Speaker 1: Ah, welcome to it could happen here a podcast where myself,
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis, and James Stout just created a new soon
Speaker 1: to be beloved fiction character, racist Sherlock's holmes. And don't worry,
Speaker 1: We're not done workshopping at It's not ready to go
Speaker 1: public yet. But when this bit drops you people are
Speaker 1: gonna lose your minds Ah, how's everyone doing today?
Speaker 2: Much better after learning about racist shadow crimes?
Speaker 1: Uh huh? After no, we didn't learn about him. He
Speaker 1: burst fully formed from our heads like Athena from the
Speaker 1: brain of Zeus. Ah. Good stuff. Speaking of the Greek
Speaker 1: and Roman pagan pantheon, James Garrison, you know who does
Speaker 1: kind of have the feel of a malevolent spear it
Speaker 1: in Greek mythology is Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not wrong, sure, run, That's what they call him.
Speaker 3: For all my years study studying the papyrie, this is
Speaker 3: I can't confirm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, meetball Ron, I'm gonna I have a long essay
Speaker 1: on my substack about how meatball Ron and the Egyptian
Speaker 1: deity Maat are are really uh directly related to one another.
Speaker 1: But that that that'll that'll you can find that on
Speaker 1: my substack. My Egyptology focused substack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not what's this, what's the god of the sun,
Speaker 2: the god of the Sun disc the one they tried
Speaker 2: to do a monotheism for.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that isn't that raw? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I can see seeing himself in those terms.
Speaker 1: No, Mat, I think.
Speaker 3: The sentence is more of like a Horus figure. Actually yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: No, because Matt here's the thing. Matt has wings uh,
Speaker 1: and Ronda Santis is currently flying over us, uh, shading
Speaker 1: us all in the comfort of his of his mighty
Speaker 1: technicolor wingspan.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing, Matt. Let's there's too many colors in these
Speaker 2: in these in these wings.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we got onto a comparing Ronda
Speaker 1: Santis to this was a mistake anyway, Garrison. You just
Speaker 1: last week we closed out on two great episodes about
Speaker 1: fash wave and uh, the adoption uh and kind of
Speaker 1: reposting of a lot of these aesthetics that had become
Speaker 1: popular on the far right via you know, the the
Speaker 1: dark branded memes, And a big part of that was
Speaker 1: how Ronda Santis somehow allowed some incredibly internet poisoned zoomers
Speaker 1: to make an ad for him that was far too
Speaker 1: online for a presidential campaign ad and I felt like
Speaker 1: it was time to kind of have a discussion about
Speaker 1: meatball ron because obvious things in Florida are very ugly
Speaker 1: right now. As a fascist, which he definitely is, Ronda
Speaker 1: Santis is an effective administrator, yeah, which I mean he's
Speaker 1: good at twisting the administrative state that exists into a
Speaker 1: weapon to attack marginalized groups. He's been effective at that.
Speaker 1: What's happening legally, you know, in the laws, you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the anti trans laws, the anti drag
Speaker 1: laws in Florida is very frightening. What he's been doing
Speaker 1: to the Florida education system, state education system is very unsettling,
Speaker 1: And you know that is all of that is worthy
Speaker 1: of further discussion. But I think because the most immediate
Speaker 1: concern we have is like, is this guy going to
Speaker 1: be able to do that on a national scale? Right,
Speaker 1: Which is not to say that we should just let Florida,
Speaker 1: you know, sink into the ABYSS. I don't believe that.
Speaker 1: But at the moment, Rond de Santis is tied for
Speaker 1: second place against Donald Trump, So it kind of it
Speaker 1: behooves us to ask the questions purely for the purpose
Speaker 1: of self deface? Can Ron DeSantis win? Right? Could he
Speaker 1: actually become not? Even the first question is like, could
Speaker 1: he become the Republican presidential candidate? Can he beat Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: And the short good answer to that is I don't
Speaker 1: think so. It's not looking good. Not looking good for
Speaker 1: all meetball. Ron agreed, and I wanted to get into
Speaker 1: why and kind of some of the fundamental flaws as
Speaker 1: a guy who is there was kind of this belief fear,
Speaker 1: I think a reasonable fear among a lot of liberals
Speaker 1: and folks on the left that because of how effective
Speaker 1: he's been consolidating and expanding his power in Florida, and
Speaker 1: because he's generally seemed like less of a like Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has certain competences as an authoritarian. There's things he's
Speaker 1: very good at, but he was not good at being
Speaker 1: the president. He was not good at using power.
Speaker 3: He's not too much of a fascist in a loss.
Speaker 1: Not an effective fascist, right Like, he wasn't good at
Speaker 1: picking people to like do things for him. He wasn't
Speaker 1: good at He was good at hurting people in a
Speaker 1: blunt way, but he was kind of incompetent at rerat
Speaker 1: like a competent fascist like Hitler was a competent fascist, right,
Speaker 1: he was not in there long in an elected position
Speaker 1: before he had effectively made it impossible to oust him
Speaker 1: without military force. And Trump was never good at doing
Speaker 1: that stuff. And the worry is that Ronda Santis would
Speaker 1: be The good news is that Ronda Santis is incompetent
Speaker 1: as a politician and a political candidate. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of start with why a lot of his
Speaker 1: the people who do form his base, which is quite
Speaker 1: shrinking at the moment, he's losing a lot of support,
Speaker 1: why they thought he was capable of winning the primary
Speaker 1: and the general. And when you look into kind of
Speaker 1: why a lot of sort of Republican like legacy Republicans,
Speaker 1: the folks who often be called Rhinos, why a lot
Speaker 1: of them decided to back Ronda Santis. The best summer
Speaker 1: you're going to get comes from Phil Hauffines, who was
Speaker 1: a businessman in Texas whose car dealership ran a series
Speaker 1: of ads that are like plastered forever in the memories
Speaker 1: of everyone who lived in the DFW area in the
Speaker 1: late nineties early two thousands, and in a CNN interview
Speaker 1: a few days ago, he said this, when one looks objectively,
Speaker 1: at who can beat Biden. It's going to be DeSantis.
Speaker 1: We already had a match with Biden and Trump. Trump
Speaker 1: turns out Democrats better than anybody. DeSantis will be able
Speaker 1: to articulate more clearly what Republicans stand for, and he's
Speaker 1: not going to be bogged down in other stuff that
Speaker 1: Trump brings to the election. I don't think that was
Speaker 1: a logical thing to think a year ago, right, because
Speaker 1: it is true that Trump turns out the dims. The
Speaker 1: idea that like DeSantis isn't gonna get bogged down and
Speaker 1: shit has become kind of fundamentally silly. Like he's gotten
Speaker 1: bogged down in the fact that a lot of his
Speaker 1: you know, backers are invested in culture warship that does
Speaker 1: not sell well on a national level. This whole like
Speaker 1: anti trans crusade he's on the anti woke shit is
Speaker 1: not a big vote getter. It just gets the base
Speaker 1: behind you, and like, you're never gonna beat Trump in
Speaker 1: a race to the base. You know, Trump has the
Speaker 1: core of the hard right Republican Party in his pocket
Speaker 1: and they're not gonna like move on from anybody. DeSantis's
Speaker 1: hope should have been like going after independence people on
Speaker 1: the edge people who are like unhappy with Biden, and
Speaker 1: I think when you pick this sort of like hate crusade,
Speaker 1: it hasn't worked well. But Huffines decided that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy, this is the dude who has a shot.
Speaker 1: I think he can actually like pull it out from Trump.
Speaker 1: I think he's got the ability to like get a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the middle or close to the middle.
Speaker 1: This has been proven kind of absurd over the last
Speaker 1: couple of months of stagnating poll numbers. Huffine says that
Speaker 1: the governor recently held a meeting with about one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty Texas Republicans in Dallas, where he quote impressed
Speaker 1: them with his stamina, youth, and performance in recent Florida
Speaker 1: state elections. And there's a number of reasons to think
Speaker 1: that this is a bad strategy that like really laying
Speaker 1: on his performance in the last Florida election is like
Speaker 1: a good way for him to win support. One of
Speaker 1: these has to do with the fact that like Florida
Speaker 1: is the national watchword for crazy right like the rest.
Speaker 2: Of their unan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even a lot of Conservatives when they're talking about
Speaker 1: like madness in America talk about Florida like Florida. Man
Speaker 1: is an archetype and like, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: right wing culture warriors who like Ron's anti immigrant and
Speaker 1: anti LGBT policies, but moderates and swing voters the people
Speaker 1: he has a chance of pulling away from Trump. Like,
Speaker 1: if you tell them I want to make New Hampshire
Speaker 1: more like Florida, most swing voters are going to be
Speaker 1: like that sounds like hell, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: anything like that place. Like what a horrible what a
Speaker 1: horrible idea. This is a sentiment that you will find
Speaker 1: among Republican thought leaders. Quote. One Republican consultant who has
Speaker 1: worked on presidential campaign said DeSantis was making a classic
Speaker 1: governor's mistake by talking extensively about his past accomplishments. Yeah,
Speaker 1: put bluntley. People in Ohio or Iowa do not want
Speaker 1: to be Florida. They don't care about Florida, and they
Speaker 1: are tired of hearing about Florida.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because he's he's so reliant on the types of
Speaker 3: coverage to come out during the past two years of
Speaker 3: legislative stuff he's done in Florida, and he's I guess
Speaker 3: forgetting the overall view of that people have of Florida
Speaker 3: divorce from his own administrative changes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not like people are moving in droves to
Speaker 2: Florida Bay because he's defeated the woke menace and he
Speaker 2: created a paradise. Like, yeah, he's getting high on his
Speaker 2: own supply.
Speaker 1: He's getting high on his own supply. It's one thing.
Speaker 1: There's a degree of his campaign that's focused on like
Speaker 1: what he calls like the Florida Miracle, the fact that
Speaker 1: Florida economically weathered COVID pretty well. And again, this would
Speaker 1: be a stronger point if like Florida's economy was booming
Speaker 1: and everywhere else was bad. But the US economy overall,
Speaker 1: in terms of like the numbers that you know economists
Speaker 1: care about at least, is like doing reasonably well. And
Speaker 1: like of the shit that is bad in the US economy,
Speaker 1: it's not any better, Like inflation is not better markedly
Speaker 1: better in Florida than it is in Iowa. Right, there's
Speaker 1: just not a good case to be made because like
Speaker 1: when you're not when you can't really drive the economic
Speaker 1: point home, when you can't be like look at how
Speaker 1: much better Flora is doing than your home. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fucking paradise compared to the you know,
Speaker 1: shitty economy in Ohio. That's an argument you can make
Speaker 1: if there's any evidence for it, But when you're like,
Speaker 1: you can't really make the economic argument. It all comes
Speaker 1: down to culture war stuff, and most Americans don't want
Speaker 1: this culture warshit going on in their backyard because it's
Speaker 1: like a gross, weird pain in the ass. So right now,
Speaker 1: the bulk of DeSantis support comes from higher income, old
Speaker 1: guard Republicans, the kind of were lukewarm for Trump from
Speaker 1: the beginning, and the kind to point out rightfully that
Speaker 1: he didn't win against Biden. It's time for new blood.
Speaker 1: This is true, but current polling indicates it's not what
Speaker 1: most GOP voters want, which is kind of the big
Speaker 1: problem the Republicans have is that this is why Trump's
Speaker 1: definitely gonna win, you know, as the primary campaign, is
Speaker 1: that like the hardcore of the GOP cannot be overcome
Speaker 1: by the moderates because the hardcore is so in lockstep
Speaker 1: about what they want, and what they want is Trump.
Speaker 1: The moderates don't have control of the party, but the
Speaker 1: moderates are the ones who can like actually win a
Speaker 1: general election. So Yeah, it's it's a tough situation for
Speaker 1: them to be in. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: kind of shows how fucked Ron is is that, like
Speaker 1: Ron won reelection in Florida in his last scubernatorial campaign
Speaker 1: by about twenty points a year or so ago. In Florida,
Speaker 1: Trump currently has a twenty point lead on him.
Speaker 3: Not great, not great.
Speaker 1: So that's a disaster, like because again not only like
Speaker 1: should you be able to bring in your home state
Speaker 1: as a sitting governor, but like it shows that Ron
Speaker 1: is not popular because of his legislative achievements. He's popular
Speaker 1: because Florida is just that right wing right. Like that's
Speaker 1: like currently like the electoral state or status of Florida
Speaker 1: is very conservative. And so Ron won by an overwhelming margin.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean people love him. They definitely like
Speaker 1: Trump more than they like him. Bad situation to be in,
Speaker 1: and a number of early backers in DeSantis's orbit have
Speaker 1: begun to acknowledge this reality. I'm gonna quote from NBC
Speaker 1: News here. Yeah, there are a number of people grumbling
Speaker 1: about it, no doubt. A Desantist owner said, there is
Speaker 1: an overall sense, including with me, that he just is
Speaker 1: not ignited the way we thought he would. And I
Speaker 1: find that really interesting because you get versions of that
Speaker 1: a lot that like, we were expecting him to really
Speaker 1: take off as soon as he started campaigning, and he hasn't,
Speaker 1: and that was our only strategy. You get this, and
Speaker 1: like if you read interviews with like folks who were
Speaker 1: in the DeSantis orbit and people, because a number of
Speaker 1: his early backers have like peeled away and rescinded their
Speaker 1: their endorsements and given them the Trump it was this
Speaker 1: hope they had that like once as soon as he's
Speaker 1: out in front of America, Americans are going to love
Speaker 1: this guy because he's all the good stuff about Trump
Speaker 1: with none of the baggage. And that was just fundamentally
Speaker 1: disastrously wrong. And I think one of the things we're
Speaker 1: starting to see is that the Dysantis people didn't have
Speaker 1: another plan for how to get this guy elected. Like
Speaker 1: their plan was that we think that Trump's policies are popular,
Speaker 1: but everyone doesn't like Trump, and no, that's actually not accurate.
Speaker 2: He opposite a true almost like some of them just
Speaker 2: like Trump as a person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of them don't care about what he's done.
Speaker 1: They like the fact that he owns the Libs, right, they're.
Speaker 3: Not he's a compelling character. Yeah, DeSantis is a void
Speaker 3: of charisma.
Speaker 2: He is.
Speaker 3: He is not a compelling character. He's actually like he's
Speaker 3: good at being like an administrator in like like yeah,
Speaker 3: he's like he's very successful in doing bad things.
Speaker 1: And he's a guy you make your chief of staff
Speaker 1: if you're yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: He's not like, he's not a compelling character, like the
Speaker 3: way Trump is.
Speaker 1: No, and it's it's again, it's so fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: It says a lot about like the degree of bubble
Speaker 1: that all of the political class are in. And when
Speaker 1: I say the political class, I mean the people the
Speaker 1: fairly small number of people in the left and the right,
Speaker 1: liberals and conservatives who work on political campaigns, right, because
Speaker 1: it's actually a pretty small community of people of the
Speaker 1: folks who do the different jobs that are running political
Speaker 1: campaigns and that are like working as the age and
Speaker 1: legislative assistants and all that stuff for elected leaders. And
Speaker 1: because to me, to just a guy sitting out there,
Speaker 1: like I'm worried about Ron because what he's doing in Florida.
Speaker 1: But from the moment I saw the guy speak, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. And
Speaker 1: if you can't think about like how a guy could
Speaker 1: attract voters. If there's nothing that seems appealing about a
Speaker 1: candidate to you, if you can't understand their charisma, that's
Speaker 1: probably a good sign that they can't get elected. I
Speaker 1: am not mystified by why any president who was won
Speaker 1: in my lifetime won. Right, George W. I've been in
Speaker 1: a room with George W. Bush and watch him spoke
Speaker 1: in immediately made sense why people fucking love George W. Bush.
Speaker 1: He had an attitude, he had an air that put
Speaker 1: people at ease. He was good at putting on a
Speaker 1: character that people found appealing in that time and place.
Speaker 1: There's a reason why so many voters who loved him,
Speaker 1: you know, especially after the first campaign where it was
Speaker 1: kind of a but like, there's a reason why he
Speaker 1: got re elected, Like there's in It's the same thing
Speaker 1: with like Bill Clinton. Right, you watch old videos of
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton on the campaign trail before he was president.
Speaker 1: You can see the charisma, you can see the way
Speaker 1: he connects to audiences. You can see the things about
Speaker 1: him that people find appealing. There's not a mystery. It's
Speaker 1: not mysterious why Obama got elected. He's a deeply charismatic man.
Speaker 1: And you know, Joe needed a little bit of help.
Speaker 1: That's why he lost so many presidential campaigns beforehand. But
Speaker 1: next to Donald Trump, he seems like a much more
Speaker 1: appealing person. Like, I'm not mystified, and I'm not mystified
Speaker 1: by why Trump got elected. Next to Hillary Clinton, Trump
Speaker 1: felt not like a politician, not like the same people
Speaker 1: who would let us down. There was this degree to
Speaker 1: which like, you should never be you should if you're
Speaker 1: looking at like whether or not someone can win an election,
Speaker 1: you should never be like, well, I don't get it,
Speaker 1: but I guess maybe they have. They must have some
Speaker 1: sort of charisma, because everybody's talking about them as a
Speaker 1: serious candidate.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Honestly, if you can't see anything about appealing about a candidate,
Speaker 1: then that might be a good sign that they're they're doomed.
Speaker 1: And I think DeSantis is fucking doomed. And this is
Speaker 1: kind of a thing that a lot of his early
Speaker 1: backups has started to realize. One DeSantis aligned operative told NBC,
Speaker 1: from my understanding, if we don't see a bump in
Speaker 1: the polls, we're basically going to shut down the idea
Speaker 1: of a national operation. This is really something that like
Speaker 1: we're probably going to see. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: he kind of has a blowout politically pretty early in
Speaker 1: the primary season next year, because he raised a lot
Speaker 1: of money earlier in his campaign. He raised about twenty
Speaker 1: million or so between mid May and the end of
Speaker 1: June of this year, which actually put him ahead fundraising
Speaker 1: wise of Trump by about two million or so. But
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign ended last quarter with twice as much
Speaker 1: cash on hand as Wrong Alongside is still dominating lead
Speaker 1: in the poll. So Ron has raised a lot of money,
Speaker 1: which kind of speaks to the number of sort of
Speaker 1: like Republican institutional backers who hoped that he could win
Speaker 1: where Trump had failed. But he blew all that shit
Speaker 1: and it didn't get him anything, right, Like, he didn't
Speaker 1: raise a like he crept up a teeny amount in
Speaker 1: the polls, but he's still like tied for second with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump despite blowing all of that money. And I
Speaker 1: think we're going to reach a point pretty quickly where
Speaker 1: if he doesn't immediately take you know, a state or
Speaker 1: two or three from Trump in the early primaries, any
Speaker 1: kind of hope he has for further donations is going
Speaker 1: to dry up, because, like, why would you keep wasting
Speaker 1: that money? We all saw how much money got wasted
Speaker 1: trying to take Trump out of the primaries in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: I do think people are going to be a little
Speaker 1: more gun shy this time. There have already been a
Speaker 1: number of recent layoffs of major staffers by DeSantis. He's
Speaker 1: kind of purged a big chunk of the people who
Speaker 1: started his campaign. One of the things that's a little
Speaker 1: interesting about him in his political career is that as
Speaker 1: a politician, he has always been kind of noted as
Speaker 1: kind of weird within Florida politics because every election he's had,
Speaker 1: he's had an entirely new team of people. He does
Speaker 1: not work with the same people twice. He does not
Speaker 1: have like bring people back for his campaigns, which is
Speaker 1: really unusual in US politics for a successful politics. When
Speaker 1: you win, you tend to bring him back a lot
Speaker 1: of the same people who helped you win the last time.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that Ron doesn't do that, that
Speaker 1: he's got such basically one hundred percent churn in his
Speaker 1: teams suggests a couple of things. One he's not great
Speaker 1: to work with, and two the people who work with
Speaker 1: him and have been successful and are good don't see
Speaker 1: him as someone with national potential, right. They don't want
Speaker 1: to keep working with him because then they get kind
Speaker 1: of trapped in the loop of being a Desantist guy.
Speaker 1: They want to move on somewhere else because they think
Speaker 1: governor is as high as this guy can go. You know,
Speaker 1: like that is kind of one of the things that
Speaker 1: you see when you note this dude has such total
Speaker 1: turnover in his fucking teams. Now again, for all of
Speaker 1: the money that he spent, Ron's polling numbers have changed
Speaker 1: basically nil from when he announced his candidacy, according to
Speaker 1: New York Magazine, kind of related a bunch of this together.
Speaker 1: In the Real Clear Politics average of polls starting July first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, Trump had a thirty four point lead
Speaker 1: over Ron DeSantis and fifty two point eight percent of
Speaker 1: the vote in national surveys, with DeSantis at eighteen point five.
Speaker 1: At present, he's got Trump's lead over to Santas So
Speaker 1: a year ago, Trump had a thirty four point lead
Speaker 1: over to Santis. Now he's at thirty two, which is
Speaker 1: not the speed of movement that you want to see.
Speaker 1: After a year of effectively campaigning. On the national surveys,
Speaker 1: DeSantis has gone from eighteen point five percent to about
Speaker 1: twenty one percent, which again is just kind of like
Speaker 1: a disastrous rate of change. Now, this is just one poll.
Speaker 1: There's PROBA potentially outliers here. I've seen other polls that
Speaker 1: show DeSantis at more like twelve percent and tied with
Speaker 1: Vivic Ramaswami, who is another GOP candidate. Like the fact
Speaker 1: that Vivek, who is not nearly the kind of national
Speaker 1: name DeSantis is, is tight with him and some polls
Speaker 1: now is fucking disastrous. He and Trump are pretty close
Speaker 1: in terms of funding. Vivec has raised only a fraction
Speaker 1: of what DeSantis has raged So that's a pretty bad sign.
Speaker 1: Kind of a fucking disaster. One major area in which
Speaker 1: Ron lags behind Trump is his ability to draw interest
Speaker 1: and what amounts to free advertising from the media. Trump
Speaker 1: famously got about a billion dollars in free publicity in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen thanks to relentless media coverage of his every move,
Speaker 1: gaff and speech. He understood it didn't matter if it
Speaker 1: was negative, It didn't matter that they were shit talking
Speaker 1: to me. What matters that they're keeping my face out front, right,
Speaker 1: this is a thing that will bring me support, It
Speaker 1: will bring me donors, it will make my supporters see
Speaker 1: me as like this kind of gladiator fighting for them.
Speaker 1: He leaned into this shit. On the surface, Ron and
Speaker 1: Trump are kind of the same in their approach to
Speaker 1: the media, and that if you go to a Dessanta speech,
Speaker 1: you go to a Trump's speech, they're going to call
Speaker 1: the media the enemy of the people or some variant there.
Speaker 1: They're going to talk about the need to control the press.
Speaker 1: They're going to like support authoritarian measures against like free
Speaker 1: you know, the free press, like like again, if you're
Speaker 1: kind of just looking on the surface, it seems like
Speaker 1: they have the same attitude towards the media, but the
Speaker 1: way they treat journalists is completely different, and that DeSantis
Speaker 1: has no strategy with the media. He just attacks them.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're right wing media, if you're some
Speaker 1: podcaster he likes, he'll go on your show, he'll talk
Speaker 1: to you. But he ignores the liberal media. He ignores
Speaker 1: the mainstream media. But that's that's different from having a
Speaker 1: tactic for dealing with them. Trump has a strategy with
Speaker 1: the media. He will howl that they're the enemy, of
Speaker 1: the people in front of crowds. He'll talk about locking
Speaker 1: up journalists, but if you like read articles about him
Speaker 1: after a speech or whatever, he always gives the press
Speaker 1: their time. He knows a lot of these guys by name.
Speaker 1: He has relationships with reporters. He's had relationships with like
Speaker 1: Maggie Haberman of The Times. He's he's able to be
Speaker 1: like friendly with these people and social with them, which
Speaker 1: isn't like, doesn't make it's not doing that to be
Speaker 1: a good person. He's doing it because like he wants
Speaker 1: them to feel comfortable around him and cover him.
Speaker 3: And like and this is this is the thing that
Speaker 3: he's been doing longer than he's been a politician, like
Speaker 3: Trump is primarily like a media guy.
Speaker 1: Like he is.
Speaker 3: He is someone who's been able to very successfully manipulate
Speaker 3: public image and manipulate media in his favor for years.
Speaker 3: Especially as like he's not like a good businessman, He's like, no,
Speaker 3: he's like a con man who's like really good. He's
Speaker 3: a good promoter, so like he knows how to do this.
Speaker 3: DeSantis has none of this background, so he's just trying
Speaker 3: to copy like the hostile vibe of Trump without understanding
Speaker 3: the actual like media backing that Trump puts into his UH,
Speaker 3: into his like relationship with UH, with like with like
Speaker 3: advertising and with having you know, any any amount of
Speaker 3: coverage that will get Republicans be like, oh, this is
Speaker 3: a guy that's worth voting for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we'll also that will the kind of coverage
Speaker 1: that will make independence pay attention to him.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: A big thing part of how a lot of negative
Speaker 1: media coverage worked for Trump is that people would just
Speaker 1: see his name in the fucking news, and you know,
Speaker 1: so they would wind up reading and listening to a
Speaker 1: lot of what he had to say. And because like,
Speaker 1: you know, he's getting so much coverage, and because all
Speaker 1: of these media outlets want to present the image of
Speaker 1: being unfair and unbiased. Like when Trump would go out
Speaker 1: and sit down with a New York Times, sit down
Speaker 1: with the post it down, he would often get coverage
Speaker 1: that like, let him say his piece, let him make
Speaker 1: his case like they would because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: feel like they were being biased and he was giving
Speaker 1: them some of his time. But when you just cut
Speaker 1: the media off like the Santas has done, you don't
Speaker 1: get that from them. You don't get any of like
Speaker 1: the benefit of this sort of like idea of impartiality,
Speaker 1: which cuts down on your ability to actually like reach
Speaker 1: people who might be converted to vote for you. This
Speaker 1: is highlighted particularly well in a segment from a recent
Speaker 1: New York Times article Ontosanta's difficulty getting press coverage. Quote.
Speaker 1: Assigned to cover the reelection campaign of Governor Ronda Santas
Speaker 1: of Florida, Miles Cohen and the young ABC News reporter
Speaker 1: found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview,
Speaker 1: aids barred him from some campaign events, and interrupted his
Speaker 1: conversations with supporters. When mister Cohen was finally able to
Speaker 1: ask a question about the governor's handling of Hurricane Ian,
Speaker 1: mister DeSantis shouted him down, stop, stop, stop, and scolded
Speaker 1: the media for trying to cast dispersions. The Dessanta's campaign
Speaker 1: then taunted mister Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of
Speaker 1: online vitriol. So on election night, mister Cohen de camp
Speaker 1: to a friendlier environment for the news media mar A Lago,
Speaker 1: where former President Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name.
Speaker 1: He came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were,
Speaker 1: and took twenty questions, mister Cohen recalled mister Trump, who
Speaker 1: heckled the fake news in his speech. That evening elevated
Speaker 1: media bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead
Speaker 1: of the next presidential race, potential candidates like mister DeSantis
Speaker 1: are taking a more radical approach, not just attacking nonpartisan
Speaker 1: news sources but out ignoring them altogether. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that kind of like gets at the core of
Speaker 1: what a bad strategy this is. And it shows all
Speaker 1: of the Republicans right now because of Trump's success in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, which we do have to remember, was not
Speaker 1: based on converting a majority of Americans. It was based
Speaker 1: in part on like the electoral system and just raw
Speaker 1: luck that shit broke the way it did. But they
Speaker 1: are looking at like his success in twenty sixteen and
Speaker 1: trying to copy that. But it's like a cargo cult thing, right.
Speaker 1: They don't actually understand what he did that work. They
Speaker 1: see him bashing the media and his speech, so they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be even harder. I'm not going to talk
Speaker 1: to the media at all. And it's like, well, you
Speaker 1: have eliminated for yourself the primary benefit that Trump drew
Speaker 1: out from this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the Coga cult script is great. They're
Speaker 2: like they're trying to have the appearance of doing the
Speaker 2: Trump thing without understanding why, Yeah, the thing worked.
Speaker 3: And like also importantly, it's not like twenty sixteen anymore.
Speaker 3: As much as it feels like twenty sixteen was the
Speaker 3: here that never ended, actually a lot has changed. And
Speaker 3: also a lot of media has gotten a bit wise
Speaker 3: to the tactics that Trump did. Like they're no longer
Speaker 3: going to be blasting all of his speeches every time
Speaker 3: he says something outrageous because they know that's part of
Speaker 3: his strategy. So, yeah, the same tactics. If de Santis
Speaker 3: thinks he's going to get publicity for saying some horrible
Speaker 3: thing in his speech, the media knows what's up now,
Speaker 3: Like they've already seen this, like playbook get played. It's
Speaker 3: not like it's you can't treat it like eight years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think a good example of this is in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, if it had come out, if Joe Biden
Speaker 1: had been the front writer, say he beats you know,
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton, but everything else is the same. So he's
Speaker 1: the Democratic primary guy, Say it comes out that his
Speaker 1: son has been smoking crack with prostitutes, and like there's
Speaker 1: pictures of his hog everywhere and he was involved in
Speaker 1: so he gets charges against him for committing a couple
Speaker 1: of crimes that might sink a presidential campaign in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden, Like zero moderate
Speaker 1: it's not a single vote is being changed as a
Speaker 1: result of the Hunter Biden situation in twenty twenty or
Speaker 1: it's a different landscape and these people haven't. This is
Speaker 1: a good thing. I am frightened for in a new
Speaker 1: you know, there's another coup in conservative politics, and somebody
Speaker 1: understands that it's a different year. Yea, yeah, but we
Speaker 1: are we are fortunate at this moment. And you know
Speaker 1: who else is fortunate.
Speaker 2: Who's that robot?
Speaker 1: The sponsors of this podcast, they're fortunate to have great
Speaker 1: pitchmen like James Stout. James, why don't you tell the
Speaker 1: people which meal box subscription will finally cure the gnawing
Speaker 1: pit of anxiety at the center of their life and
Speaker 1: and bring them both both peace and the love of
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, we're pretty gonna have to uh, we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to bleat some shit out here, but absolutely when
Speaker 2: the uh, I personally love been a big chicken wing
Speaker 2: fam my whole life until the baby's arms from yaprint arrived.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They are delicious, little little fatty ams from freshlyew horbsted babies.
Speaker 2: And I've felt better inside and out since I started
Speaker 2: eating children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just remember our our motto. Uh, nothing's wafficking like
Speaker 1: human traffic. Shit.
Speaker 3: Go to go to HelloFresh dot com, use promo code
Speaker 3: children Arms for a discount.
Speaker 1: Blue Apron actually cut HelloFresh there, they're giving us a
Speaker 1: lot of money. It's Blue Apron. We shipp on Ah,
Speaker 1: We're back and we're thinking about how there's one food
Speaker 1: box company who's been accused of a lot of malfeasance
Speaker 1: and another food box company who are I think it's
Speaker 1: safe to say Christ like, you know, honestly, and.
Speaker 3: Jesus Jesus inspired to at the very least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the reason Jesus actually rose from the dead
Speaker 2: was to consume a breakfast. That's right by Blue Apron.
Speaker 1: Jesus. Jacob big omelet guy, huge omlet guy. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: don't know, that's not really a joke. So Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: has long ignored any meat and not guaranteed to be
Speaker 1: fawningly indulgent of him. For political reasons, this worked well
Speaker 1: in Florida. He's been able to get by by attacking
Speaker 1: centrist in liberal media and embracing a constellation of far
Speaker 1: right podcasters and Fox News. But Florida is not the
Speaker 1: United States, and a governor's race is not a federal election.
Speaker 1: He simply can't succeed against Trump with the same tactics
Speaker 1: that worked in Florida's or against Florida's anemic state Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: When he's tried to rebut the naysayers who see his
Speaker 1: cause as largely doomed, DeSantis has tried to publicly downplay
Speaker 1: the significance of national polls. It is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things. Whenever people point out, like, your polls have
Speaker 1: not moved in a year, and you've spent millions and
Speaker 1: millions of dollars, He'll be like, I don't trust those polls.
Speaker 1: Those polls don't really matter. You can't trust the poll
Speaker 1: to get how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen articles.
Speaker 3: I've seen him use that line a lot. Look, look
Speaker 3: how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, Ron, Yeah, I don't think they were not off
Speaker 1: by thirty four points. You can see clearly how he's
Speaker 1: making his case currently to donors in private, because a
Speaker 1: memo that he's sent out to a bunch of his
Speaker 1: high dollar donors leaked recently. There's been a number of
Speaker 1: websites that have written about it. But we have like
Speaker 1: this memo, which is fascinating. It was sent out to
Speaker 1: a bunch of big dollar donors, to a super pack,
Speaker 1: So these are the people who are not limited by
Speaker 1: like campaign contributions because it's to a superpack. So these
Speaker 1: are like the thick pockets people. So we get an
Speaker 1: idea of how he is marketing his campaign right now
Speaker 1: that it's in a crisis, and it starts with a
Speaker 1: state of the race update with a subtitle the ballot
Speaker 1: is very fluid. Early state voters are only softly committed
Speaker 1: to the candidates they select on a ballot question this
Speaker 1: far out, including many Trump supporters. Our focused group participants
Speaker 1: in the Early States even say they don't plan on
Speaker 1: making up their mind until they meet the candidates or
Speaker 1: watch them debate. Well, we know Trump's flor is twenty
Speaker 1: five percent. That leaves three quarters of the electorate willing
Speaker 1: to consider other viable options. What has not changed to
Speaker 1: the candidates who are realistically being courted by the electorate.
Speaker 1: As it has been for the last year, Trump and
Speaker 1: DeSantis remain the only viable options for two thirds of
Speaker 1: the likely Republican primary electorate. Well, Tim Scott has earned
Speaker 1: a serious look at this stage, as Bio is lacking
Speaker 1: the fight that our electorate is looking for in the
Speaker 1: next president. We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny.
Speaker 1: In the weeks of head we found low to no
Speaker 1: interest in Vivek Bergham and Nikki, while too many voters
Speaker 1: will not consider Pencer Christie for them to be remotely viable. Now,
Speaker 1: I agree about pens and Christy. Neither of those people
Speaker 1: is going to be the primary candidate. But again Vivek
Speaker 1: and some polls is right up there with Ron de Santis.
Speaker 1: So yeah, note that neither of them's gonna win.
Speaker 2: Great sign.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The MIMO goes on to note and to sort of
Speaker 1: admit that their efforts and other primary states have hit
Speaker 1: a wall and they're basically like, we're given up in
Speaker 1: Iowa and Ohio kind of we're not going to be
Speaker 1: putting new resources into them. We're just going to throw
Speaker 1: everything we've got into New Hampshire. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons for this, but I think it's largely that they
Speaker 1: don't think they can win in those other early states,
Speaker 1: and they know they desperately need an early wind to
Speaker 1: have any hope of building up momentum. Yeah, language like
Speaker 1: this from the memo has to have experienced Republican politico's
Speaker 1: nervous While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not
Speaker 1: dedicate resources to Super Tuesday. That's slow our momentum in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. We expect to revisit this investment in the fall.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you will not a great sign guys the memo.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you'll be revisiting a lot of things in
Speaker 3: the fall.
Speaker 1: The memo also claims Governor DeSantis and his messager thriving
Speaker 1: in town hall engagements. So basically, when Rod gets in
Speaker 1: front of people, they see his magnetic charisma. They really
Speaker 1: like him once he gets a chance to shine in
Speaker 1: front of them. Now, there's been no evidence in polling.
Speaker 1: He's been in front of people quite a bit, and
Speaker 1: he's not very impressive. Most of the social media response
Speaker 1: to his public appearances have been people making fun of
Speaker 1: the way he eats in public, Like there's like six
Speaker 1: or seven different videos out that are him trying to
Speaker 1: eat something and looking like a goober and people making
Speaker 1: fun of him, Whereas like again Trump has because he's
Speaker 1: actually charismatic. Trump can like sit in a truck and
Speaker 1: look like a dufus playing truck driver and everybody's like,
Speaker 1: look at that guy. Even people who hate him are like, well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of endearing. Look at him. He's hogging the horn.
Speaker 1: He's pretending to be a big truck driver. You know.
Speaker 1: Meet ball Ron. I mean we call him meatball Ron
Speaker 1: because of a food related gaff.
Speaker 2: Putting Ron.
Speaker 1: Putting Ron too. He's just a disaster in public. There
Speaker 1: are some useful bits in this leaked document. This is
Speaker 1: the part of the document where the Desanta's campaign is
Speaker 1: like trying to lay out what they see as his
Speaker 1: assets as a candidate. And again the goal of this
Speaker 1: is to get big dollar donors to give him more money.
Speaker 1: So this is them making the case as to why
Speaker 1: Ron is worth further investment. We found that when voters
Speaker 1: hear about the governor's bio, principally as a dad and
Speaker 1: as a veteran, they like him and are open to
Speaker 1: hearing more about him. This says to say nothing of
Speaker 1: his successes on parental rights, his leadership bringing Florida's economy
Speaker 1: back during and after COVID, fighting illegal immigration, and ensuring
Speaker 1: Border Act security. That he's not just a fighter, but
Speaker 1: most importantly a winner. A major paid media effort featuring
Speaker 1: the governor's bio will help us to convert three big
Speaker 1: issues that you know. That's again, so the three big
Speaker 1: issues he's highlighting that he says like, these are the
Speaker 1: things that are going to get voters onto us enough
Speaker 1: of them that we can overcome Trump's twenty five percent
Speaker 1: floor our anti immigration stuff. Well, I'm sorry, man, Trump's
Speaker 1: got you beat there. The wall is his.
Speaker 2: Right descentist has tried to go one step further. And
Speaker 2: if you saw his press conference in Texas where he
Speaker 2: the birthrights team thing, yeah no to shooting people.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he said quite drop a few of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's trying to. But again he just talked about
Speaker 1: what's interesting to me. He opens this memo by starting like, look,
Speaker 1: Trump's got a twenty five percent floor of but you know,
Speaker 1: there's that other three quarters of people we can get.
Speaker 1: And yet when you are talking about gunning people down
Speaker 1: at the border, you're just trying to take that twenty
Speaker 1: five percent from Trump. You are not reaching out to
Speaker 1: like the people who are less maniac right, he's trying,
Speaker 1: Like again, it's just bad strategy. It's a bad strategy
Speaker 1: within the context of what his people have laid out
Speaker 1: as a strategy. Right, Like, if the good strategy is
Speaker 1: go for the other seventy five percent of the voters, well,
Speaker 1: you probably don't do that by promising to be even
Speaker 1: harder on the border.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he doesn't really even have like obviously Trump
Speaker 2: didn't have a coherent border policy either, but he had
Speaker 2: a thing, right, Like, he had a sort of shiny thing.
Speaker 3: That he had three words that were very power build
Speaker 3: the wall.
Speaker 1: And you know, if desantists thinks Americans are ready for
Speaker 1: shoot them, all, right, you can try that. But he's not.
Speaker 1: He's like trying to do this weasel thing anyway, it's
Speaker 1: just not there's just not any evidence of an actual tactic,
Speaker 1: there of an understanding of like what people find appealing
Speaker 1: and how to highlight it. He's not doing it yet,
Speaker 1: He's not if you're a donor. He's not exhibiting the
Speaker 1: idea that he knows how to copy what Trump did
Speaker 1: and do it one better, like your goal here at
Speaker 1: if you're running against Trump based on kind of what
Speaker 1: they lay out, is what their strategy needs to be,
Speaker 1: which is get the other seventy five percent of people
Speaker 1: to back us instead of Trump. You need to be
Speaker 1: you don't need to be yes ending you are acknowledging
Speaker 1: by laying that out as the strategy that Trump his
Speaker 1: appeal is. He's got a dedicated base of appeal, but
Speaker 1: it's limited, and so if you are trying to make
Speaker 1: the case that you're more electable than him, you need
Speaker 1: to show how you have a wider base of a
Speaker 1: wider appeal than he does. And you don't do that
Speaker 1: by being like, I'm even shittier on the border, like anyway,
Speaker 1: just a bad strategy since he doesn't have a strong
Speaker 1: case to make an absolute numbers. Ron's campaign has made
Speaker 1: the call to push heavily on the Forgotten Man narrative,
Speaker 1: arguing a soft conspiratorial view that a cabal of shady
Speaker 1: elites is colluding to ruin American greatness. Here's another quote
Speaker 1: from that memo equally important, we will offer an economic
Speaker 1: message to disrupt and win economy voters. American decline was
Speaker 1: not an accident, It was a choice. Our elites do
Speaker 1: not consider themselves Americans so much as they think of
Speaker 1: themselves as citizens of the world. Their loyalty is not
Speaker 1: to a discrete nation, but to the bottom line on
Speaker 1: a balance sheet. And the decisions they made in leading
Speaker 1: this country over the past few decades has reflected that worldview.
Speaker 1: They have governed in their interests rather than ours. And
Speaker 1: I do think there's a germ of something interesting there.
Speaker 1: There's this idea of like economic populism, which was a
Speaker 1: factor in Trump's campaign. It's interesting to me how close
Speaker 1: Ron's idea is to outright anti Semitic conspiracy theory language like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't recognize borders, they're citizens of the world, which
Speaker 1: is a you know, very similar to a lot of
Speaker 1: the arguments that like the Nazis would make about the Jews,
Speaker 1: is that like they're a borderless people who exist within
Speaker 1: this like financial system rather than like our national like
Speaker 1: co citizens. Right. It's interesting to me that he's got
Speaker 1: that this in that memo. Again, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a good strategy. I think the way Trump, Trump's just
Speaker 1: better at doing this right at like he's made himself
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of people who consider Trump like
Speaker 1: their kind of guy, like a working class dude, even
Speaker 1: though he's a billionaire with a gold toilet. I don't
Speaker 1: see that DeSantis has the ability to like win that
Speaker 1: kind of support from working people.
Speaker 2: Now. He tried really hard to go to push his
Speaker 2: like his military record as part of a like, yeah,
Speaker 2: sort of I'm a normal dude kind of thing, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't seem to have stuck the landing at all. Again,
Speaker 2: he just yeah, I just did it in a clumsy
Speaker 2: and awkward way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean in part because like the thing he's
Speaker 1: got to hang on like that he was this fucking
Speaker 1: dude doing sketchy shit at Guantanamo. Isn't like even conservatives
Speaker 1: don't feel great about that, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he tried earlier to push like he was a leager,
Speaker 2: he was a jag officer, like attached to a seal team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he tried to call himself a seal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he like, I think he flew a
Speaker 2: little bit too close to the sun on that one.
Speaker 2: And again like, yeah, he fucked up and alienated the
Speaker 2: people he was trying to appeal to.
Speaker 1: And I also I do kind of wonder it was
Speaker 1: like sort of taking as red for some time that
Speaker 1: having military experience was like a positive aspect in a
Speaker 1: in a campaign that it would like win you a
Speaker 1: lot of conservative voters and whatnot. I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's really the case. Yeah's a lot of evidence for it,
Speaker 1: Like people certainly like shouted when they serve, But I
Speaker 1: don't know that it really works for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's more of a like a I
Speaker 2: don't know if I'm using the right phrasing. He like
Speaker 2: a traditional Republican value, not like a post Trump Republican value.
Speaker 1: Because Trump, like on record is being like, no, only
Speaker 1: idiots serve in the military. I'm a smart man, and
Speaker 1: like that didn't seem to hurt him at all. But
Speaker 1: you know who else hates veterans?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, several of the food box delivery companies. They
Speaker 2: actually they just won't give them food.
Speaker 1: They are they are actively every one of our supporters
Speaker 1: is wiping their ass with whatever flag the Navy uses.
Speaker 1: I assume they have a flag, right.
Speaker 2: Oh definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah, special navy flag. It works
Speaker 2: underwater too very special.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's good. And underwater flag that's what we
Speaker 1: need to bring nationalism to the fish. We're back. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to close out by kind of looking at
Speaker 1: a segment of Desanda supporters. You find people behind my
Speaker 1: favorite reliable media institution, legal insurrection dot com. Oh good, now,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of libertarian right themed news website.
Speaker 1: They're like, boy, I do want you to look up
Speaker 1: legal insurrection dot com because their website's very interesting, like
Speaker 1: starts with this like phonetic breakdown of the phrase legal insurrection.
Speaker 1: Like that's their logo that includes like a definition a
Speaker 1: rising up against established authority, rebellion, revolt in conformity with
Speaker 1: or permitted by law. That's a nonsense phrase, because there's
Speaker 1: no such thing as a permitted legal insurrection. We had
Speaker 1: this argument actually, like back in around eighteen sixty and
Speaker 1: guess where it ended. Like, I'm not saying it's bad
Speaker 1: to have an insurrection. I think some insurrections are potentially
Speaker 1: really good, but they're never legal. Otherwise they're not an insurrection.
Speaker 2: Yet the same silly idea direction is illegality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like one way or the other. I think it's
Speaker 1: this idea. These people who like pretend to be libertarians,
Speaker 1: they still have this like sacred sort of reverence for
Speaker 1: the law. They can't just say like, yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: in overthrowing the government. No, no, no, what I'm doing is
Speaker 1: actually obeying the real law. The people in charge are
Speaker 1: obeying laws that are illegal and fake. But like, I
Speaker 1: know the real law. So what I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 1: a criminal? Like no, man, just be like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I'm a criminal. I want to I want to overthrow
Speaker 1: the government. You know what's cool is being a criminal
Speaker 1: who wants to overthrow the government. We all love criminal
Speaker 1: This is why Star Wars is the biggest movie series.
Speaker 1: We love criminals who want to overthrow the government. That's
Speaker 1: who the founding fathers of this country.
Speaker 2: War is a very American thing to love.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't have to be like no, but ours is
Speaker 1: a legal and now fuck it, you're a criminal. You're cool.
Speaker 1: You're fucking al Capone.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, it's very very cooked.
Speaker 1: It is very cooked. Anyway. Here's an article from legal
Speaker 1: insurrection dot com who bafflingly backs Ronda Santis Florida government.
Speaker 1: Rond De Santis is serious about restoring executive branch agencies
Speaker 1: and rebuilding trust with the American people who've been shocked
Speaker 1: and appalled at the weaponization of government by the Biden
Speaker 1: administration and before that, the Obama administration. The federal government,
Speaker 1: specifically the executive branch alphabet agencies, has been completely corrupted
Speaker 1: by the Obama, Biden and now the Biden Harris administrations.
Speaker 1: We all know it, and we're all disgusted and disheartened
Speaker 1: by the myriad ways the Obama administration targeted political opponents.
Speaker 1: That's why Trump's twenty sixteen campaign to drain the swamp
Speaker 1: was so potent. We knew the depth and breadth of
Speaker 1: the corruption, the partisan Banana Republic style attacks on political opponents,
Speaker 1: and we wanted it stopped. Unfortunately, Trump was not able
Speaker 1: to drain the swamp at all, not even a little bit.
Speaker 1: So when Biden took office in twenty twenty one, he
Speaker 1: just got to work picking up Obama's attacks on ascent
Speaker 1: with a deep state still fully embedded through the executive branch,
Speaker 1: having spent the intervening years openly working as the resistance
Speaker 1: to Trump's the duly elected president's agenda. God, it's such,
Speaker 1: first off, very funny that they're trying to like make
Speaker 1: the resistance to be anything but like Twitter libs like
Speaker 1: I do find it by that they're like fucking trying
Speaker 1: to treat this like a boogeyman.
Speaker 2: I'm just yeah, like leading the Maquis through to through
Speaker 2: that I don't know, forester S Georgia and blowing up
Speaker 2: fucking train tracks is extremely amusing to me.
Speaker 1: It's just sad, but it does get it something right.
Speaker 1: This attitude among a lot of Republicans, particularly the guys
Speaker 1: who really like DeSantis, that the deep state is really powerful.
Speaker 1: These federal law enforcement agencies are fundamentally like fighting against us,
Speaker 1: and we have to build an ability to compete with them.
Speaker 1: And this is I actually think we've been mostly talking
Speaker 1: about like the weaknesses and the dumb shit about DeSantis's campaign.
Speaker 1: I think a strength he has not maybe capitalized on
Speaker 1: enough is this idea, because this is something Trump proved
Speaker 1: he was unable to do, like he didn't go in
Speaker 1: there and unseat the deep state. And DeSantis has actually
Speaker 1: been kind of effective at resisting the federal government and
Speaker 1: even sidelining some federal agencies within Florida. And there's some
Speaker 1: actual like potential for strength here with Trump's base. I
Speaker 1: don't know that this gets you moderates, but like, it's
Speaker 1: weird to me that he hasn't pushed this harder. Part
Speaker 1: of that maybe the fact that he's, like everything else,
Speaker 1: really bad at it. Kind of his strongest attempt to
Speaker 1: provide sort of a countervailing force to federal law enforcement
Speaker 1: was his activation of the Florida State Guard, which seventeen
Speaker 1: or so states have state Guards. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: like a state version of a National Guard. Potentially, Florida's
Speaker 1: had not been active in a while, and he reactivated them,
Speaker 1: claiming that it was going to be a force of
Speaker 1: volunteers who could respond to hurricanes and other public emergencies.
Speaker 1: But what he was actually doing was trying to create
Speaker 1: a paramilitary organization. He is in the process of attempting
Speaker 1: to do this now. These people are undergoing like military
Speaker 1: training and whatnot. He's trying to get them access to weaponry.
Speaker 1: Like this is potentially kind of concerning, but he's really
Speaker 1: fucking bad at it. There was a really interesting New
Speaker 1: York Times article recently that kind of goes into the
Speaker 1: problems the Florida State Guard have had sort of spinning up,
Speaker 1: and it's a very funny read, because it's like it's
Speaker 1: like a little kid's idea about how you would build
Speaker 1: a paramilitary organization. So on paper, the Governor's office has
Speaker 1: said that one of the Guard's missions would be quote
Speaker 1: to ensure Florida remains fully fortified to respond not only
Speaker 1: to natural disasters, but also to protect its people in
Speaker 1: borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest. And then the
Speaker 1: New York Times article continues, the deployment this spring has
Speaker 1: been mired in internal turmoil, with some recruits complaining that
Speaker 1: what was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization
Speaker 1: had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to participate in marching
Speaker 1: drills and military style training sessions on weapons and hand
Speaker 1: to hand combat. At least twenty percent of the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people initially accepted into the program dropped
Speaker 1: out or were dismissed. And if you get into this,
Speaker 1: the people dropping out are like the veterans, They're like
Speaker 1: military officers and stuff who got into this thing, and
Speaker 1: then are like, I was in the military for twenty years,
Speaker 1: you know, I did deployments here and here, and I
Speaker 1: came into this thing and it's a bunch of civilians
Speaker 1: dressed as soldiers yelling at me to do push ups
Speaker 1: in march in a field and like trying to be
Speaker 1: an asshole to me because they're angry that like I
Speaker 1: have military experience and they think they know better. Like
Speaker 1: it is so like the volunteers said the training seemed
Speaker 1: poorly structured, with an order to minimum amount of time spent,
Speaker 1: as one of them described it, marching in fields. Some
Speaker 1: of the men said that as veterans with years of
Speaker 1: experience in the military, they were offended when they were
Speaker 1: yelled at by junior instructors acting like drill sergeants who
Speaker 1: disregarded their previous ranks. I find this really fucking funny.
Speaker 1: If you guys seen those videos coming out about like
Speaker 1: they're these classes where if you're like a rich or
Speaker 1: you know, upper middle class dude, you can pay like
Speaker 1: ten grand to spend five days doing a fake version
Speaker 1: of the Seals Hell week. Like your role you're like incredible,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, you're like carrying, like hitting stuff with big hammers,
Speaker 1: You're like crawling on your back through rocks. You're doing
Speaker 1: all these like shitty, painful exercises, while like some dude
Speaker 1: who probably fucking got an other than honorable separation from
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps as a private second class like screams
Speaker 1: at you a lot, and it's you know, that's what
Speaker 1: you feel. Yeah, yeah, rolling around on a one wheel
Speaker 1: yelling at you that you're you know, just like making
Speaker 1: a bullshit reasons to be angry at you because idiots
Speaker 1: honestly have it, Like yeah.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a weird mix of like expensive LARPing
Speaker 3: and like a like a repressed kink thing for these guys.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, watched the.
Speaker 1: Movie Full Metal Jacket, and a number one didn't watch
Speaker 1: all of it because like our Lee Ermie or whatever
Speaker 1: his name was. Character, they're like, the really mean drill
Speaker 1: sergeant gets murdered after like emotionally abusing one of his recruits,
Speaker 1: like kind of a big part of the movie, but
Speaker 1: just saw him like making fun like yelling at people
Speaker 1: and making up fun insults, and we're like, well, that's
Speaker 1: got to be key to teaching people how to fight Garrison.
Speaker 1: Have you seen Full Metal Jacket?
Speaker 3: I have not seen Full Metal Jacket.
Speaker 1: You'd actually probably like it's good. There's some interesting parts
Speaker 1: of that movie well well shot, but yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think it's really funny, Like there's potentially this is one
Speaker 1: of those things potentially very scary to have a far
Speaker 1: right elected leader building his own paramilitary force that is
Speaker 1: answerable only to him. Righteah, that is a frightening thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about him trying this,
Speaker 1: but he's so shitty.
Speaker 3: It it's like dictator one oh one. Yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 3: it makes sense that he would try it. I mean, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I would never want to be a governor because I
Speaker 3: think that's an a moral thing to do. But if
Speaker 3: I if I was to be, yeah, pitarian governor, my
Speaker 3: own hit squad.
Speaker 1: Step one, make your own army. And it says a
Speaker 1: lot about Ron number one that of all of the
Speaker 1: different things he's tried to do, this is the only
Speaker 1: one that seems like, Oh, you might actually be able
Speaker 1: to get a lot of Trump voters to switch over
Speaker 1: to you if you promise them I'm going to do
Speaker 1: this nationwide. And you, as a guy who didn't join
Speaker 1: the army but is pretty sure he would have been
Speaker 1: good at it, can like become a militant commander in
Speaker 1: your like state guard thing that I'm going to establish.
Speaker 1: You might get some votes. I don't think you'd win
Speaker 1: a lot of moderates, but you might get the base
Speaker 1: away from Trump.
Speaker 3: Right, it's just so clearly a brown Shirts rip off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just like it's so blatant that it's like it's
Speaker 3: it's like it's like it's like he's like poorly copying
Speaker 3: someone else's homework. Yeah, Like, I don't A lot of
Speaker 3: his campaign has that vibe and he's like just poorly
Speaker 3: copying someone else's homework.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't know that this would work, and I
Speaker 1: still think he would have. It would be a long
Speaker 1: shot that he would have any chance of beating Trump.
Speaker 1: But if you were to be like I'm going to
Speaker 1: establish a state Guard where conservatives can get access to
Speaker 1: military grade weaponry and the right to carry their handguns everywhere,
Speaker 1: you might get I don't again, I don't think you
Speaker 1: went a general that way, but you might get the
Speaker 1: base away from Trump with that. It's at least more
Speaker 1: creative than anything else he's tried. Anyway, this is all
Speaker 1: a bad idea. I want to close by reading one
Speaker 1: last anecdote from that New York Times article on Ron Meatball.
Speaker 1: Ron's attempt to make an Army. A fifty one year
Speaker 1: old former Marine captain who had retired from the military
Speaker 1: with a disability and later joined the State Guard, also
Speaker 1: clashed with instructors during initial boot camp last month, raising
Speaker 1: concerns about the training. In an assault complaint filed with
Speaker 1: the Clay County Sheriff's office, the man said he was
Speaker 1: accused by the State Guard commander of being the leader
Speaker 1: of the group that had been criticized in the organization
Speaker 1: and its leadership. He was then forcibly pushed into a
Speaker 1: van against his objections and driven to the command boost,
Speaker 1: where he was fired and escorted off base. Of the
Speaker 1: nine original State Guard recruiters and commanders who spent months
Speaker 1: recruiting for the organization, fewer things the third remained. The
Speaker 1: staff director, who had been a proposion of the less
Speaker 1: militarized version of the group appointed in January, was removed
Speaker 1: from his post just two days before the inaugural graduation.
Speaker 1: The program's personnel director was fired this week.
Speaker 3: So good, sounds like it's going great over there in Florida.
Speaker 1: Sounds like Meatball Ron knows how to make an army.
Speaker 1: I don't know, folks. That's that's my episode on on
Speaker 1: the Ron De Santis campaign and now he's doing I
Speaker 1: hope you all enjoyed this little update. We're done. Cool.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for a vveck Ramaswani.
Speaker 1: Episode, yeah, which is just gonna be me making fart
Speaker 1: noises into the microphone. You'll get everything you need on vveck.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: Look, it's gonna be Trump unless he dies, in which case, boy,
Speaker 1: that could be interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, I just like Dessantis could have waited four
Speaker 3: years and then he could have had the backing of
Speaker 3: Trump to help him. I don't he's such a he's
Speaker 3: such a weird little like power goblin because like, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if he was still may try to do that.
Speaker 1: Trump has gone back and forth on people in the past,
Speaker 1: but it's such a weird call to like make this
Speaker 1: doomed play at it, to build like this bad, like
Speaker 1: you're gonna piss some people off. Yeah, why.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Anyway, I yeah, I remember us doing an episode
Speaker 2: not so long ago about the Santis and being like, well,
Speaker 2: he'll just wait four years until Trump's out to the
Speaker 2: pit show. But no, he fucking defied our expectations by
Speaker 2: torpedoing his own presidential chances.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and uh, That's why I love him.
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