—it got almost no pick-up and was not met well among the smart set in Washington, not to mention Clinton advisers. At the time, she was untouchable.

We all know what happened next. Bernie Sanders came out of nowhere and she almost lost Iowa. But she didn’t, and despite the long slog of the primary, she became the nominee anyway. Trump, too, could get dinged up on the way to just becoming the nominee once again, beginning with a close race or even a loss in Iowa. Trump, of course, is far more beloved among Republicans than Clinton ever was among her party, and he’s still in the driver’s seat. But based on my conversations out in corn country, we’d be stubborn to assume that he’s got this thing locked up.