Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Gasova. Today, has Ronda Santis found the elusive
Speaker 1: secret to stealing Donald Trump's voters? So you know, Ron's
Speaker 1: been in front of mine for a long time now.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most popular governments. He's a
Speaker 1: tough guy, he's a brilliant guy. And we got involved
Speaker 1: with Ron. A lot of people were saying, do you
Speaker 1: think he can make it? I said, he's gonna make
Speaker 1: it because he's a jamp, he's a winner. And I
Speaker 1: gotta thank the President for his support of Florida. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of excited that he's here about tell you,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have Milania as a Florida resident.
Speaker 1: Let me just say, Mr President, given your change of registration,
Speaker 1: welcome home to Florida a simpler times back when everything
Speaker 1: was buddy buddy down in Florida. Donald Trump, as you
Speaker 1: heard there, was all too happy then to take credit
Speaker 1: for the rapid rise of rhn De Santis, Florida's governor.
Speaker 1: I endorsed Ron, and after I endorsed me, took off
Speaker 1: like a rocket ship. And to Santis, well, he was
Speaker 1: all too happy to let him for the time being. Anyway,
Speaker 1: these days, the relationship between the former president and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party's new star is a little frost here. It's
Speaker 1: no secret to Santis is weighing whether to challenge Trump
Speaker 1: for the Republican presidential nomination, and it's really no secret
Speaker 1: that Trump is not happy about it. In the past,
Speaker 1: that might have meant that Santis would come under attack
Speaker 1: not just from Trump, which is happening, but also Trump's
Speaker 1: legions of supporters, which is not happening. In fact, some
Speaker 1: early pole show Republicans preferring to Santis over Trump. What
Speaker 1: is going on. One person who knows is Umberg's national
Speaker 1: political correspondent, Joshua Green. He's just written a big story
Speaker 1: about De Santis for Business Week, and he's here with
Speaker 1: me now in our Washington studio. Josh thanks for being here,
Speaker 1: my pleasure, Joshuay is Ron De Santis suddenly the big
Speaker 1: Republican of the moment. So Republicans went into the mentoral
Speaker 1: elections expecting a big red wave. It didn't materialize. By
Speaker 1: and large, their candidates lost in the battleground states. They
Speaker 1: didn't manage to win back control of the Senate. But
Speaker 1: the one big exception to that trend was Ron De Santis,
Speaker 1: who won a landslide re election race for Florida governor
Speaker 1: into the process one not just Republican voters, but a
Speaker 1: lot of Democrats and independence too, many of whom think
Speaker 1: that he might even be the Trump slayer that if
Speaker 1: he runs for the Republican presidential nomination is most people
Speaker 1: expect that he might finally be the person who can
Speaker 1: depose Trump and loosened Trump's warlord grip on the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: These had for the last seven years. And of the
Speaker 1: reasons I suppose that Republicans would actually want to have
Speaker 1: a Trump's layer is because when reason the Republicans lost
Speaker 1: so badly in the midterm elections is because Trump put
Speaker 1: forward so many candidates who were not palatable beyond the
Speaker 1: very narrow base of die hard Trump supporters. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the menagerie of folks
Speaker 1: that Trump put forward, from mem at Oz to herschell Walker,
Speaker 1: yeah in Georgia, you know, to all sorts of kind
Speaker 1: of lesser House candidates who disappointed and lost. It cost
Speaker 1: Republicans control of the Senate, and it cost them a
Speaker 1: bigger majority in the House of Representatives, and we can
Speaker 1: already see the problems that's causing the party in terms
Speaker 1: of the fights over who's going to be the next
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House. But backing up a step, what
Speaker 1: it really showed to people, even Republicans who are fairly
Speaker 1: Trump positive. This marked the third election in a row
Speaker 1: that Republicans have underperformed with Trump at the top of
Speaker 1: the ticket. Mid term elections big blue way for Democrats,
Speaker 1: and of course Joe Biden won. Uh here we are
Speaker 1: in two with inflation rampant and right track run track
Speaker 1: numbers very negative for Democrats. I mean, all the fundamentals
Speaker 1: showed that we were headed for a Republican wave and
Speaker 1: instead this Trumpet ticket and these candidates underperformed. I think
Speaker 1: it was a wake up call for a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are perfectly willing to go along with Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as long as the party was winning, but now
Speaker 1: recognize that with Trump at the top of the ticket,
Speaker 1: they're losing, and so they're searching for a new standard bearer.
Speaker 1: And Rhonda Santis might be that guy. And something you
Speaker 1: said earlier is pretty significant, I think. And that's even
Speaker 1: though the Sanders is a very conservative Republican and made
Speaker 1: his bones as a die hard Trump supporter before separating himself.
Speaker 1: He still managed to win Democrats and independence in large numbers.
Speaker 1: What did he do to attract people who you would think,
Speaker 1: in this really polarized environment would run away from a
Speaker 1: guy like that. I think the real thing he did
Speaker 1: was he was very COVID skeptical, and Florida became famous,
Speaker 1: you know, if not infamous during the pandemic. De Santis
Speaker 1: was the guy who was most aggressive about opening businesses,
Speaker 1: fighting back mask mandates, keeping kids in real school, and
Speaker 1: in the travels I had through Florida campaigning with him.
Speaker 1: In the week leading up to the mid terms, a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are not hard core Republicans said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, looking back two years from now, De Sante
Speaker 1: has got a lot right on COVID. We sort of
Speaker 1: appreciate that he was a good governor. My kid got
Speaker 1: to stay in school, My husband didn't lose his job
Speaker 1: because his business stayed open. So from a governing standpoint,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Florida seemed to have been
Speaker 1: happy with how he performed, and I think that's reflected
Speaker 1: on the landslide reelection. He wonted November. The question now, though,
Speaker 1: is can you appeal to a slightly different class of voters,
Speaker 1: Republican primary voters, and make himself appealing enough to those
Speaker 1: voters that they will loosen their ties to Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and transfer them to somebody else. And of course, this
Speaker 1: is the big danger that any Republican hoping to succeed
Speaker 1: Donald trumpas do. He's got to attract those Trump voters
Speaker 1: while not alienating them by turning off Trump himself, and
Speaker 1: Descenders appears to have done that. In your story, you
Speaker 1: write that Descenders figured out away two be the next
Speaker 1: candidates to succeed Trump without getting kind of machine gunned
Speaker 1: down by him. Yeah. I mean to say, this is
Speaker 1: interesting because he kind of cracked the code for solving
Speaker 1: a problem that a lot of Republican presidential hopefuls have
Speaker 1: been trying to solve and have been unable to and
Speaker 1: that is, how do you run for president in a
Speaker 1: Republican party that is still fundamentally controlled by Donald Trump?
Speaker 1: So what did he do? Well? What most people did?
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about people like Mike Pence, for instance,
Speaker 1: the former Vice president and former Secretary of State, Mike
Speaker 1: Pompeo had along with a lot of Trumpey senators like
Speaker 1: Tom Cotton from Arkansas Ted Cruz from Texas. What most
Speaker 1: of those people have done over the past five years
Speaker 1: is glorify him, fluff his ego, attacked his opponents in
Speaker 1: hopes that he would look kindly on them and wouldn't
Speaker 1: tear them to shreds when they decided to run for president.
Speaker 1: They created a problem for them, though, and it's that
Speaker 1: they came off looking like secondary figures, beta males to
Speaker 1: Trump's alpha males. One Republican put it to me to say,
Speaker 1: this is interesting because he went in a different direction
Speaker 1: when he was running for governor in He went on
Speaker 1: Fox News a bunch because he was ranked third in
Speaker 1: the time in the Florida Republican gubratorial primary. Understood that
Speaker 1: he needed Trump's endorsement, and further understood that the best
Speaker 1: way to get that endorsement was to go on TV
Speaker 1: and sort of flagrantly praise and defend Donald Trump, who
Speaker 1: at that time was fighting off Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Speaker 1: He didn't even identify a crime. He said, Oh, come,
Speaker 1: he's doing a counter intelligence investigation. Just go try to
Speaker 1: find something we needed. Insurance policy to prevent Trump from
Speaker 1: getting elected. There's one thing to have a bias, there's
Speaker 1: one thing to have an appearance of impropriety. This is
Speaker 1: actually taking a bias and basically saying you're going to
Speaker 1: use the machinery of government to prevent the American people
Speaker 1: from making a choice. That's very disturbing. So to Santa
Speaker 1: spent a ton of time on Fox News, just like
Speaker 1: the other guys, praising him. It worked. Trump noticed, endorsed him.
Speaker 1: It vaulted him to the Florida nomination and eventually to
Speaker 1: the governor's office. But De Santus did something interesting at
Speaker 1: that point. He stopped praising Trump. He stopped genuflecting and
Speaker 1: sort of presenting him. Once he became governor, It's kind
Speaker 1: of a beta to Trump's alpha, and it allowed to
Speaker 1: Santa's to do something that none of the other guys
Speaker 1: had been able to do, and that is to emerge
Speaker 1: as his own figure. Josh, So, now Ronda Santa Is
Speaker 1: is governor of Florida. He's stepped into his own and
Speaker 1: you writing your story that as he began to eye
Speaker 1: the White House, he realized he had one more big
Speaker 1: thing he had to do. So what to Santa's did that.
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty ingenious. Is he understood he had
Speaker 1: to kind of go out and create his own issue
Speaker 1: portfolio that would get people excited. Right, every Republican in
Speaker 1: the age of Trump understood that the way to get
Speaker 1: attention is to have these big, loud, messy cultural fights,
Speaker 1: most of which revolved around Trump. What De Santis did
Speaker 1: was he realized that he needed to have big, large,
Speaker 1: messy cultural fights that didn't revolve around Trump, so that
Speaker 1: De Santis himself could kind of be the alpha male
Speaker 1: in these fights. So one of the things Trump did
Speaker 1: when he became president was he fundamentally reoriented what it
Speaker 1: meant to be a Republican and good standing. In the past,
Speaker 1: it had meant that you subscribe to a certain set
Speaker 1: of policy commitments. You know, optimistic, pro business, small government.
Speaker 1: You know, think Ronald Reagan, Shining City on a Hill,
Speaker 1: small government. The government was the problem. Exactly what Trump
Speaker 1: did was he sort of turned it into an issue
Speaker 1: of grievance. So from the moment he came down the
Speaker 1: Trump Tower escalator to announce his campaign, he was attacking immigrants.
Speaker 1: The Chinese are our enemies, the liberals are our enemies.
Speaker 1: Creating all sorts of enemies and grievances that really had
Speaker 1: a powerful effect, as we saw on Republican voters and
Speaker 1: changed what the party diod for. It was that other
Speaker 1: people were responsible for the ills in your life exactly,
Speaker 1: and that he was the guy who's going to right
Speaker 1: those wrongs. Of course, with Trump, there was a big
Speaker 1: personal element to all this that he too was being
Speaker 1: victimized by, you know, whether it was Robert Muller or
Speaker 1: mean Democrats, um. And so he had a lot of
Speaker 1: grievances to air too, and that sort of became what
Speaker 1: Republican politics was about in the air of Trump. I
Speaker 1: think one thing that DeSantis recognized early on was that
Speaker 1: if he wanted to emerge as his own figure, he
Speaker 1: had to come up with a brand of politics sort
Speaker 1: of rhymed with Trump is um, but wasn't about Trump specifically.
Speaker 1: So one of the things he did from the very
Speaker 1: get go of his term as Florida governor was to
Speaker 1: start these big fights, whether it was over immigration or
Speaker 1: wokeness is a big theme of his but it was
Speaker 1: about something that DeSantis was orchestrating, and that focused on
Speaker 1: DeSantis in the state of Florida. It didn't focus on
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Josh, please stick around. We'll continue talking after
Speaker 1: the break, Josh, he said to Santis began building his
Speaker 1: own portfolio of enemies to attack who people would associate
Speaker 1: with him instead of Trump. What are some examples of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look a few months ago, De
Speaker 1: Santis did this immigration stunt where somebody from his administration
Speaker 1: lured a bunch of venezuel And immigrants onto a flight
Speaker 1: to Martha's Vinue with promises that they would get jobs
Speaker 1: and aid, flew them there, dropped them off. There were
Speaker 1: no jobs in aid, and it became this big kerfuffle
Speaker 1: in conservative media. Um, we had Media Matters for America,
Speaker 1: the Watchdog group do a study for us for this piece,
Speaker 1: and they found out that Fox had devoted a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty eight segments to the santiss immigration stunt. Got
Speaker 1: people really riled up. Put De Santis at the forefront
Speaker 1: of this controversy on immigration, which we know that Republican
Speaker 1: voters care about and are prime to react to. And
Speaker 1: it made the Santis the centerpiece of the story. And
Speaker 1: if you look at what he's done in his recent
Speaker 1: political career, he's run that playbook again. And again and again.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I write about in my
Speaker 1: new business cover story is that one of the bad
Speaker 1: guys the Santisist has chosen is actually corporate America, which
Speaker 1: has historically been the Republican Party's great ally. What do
Speaker 1: Santus is trying to do is kind of forge a politics.
Speaker 1: It's a lot like Trumpism. It revolves around grievance, but
Speaker 1: it isn't backward looking. He's not trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: restore the Reagan era of sunny optimism. He's drumming up
Speaker 1: a new set of grievances for people to get upset about.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of evidence that that what he's
Speaker 1: doing is working, that Republican voters are listening to this
Speaker 1: and responding to this, whether it's fighting against what he
Speaker 1: calls wokeness and corporate America, the idea that CEOs and
Speaker 1: business people have been kind of captured by social justice
Speaker 1: and environmental warriors and are undermining sort of the basis
Speaker 1: of US capitalism. We can't just stand idly by while
Speaker 1: woke ideology ravages every institution in our society. We must
Speaker 1: fight the woke in our schools, We must fight the
Speaker 1: woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in
Speaker 1: government agencies. We can never ever surrender to woke ideology.
Speaker 1: The state of Florida is where woke goes to die.
Speaker 1: A great example of this is to Santus's fight with
Speaker 1: the state's marquee employer, Disney. Last year, Florida past what
Speaker 1: critics dubbed it Don't Say Gay law, which limited what
Speaker 1: teachers could teach children about gender and sexual identity in
Speaker 1: the classroom, and one of the people who came out
Speaker 1: and criticized the law was Disney CEO Bob Chappeck. De
Speaker 1: Santis did something that in any previous political era would
Speaker 1: have been unthinkable, and he went to war with one
Speaker 1: of the state's largest employers in Disney, threatened them, called
Speaker 1: a special session of the legislature to punish them by
Speaker 1: stripping them of a special tax break, and used Disney
Speaker 1: to start a big national fight over the issue of
Speaker 1: what he calls corporate wokeness, the idea that CEOs and
Speaker 1: business leaders have been captured by perfidious liberal social justice
Speaker 1: and environmental warriors in a way that is sort of
Speaker 1: threatening to the fabric of American society. And this turned
Speaker 1: out to be a very resonant fight. Again, it put
Speaker 1: around to Santis on Fox News every night. It introduced
Speaker 1: to a lot of Republican voters a whole new set
Speaker 1: of grievances that they hadn't really known about before. That
Speaker 1: kind of got them excited. And once again it put
Speaker 1: to Santis in the role of being the prime driver
Speaker 1: of a crisis that had nothing to do with Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: It let him emerge as the big figure. And his
Speaker 1: ability to run that play again and again and again,
Speaker 1: I think explains how it is that he's managed to
Speaker 1: emerge from Trump's Republican Party as probably the most exciting
Speaker 1: Republican presidential prospect heading into the primaries. We'll be right back, Josh.
Speaker 1: You write that one of the other differences between Trump
Speaker 1: and DeSantis is that the Sensis is very effective as
Speaker 1: a governor. As an executive. De Santis as governor, understands
Speaker 1: how to use the power of government in pursuit of
Speaker 1: his political goals. So Trump would throw an awful lot
Speaker 1: of tantrums and fire people and hire people, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, he didn't really use the
Speaker 1: power of government to accomplish a lot, or he seemed
Speaker 1: like he was unable to do it. De Santis is
Speaker 1: Harvard trained lawyer and a very capable chief executive who
Speaker 1: has used the powers of the government to punish companies
Speaker 1: like Disney that he's gone to war with. It's sort
Speaker 1: of remarkable from the standpoint of you don't usually see
Speaker 1: a government attacking businesses in their own party. But it's
Speaker 1: also remarkable because it's sort of the opposite of what
Speaker 1: Republicans traditionally say they want and don't want from government,
Speaker 1: and that is to kind of be left alone and
Speaker 1: for business to operate independently. One of the kind of
Speaker 1: wild things that it's governed doing research for this East was,
Speaker 1: you know. De Santis was elected to Congress as a
Speaker 1: libertarian minded congressman from a district outside Jacksonville, and as
Speaker 1: part of his campaign, he wrote a book sort of
Speaker 1: attacking Obama and venerating the First Principles of America. And
Speaker 1: in that book he wrote the bullying of private industry
Speaker 1: was part and parcel of the modus operandi of the
Speaker 1: Obama administration. What's so amazing and ironic about De Santi's
Speaker 1: Times government is that he used the powers of the
Speaker 1: De Santis administration to bully companies like Disney very successfully
Speaker 1: in a way that has built up his political image
Speaker 1: and made him into a real viable, if not the
Speaker 1: leading Republican contender for the nomination. Josh, you describe all
Speaker 1: the attention and success that De Santis is having, especially
Speaker 1: among Republicans, that of course has already attracted the ire
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. What does that mean for De Santis
Speaker 1: now that Trump wants a big supporter is on his
Speaker 1: bad side. Trump has been very frustrated with Rohn to
Speaker 1: Sandis for a while because, as we said earlier to Santus,
Speaker 1: once he became governor, stopped Jenny flecting to Trump, and
Speaker 1: Trump felt as though he were being slighted. That frustration
Speaker 1: finally bubbled to the surface. Just before the elections. Trump
Speaker 1: was in a rally in Pennsylvania and referred to him
Speaker 1: as Ron the Sanctimonious, which is Trump's new nickname for him.
Speaker 1: Not quite as good as Crooked Hillary or Lion Ted.
Speaker 1: But you got the sense that Trump was sort of
Speaker 1: very frustrated, but to Sant's just ignored it. And I
Speaker 1: think the fact that Republicans with a lot of Trump
Speaker 1: candidates to the top of the ticket performed as badly
Speaker 1: as they did in the mid terms. Has kept other
Speaker 1: Republicans from going after to Sandis like Trump's attacks really
Speaker 1: haven't had that much of effect. Most Republican lawmakers and
Speaker 1: voters seemed to have ignored them, and it's allowed to
Speaker 1: Santus to continue to emerge as this exciting potential Trump
Speaker 1: replacement if he gets into the presidential race. And I
Speaker 1: guess that comes down to one of the other signatures
Speaker 1: of Trump, which is fear. He makes p Fear him
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why people are afraid to
Speaker 1: run against him, because if they don't fear him personally,
Speaker 1: they fear his very loyal voters. And in your story
Speaker 1: you write that De Santis has actually been very effective
Speaker 1: at creating an aura of fear around himself. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: one thing that the Santis managed should do in Florida
Speaker 1: through his attacks on Disney and other enemies, is to
Speaker 1: really instill a degree of fear among businesses, among other Republicans.
Speaker 1: It's almost Trumpian in its nature. I mean, being down there,
Speaker 1: people are really afraid of him. They don't want to
Speaker 1: get in his crosshairs, and that's an important quality I
Speaker 1: think for Republican leader to have. I mean, one thing
Speaker 1: that Republicans love about Donald Trump is the fact that
Speaker 1: he's sort of a strong man who can smite their enemies.
Speaker 1: I think any key to Santa's replacing him is going
Speaker 1: to rely on to Santa's being able to kind of
Speaker 1: expand what he's done in Florida to the nation at large.
Speaker 1: He needs to show that he's sort of a big,
Speaker 1: strong guy who can stand on his own. But that's
Speaker 1: going to mean standing up to Donald Trump at some point.
Speaker 1: It's important to strike a note of caution here because
Speaker 1: there's a long history of governors who seemed like they
Speaker 1: were all powerful and the next big thing about to
Speaker 1: take off like a rocket ship, and they ended up
Speaker 1: blowing up at a launchpad. The guy who comes to
Speaker 1: mind last cycle former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, who seemed
Speaker 1: like this big deal, raised a ton of money, and
Speaker 1: then his campaign kind of withered and died within a
Speaker 1: matter of a few months. So it's always a little
Speaker 1: risky kind of projecting forward. But De Santis has a
Speaker 1: number of advantages for Republicans, and there are a number
Speaker 1: of reasons why I think he should be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: One is he's managed to raise a ton of money.
Speaker 1: He raised two hundred million dollars for his re election race,
Speaker 1: and he also won over a lot of voters independence,
Speaker 1: even some Democrats that Republicans have struggled to win under Trump.
Speaker 1: So he offers a kind of alternate path forward from
Speaker 1: the one that the party would be following if they
Speaker 1: simply nominated Trump to be president again. And that has
Speaker 1: a lot of appeal for people. But the real question
Speaker 1: about De Santus is can he get up on a
Speaker 1: debate stage at electorn opposite Donald Trump and go toe
Speaker 1: to toe with him. So far, nobody who's attempted that
Speaker 1: has survived, and De Santis has been notably quiet on
Speaker 1: the issue of Trump himself. But if he wants to
Speaker 1: have that nomination, Trump is already a candidate for he's
Speaker 1: going to have to have a showdown with him at
Speaker 1: some point, and I think we'll see at that point
Speaker 1: whether he kind of has the moxie, in the charisma,
Speaker 1: in the stamina to go head to head with somebody
Speaker 1: like Trump who is so skilled performing on television but
Speaker 1: also at politically his competitors as we saw in the
Speaker 1: Republican primaries. Josh Green, thanks for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Paul's Pleasure. You can read Joshua Green's business week story
Speaker 1: on Ron de Santis at Bloomberg dot com. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to us here at The Big Take, the daily
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