Speaker 1: What's still meatball? My continues to be ron Uh. How
Speaker 1: we doing, everybody? I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 1: a podcast about Ronathan DeSantis with me again, Cody Johnston,
Speaker 1: Katie Stole. How do you guys think your lives would
Speaker 1: be different if your last names were reversed?
Speaker 2: Who Stole Katie?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, if you if you were Katie Johnston and
Speaker 1: you were Cody Stole.
Speaker 4: Oh, in a way, I feel like you'd be called
Speaker 4: Cody Stoley a lot.
Speaker 1: Cody Stole probably, Yeah, that would have been your college nickname,
Speaker 1: like because of because of the vodka. Like, oh, I
Speaker 1: had asked Cody Stolely, why well why was that?
Speaker 2: Why was that not Katie Stoley's nickname?
Speaker 1: Because that would not be appropriate?
Speaker 2: What does Katie Stoley doesn't sound right to me?
Speaker 4: People called me Stolely just Stolely in college because that
Speaker 4: would be like a cool Yeah, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I think would be a nice nickname.
Speaker 2: Katy J.
Speaker 4: Katie J is Yeah, I'd go by that. I think
Speaker 4: I'd be a very different person if I'd grown up
Speaker 4: with that as my nickname.
Speaker 2: Katie J.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think if I had a saw
Speaker 3: that Cody stole too.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be different too, Yeah, totally different. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would be working for the Daily Wire right now,
Speaker 1: Before we get into Ron DeSantis, I've I've just found
Speaker 1: a list of gen Z slang terms. Uh and in
Speaker 1: order to uh to boost our appeal with the youth demographic,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna key you in on some of these.
Speaker 1: On some of these slang words, Google's AI has coreliated
Speaker 1: them from a mix of Mommy, Daddy dot com, uh,
Speaker 1: mental floss and parades. So you know, this is the
Speaker 1: best information on gen Z well researched.
Speaker 3: Wait is this an article or is this like a
Speaker 3: Google search? It appears to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is just like the Google search result for
Speaker 1: Z slang list. Because I was trying to just stay cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's become great, falling, falling apart. So number
Speaker 1: three on the list is s I C slash s
Speaker 1: I c K. Just these are the two spellings of
Speaker 1: sick that gen Z kids do. It means next level cool,
Speaker 1: so not just normal cool. That's good obviously. Salty means
Speaker 1: bitter or angry, lyddy again exciting or wild once more.
Speaker 4: Lyddy is it's something I've heard it that is seeped
Speaker 4: its way into I just.
Speaker 1: I know that's what made me.
Speaker 4: I used it this morning to describe myself last night.
Speaker 5: Does that mean does that mean I'm hashtag cool?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, truly Sophie or your coolness.
Speaker 2: Those these words are no longer cool.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm personally pissed at this because dope is number two
Speaker 1: and like, that's not a gen Z term. That's that's
Speaker 1: that's well well before gen zve been.
Speaker 4: Saying it for a long time, people saw me had
Speaker 4: been saying it for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like that's like an ex millennial they have.
Speaker 2: There's got to be something good.
Speaker 1: Uh, they got Gucci. I do feel like that's solidly
Speaker 1: gion gen Z.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they've got You've got your word riz.
Speaker 1: They do have the word riz that is not on
Speaker 1: this list.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, it's like, is there anything on
Speaker 3: the list that's like no correct or like youthful?
Speaker 1: No, Like everything that AI puts together it's a piece
Speaker 1: of ship.
Speaker 3: They don't even have a rizz. That's so weird.
Speaker 1: They don't have no cap, they don't have any of
Speaker 1: the charisma based isn't on here.
Speaker 5: Riz is gen Z shortening charisma like yeah, you have swag,
Speaker 5: you have ri.
Speaker 3: It's more like in the context of like flirting, but
Speaker 3: it is short for anyway.
Speaker 1: This has been gen Z corner where.
Speaker 2: We uh ah olves.
Speaker 1: Our credentials with the with the young'insu with the with
Speaker 1: the ones.
Speaker 2: We might it works, we might listen back to this single.
Speaker 5: Wow, we should cut this on account of we sound
Speaker 5: so old, all right.
Speaker 1: I mean people have been complaining a lot about gen
Speaker 1: Z on Twitter lately, about them being you know, prudes,
Speaker 1: not liking sex and things and stuff, and watching movies weird,
Speaker 1: watching movies weird. I just rewatched the original Bad News
Speaker 1: Bears with Walter Mathow, and I think the solution is
Speaker 1: we got to get cigarettes back in kids' hands. Like
Speaker 1: fapes aren't doing it. We got to get them smoking.
Speaker 1: We gotta get them smoking.
Speaker 3: Uh shortcut. We just put them back in the mines.
Speaker 1: Put them back in the mines just to go for
Speaker 1: the lungs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we get some work.
Speaker 2: Done to fuck up their lungs.
Speaker 4: It's not to make them look cool or make them
Speaker 4: generally cooler. Okay either way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cheap labor. But if we if we want to
Speaker 3: make them cool. Then I guess give them cigarettes.
Speaker 1: Fine, excellent. So uh we are back, and uh.
Speaker 3: We are on top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese,
Speaker 3: all covered.
Speaker 1: In a meat ball, a meatball made of Ron. So, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Find my handsome, handsome meatball that's.
Speaker 3: Often described as handsome me. I have not.
Speaker 4: Stopped thinking about that, to be honest, I mean I have,
Speaker 4: but it's been several days since last we met. Yeah,
Speaker 4: discussed mister Ronald and yeah, Nathan, apologies, I just can't
Speaker 4: believe it. Anyway, I've spent so much time talking about So.
Speaker 1: Ron was thirty three years old when he went on
Speaker 1: his first political campaign. Running for an open district that
Speaker 1: your party dominates is a pretty sweet spot for for
Speaker 1: a politician trying to break into the national level. This
Speaker 1: is kind of the easiest way you can possibly start
Speaker 1: in national politics. And the only stumbling block between him
Speaker 1: and this first step on the ladder up towards the
Speaker 1: presidency was the Republican primary. Right, because there's just not
Speaker 1: going to be a general election competition. He wins the primary,
Speaker 1: the seat is his, and luckily for Ron, his competition
Speaker 1: were all utter non entities, so all he had to
Speaker 1: do to succeed was make himself into somebody. He opted
Speaker 1: for the smart play here and decided that rather than
Speaker 1: focusing on his opponents, he would run against President Obama.
Speaker 1: This was at the height and we're talking two twenty
Speaker 1: twelve here, so this is kind of like a little
Speaker 1: past maybe the peak of influence for the Tea Party,
Speaker 1: but it's it's still like the big name in Republican
Speaker 1: politics at the moment, and Ron leaned hard into that movement.
Speaker 1: He patterned himself specifically off of Ted Cruz. That was
Speaker 1: his whoa water.
Speaker 3: Makes so much sense?
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh huh yeah, equally likable man.
Speaker 2: That's reflexing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so funny that he's all I see when thinking
Speaker 3: about him is Ted Cruz. That's so funny. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: on purpose, it is. And he's just as doomed as
Speaker 3: old Teddy. And you get the same thing too, where
Speaker 3: like his his co workers, no one will say a
Speaker 3: nice word about Ron as a person, right who works
Speaker 3: with him? Oh yeah, he's just deeply unlikable. So yeah,
Speaker 3: he starts attacking Obama's record. He runs primarily on dismantling
Speaker 3: the Affordable Care Act, ending gun control, you know, border ship,
Speaker 3: all that good Republican jazz. It was not do any
Speaker 3: of that, I mean not really. No, it was not
Speaker 3: a creative line of attack, nor did it set him
Speaker 3: apart from the pack, but it was enough. He kind
Speaker 3: of is good enough at sort of leaning into these
Speaker 3: big conservative targets that he gets attention from the usual
Speaker 3: pack of right wing funders, these different sort of think
Speaker 3: tanks and packs and whatnot, like Freedom Works in the
Speaker 3: Club for Growth, who fund all of the really awful
Speaker 3: conservative candidates that have made life so colorful in our
Speaker 3: democracy of late. Ron also makes a habit of showing
Speaker 3: up at tea party rallies, and he's able to build
Speaker 3: a reputation for himself as an economic wonk. Another model
Speaker 3: that he really embraces is Paul Ryan, Right, So like
Speaker 3: he's trying to do that, he really does. It's so
Speaker 3: bad national.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he perfect.
Speaker 3: It's so funny, especially like obviously you know, hindsight and
Speaker 3: all that, but to model yourself after after Ted Cruz
Speaker 3: and Paul Ryan and now try to beat Donald Trump
Speaker 3: in an election, this is very funny. That's not going
Speaker 3: to happen, my man, You pick the two wrong guys.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah, he really did like pick the exactly
Speaker 1: wrong dudes. Now, kind of the one intelligent thing he
Speaker 1: did is he also leans into glenbeck stick of portraying
Speaker 1: himself as a historian. This is like a big part
Speaker 1: of early Ron DeSantis, and he's really kind of patterning
Speaker 1: himself specifically on this style of conservative media dude who
Speaker 1: rewrites history in order to make political points. Key to
Speaker 1: this strategy is self publishing his first book, Dreams from
Speaker 1: Our Founding Fathers. The title, as in everything Else About Ron,
Speaker 1: was a direct snipe at President Obama, particularly Bama's pre
Speaker 1: election memoir, but the content was more in line with
Speaker 1: the work of pop history big name right wing media
Speaker 1: stars like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, all
Speaker 1: of whom had started publishing history books. Now, Ron's self
Speaker 1: published book does not hit the best seller list. He
Speaker 1: seems to have made less than six thousand dollars in sales,
Speaker 1: which is not bad for an independent book well.
Speaker 3: Published.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he's I guess he's not as known as
Speaker 4: he is now I am thinking, I am thinking of
Speaker 4: it in terms of right now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it's not like it's certainly not a
Speaker 1: big deal. But the book is a success in a
Speaker 1: different way, which is that he's able to take copies
Speaker 1: of it with him when he goes to speak at
Speaker 1: tea party rallies. And even if they don't sell the
Speaker 1: fact that he's sort of setting himself up as one
Speaker 1: of these guys who shows up with their like self
Speaker 1: published manifestos and tea party rallies, that makes him feel
Speaker 1: like he's one of them, right, Like that's a He's
Speaker 1: this very highly educated a Yale guy who is like
Speaker 1: has been previously tied to the kind of most austere
Speaker 1: chunks of the Republican Party, and showing up with your
Speaker 1: self published like manifesto at a tea party rally is
Speaker 1: a great way to make like make them feel like
Speaker 1: you're one of them, you know. Absolutely, So we should
Speaker 1: probably talk about this book a little bit because it
Speaker 1: shows off Ron's very consistent obsession with an narrow chunk
Speaker 1: of the historic discipline, the history of American federalism. Two
Speaker 1: of his kids are named after He has a child
Speaker 1: named after James Madison and a child named after George Mason,
Speaker 1: both of whom like our federalists who helped write the Constitution,
Speaker 1: and in Ron's eyes, they're the guys who saved the
Speaker 1: early Republic from the demagogues who threatened the property of
Speaker 1: wealthy Americans. Now we can talk about what that property is,
Speaker 1: and in fact, well in the second Okay, Dreams of
Speaker 1: our Founding Fathers quotes liberally from the arguments that DeSantis
Speaker 1: agrees with that were made by quote unquote founding fathers.
Speaker 1: This largely means equating freedom with the right to own property,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, land and people. At this time,
Speaker 1: Ron of course, does not defend slavery. In his self
Speaker 1: published book, he simply denies that our nation's history with
Speaker 1: it should have any impact on the way people think
Speaker 1: about founders, or our constitution or property rights. From an
Speaker 1: analysis in the Atlantic Quote, it's rather how his entire
Speaker 1: reading of American history is enveloped in both unquestioning fealty
Speaker 1: to the founders and an insistence that the role of
Speaker 1: slavery and race more broadly in that history does not
Speaker 1: seriously change anything about how we should understand the birth
Speaker 1: and development of our country. For Obama and his teachers,
Speaker 1: the problem of slavery exemplified the need to adapt and
Speaker 1: improve the constitution. For DeSantis would be reformers who misunderstand
Speaker 1: the role of slavery in our history are themselves the
Speaker 1: root of the problem in our politics. And the most
Speaker 1: infuriating portion of this book is when Moron makes very
Speaker 1: limited quotes, takes very limited quotes from Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: Junior and makes them into an argument that he was
Speaker 1: a famous endorser of the founding documents of this country,
Speaker 1: right because he would he would quote from the Constitution
Speaker 1: a lot to make you know, and the Declaration of
Speaker 1: Independence to make certain arguments.
Speaker 3: Now how it was flawed and made right, we weren't
Speaker 3: doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, love love when Whiteman do that, take take him
Speaker 4: out of context and use it to fit a narrative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's galling that, Kate, what King was doing pointing
Speaker 1: out how the country has never lived up to even
Speaker 1: the promises that it made, and Ron as like, see,
Speaker 1: he was a constitutionalist. It's just like antonin Scalia.
Speaker 2: God, this is absolutely not what he was saying at all.
Speaker 1: He's a fucking originalist. By far. The most galling moment
Speaker 1: in the book, though, is when Ron cites the dread
Speaker 1: Scott decision as an example of an activist judge ignoring
Speaker 1: the letter of the law. Something his beloved originalists would
Speaker 1: never do quote. There is a consensus among historians and
Speaker 1: legal scholars that dread Scott v. Sanford, which turned on
Speaker 1: the question of whether a fugitive slave could sue for
Speaker 1: his freedom after he crossed into a free state, was
Speaker 1: wrongly decided because Teney declared that African Americans could not
Speaker 1: be considered citizens. They had in fact been voting citizens
Speaker 1: in numerous states. DeSantis wants to distance himself and the
Speaker 1: Constitution from Tanee's obvious and decisive hatefulness, so he doesn't
Speaker 1: mention that the entire logic of Teney's wilful forgetting of
Speaker 1: statutory laws rested on his insistence that the founding fathers
Speaker 1: could never have meant for there to be any kind
Speaker 1: of racial equality. In other words, Taney made a politically
Speaker 1: conservative notably part as a decision precisely on his interpretation
Speaker 1: of the founder's intent. It was originalist to the core.
Speaker 1: The original originalism where gut feelings about what the founders
Speaker 1: thought and wanted trump to trump actual state laws. Desantists
Speaker 1: can't see or won't admit that it is often originalism
Speaker 1: that is selective with evidence, So he's basically saying, like
Speaker 1: the dread Scott decision is like what liberals do, right,
Speaker 1: They're just going off of their political opinions and not
Speaker 1: being originalists, where the reality is that like, no, it
Speaker 1: was a fundamentally originalist decision.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you think he knows? Do you think he
Speaker 3: read the criticism of the book and was like, I've
Speaker 3: changed my ways now that people know they're talking about No,
Speaker 3: of course that's it. No, Like I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know the degree to which One of the
Speaker 1: things that's frustrated me about my research into desantists is
Speaker 1: I don't know the degree to which he believes the
Speaker 1: shit he's selling m hm, as opposed to just kind
Speaker 1: of laying it out because it's an effective argument to
Speaker 1: make to get the things that he wants. I lean
Speaker 1: towards he's full of shit and this is just what
Speaker 1: he saw is the best way to get into power,
Speaker 1: and like he is.
Speaker 3: It seems, especially these days like the like knowing this
Speaker 3: stuff from this book and then seeing where he is
Speaker 3: now with education and history, yeah, and just the Florida
Speaker 3: of it all, it does seem like he knows yeah,
Speaker 3: and is too and is smarter than he is letting
Speaker 3: on by just sort of yeah, I can say this
Speaker 3: stuff and people eat it up.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, he's definitely doing that now.
Speaker 4: But I do think it's pretty calculated, and I do
Speaker 4: think he's a smart person.
Speaker 2: That he's definitely a smart pat's been playing.
Speaker 4: But it's all a part of a a game, not
Speaker 4: a game, but yeah, a plan. It feels strategic. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's also feels pathetic because it's.
Speaker 1: It's pathetic just now, you know, Yeah, we're looking at
Speaker 1: it now because his shit starts to fall apart. But
Speaker 1: you do have to note that like from the point
Speaker 1: at which he starts running, it works startlingly well for
Speaker 1: quite a while.
Speaker 2: Well that's why he genuinely scared at the beginning of this.
Speaker 4: I've had this conversation with you guys of like he
Speaker 4: actually if it was to take he was to take
Speaker 4: a route in some way, Like he actually does scare
Speaker 4: me because he's smarter than a lot of them.
Speaker 1: What he's done is very scary. Like he's done a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll continue talking about that. So Ron's selective
Speaker 1: reading of our founding documents in history is not new,
Speaker 1: but it did solidify a place for him on the
Speaker 1: wonky side of the post bush Gop This caused him difficulty,
Speaker 1: namely due to the fact that his new funders liked
Speaker 1: what he had to say, but didn't like the fact
Speaker 1: that he was an extremely obvious void of charisma. The
Speaker 1: kind of the person who saves him here from the
Speaker 1: fact that he's just terrible at actually like hand to
Speaker 1: hand campaigning is his wife, Casey. She is his charisma.
Speaker 1: One colleague of Ron's later told a reporter he doesn't
Speaker 1: make small talk easily, but Casey was always with him,
Speaker 1: and she filled that gap. He puts so much emphasis
Speaker 1: on her. Every single speech she ever made, he almost
Speaker 1: always led off with her or within two minutes he
Speaker 1: had mentioned her. And she is like going door to
Speaker 1: door for him. She's like shaking hands, knocking, knocking on
Speaker 1: doors and shit like. She is his his ground game
Speaker 1: to a really significant extent, and a big part of
Speaker 1: like making him feel like a normal person when he's
Speaker 1: doing these events with donors and stuff. Ron and Casey
Speaker 1: had been married for just three years when they get
Speaker 1: start campaigning together, so three years after their fun little
Speaker 1: Disney wedding. As the election continued, Ron started to collect
Speaker 1: celebrity endorsements. Savvy Your Eyes and the Republican fold had
Speaker 1: marked him out for greatness. He earned Joe R. Pyo's
Speaker 1: endorsement along with that. How about that celebrity endor celebrity endorsements. Hey,
Speaker 1: our Pio's a big name, especially in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
Speaker 1: And he also gets the coveted John Bolton endorsement.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's a big yeah wow wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But perhaps his most important endorsement was that of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Trump gave to Santas. Yeah, this and again this is
Speaker 1: twenty twelve birtherism. Trump gives him an early boost when
Speaker 1: he tweets out on March twentieth, twenty twelve. Iraqviitt Navy Hero,
Speaker 1: Bronze Star, Yale, Harvard Law. Very impressive. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: to hear.
Speaker 3: What Donald Trump has to say about all. He's still
Speaker 3: a Navy here out. You still like Harvard and Yale?
Speaker 3: You think those are like not where the snobby elites
Speaker 3: go to do communism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the communist communist Harvard Law. In his first term,
Speaker 1: Ron was a reli so he does get elected, by
Speaker 1: the way, obviously, in his first term in Congress, Ron
Speaker 1: is a reliable vote on the piece of shit Caucus.
Speaker 1: He tried to stop Hurricane Sandy aid. He voted to
Speaker 1: support the government. Yeah, he does of that. None of
Speaker 1: that don't help people with government money. We need that
Speaker 1: money to not spend. I guess cloudy with a chance
Speaker 1: of meatballs, all right, yeah, yeah, he votes to support
Speaker 1: the government shutdown. He voted against an update for the
Speaker 1: Violence Against Women Act. If you want a short idea
Speaker 1: about what.
Speaker 2: A sorry you dare?
Speaker 5: Everyone not laugh at that joke for Cody, I didn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't catch it, Sophie silently.
Speaker 2: I was silently dying, Cody. I guess I didn't really laugh,
Speaker 2: but that's okay.
Speaker 3: It was just a reference to weather and meatballs. Clouding
Speaker 3: with the chance of meatballs. It was really good, better
Speaker 3: than my mone joke last week.
Speaker 1: Moanent so good stuff. The Heritage Foundation gives him one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. So if you want to know the kind
Speaker 1: of dude he is as a as a as a congressman,
Speaker 1: there you go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ron gets a junior seat on the Freedom Caucus. He
Speaker 1: is one of the nine original members, although he's kind
Speaker 1: of the least of them. He's not very prominent at
Speaker 1: this point, but he is.
Speaker 3: He is.
Speaker 1: This is kind of show some political foresight, right He sees,
Speaker 1: because the Freedom Caucus is really a precursor to a
Speaker 1: lot of trump Ist shit hitting. Yeah, and he's he's
Speaker 1: he's on that right from from an early stage. If
Speaker 1: DeSantis has a reputation in this period, he it is
Speaker 1: as a very far right vote who you cannot talk
Speaker 1: to a reason with. Right, he is going to vote
Speaker 1: against anything Obama wants to do. Reflexively, Ron openly agreed
Speaker 1: with Mitch McConnell that there was nothing more important in
Speaker 1: this period than interrupting the president's second term. This was
Speaker 1: a job that played to Ron's strength. He is the
Speaker 1: kind of dude who does not care much about people
Speaker 1: or they're suffering, and so can just kind of vote
Speaker 1: to hurt things, right, Like that's that's what he's doing.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like voting to make the country
Speaker 1: worse consistently.
Speaker 3: And like brush it off, like brush off criticism, like
Speaker 3: you doesn't care about being asked the question about it
Speaker 3: or being confronted about it.
Speaker 4: He's no, he's whatever, Yeah, but purely purely obstructionist point
Speaker 4: of view, purely wanted and like gosh, we love a
Speaker 4: public servant that doesn't care fuck about the citizens. That
Speaker 4: is just about care people's lives, just wants to play
Speaker 4: that game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's a quote from Politico that really makes that point.
Speaker 1: I wasn't really there necessarily to make friends, he once
Speaker 1: told Politico.
Speaker 3: He did not.
Speaker 1: Fellow Republicans noted him as a loaner who only got
Speaker 1: in close with other freedom cock as weirdos. Florida Republican
Speaker 1: Congressman David Jolly said that besides those guys quote, I
Speaker 1: don't think he had many relationships at all one peer,
Speaker 1: former Florida Democratic congresswoman when Graham told Politico he wore
Speaker 1: earbuds on the floor of the house so he didn't
Speaker 1: have to talk to people to say he was anti
Speaker 1: social as a disservice to this term, he does not
Speaker 1: enjoy being around people. Now, Gwyn has an obvious bias.
Speaker 1: She's a dim but former Michigan Republican Congressman David Trott
Speaker 1: was even more savage in a recent interview with Playbook.
Speaker 1: I think he's an asshole. I don't think cares about people.
Speaker 3: That's bold accurate. But like for like a Republican to
Speaker 3: point out, like, yeah, it's like part of their you know,
Speaker 3: at least these days especially, it's like, well, we're a
Speaker 3: little callous towards people, and like the idea of empathy
Speaker 3: is like disgusting to us. But even to call out like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he doesn't care about.
Speaker 1: People, well it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think also what you're seeing with that, especially the
Speaker 1: whole I'm gonna wear headphones on the floor, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to talk to anyone. He's not He has no
Speaker 1: interest in being a congressman as the job. He has
Speaker 1: interest in being a congressman in order to set himself
Speaker 1: up for the presidency a higher Yeah, and so what matters.
Speaker 1: You can't think about helping people or doing the job
Speaker 1: of governance. All that matters is getting that hundred percent
Speaker 1: from the Heritage Foundation, locking in donations, locking and support,
Speaker 1: locking in things you can brag about in a campaign
Speaker 1: to the worst, most active chunks of the Republican base.
Speaker 1: So he's going to put those headphones on because he
Speaker 1: knows he's going to be hurting people and he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be confronted with their existence. Like he wants
Speaker 1: to be able to ignore everyone around him because he
Speaker 1: is just here to push some buttons, you know.
Speaker 3: He has like having a private office in your ears, yes,
Speaker 3: which yes, eventually get yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like that. So yeah.
Speaker 1: For his part, DeSantis leans into his growing reputation as
Speaker 1: like the fucking kind of a psycho. From a write
Speaker 1: up in Politico. Quote, look, Desanta said, I was not
Speaker 1: in Congress to necessarily socialized. He slept in his office.
Speaker 1: He liked being at home more than he wanted to
Speaker 1: be in DC. So that's that's uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, wait, he slept in his office.
Speaker 1: He sleeps in his office. He doesn't talk to people,
Speaker 1: he sleeps in his office. He's just there to like
Speaker 1: cast the votes that get him marked down as like
Speaker 1: good bye the NRA, good by the Heritage Foundation, and
Speaker 1: then it's a way he has no interest in doing
Speaker 1: this job. Right. Cool. In twenty fifteen, right as the
Speaker 1: first stirrings of trump Ism started to ooze into what
Speaker 1: had been a deceptively placid political media environment, Ron dealt
Speaker 1: with the first tragedy of his life. His sister, who
Speaker 1: was just thirty years old, died of a pulmonary embolism.
Speaker 1: When interviewed by Pierce Morgan, Ron later claimed, you start
Speaker 1: to question things that are unjust, and you just have
Speaker 1: to take faith that there's a plan in place, trust
Speaker 1: in God, there's no guarantee that you're going to have
Speaker 1: a life without challenges and without heartbreak, and that's just
Speaker 1: a function of being human. So there you go.
Speaker 3: Is that him being I guess that's.
Speaker 1: A weird thing to say about Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's a weird like way to talk about it, and
Speaker 3: like lesson to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a normal person would say something like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's devastating, like I'll miss her forever, you know, something
Speaker 1: something like that, like you say about a dead person.
Speaker 1: Not be like right, he's like this republican argument, Well,
Speaker 1: everybody deals with shit like.
Speaker 3: Rights sort of like take that tragedy and turn into like,
Speaker 3: well you got to pull yourself up by your bootstress
Speaker 3: to work hard, an't there.
Speaker 4: Well he's also taking it into some sort of as
Speaker 4: an opportunity to paint him self as a masculine, tough
Speaker 4: type at someone who can handle anything that you know,
Speaker 4: I'm sure he's hoping to come across as a strong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, stuff happens, that's life, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, why are you complaining about your problems?
Speaker 1: Look at me?
Speaker 3: It's just that we all.
Speaker 4: It also just reinforces Yeah, the bootstraps mentality, which the
Speaker 4: idea that we all can.
Speaker 2: Just buck up and everything's fine.
Speaker 1: I think with his best quote best in Bodies is
Speaker 1: that he is always relentlessly on point in this period
Speaker 1: of his life. Right, this is the answer that you
Speaker 1: give because it furthers your political reputation. Is the kind
Speaker 1: of conservative who can get elected. Right, Like, every single
Speaker 1: thing that you say in public, every word, every action
Speaker 1: is based on building your future presidential campaign. Like that's
Speaker 1: that's who he is.
Speaker 3: If that's how you're thinking, that's exactly what. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: the move and that's what you do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. When the twenty sixteen election got well under way,
Speaker 1: Ron was alindsighted by Donald Trump's rise to prominence as
Speaker 1: anyone else. This is evident in the fact that he
Speaker 1: kept his fucking mouth shut for much of the primaries,
Speaker 1: and when he did speak out about the controversial GOP
Speaker 1: front runner, it was mainly to dissociate himself from Trump.
Speaker 1: He said in one interview that Trump's twenty twelve tweet
Speaker 1: had not been an endorsement, and he made it clear
Speaker 1: that he'd never met the man. So he actually this
Speaker 1: big deal endorsement he gets as a first term congressman,
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, that wasn't an endorsement that was just
Speaker 1: a nice tweet about me. I've never met the guy,
Speaker 1: don't know no opinions, And this is probably fair to
Speaker 1: see as a limitation in his political instincts. Right, he
Speaker 1: was not someone who right away he could saw Trump coming. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this makes sense. Like he's a structure guy, right.
Speaker 1: He plays well with the Republican Party, and he plays
Speaker 1: well with the kind of engine of donors and think
Speaker 1: tanks and whatnot that support that party and particularly it's
Speaker 1: far right flank. But as soon as he encounters someone
Speaker 1: who is running outside of that structure, threatening to upset
Speaker 1: it and remake it, he freezes. Right, he's just not
Speaker 1: ready to deal with this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just that weird, Like you you're courting this
Speaker 3: aspect of the party in politics, but you don't really
Speaker 3: necessarily realize the endgame or like where it's headed. And
Speaker 3: then it happens and like, well, but I was, but
Speaker 3: the machine is good. What's this guy trying to wreck
Speaker 3: this machine? Yeah? I think it speaks also to like
Speaker 3: the fact that he model himself sort of after Ted Cruz,
Speaker 3: who also had a similar thing where it's like I
Speaker 3: don't know what to do here right, you know his
Speaker 3: wife's yeah.
Speaker 4: They don't know to or to kiss him or to
Speaker 4: cropy him or to yeah.
Speaker 3: And then you get that sweaty phone call picture of
Speaker 3: tatoo is just like begging.
Speaker 1: For both so funny, and it is like, it is
Speaker 1: kind of worth noting that from all the evidence we have,
Speaker 1: it seems that Ron hated Trump on site, or at
Speaker 1: least saw kind of making fun of him as a
Speaker 1: profitable enterprise. One of his former staffers told Vanity Fair
Speaker 1: Ron made more fun of Donald Trump than anyone I know,
Speaker 1: and another added he thought Trump was fucking nuts. So again,
Speaker 1: very much not on the Trump train initially, but when
Speaker 1: Trump starts making this inexorable progress and remaking the Republican
Speaker 1: Party in his own image, Ron is kind of focused
Speaker 1: continuing his pace towards the White House. He's in his
Speaker 1: second term by early twenty fifteen, and he's already made
Speaker 1: a lot of connections among the Heritage Foundation think tank
Speaker 1: set who determined where campaign funds are going to go.
Speaker 1: So when Marco Rubio announces that he's going to run
Speaker 1: for president and steps down from a yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to run for reelection for this Senate seat, a
Speaker 1: representative for the Club for Growth calls Ron and is like, hey,
Speaker 1: Marco Rubios definitely headed to the White House Senate seats.
Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from Politico here. In May twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: less than a month after Rubio announced his presidential candidacy,
Speaker 1: DeSantis announced his Senate bid. He had the post taste
Speaker 1: backing of the same array of conservative groups Senate Conservatives, Fund,
Speaker 1: Freedom Works, the Club for Growth, and a year after
Speaker 1: he got called back to the breakers at a luncheon
Speaker 1: of at the Republican Party headquarters in the Highlands County, Florida,
Speaker 1: DeSantis spelled it out. I was the only US Senate
Speaker 1: candidate that spoke at the Koch Brothers donor summit where
Speaker 1: they have all their organizations that get involved in these races.
Speaker 1: You have everyone from the Club for Growth on. So
Speaker 1: we built a huge, huge network of supporters that will
Speaker 1: be able to turn on the most important decision Ron
Speaker 1: Desanta's made that led to his eventual election as governor.
Speaker 1: A high profile national Republican consultant said was running for
Speaker 1: Marco's seat in twenty sixteen. Desantas, he said, was able
Speaker 1: to go network a group of billionaires that he otherwise
Speaker 1: couldn't have done as a congressman. And this is he
Speaker 1: doesn't get this seat, right because Rubio flames out and
Speaker 1: returns to his seat, But because he had been willing
Speaker 1: to play ball and run for this to keep it
Speaker 1: in house and whatnot and made all these connections. That's
Speaker 1: what political insiders will argue is what lets him become
Speaker 1: the governor floors at least, what gives him a fighting chance, right,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 2: I would say that makes sense anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because he shows himself as a team
Speaker 1: player to these money guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, team player, tool for them, whatever you want
Speaker 3: to call it. But he is.
Speaker 1: Bragging about being a tool of the Koch brothers in
Speaker 1: this period exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, I'll do whatever. I give you the money,
Speaker 3: I'll do it. I'll do the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 3: I'll do the thing. I said. A big beat.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's perfect.
Speaker 3: So fake.
Speaker 1: Let's replace our audio sting into and out of every
Speaker 1: episode with that.
Speaker 2: No, she's like noting it.
Speaker 1: Here's a spicy god almighty, that's embarrassing, shameful. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: doing that. Just ah, we're back. What you guys favorite
Speaker 1: favorite way to do an offensive Italian accent.
Speaker 3: I don't because I'm I'm I'm partially Italian, so defense
Speaker 3: very Italian.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's the one we've just
Speaker 4: been doing.
Speaker 2: It's Ama Mario.
Speaker 1: I love what to do. The fraud No, I do.
Speaker 3: Take baths in pesto sauce.
Speaker 1: You do, you do, and I commit a lot of
Speaker 1: insurance fraud. The perfect Italian, the perfect Italians. That is
Speaker 1: how my family came to this country. Good times. So
Speaker 1: if you're going to be influential in politics in this country,
Speaker 1: you have basically two broad families of choice. One is
Speaker 1: to work yourself up from within the system. You do
Speaker 1: take bit roles in campaigns, you know, until you're able
Speaker 1: to get enough support to run for office somewhere, probably
Speaker 1: a local office. You win election, you start schmoozing with
Speaker 1: big donors, building connections to financiers through the think tanks
Speaker 1: that ask us they're grasping little hands. The other way
Speaker 1: to get into politics in this country in a big
Speaker 1: way is just pure populism. You force yourself into relevance
Speaker 1: by building enough of a following that these same people
Speaker 1: have to pretend they're not angry that you skipped in
Speaker 1: line right, Trump is a line skipper. He's great at
Speaker 1: line skipping. Ronnie d is not a line skipper. As
Speaker 1: one of his friends, a former Florida Republican congressman, told Politico,
Speaker 1: He's somebody who has his view of his strategy in politics,
Speaker 1: do the right little conservative things. But behind that curtain
Speaker 1: build a network of mega conservative donors, the Koch Brothers,
Speaker 1: Sheldon Adelson. Ron, more than just about anybody I know
Speaker 1: in politics, has built that network very successfully. And this
Speaker 1: is the thing he's actually good at, right, Like this
Speaker 1: is his actual skill. David Bossi, the president of Citizens
Speaker 1: United and former deputy campaign manager for Trump, has given
Speaker 1: de Santis credit for building an operation with quote very
Speaker 1: Trumpian tones during Trump's first campaign. I actually don't think
Speaker 1: this is accurate. Bossy now works on DeSantis' campaign, which
Speaker 1: is why he's saying this. But my take is that
Speaker 1: it would be more accurate to say Ron and Trump
Speaker 1: focused on the same issues because those issues have been
Speaker 1: issues for Republicans as long as most of us listening
Speaker 1: have been a live cutting entitlements, border security, culture, warship
Speaker 1: against elites. But those are just surface similarities. Ron has
Speaker 1: always gone after those things in a pretty normal conservative way,
Speaker 1: whereas Trump went after them in a populist wild card way.
Speaker 1: Given his legitimate so yeah, I don't know that's I think, boss,
Speaker 1: he's full of shit there anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think well also especially now, like yeah,
Speaker 3: ron is doing a clear terrible Trump impression right and
Speaker 3: not doing like he's He's sort of like off the
Speaker 3: grid in terms of like what he's used to, it seems,
Speaker 3: and that's part of why he's sort of floundering, is like, well,
Speaker 3: this is not what I thought politics was supposed to be.
Speaker 3: I did the things I'm supposed to do, and now
Speaker 3: I got to be this freak.
Speaker 4: He's very much out of his depth in what he's
Speaker 4: trying in the tact that he's taking here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're out of your depth, Donnie, Ronnie exactly, Ronnie perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: excellent Doki karaoke. So, given as legitimately impressive history as
Speaker 1: a ball player, you might expect Ron to have played
Speaker 1: on the congressional team, and he did, but by all accounts,
Speaker 1: he did not make an impressive impact, nor did he
Speaker 1: devote much time towards it. The only impact baseball was
Speaker 1: to have on the rest of his career so far
Speaker 1: is that he left congressional baseball practice in the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty seventeen just before a gunman opened fire. By
Speaker 1: the time twenty eighteen rolled around, Ron was ready to
Speaker 1: take another shot at the brass ring. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was the governor's seat in his home state of Florida.
Speaker 1: And again he is running to be the governor of Florida,
Speaker 1: not flow Rda, the beloved musician who represented San Marino
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. Just want to really be clear
Speaker 1: about that because we keep getting confusion. Yeah, the last episode,
Speaker 1: people were did.
Speaker 3: You tell me?
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: I still think it's Flora.
Speaker 1: Well, I think the only way to solve this is
Speaker 1: induct flow Rider into the United States. Sure, yeah, sure, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think for the flag, we just get rid
Speaker 1: of the other fifty stars and just have one big
Speaker 1: star on the flag that represents flow Rider United.
Speaker 2: Because that would be our biggest star.
Speaker 1: Uh huh yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. So still
Speaker 1: no idea what song that guy wrote. He's got to
Speaker 1: have at least one, right that was popular? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: otherwise sand Marino wouldn't have sniped him. So his opponent
Speaker 1: for the Republican nomination Ronda Santis is not flow Rider.
Speaker 1: Was a guy named Adam Puttingham, a career politician who
Speaker 1: had been in office some kind of office since he
Speaker 1: was twenty two at one point. And this is I
Speaker 1: think funny. Puttnam is clearly a guy who like is
Speaker 1: at one point in his career a conservative wonderkin right,
Speaker 1: Like he's starting office in his early twenties. He's one
Speaker 1: of these like go getter youth Republican that the party
Speaker 1: sees is its future. Uh And but shit starts to
Speaker 1: change on a dime with Trump, and Ron is like, well,
Speaker 1: I can make Hay by portraying putting him as this
Speaker 1: like out of touch rhino careerist, you know.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: So he uses his connections to get a meeting on
Speaker 1: Air Force one where he makes his case to President Trump.
Speaker 1: This was an important meeting. No one else's endorsement mattered
Speaker 1: if Trump was on his side, and no one else
Speaker 1: could save him without Donald. Now, Desanta has been putting
Speaker 1: in groundwork here. He like started for months prior to this,
Speaker 1: about a year or so prior to this, really hitting
Speaker 1: against Trump attacks on social media and stuff, and these
Speaker 1: are this is kind of a shallow thing. Just the fact,
Speaker 1: and whenever he gets goes on TV, he'll defend the president.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: Uh, it's it's very obvious. It's very like shallow toadying.
Speaker 1: But that shit works like a dot, like perfectly on
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, like very much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, love that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they have this meeting and Desanti's chief of staff
Speaker 1: later recalled what President Trump saw on to stantis somebody
Speaker 1: that was fighting for him and his agenda on Fox News,
Speaker 1: whether it was Fox News or on Fox Business. And
Speaker 1: Asanta's had a pretty smart strategy to use his committee
Speaker 1: responsibilities and find ways to insert himself into the national
Speaker 1: debate and get booked on TV. And we obviously had
Speaker 1: a lot of media requests beyond Fox. But you know,
Speaker 1: members of Congress know what shows the president watches and
Speaker 1: what he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it works. Trump tweets an endorsement soon after
Speaker 1: this meeting. Ron wins his primary handily, and he makes
Speaker 1: frequent use of Trump's support, name dropping him twenty one
Speaker 1: times in a single debate. He cuts what one Democratic
Speaker 1: ad man called the dumbest, most effective ad in Florida history,
Speaker 1: and it's it is remarkable. It starts with him like
Speaker 1: reading his son a copy of the Art of the
Speaker 1: Deal and telling his daughter to build the wall with toylet.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's a real hit. That's a
Speaker 2: real toy.
Speaker 1: It's so funny, just the dick writing his dad.
Speaker 2: He's so fulle embarrassing.
Speaker 3: It's so transparent and funny. I yeah, And that time
Speaker 3: passed and it's all gone now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all gone now. So despite all this,
Speaker 1: Florida was still one of America's most infamous swing states.
Speaker 1: It is very purple at this point, and the general
Speaker 1: election is a nail bier. DeSantis barely manages to squeak
Speaker 1: past Democrat Andrew Gillham with some thirty two thousand votes,
Speaker 1: less than half a percentage point. Gillim later gets hit
Speaker 1: with a twenty one count federal indictment for wire fraud, conspiracy,
Speaker 1: making false statements, all related to fraudulent fundraising from various
Speaker 1: entities tied to his campaigns. Gilliam denies all charges, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter for here. What matters is that DeSantis
Speaker 1: does manage to squeak out a victory and that it
Speaker 1: is going to be very narrow. But his second victory
Speaker 1: is not going to be narrow and that's pretty worth noting.
Speaker 1: So today, Ron DeSantis is deservedly reviled for turning Florida
Speaker 1: into a laboratory for outwardly fascistic and eliminationist public policy,
Speaker 1: targeted particularly towards queer people. His early years in office, though,
Speaker 1: are surprisingly mild. He is not the guy he is now.
Speaker 1: His first couple of years as governor. Another Politico article
Speaker 1: notes he surprised many in the state by tackling towards
Speaker 1: the center. He signed a bill that nixed a ban
Speaker 1: on smokable medical marijuana, announcing it with Matt Gets, one
Speaker 1: of the most trumpy members of Congress, and Orlando attorney
Speaker 1: John Morgan, long a major fundraiser for Democratic candidates. He
Speaker 1: veted a bill that would have prevented local bands on
Speaker 1: plastic straws. He angled for additional funding for Everglades restoration.
Speaker 1: He instituted two new state jobs, chief Resilience Officer and
Speaker 1: Chief Science Officer. DeSantis actually spoke the words climate change
Speaker 1: after Rick Scott had downplayed it. His approval ratings soared
Speaker 1: into the sixties and even into the seventies, including sort
Speaker 1: of shockingly high faves from Democrats and independents too, so
Speaker 1: that's interesting to me, and I think it does make sense.
Speaker 1: It is actually consistent because when he's in Congress, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, like you're not directly accountable to any one
Speaker 1: really in Congress, like because there's all these other guys
Speaker 1: voting on everything that happens. Right, So you can be
Speaker 1: just an obstructionist if that's the thing that makes you
Speaker 1: palatable to the base, that gets you the endorsements. When
Speaker 1: you're governor, you do have to do like, especially when
Speaker 1: you're governor of a state that is a purple state. Right.
Speaker 1: That's why he's doing this because he doesn't want to
Speaker 1: lose office, because that's fucking death to a presidential campaign.
Speaker 2: So to do something, yeah, you are the face of
Speaker 2: it exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he's he is a fairly you would say, pragmatic guy. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that is generally like there's political quotes one Republican
Speaker 1: lobbyist as saying, as someone who has aspirations behind beyond
Speaker 1: his current office, which I think everyone will concede this
Speaker 1: probably is not his last office. I think that is
Speaker 1: how you have to do it. I do think hopefully
Speaker 1: it will be his last office, but we'll maybe we'll see.
Speaker 3: I mean, like all it takes is just like a
Speaker 3: Trump to walk on stage and interact with him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, putting Ron. Bam, speaking of putting Ron. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about putting Ron because it is.
Speaker 1: It is during this surprisingly mild interlude in his career
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen that one of Ron's peculiarities would pass
Speaker 1: into legend. Everyone who worked with the governor was aware
Speaker 1: that he was a man who did not socialize easily.
Speaker 1: Or well, he's very intelligent. He's able to digest large
Speaker 1: reams of data in hours and come back with pointed questions,
Speaker 1: but social dynamics baffle him. In March of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: during a private flight from Tallahassee to DC, DeSantis decided
Speaker 1: to take on some energy by eating a pudding snack.
Speaker 1: According to two sources who were there, he did this
Speaker 1: with three of his fingers, using them like a spoon
Speaker 1: and licking them clean in full view of multiple people. Now, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's off putting a bit. I do agree, and I'm
Speaker 1: a big oh that was accidentally good. And I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time and like you know, the Middle East,
Speaker 1: I do a lot. I've done a lot of eating
Speaker 1: with my hands as utensils. But eating putting that way
Speaker 1: is just so in public, is so off putting too.
Speaker 3: In like a work business sort of setting. Yeah. Also, well,
Speaker 3: just all.
Speaker 4: The say is you could just squeeze it in. You
Speaker 4: don't have to do that at all. You could just
Speaker 4: squeeze the pudding. You could use the lid like a okay,
Speaker 4: thank you. I was gonna say, there's this, The lid
Speaker 4: is foil. Usually I assume he's eating standard pudding cup
Speaker 4: probably probably a standard putting shape. You shape the lid
Speaker 4: into a little spoon, and then you have a little spoon.
Speaker 4: You don't have to use your three fingers. That's what
Speaker 4: we've all done.
Speaker 3: Is putting the shocker, Like God, not those three fingers.
Speaker 3: That's what I choose.
Speaker 2: Like, I know, it's like such.
Speaker 4: A silly thing, but there's something wrong with you if
Speaker 4: you think it's okay to do that around people.
Speaker 3: Sorry, it's weird. Now.
Speaker 1: Look have I eaten pudding with my fingers when nearly
Speaker 1: blackout drunk alone in my apartment? Of course, But I
Speaker 1: can all agree I should not be a governor.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, and then there's that.
Speaker 4: But I just imagine you wouldn't do it sober around
Speaker 4: colleagues in any kind of environment.
Speaker 3: But if you did, it'd be like, yeah, I'm this
Speaker 3: type of governor. Yeah I'm gonna I feel like I'm
Speaker 3: going to have a meeting and I'm going to take
Speaker 3: a ship during the meeting to Yeah again that I can.
Speaker 1: I could if Ron, if Ron had the kind of
Speaker 1: natural charisma LBJ had, just like, I don't give a fuck,
Speaker 1: You're not even people.
Speaker 3: This is who I am, and you're dealing with me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I go for it. But no, he's just a weirdo
Speaker 3: who wanted his little pudding snack and I had to
Speaker 3: your fingers in there to get it. That is gullet.
Speaker 1: Because this is an unbiased political analysis show, I do
Speaker 1: want to note here that at the same time put
Speaker 1: In Ron was being born, another famously unpleasant politician on
Speaker 1: the other side of the aisle had a similar experience.
Speaker 1: The New York Times reported that in twenty nineteen, during
Speaker 1: a flight to a campaign event, Senator Amy Klobachar was
Speaker 1: told there was no fork for her salad, and she
Speaker 1: pulled a comb from her bag and used it to eat. Now,
Speaker 1: this is maybe the most controversial thing I say on
Speaker 1: the show. Both of these are weird things to do.
Speaker 1: I think Ron's choice was more normal than Amy's because,
Speaker 1: like people, pudding is it's weird to eat pudding with
Speaker 1: your fingers, but fingers are acceptable for eating some things.
Speaker 5: An Also, I see, we've all seen Amy's hair. There's
Speaker 5: product in there. Yeah, she's eating her salad and also
Speaker 5: eating hairspray's unhitched.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: It's not good.
Speaker 1: It's not good. Hell yeah, we're going by klobuch Gang.
Speaker 3: Like it's not this, but like it's something like it's
Speaker 3: like getting your like like your toothbrush out and using
Speaker 3: a toothbrush to eat the pudding. Sure, but even that
Speaker 3: is like not the same as the calm, Like there's
Speaker 3: no equivalent there, like love it.
Speaker 1: So, prior to twenty twenty, if you were looking at
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis, you'd probably have expected him to hew to
Speaker 1: that wonky Paul Ryan image, which is kind of what
Speaker 1: he's he's doing, largely with a little bit of Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz thrown in there. Uh, to hold on, yeah, none
Speaker 1: of that stuff, but to try and hold onto his
Speaker 1: state through whatever happens with Trump's second campaign, and hopefully
Speaker 1: plot a less extreme path to picking up his crown
Speaker 1: after right, sort of let let the Trump storm pass
Speaker 1: and you know, trust that you're young enough to have,
Speaker 1: you know, time to get in there afterwards. Given his
Speaker 1: relatively mild performance at this point, this would not have
Speaker 1: been a bad strategy, but the coronavirus pandemic changed everything. Initially,
Speaker 1: Ron responded more or less the same as everyone else,
Speaker 1: and and Florida does have a brief lockdown. It's like
Speaker 1: a month or so, Dan run, lockdown.
Speaker 2: Run, lockdown, run.
Speaker 1: Once it becomes clear that the pandemic is not like,
Speaker 1: it's not a civilization ender, it's you know, just a
Speaker 1: massive three to the most vulnerable people in the country,
Speaker 1: He's like, well, fuck those people. And he reversed his
Speaker 1: course and decides to ride the waves of paranoid discontent
Speaker 1: by flouting every expert recommendation and reopening his state Here's
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. Initially, Florida faired better than many states, although
Speaker 1: its numbers eventually came to look pretty bad. He has
Speaker 1: since adopted a sort of soft anti vaccine stance, never
Speaker 1: explicitly rejecting the shots but declining to promote them, and
Speaker 1: often appearing with skeptics. Desanta's COVID politics hurt his approval
Speaker 1: with Democrats, driving down his overall numbers, but they endeared
Speaker 1: him to conservatives in both Florida and nationwide. His standing
Speaker 1: remained and remained strong among Republicans in the Sunshine State,
Speaker 1: and he became a darling of the national right wing media,
Speaker 1: which saw him in him a rare conservative COVID success
Speaker 1: story and also a politician who could combine elements of
Speaker 1: Trumpism with more traditional movement conservatism. The glow seems to
Speaker 1: have emboldened DeSantis, picking Trump's example, DeSantis begun keeping legislators
Speaker 1: in check with the threat of criticism or backing primary challenges,
Speaker 1: and this is the start of ron as the fearsome
Speaker 1: force of authoritarian governments that we see today. Right, he
Speaker 1: is initially pretty popular governor. At one point he has
Speaker 1: nearly seventy percent, but he realizes by becoming this culture warrior,
Speaker 1: he's gonna lose ten to fifteen points, you know, something
Speaker 1: like that, but not enough to take him out of
Speaker 1: winning the governor's seat, and in fact, it'll strengthen his
Speaker 1: overall appeal to his base, so that means more money.
Speaker 1: And crucially, not just does it mean more money, it
Speaker 1: means he doesn't actually need to have any sort of
Speaker 1: buy in from the left in order to govern, because
Speaker 1: he can he can get all of the legislators in
Speaker 1: Florida lockstep behind him, because since he is so popular
Speaker 1: with the base, he can be like, look, if you
Speaker 1: don't do exactly what I fucking want, you're out of here.
Speaker 1: Like I will endorse your opponent in a primary, and
Speaker 1: you're fucked. And that's what's allowed him to do, to
Speaker 1: push through a lot of the stuff that he's done
Speaker 1: that's really unpopular.
Speaker 4: It's interesting to see when you're laying it out like this,
Speaker 4: how quickly this.
Speaker 2: It's not that he.
Speaker 4: Ultimately wants We've talked about it this whole time, just
Speaker 4: how he's adopted this persona over the period of time,
Speaker 4: but it's been a relatively short period of time.
Speaker 2: Uh, with this latest iteration.
Speaker 1: Of Ronald yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what else articulates Well, Katie.
Speaker 4: Is it something you can row with advertisements?
Speaker 1: Yeah? We are actually sponsored entirely by Ron DeSantis. Oh
Speaker 1: so yeah, here's ron.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 3: I'm here to be your president. And you know what
Speaker 3: I don't like is not well, not pudding. I love putting.
Speaker 3: That's a really.
Speaker 5: Really perfect I have a question as we come back
Speaker 5: from break here, Sure do we think that there should
Speaker 5: be some kind of test for elected officials where we
Speaker 5: give them some kind of food and no solaware and
Speaker 5: see what they do and if it's and it's.
Speaker 2: A great idea, sofy, that's one of the best ideas
Speaker 2: I've heard I feel in a long time.
Speaker 5: And I feel like there's like a scale and it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, were you on the comb and the salad
Speaker 5: or were you you know, just you know as Katie,
Speaker 5: as Katie suggested you, you you eat the pudding without
Speaker 5: putting your fingers in it?
Speaker 1: Because I mean, what I what I would really like
Speaker 1: to see you would have to do everyone at once,
Speaker 1: but all of our elected leaders you get it once.
Speaker 1: You put them in a room and you have them
Speaker 1: eat like a sandwich or some hummus or something that
Speaker 1: you have squirted dish soap into and you film them all.
Speaker 1: You do it just to see. You don't tell them
Speaker 1: see who powers through it?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: It's like, right, are you gonna are you going to
Speaker 3: say something I mean like this tastes weird? Or like
Speaker 3: are you and are you gonna sort of have you
Speaker 3: had hummuts before? Do you know? What it's supposed to
Speaker 3: taste like, do you know that it's not supposed to
Speaker 3: taste like so you're like, oh, yeah, I love my
Speaker 3: soaphi humus.
Speaker 1: It's got that able that we all know about.
Speaker 4: Just maybe one of those, one of them, we'll take
Speaker 4: the initiative to say, hey, don't eat this. It's got
Speaker 4: soap in it, but probably not up. It is also
Speaker 4: a good it's an opportunity for them to prove themselves
Speaker 4: to be a good leaders.
Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 5: If you find out if some of them goes, did
Speaker 5: you put cilantro in this hummus? Yeah, and you find
Speaker 5: out who has bad taste buds?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we should not. Maybe we can
Speaker 1: all agree you should not be able to hold office
Speaker 1: if you've got the gene that makes cilantro taste bad
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean I think those are even really people.
Speaker 5: I just feel like we're making really good rules right
Speaker 5: here where I agree. And I feel like the food
Speaker 5: without support thing should be live streamed.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, for sure, we can.
Speaker 3: We can do it.
Speaker 1: We can. Audience of those Philly sports fans from part one,
Speaker 1: I mean, you.
Speaker 3: Know we're not doing though, we're just sort of like
Speaker 3: paving the way for another Trump presidency because you know
Speaker 3: he eats the soapy helmets. He's just gonna be like
Speaker 3: this isn't this is bad? Like what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Give me a tie of coke? Like he'll just like
Speaker 3: he'll bulldoze the entire room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, dangerous games anyway, here's a dangerous ad.
Speaker 3: Time.
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, We're bad. That was horrible Cody, Okay, So yeah,
Speaker 1: uh there we go. So Ron DeSantis, after covid is
Speaker 1: now starts to remake himself in the image of Huey
Speaker 1: Long basically like he goes kind of kind of dictator
Speaker 1: from this point forward. He bases his power and authority
Speaker 1: on this vice grip that he's got on the Republican
Speaker 1: voters of Florida, and he's able to use this to
Speaker 1: push through very unpopular policies by threatening his legislators with
Speaker 1: primary challenges. Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist from the University
Speaker 1: of Central Florida, says that DeSantis has control over the
Speaker 1: Florida legislature is historically unique. Historically, particularly in the Florida Senate,
Speaker 1: you'd see more independence, they'd buck the governor Jem Bush
Speaker 1: experienced this, Charlie Christ even Rick Scott. Now, Desanta's approval
Speaker 1: is below its pre pandemic levels, but this does not
Speaker 1: change his behavior, and he uses it like his power
Speaker 1: now to ram through Florida's infamous Don't Say Gay Bill,
Speaker 1: which bans any classroom discussion of gender identity or sexual
Speaker 1: orientation in Florida public schools through the third grade. It
Speaker 1: was and remains an unpopular law, but Ron handily won
Speaker 1: re election after the pandemic, and in fact he didn't
Speaker 1: just win, he absolutely blew out his Democratic challenger. You
Speaker 1: can say there's one thing for DeSantis, and it's that
Speaker 1: he knows how to push when he sees an opening.
Speaker 1: He has responded to the new tenor of Florida politics
Speaker 1: by remaking himself as the arch culture warrior, making unpopular
Speaker 1: gear policies geared at hurting the left and enemies of
Speaker 1: conservatism above anything that might be called traditional governing. He's
Speaker 1: helped to push through what many consider the most partisan
Speaker 1: redistricting map in the country, geared towards reducing the influence
Speaker 1: of black voters. This has been met with a full
Speaker 1: on legal assault against what Ron calls voter fraud one,
Speaker 1: which has primarily targeted black Floridians. A good example comes
Speaker 1: from October of twenty twenty two, when body camera footage
Speaker 1: revealed a raid on voters around Tampa, nineteen of whom
Speaker 1: were arrested for so called fraud. The ACLU reports quote
Speaker 1: the footage is disturbing. It is clear that the individuals
Speaker 1: arrested in and around Tampa have absolutely no idea that
Speaker 1: they have done anything wrong and why they are being detained.
Speaker 1: At moments, their confusion and distress are so pronounced that
Speaker 1: the police arresting them try to console them. As the
Speaker 1: Tampa Bay Times put it, the police are almost apologetic
Speaker 1: for their actions. Nineteen people are arrested in this sting,
Speaker 1: which focused around Amendment four. This is an amendment to
Speaker 1: the Florida state Constitution that was approved by sixty five
Speaker 1: percent to Florida voters in twenty eighteen and restored voting
Speaker 1: rights to Floridians with past felony convictions. But the year
Speaker 1: after this happens, DeSantis has his legislature pass SB seven
Speaker 1: H sixty six, which requires that felons pay legal fines
Speaker 1: before being eligible to vote. As the ACLU notes, the
Speaker 1: state has no central database for information on convictions and
Speaker 1: the resulting financial obligations. This leaves hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: Floridians unable to assess if they owe money and how much. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the state created a paid a vote system well, giving
Speaker 1: people no way to determine how much they must pay,
Speaker 1: and then he's able to charge them criminally for voting
Speaker 1: when they haven't paid properly in this thing that they
Speaker 1: can't know, Like, yeah, it's really fucked up. It is
Speaker 1: very clearly targeting specifically black voters. Thirteen of the nineteen
Speaker 1: people arrested in this first sweep are black, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's generally seen as an attempt to chill the vote
Speaker 1: in low income black and brown communities ahead of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four election. That's absolutely what he's doing here.
Speaker 1: DeSantis also oversees a ban on critical race theory, one
Speaker 1: so severe it's led to even math textbooks being censored.
Speaker 1: One law makes it a third degree felony to distribute
Speaker 1: what the state under DeSantis calls pornography in classrooms. The
Speaker 1: actual text of the statute is incredibly broad, defining pornography
Speaker 1: not just as erotic material with the intentment to cause
Speaker 1: sexual excitement, but including instruction on gender identity or discrimination.
Speaker 1: By teaching that quote, an individual by virtue of his
Speaker 1: or her race, color, sex, or national origin is inherently
Speaker 1: racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. So it's basically
Speaker 1: just like a felony to teach anything that someone conservative
Speaker 1: might get offended by. And if you know conservatives, you
Speaker 1: know there's nothing that doesn't offend them.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's all that very it Honestly, I don't even
Speaker 4: know what to say say and we talk about this
Speaker 4: all the time, it but it does blow my mind.
Speaker 4: It's hard for me to wrap my mind around all
Speaker 4: that he's all the terrible things that he's done in
Speaker 4: a very short period of time, and the hypocrisy of
Speaker 4: people talking about, you know, public schools, the schooling is
Speaker 4: an indoctrination, and then literally what is happening, Literally what
Speaker 4: the things that are being removed from basic elements of
Speaker 4: our education and how yeah, I'm preaching.
Speaker 1: Classrooms and school libraries just absolutely shorn of books because yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ghastly. I'm not going to go into as much.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to like spend the whole episode just
Speaker 1: listing every bad thing he's done as governor. I thought
Speaker 1: it was more useful because you get this every day,
Speaker 1: right people are reading this, they're watching this. I thought
Speaker 1: it was more useful to explain why he's able to
Speaker 1: do this, because this is not how he governs at
Speaker 1: the start of his time as governor. This is a
Speaker 1: change that comes midway through as a rest of the
Speaker 1: COVID pandemic, and it's important to know that he is
Speaker 1: able to get away with pushing so many unpopular policies
Speaker 1: because of how he gains control over the state legislature.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to kind of get into because
Speaker 1: that's actually a really useful thing to understand, in part
Speaker 1: to prevent future authoritarians like DeSantis from doing similar things
Speaker 1: in other states, you need to at least understand how
Speaker 1: he got to be able to do all this shit.
Speaker 1: Right now, this is all awful. None of it, though,
Speaker 1: has stopped DeSantis from winning re election. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of articles from right before his reelection campaign that are like,
Speaker 1: you know, is COVID is his hard right tilt? You know,
Speaker 1: is this all going to like hurt his chances of winning?
Speaker 1: Because he barely squeaks it by the first time his
Speaker 1: second election, Ron wins by an astonishing margin. He even
Speaker 1: captures traditionally liberal enclaves in the state, which has led
Speaker 1: many to posit that, however you want to characterize his
Speaker 1: reign ethically, he has ended, at least for now, Florida's
Speaker 1: status as a per state. Little early to say that,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll see how twenty twenty four goes, but
Speaker 1: I think that's probably fair. It is impossible to say
Speaker 1: at the moment whether or not this will hold true
Speaker 1: beyond twenty twenty four, but it does point to an
Speaker 1: undeniable conclusion. Ron DeSantis is probably the most effective elected
Speaker 1: anti Democratic leader in the country. The good news is that,
Speaker 1: at least for now, he seems to have overreached his
Speaker 1: capabilities and what is probably fair to say is the
Speaker 1: most major misstep of his career so far. People have
Speaker 1: been discussing DeSantis as a probable Republican presidential candidate since
Speaker 1: at least twenty twenty and after January sixth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and the brief relative absence of Trump when he was
Speaker 1: being shunned for that like a couple of months, he
Speaker 1: seemed to shine as a likely future standard bearer of
Speaker 1: the authoritarian movement that Donald had helped conjure into being.
Speaker 1: There were articles in mainstream publications touting the Florida miracle.
Speaker 1: Ron had decided to campaign on this. Interviews highlighted his
Speaker 1: intelligence as a counterpoint to Trump's crudity, But this brief
Speaker 1: period as a front runner came to an end as
Speaker 1: soon as the former president made it clear that he
Speaker 1: intended to run once more. In deference to the fact
Speaker 1: that DeSantis had defended him a few years earlier, Trump
Speaker 1: gave a couple of quiet warnings. I think the first
Speaker 1: warnings are probably sent through intermediaries kind of politely. You've
Speaker 1: got some guys who are because they're both Florida dudes,
Speaker 1: you know, who are visiting both camps, be like, now's
Speaker 1: not the time, Ron, Now's not the time, Ron. But
Speaker 1: Ron doesn't listen to this, and when that isn't enough.
Speaker 1: In November of twenty twenty two, Trump makes a public
Speaker 1: warning in an interview on Fox News. He threatens DeSantis
Speaker 1: with a release of private information if he runs for president.
Speaker 1: From the Huffington Post. I can tell you things about him.
Speaker 1: It won't be very flattering. I know more about him
Speaker 1: than anybody other than perhaps his wife is so funny.
Speaker 3: I can't believe he did that, but an unbelievable. It's
Speaker 3: something's something like that that he does every week and
Speaker 3: it's just gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It is remarkable.
Speaker 3: Right, warned him not to run for presid.
Speaker 1: You threaten him with that, you that you'll pull pull
Speaker 1: out dirt on him if he does. You just do
Speaker 1: it openly on TV.
Speaker 3: That's so wild, like during the interview, right, it's not
Speaker 3: even like off the cough at like a rally.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, no, I accept it from Trump because
Speaker 1: it is really funny, like it is. It's very funny.
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry I am that shallow with stuff like this.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah quote. I think he would be making
Speaker 1: a mistake. I think the bass would not like it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be good for the party.
Speaker 1: Any of that stuff is not good. You have other
Speaker 1: people that possibly will run. I guess I don't know
Speaker 1: if he runs. If he runs, he runs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he runs morning and he shouldn't.
Speaker 1: It's gonna hurt him badly if he does.
Speaker 3: And again he does.
Speaker 1: Up to this point, Ron's career has been meticulous. Right,
Speaker 1: the first time he throws the dice is kind of
Speaker 1: when he takes this hard right turn on covid uh
Speaker 1: and that works for him. And I think if I'm
Speaker 1: if I'm gonna psychoanalyze him, I think after decades of
Speaker 1: making all of the care choices, he sees how kind
Speaker 1: of gambling works for Trump, how it gets him into
Speaker 1: it at least gets him into the presidency wants. And
Speaker 1: he's like, he sees how well it works for him
Speaker 1: in his reelection campaign, and he's like, well, fuck it,
Speaker 1: guess I'm gonna keep gambling. And he throws the dice
Speaker 1: on Donald Trump, and Trump is just a better gambler
Speaker 1: than Ron DeSantis could ever hope to be. Like, this
Speaker 1: is a calamitous mistake, but it is in line with
Speaker 1: this new image that DeSantis has tried to paint for
Speaker 1: himself since the pandemic, this kind of getting away from
Speaker 1: the Ted Cruz, from the careful Paul Ryan sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And this attitude is embodied in the trumpy accessories that
Speaker 1: he starts selling to finance his re election campaign, my
Speaker 1: favorite of which are golf balls with the text floors
Speaker 1: as governor has a pair on them. Oh boy, just
Speaker 1: sad Ron.
Speaker 2: Boy kiels so forced raw.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It does. Also, you know you're already
Speaker 1: dealing with the meatball Ron thing. Maybe don't don't add
Speaker 1: ball here, but.
Speaker 2: Or lean into it. Yeah, sell kits.
Speaker 1: With Ron's meatball Selah. Yeah, in fact he should that
Speaker 1: That's what I would do. Yeah. His only strategy seems
Speaker 1: to be running against Trump as a better Trump, which
Speaker 1: is a risky move against a man with so much
Speaker 1: personal popularity among the same base. And sure enough, as
Speaker 1: soon as Ron sets himself against Trump, all of this
Speaker 1: dirt on him starts to spill outcome articles noting that
Speaker 1: he's had three chiefs of staff and three years at
Speaker 1: Congress and then three more and five years as governor.
Speaker 1: Right Like, he's got all this turnover and nobody likes him.
Speaker 1: He can't keep a team together. One of his former
Speaker 1: strategists lets slip to Vanity Fair that Ron and Casey
Speaker 1: quote use people like toilet paper, and that there's an
Speaker 1: unofficial support group of former aids. This might just be
Speaker 1: dismissed as politics if not for the fact that the
Speaker 1: Asanta's campaign has seen even more rapid turnover since then,
Speaker 1: bleeding nearly all of its hires over the course of
Speaker 1: a year that's seen him go from the best funded
Speaker 1: candidate on the Republican Party too broke and so reliant
Speaker 1: on his superpack that Trump's campaign recently made a public
Speaker 1: warning against Republican candidates coordinating illegally with their super packs,
Speaker 1: just to like stick it ron a little bit so funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just yeah, it's very it's a.
Speaker 3: Foolish thing to do, Like aside from like all the
Speaker 3: things that you're pointing out, like why would you try
Speaker 3: to out Trump? Trump? Mean, you're so severely unlikable. It
Speaker 3: is like even like I probably Trump, but like he's
Speaker 3: got he's definitely has some charm and charisma because he's
Speaker 3: on TV for decades as like a famous guy. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it is it is hard to sort of like necessarily
Speaker 3: assess yourself like that and admit it, even if you
Speaker 3: are a little putting fingers.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's really far deep at this point, you know,
Speaker 4: and he's really like gone down the path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's locked in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is locked in. It's a it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me because it's it's very much like a like you've
Speaker 1: got like this boxer who's like just just famously good,
Speaker 1: right hook just knocking dudes out left and right, and
Speaker 1: he's a heavyweight, and you're like, you know, sometimes you
Speaker 1: like box at the local gym with your friends for fun,
Speaker 1: and you see him. You see this guy. Maybe he's
Speaker 1: doing some sort of like circus thing. He's just pounded dudes, right,
Speaker 1: challenging guys from the crowd. He knocks like four or
Speaker 1: five dudes out, and you're like, you know what, I
Speaker 1: bet I can take this man who's twice yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's just what so reckless?
Speaker 3: Must It's like, must say he wants to fight Zuckerberg.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, man, Like, yeah, I think that both
Speaker 1: what Ron has done and Elon Musk wanting to fight
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg are just the best evidence you could get
Speaker 1: of how power and wealth derange you. Like he has lost.
Speaker 1: He's he's a guy earlier in his career who very
Speaker 1: small assesses risk and reward, and he's it's just kind
Speaker 1: of fallen apart. He won for too long, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, it breaks your brain, It breaks yeah,
Speaker 3: it turns you into a meatball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, into a meatball, a ground up little meatball. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh so you know, alongside Trump, DeSantis has chosen
Speaker 1: to pick a fight with Disney over the extremely mild
Speaker 1: resistance the company put up to his anti renewals. It's
Speaker 1: very like he tries to revoke their special tax status
Speaker 1: and then Disney uses their much more expensive lawyers to
Speaker 1: cancel a lot of this act.
Speaker 2: Should have revoked his marriage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, to do that.
Speaker 3: They are like the pope.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's very funny, like former RNC chair Michael Steele was,
Speaker 1: after all this happened. Is like once you lose a
Speaker 1: battle against Mickey Mouse, it's kind of hard to take
Speaker 1: you seriously.
Speaker 3: Max, Like you lose a fight that you started, like.
Speaker 1: That you started with Mickey Mouse. Max Stepanovitch, an influential
Speaker 1: figure in Tallahassee politics, told Politico last year that DeSantis
Speaker 1: had to resist becoming the protagonist in his own Greek tragedy,
Speaker 1: claiming the governor's key rival is not Trump but Hubris.
Speaker 1: I might also add what I said, yep, yep, yep, yeap.
Speaker 1: His own awkwardness too, you know, putting ron.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his laughing and then scowling, yeah, nine and half
Speaker 3: a second that one of his Nazi didn't help.
Speaker 1: No, that that sure doesn't help. Yeah, it's all very funny.
Speaker 1: I think the best way to close this out is
Speaker 1: for me to play a little clip of an interview
Speaker 1: with a with old Meatball Ron at Adasantas twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four event. This was taking Paul Steinhauser. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this. Yeah, Katie Eve been waiting.
Speaker 2: For this all episode.
Speaker 3: Maybe he finally has the juice in this clip.
Speaker 1: Can you guys see he got it?
Speaker 2: Does he got a juice?
Speaker 3: You finally got the juice?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Instead the other day that the knives are out for
Speaker 6: you at that debate, I got to ask you about that.
Speaker 6: Plus I got to ask you a memo that people
Speaker 6: are talking about. So I'd like to get your reaction
Speaker 6: to both.
Speaker 3: Well. On the memo, it's not mine.
Speaker 7: I haven't read it, and it's just I think it's
Speaker 7: something that we haven't put off to the side. But
Speaker 7: in terms of the debate, look, when you're I know
Speaker 7: from the military, when you're over the target, that's when
Speaker 7: you're taking flack. And if you look really, in the
Speaker 7: last six to nine months, I've been more attacked than
Speaker 7: anybody else by the Harris, the media.
Speaker 3: The left. I feel like the Republican candidates and more
Speaker 3: times indicted President is probably.
Speaker 7: Biggest threat, so we view it as positive feedback. We'll
Speaker 7: be ready to do what we need to do to
Speaker 7: deliver our message. But we absolutely expect that and we'll
Speaker 7: be ready for it. And that means punching back, It means,
Speaker 7: it means yes, it means defending ourselves, but more importantly,
Speaker 7: showing why we are the leader to get this country
Speaker 7: turned around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's there's so much that. First off, Ron, how
Speaker 1: many times did you take flack in the Navy as
Speaker 1: a lawyer? Uh?
Speaker 2: Over the combat line?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Uh huh okay, Ron Wild time to bring that in.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, he is grinding his fucking teeth. So
Speaker 1: the reason that the thing he's asking about is I
Speaker 1: mentioned that his campaign is broke. His super pac has
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but you cannot coordinate directly between
Speaker 1: a campaign and a superpack. So he had his superpack
Speaker 1: put together his debate prep list, like his his debate
Speaker 1: prep instructions. But the super pac can't send those to
Speaker 1: the campaign. What it can do is put them up
Speaker 1: in a website in a way that's technically publicly available, right,
Speaker 1: and then they can say, and that's how we got
Speaker 1: it right, They published this publicly. Now there's ways to
Speaker 1: do that where it's not obvious, but like people found
Speaker 1: it and published his debate prep instructions, which are mostly
Speaker 1: really like it's do not attack Trump ever, you know,
Speaker 1: never say anything bad about Trump when you're up there.
Speaker 2: Sounds like he's gonna fatal hard.
Speaker 1: Viciously attack ignore Trump and viciously attack Vivic Ramaswamy by
Speaker 1: calling him and and it like this is the saddest part.
Speaker 1: It's like, you got to give him a Trump style
Speaker 1: nickname to attack Vivic the liar?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, don't even try.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know what Trump would call Vivic. I don't
Speaker 1: think anything. I think he would basically ignore him because
Speaker 1: he's not a serious threat. He would go after he
Speaker 1: would be calling Ronda Santis.
Speaker 2: If he did, it might be a little racist, there's
Speaker 2: a chance.
Speaker 3: But he has made clear rhymes about it. Okay, he's
Speaker 3: rapped about it. You'll see he.
Speaker 1: Is like is he well known as a liar on
Speaker 1: the right?
Speaker 8: Like we like because he's like he the things Vivic
Speaker 8: says are like weird, like misunderstandings of how the government works,
Speaker 8: and like, wait, you want to do this with a
Speaker 8: what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Man? But he's not a liar.
Speaker 1: I think there's this fundamental misunderstanding about why Trump's nicknames
Speaker 1: are effective. And they are effective because they get at
Speaker 1: what most people have as like a primary complaint about
Speaker 1: a dude in a very like succinct way. Right, Jeb
Speaker 1: Bush is like the son of a president who was
Speaker 1: like the kind of evil genius political manipulator and the
Speaker 1: brother of a president who was like the super charismatic
Speaker 1: political candidate. Right, yeah, and he just was absolutely bland
Speaker 1: by comparison.
Speaker 3: Low energy Jeb.
Speaker 1: Right, he's desperate, but it's the thing that hurts him
Speaker 1: the most, right, Like he knows that about himself. Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz Lion Ted. You call Ted Cruz a liar because
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz is a fucking liar.
Speaker 2: He exuded lies.
Speaker 1: Well, guess for the Trump if Trump was going to
Speaker 1: do a nickname of Vivek, is is nobody nobody Vivek? Right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not He's not, right, He's he's a zero, you know,
Speaker 1: because he is a zero. Yeah, vapid Vivek. You know
Speaker 1: something like that that gets it his like that he's
Speaker 1: he's not a serious candidate.
Speaker 3: He's just there for his books and stuff, and that's
Speaker 3: you know, Yeah, vapid Vivec. That's a good one, Katie.
Speaker 1: You don't call him Vivec the liar because like, that's
Speaker 1: not it, Like there's that doesn't get you anywhere.
Speaker 3: And also blank, the blank is not something. It's not
Speaker 3: the that's not the structure of the nicknames.
Speaker 1: Also like, yeah, I think vapid is a good one, Katie.
Speaker 1: That might be the VP vivec rapin rapping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, anyway, guy who wants to raise the voting
Speaker 3: age to twenty five of.
Speaker 1: The veke, I think we need to lower the age
Speaker 1: to rent cars to eighteen. Uh yeah, And I also
Speaker 1: think we need to lower the drinking age to eighteen
Speaker 1: as long as as you're buying your alcohol in a
Speaker 1: rented car. That's my argument.
Speaker 3: Get to drink it in the rented.
Speaker 2: Car and drink it while driving in the rented car.
Speaker 1: No, No, that would be irresponsible. I just want to
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how when Texas you can buy
Speaker 1: liquor at a drive through, but only if they put
Speaker 1: a piece of tape on it.
Speaker 3: That's that's that's the situation.
Speaker 2: Apparently.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's glorious sixty four ounce margarita in your truck.
Speaker 1: The size of a Sherman battle tack.
Speaker 2: Literally a drive through liquor store and you like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's called called State's Rights. It's so funny.
Speaker 1: It's the best thing Texas does.
Speaker 4: And like now that I note exists, I don't want
Speaker 4: to get out of my car.
Speaker 2: No, get boozed like a peasant at some place.
Speaker 1: Like a poor No, absolutely not or yeah, anyway, that's after.
Speaker 3: Run on Wednesday evening when he is not allowed to
Speaker 3: talk about Donald Trumpton.
Speaker 1: Anyway, good luck to Ron the day before this episode
Speaker 1: will drop hopeful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thanks for having us, having.
Speaker 2: Us per USU.
Speaker 5: Do you want to do your plugs, Katie.
Speaker 2: We've got shows, we sure do.
Speaker 4: We'd love for you to listen and watch those shows.
Speaker 4: We have about YouTube channel called some More News and
Speaker 4: you can watch videos, but we also have a podcast
Speaker 4: called even more News, and we also have the audio
Speaker 4: from the YouTube channel in that podcast feed. So it's like
Speaker 4: there's two different shows in the podcast. Check it out,
Speaker 4: you'll get it. Check them out and Patreon and Cody.
Speaker 4: You have a band.
Speaker 3: Oh it's so true, Sophie. Oh my god, what a
Speaker 3: great point from Sophie. Once again, it's my band is
Speaker 3: called the hot shapes. You can find them on band
Speaker 3: camp and SoundCloud and maybe streaming where you stream songs.
Speaker 3: I think I tried to do that. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Check it out.
Speaker 2: And Robert, you have a you have a book.
Speaker 1: I I do have a book. It's it's called After
Speaker 1: the Revolution. You can buy it any where books come from.
Speaker 1: And you know what else I have is a lot
Speaker 1: of love in my heart from my co hosts uh
Speaker 1: and and my producer who listened to two hours or
Speaker 1: so of Ron DeSantis. And if you at home are
Speaker 1: feeling kind of bummed out about this, go go on
Speaker 1: Twitter and find the clip of him in that interview
Speaker 1: we just played next to Homelander. Uh, the same, the same, like.
Speaker 3: Biling's just it's not even under the surface. It is
Speaker 3: the surface. It's the bundling one to one. I've also
Speaker 3: never seen, like I don't think I've ever seen somebody
Speaker 3: grind their teeth like so visibly, Like no, you're you're
Speaker 3: also bearing your teeth. You're bearing your teeth and you're
Speaker 3: grinding them usually like no, tight lips, you keep it down,
Speaker 3: you clenched them.
Speaker 4: He didn't seem to be handling things well, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: or for the past years. But yeah, no, he is
Speaker 4: grinding and bearing and out in rending and tearing. Is
Speaker 4: that something from where the Is that a quote? I
Speaker 4: made it up to stop talking to Katie? The gnashing
Speaker 4: of the teeth.
Speaker 3: Yep, He's going to stop talking.
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