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Speaker 1: According to Bloomberg News, this weekend has been another very
Speaker 1: difficult one for the disintegrating Ron de Santis campaign. Let's
Speaker 1: read from the story by Bloomberg's Nancy Cook. Ron desantists
Speaker 1: promised a reset of his presidential campaign. Many of his
Speaker 1: campaign staffers are still waiting. Several leagues believe the Republican
Speaker 1: candidate's bid lax of coherence, strategy and message. According to
Speaker 1: people familiar with the campaign, the operation is disorganized, with
Speaker 1: different teams pursuing their own agendas a little communication between groups,
Speaker 1: said the people familiar, who requested anonymity to discuss the
Speaker 1: campaign's inner workings. There's a couple of things going on
Speaker 1: in that paragraph. First, the Ron de Santa's campaign is disintegrating,
Speaker 1: and the evidence is the leaks. Nancy Cook's anonymously sore
Speaker 1: story makes clear that the voices from inside the campaign
Speaker 1: expressing such worry are the very people who are responsible
Speaker 1: for the campaign reset. The rond de Santa's staff, but
Speaker 1: they feel siloed, disconnected, and disorganized. One of the things
Speaker 1: that happens when a campaign starts to disintegrate is the
Speaker 1: leaking starts. It marks a collapse of discipline, of teamwork,
Speaker 1: and the Ronde de Santis campaign has reached that pathetic stage.
Speaker 1: It's important to remember Ron DeSantis isn't running to be
Speaker 1: mayor of Tallahassee. Ron de Santis is running to be
Speaker 1: president of the United States. He is a micromanaging freak show.
Speaker 1: To say the least, Ron de Santis has never managed anything,
Speaker 1: never run anything besides the state of Florida, which he's
Speaker 1: done well, let's just say, ineffectively for the last five years.
Speaker 1: Despite his twenty point reelection bid. What Ron de Santis
Speaker 1: has done is declared war on the state's largest employer
Speaker 1: in Stoke, a jihad against the educational system in Florida. Now,
Speaker 1: Florida voters may like that a bit, but it's not
Speaker 1: effective leadership. This incredible paragraph details what a sorry manager
Speaker 1: Ron de Santis is. Even posting an official message on
Speaker 1: x the platform formerly called Twitter, is rife with bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: According to the people briefed on the communication, strategy. The
Speaker 1: governor and his wife, Casey DeSantis must personally approve many
Speaker 1: of the messages, a process that can take two days
Speaker 1: and can slow their ability to respond to campaign developments.
Speaker 1: They said, some at the highest rungs of the campaign
Speaker 1: leadership consider the operation flawed and worry they are watching
Speaker 1: the Florida governor's chances of winning the GOP nomination slip away.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Ron de Santis' acumen as a manager.
Speaker 1: He aspires to be the commander in chief of the
Speaker 1: American military, the head of state of the government of
Speaker 1: the United States President. He runs an operation where it
Speaker 1: takes two days two days to approve a tweet, and
Speaker 1: apparently the only people that Ron Desantus trusts to approve
Speaker 1: the tweet are him and his wife, Casey. What that
Speaker 1: reflects is a paranoid style of decision making, a culture
Speaker 1: of mistrust. He's someone who's simply not capable of leading
Speaker 1: and managing Harold it is a viable challenger to front
Speaker 1: runner Donald Trump. DeSantis has slid in the polls, committed
Speaker 1: a series of missteps, and alarmed donors following his campaign kickoff.
Speaker 1: With his spending and strategy, the candidate promised the reset,
Speaker 1: but his own aides are frustrated and disappointed, and a
Speaker 1: sense of gloom permeates his Tallahassee headquarters, according to people
Speaker 1: familiar with the operation, Well, you don't say a sense
Speaker 1: of gloom has descended on the DeSantis campaign. A fog
Speaker 1: of despair, if you will, hangs over the headquarters, the
Speaker 1: Fura bunker of the Tallahassee Mussolini. I wonder how the immigrants,
Speaker 1: the men, the women, the children, dazed, confused, bewildered and
Speaker 1: lost in a land where they didn't speak the language,
Speaker 1: and they knew no one when round Desantas shipped them
Speaker 1: off tomorrow at this vineyard for a freezing Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: The reset hasn't exactly stopped him from making one unforced
Speaker 1: error after the other, said Wit Airs, a GOP polster
Speaker 1: who worked on the sant As a successful twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: gubernatorial race. His issue is just he had a hard
Speaker 1: time dealing with people. Now, before continuing, isn't it important
Speaker 1: to be able to deal with people just as a
Speaker 1: general proposition, a human proposition. Now, if you want to
Speaker 1: lead the people to be their president, to be the
Speaker 1: head of state, the commander in chief of a system
Speaker 1: where it is a government of the people, by the people,
Speaker 1: for the people, showing the person who seeks to be
Speaker 1: in charge not to stain the people. Thank you for
Speaker 1: listening to my political commentary. If you like what you
Speaker 1: heard today, please also consider subscribing to The Warning daily
Speaker 1: newsletter on Substack. Our democracy hangs in the balance. The
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four presidential election is the most consequential in
Speaker 1: America's history. It's not hyperbole, it's a fact. That is
Speaker 1: why the mission of the Warning with Steve Schmidt is
Speaker 1: to help readers orient to the currents that are shaping
Speaker 1: our times and the unseen forces driving politics that are
Speaker 1: very rarely discussed on cable news. Please send up at
Speaker 1: Steve Schmidt ste Ve scch m I DT dot substack
Speaker 1: dot com again Steve Schmidt dot substack dot com, or
Speaker 1: at the link in the show notes section below. Thank
Speaker 1: you to each and every one of you for listening
Speaker 1: and watching. There is pressure to turn around the campaign
Speaker 1: before the first Republican debate on August twenty third in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: Were by September, when the governor and his wife think
Speaker 1: that most Americans will start paying attention to the presidential
Speaker 1: raise set a fundraiser who attended a recent DeSantis retreat
Speaker 1: for donors in Park City, Utah. Now Park City, Utah
Speaker 1: is my hometown. And the DeSantis campaign, which is broke,
Speaker 1: decided to host their comeback meeting at the thousand dollars
Speaker 1: a night stein Ericson Lodge. What a why expenditure of
Speaker 1: the donor's money and a perfect setup for Nancy Cook's
Speaker 1: next paragraph. Dessat has fired one third of his campaign staff,
Speaker 1: focused his travel to early voting states, and started holding
Speaker 1: more intimate events and interacting more with mainstream media. But
Speaker 1: it is not clear to supporters or campaign officials if
Speaker 1: the reset has been sweeping enough. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the one to break the bad news to you. The
Speaker 1: reset is not working, and the reset will not work.
Speaker 1: The gloom and the despair, embrace it because the center
Speaker 1: you do, the sooner that the Santas campaign will be over.
Speaker 1: And that's a good thing for America. When you're losing
Speaker 1: a campaign, the whining and the complaining and the poor
Speaker 1: may always comes. And that was before the Republican Party
Speaker 1: became a great cult of victimization. Let's listen to how Lambert,
Speaker 1: a DeSantis donor, he seems particularly delusional. I think the
Speaker 1: reset is going great. He's getting out in front of
Speaker 1: the media a whole lot more and rolling out more
Speaker 1: policy proposals in the near future, said how Lambert, a
Speaker 1: donor in Texas finance executives. Some campaign officials want the
Speaker 1: reboot to go further. Donors and allies are urging the
Speaker 1: governor to stop talking so extensively about his record in
Speaker 1: Florida and culture war fights and broaden his message to
Speaker 1: appeal to the concerns of voters in places like Iowa.
Speaker 1: Quite a revelation there. You don't have to be a
Speaker 1: political genius to figure it out. If you live, let's say,
Speaker 1: in Iowa, Carolina or New Hampshire, you really don't want
Speaker 1: to hear somebody give an our speech about Florida because
Speaker 1: you don't live there and you don't give a shit.
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of Ron DeSantis's problem, because
Speaker 1: he talks incessantly about things that no one cares about,
Speaker 1: and he's very strange on top of it. But besides
Speaker 1: talking about things that they don't care about, he also
Speaker 1: has decided to provoke them and antagonize them with a
Speaker 1: culture war that he's decided to launch against all of
Speaker 1: America's culture, and you know what, no one likes it,
Speaker 1: not even the MAGA voters. Robert Bigelow, the biggest individual
Speaker 1: donor to the pro deosatus never back down Superback, told
Speaker 1: Ruters Friday he won't give any more money He's given
Speaker 1: twenty million so far unless the guy governor attracts new
Speaker 1: major backers and adopts a more moderate approach. Supporters know
Speaker 1: the first debate will be a critical moment for DeSantis
Speaker 1: to introduce himself to Americans who are not familiar with him,
Speaker 1: several donors said, and they are eager to see how
Speaker 1: he stacks up. The American people do know Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: They've gotten to know him, and they don't like him
Speaker 1: at all, and for good reason. Ron DeSantis's campaign is collapsing.
Speaker 1: It's all but over. It will long be remembered as
Speaker 1: a national joke, a punchline about what happens when a
Speaker 1: strange and paranoid fascist from Florida with his wife decides
Speaker 1: that they alone can run and win presidential campaign. The
Speaker 1: most amazing thing about it is a few years from now,
Speaker 1: assuming the country's democracy survives, there'll likely be another Ron Deissantis,
Speaker 1: and they won't learn a single lesson from this Raan
Speaker 1: de Santis. That's the most amazing thing about American politics.
Speaker 1: It's the arrogance, the arrogance of people like Ron and
Speaker 1: Casey DeSantis. Watching them crash and burn is an awful
Speaker 1: lot of fun, isn't it