Latest / Pod Save America / Ron’s Boulevard of Broken Streams

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Ron’s Boulevard of Broken Streams · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Dan Pfeiffer.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: On today's show, Ron DeSantis' campaign launch explodes on takeoff.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: And Tim Miller is here to break down what's next
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: for Tiny D and the rest of the Republican field. Then,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: House Republicans are feeling so confident about the debt ceiling
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: negotiations that they're bragging about holding the economy hostage. And finally,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: we dig into one of the week's weirdest stories. Why
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: did Marjorie Taylor Greene pay $ 100, 000 for a used tube
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of Kevin McCarthy's chapstick? Just the big stories here on
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• 1:37
  Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Dan, let's get to the news. Here's
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a question. If a presidential campaign launches on Twitter and
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: no one can hear it, did it really launch? Ron DeSantis.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: He could have announced his White House bid with a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: big rally or a splashy primetime interview. Instead, he chose
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: what was essentially a conference call with Elon Musk and
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: one of his VC fanboys that was meant to showcase
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the governor's dulcet tones and the billionaire media mogul's technological prowess.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: If you didn't get the chance to tune in, here's
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: how the first 20 minutes or so went.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: But not those of us who've known and worked with
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Elon for nearly a quarter century.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: His commitment to freedom and his willingness to put his money.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Where his mouth is.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I think we've got.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Just a massive number of people online, so it's a
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: service restraining somewhat.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Obviously very excited to.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Have Governor DeSantis make this stark announcement. We're just trying
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: to Just trying to get it going.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: An auspicious start for Mr. Trump without the baggage. Trump
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: without the drama. Dan, you have seen quite a few
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: campaign launches in your day. You've helped organize a couple yourself.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Do you remember any announcements where you can't actually see
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: the candidate or hear from them for a good half
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: hour into the announcement?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Well, John, I think we're all being a little bit
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: unfair to Ron DeSantis because for... about a century, all
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: of the campaign announcements were audio only.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: That is true.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Then the TV was invented. But no, not since then.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: So it's really make America great again kind of thing. Yeah.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: We thought that was just like pre-Civil Rights Act when
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: they said it, but they actually mean pre-television.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Worst presidential campaign launch of all time? I was trying
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to figure this out and like going back, at least
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: in my poor memory, about what was a worse launch
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: than this. There were certainly worse campaigns that ended in disaster,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: but the actual announcement is a tough one to really
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: fuck up.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say the AI chatbots were not helpful
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: in trying to identify this question.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: You asked the AI chatbots? Yes, yes. I'm thinking back
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: to Wes Clark after he announced, but his actual speech
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: was okay, and then he had that famous moment on
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: the plane where he was asked about his Iraq war position,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: and he in the middle of the question, turned around
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: to his press person and asked what his position was.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: You mean, he said, he said, help Mary.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Help Mary. Yeah, help Mary. That in my mind so far,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: that was back in 2003. That was like the running,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: in the running for the worst launch of all time.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, Donald Trump did come down an escalator and
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: then start screaming about Mexico sending rapists and criminals. But that,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: by all accounts, was a stellar performance compared to that.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Well, as it turns out, we were all a bit
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: naive about the Republican Party base in 2016.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. Now, it is probably true that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: most Republican voters won't hear about this.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Literally.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: And that is the best possible news for Ron DeSantis,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: because everyone who does hear about it will learn that
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: it was an absolute disaster and a joke, including Republican
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: voters who hear about it from right-wing media, which is
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: a rarity. Because, like, Fox News was dunking on it.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I mean... Real problems. Real problems. Ron DeSantis even lost
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Cat Turd. Cat Turd.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Not the Cat Turd?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: The Cat Turd.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: That's Mr. Cat Turd to you, buddy.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: It's at Cat Turd 2, Mr. Cat Turd. He said
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that it was like watching paint dry and so that
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: he left. I don't know if he voluntarily left or
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: he was forced out like most of us were most
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: of the time. There were about 500,000 listeners when Twitter
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Spaces crashed. Only about 200,000 came back once they finally
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: turned it off and turned it on again. Average Fox
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: primetime audience is about 1.5 million. What on earth was
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the DeSantis campaign thinking in choosing an audio-only platform with
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a well-known history of crashing?
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Earlier when you... not so subtly called me old by
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: pointing out all the campaign announcements that I have seen
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: over time.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: You were there at the Carter announcement, I believe.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I wasn't born when Carter announced. I would point that out.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I have to do the math in my head. I'm
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: not sure. But look, when you plan an announcement, you
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: and I have been a part of a couple. The
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: way to do that is you pick the candidate's greatest strength.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Then you build the strategies around highlighting that strength for everyone.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: And for Ron DeSantis, that is clearly his voice.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: His voice, that's right. He got it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: It annoys no one. It's not off-putting at all. So
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: you want to just center the voice in the announcement
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: because that's what you people are going to want to hear.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: They're going to want to hear Ron DeSantis. Just focus
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: on that voice for years to come. Look, this is
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: an idiotic strategy. Campaign announcements, all things in politics. can
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: go wrong. They go wrong one of two ways. One
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: is a good idea that is either executed poorly or
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: just suffers from bad luck. Take the example of Tim
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Scott's microphone going out. Maybe that's some advanced person's fault
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: or they hired the wrong vendor, but that's not a
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: sign that it was not a bad idea of an announcement.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Then there are just straight up fucking terrible ideas. The
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: idea of doing an audio announcement being interviewed by two
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: silicon billionaires is on the fourth-tier feature of a third-tier
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: social media platform? Even if it had gone perfectly, what
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: was the upside?
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: I know. That's what I keep saying. It's hard to
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: put the glitches aside, but even if we try to
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: put the glitches aside, the idea is fucking terrible.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: So just think about when you do this, we're going
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: to focus on it. We will make fun of it
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: for the 300,000 people or the 150,000 that's That is
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: sort of a very– and I would say this to
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: any person or politician I was advising. The numbers of
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: people watching in real time is an anachronistic way of
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: looking at it. What you want to look at is
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: the tail effect of anything you do. How does it
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: get picked up? So just what do you care about? Iowa,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: New Hampshire, South Carolina. What are they going to play
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: on the news to say that Ron DeSantis entered the race?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Audio with a picture of Elon Musk and a picture
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: of Ron DeSantis? Like, you have to think about what
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: the voter is going to consume. The regular voter who
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: is not on Twitter, or especially not on Twitter spaces,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: they're going to hear your voice. It's so bizarre. And
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: the audio thing is just so weird. And this is
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: an example of how just old and dumb that is.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Since Reagan, for a long time, presidents got to give
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: a weekly radio address every Saturday. And you would record
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: it on Friday. You could pick whatever you want. And
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: radio stations all across the country would air it at
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: a certain time.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Know it all too well.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: In 2009. So Reagan did it. Bush did it. Clinton
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: did it. Bush 43 did it. Obama comes in, sort
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: of first internet president is like, this is dumb. Why
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: would we just do this on radio? So we videotaped
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: it and also put it on YouTube. So in 2009,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: well more than a decade ago, we were like, audio
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: only is dead. And Ron DeSantis is bringing it back
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: because David Sachs is probably going to give $ 50 million
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: to– his super PAC maybe, and Elon Musk could do
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the same. And so it's, you can't use your fight,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: your campaign announcement to raise money from super PAC billionaires.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: It's just a stupid, stupid, idiotic way of doing it.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I've last week, I talked about how terrible, how he
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: should fire his entire team. This is worse. He did
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: not fire them. He got an actual worse idea than
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: that weird endorsing of Kelly craft minutes before she lost
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: by 30 points. Yeah.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: The, the young generational change candidate decided to take us
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: back to the days before television, something that everyone has
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: in their homes. He could have potentially reached lots of
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: people on a piece of technology that they've had in
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: their homes for quite some time, and that is the television.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: And actually, they have little televisions on their phones, too.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: I can see that.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: That's happened also. But you know, audio only is fine, too.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And again, when you're doing your presidential announcement, you don't
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: want the stage to yourself. You want to share the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: stage with an erratic billionaire and his fucking flunky, David Sachs.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: I haven't said his name because no one fucking knows
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: who David Sachs is, right? He's just some random, you know,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: he's like the sixth guy at PayPal. And now he's
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: rich and has some opinions. That's David Sachs. That's who
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis wanted to moderate his announcement. Also, you couldn't
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: really tell the difference between when David Sachs was speaking
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: and Ron DeSantis because they both have terrible voices. And
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: there were times when Ron DeSantis couldn't even get a
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: word in edgewise because David and Elon were like hogging
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: the whole thing and talking too much. I mean, I'm
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: trying to get into the minds of the DeSantis campaign,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: of the people who, of the Yahoo who, who proposed
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: this idea. And all I can think of is that
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: they are all way too online. They seem to have
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: actually bought into this idea that Elon Musk is the
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: new Rupert Murdoch. This is where the media is going
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: and the right-wing media is going. And maybe somehow they're
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: going to take it to trump by announcing on the
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: platform that helped him become president and twitter used to
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: be trump's platform and now here comes desantis and maybe
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: they'd get a lot of elite media attention uh which
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: you know it certainly did certainly did get a lot
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: of attention but it all seems like real galaxy brain
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: shit like who was the audience was it donors was
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: it dogecoin fans was it was it elon musk fans
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: which at this point you could fit into a small
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: building like what what What was going on?
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be cynical about this, John, but
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Ron DeSantis' campaign plans to raise, the other super PAC
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: plans to raise and spend at least $ 200 million. And
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: it's probably going to be more than that. And Ron
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: DeSantis' chief political guru is a guy named Jeff Rowe.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: He worked for Ted Cruz. He helped get Glenn Youngkin elected.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: He also owns the ad-buying company that will be used
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: to place the ads spent by the super PAC. And
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: he will get a cut of every single dollar spent.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: And you know who can give a lot of money
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: to that super PAC?
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: David Sachs and Elon Musk. And this is the same thing.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: We talked about this last week. This is why he
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: endorsed Kelly Craft, who was also a Jeffro client, who
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: also is a billionaire who plans to give money to
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: the DeSantis effort. And so DeSantis is being... Like he
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: is no great shakes as a candidate or a politician.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: And we're gonna talk about that with Tim, but his
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: campaign is pure idiocy right now. Absolute pure idiocy.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a bunch of like reactionary Republicans
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: who have been red pilled by being too online, just
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: like Elon, just like Ron DeSantis. It's like the things
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: they care about, um, are all just like these very
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: niche concerns that like, you have to be way deep
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: in the comment section to understand and right-wing media. And
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: speaking of right-wing media, just to go off DeSantis for
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a second, there were some takes floating around that Elon
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Musk has displaced Rupert Murdoch as the king of right-wing media.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: You think the coronation might be delayed now?
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, seems that way. And just the numbers here make
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: it just very clear that Twitter, the scale of Twitter,
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: and what people who actually consume live political content on
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Twitter is.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Quite small compared to Fox or frankly, any cable channel.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Those are CNN numbers, not to be rude about it,
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: but that we're talking about here. And that should probably
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: give Tucker Carlson some pause on his plan to reinvent
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: his empire on Twitter. Having said that, let's put aside
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: who's the king of right-wing media and who isn't, it
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: doesn't matter. But I think there is a lesson here
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: for progressives, which is, I don't care about the Twitter
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: space generally. But what Elon Musk has done is he
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: has bought one of the major distribution mechanisms of content
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: in the world. And he is now using that to
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: tilt the content that's distributed. He owns the pipes, not
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: the media. Twitter's not a media company. It's a media
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: distribution company. And if you're on Twitter, Charlie Borzell wrote
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: this in The Atlantic, it's becoming a right-wing platform. The
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: content choice is being made by Elon Musk via their algorithm.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: is pushing more right-wing content. He's using his ownership and
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: his platform to highlight. No Democratic candidate is going to
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: go on there and do it, but there will be
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: MAGA candidates all the time. And that is an argument,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: not that we should care that much about Twitter, but
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: the future of media is media distribution, how you get
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: content in front of people. And Elon Musk, as a
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: newly found red-pilled right-winger, now owns the pipes. And that matters.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: And And as Democrats think about how we're going to
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: compete against that going forward, it's not going to necessarily
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: be by buying The Atlantic or even building media companies.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: But we also have to think about distribution, how you
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: get content in front of people's eyeballs. And that does matter.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: And that is important. And we can make fun of
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: it and laugh at the glitch. And that's all funny.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: And the platform is dying. But between now and when
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: it dies, it's going to have an impact. And it's
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: going to have an impact on the terms that Elon
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Musk wants it to have.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree with all of that, except it
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: may not have the impact that Elon wants it to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: have because he's got a pipe maintenance problem.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got to fix his pipes, yes.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: He's not running the thing all that well. I mean, look,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: I don't want to do the whole thing about Elon,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: but this is a guy who thought that his success
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: at building rockets and cars would translate to success at
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: building a media platform. But the guy has built robots
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: with better people skills than he has. He's a shitty manager,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: shitty leader. with shitty politics that came from being red-pilled,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: from spending too much time on the platform that he
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: paid $ 44 billion for, and all of his engineering skills
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: couldn't stop the thing from crashing constantly because he doesn't
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: have enough people working for him because he sucks.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Look, he's doing a shitty job. There is no question
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: about that. And it's a little bit Trump-esque. Like, if
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: a smarter, more focused... right-wing billionaire owned Twitter, it would
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: be much more damaging as it is under Elon. I
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: just think the point is that there is a lesson
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: in this for Democrats that we should understand. And Elon is,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I'm not here to judge his overall intelligence, but he
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: knew what he was doing when he bought this platform.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: Because he understood that in an age where cable TV
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: is going away, broadcast media is going away, newspapers are dead,
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: the internet as we know it is dead. People don't
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: go to websites anymore. Owning content distribution matters a lot.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: And he bought it. And that will have an impact.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: It will not be the same as Facebook or TikTok
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: or something else. But it is a thing. And it's
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: going to be yet another headwind that progressive messaging is
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: going to push against in 2024. Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: And I think there's lessons to be learned in his
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: purchase of Twitter and what he was thinking, what he's
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: trying to do. And then there'll be lessons in the–
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: the failure to actually make it a real bit, you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: just for progressives, I think. So some of you might
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: be thinking, all right, glitches aside, once they got back
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: on there, conversation must have gone pretty well, right? Well,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: so after DeSantis hops on the call, he reads a
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: short version of his stump speech. Again, just reads a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: stump speech. Like if you're going to have some fun,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: informal chat that's new and different than your typical stodgy
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: campaign launch, Don't just read the speech you would have
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: read at the rally with applause. But that's what he
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: did for a while. Then he took about an hour
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: of questions on voters' top concerns from David Sachs, a
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: MAGA congressman, Thomas Massey, a few MAGA pundits. Here's how
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: it went.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: I pledge to be an energetic executive that will take
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: on the important issues. The whole book ban thing is
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: a hoax, and I think it's part of a political agenda.
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: When we're taking on things like DEI, you get blowback
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: from legacy media and the far left. We believe jamming
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: gender ideology in elementary school is wrong. You have every
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: right to do Bitcoin. The only reason these people in
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Washington don't like it is because they don't control it.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: I think this whole ESG movement is really trying to
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: do through the financial sector what they could never achieve
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: through the ballot box. The legacy media, these corporate journals,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: they're in their little bubble. And look, I'm a blue
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: collar kid. I grew up in the Tampa Bay area
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: working minimum wage to get through school. My grandfather worked
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: in the steel mill in West Pennsylvania. I just know
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: instinctively kind of what like normal people think about all
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: this stuff.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Here's the thing. Legacy Media is in
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: their bubble. Ron DeSantis knows what normal people care about.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: He knows that the Republican primary will ultimately be decided
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: by Bitcoin enthusiasts, who are angry with asset managers for
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: investing in renewable energy. Right? That's what's going to determine
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the next president.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Look, when you go to those New York Times diners
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: all across the country, you know what you hear first? D-E-I.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: E-S-G. D-E-S-G. There's just so many letters coming out of
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: their mouth. They're just chanting letters.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: They're just chanting D-E-I. D-I-E.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: E-S-G.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Bitcoin, Dogecoin.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: Like, David Sachs is a huge crypto guy. He is,
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I'm sure, has a lot of Bitcoin, cares a lot
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: about it. He keeps asking about Bitcoin. And Elon Musk
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: has some sort of trolly relationship. with pumping and dumping Dogecoin.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: And he keeps bringing up Dogecoin awkwardly in that sense.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: And I know very little about crypto, but I don't
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: think do Bitcoin is the right way it's described.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: We're going to.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Let people do Bitcoin.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: They also like, they spend a lot of time bitching
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: about the media. like Elon Musk is like yelling about
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: the Charlie Warzel Atlantic piece that you brought up. Uh,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: then David Sachs starts yelling about Vanity Fair. I was
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: also struck by like DeSantis. He not only has like is,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: is way too online. He also sounded at times like
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: someone who has spent too much time in Washington, like
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: the establishment figure that Trump is trying to frame him as.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Like at one point he went from doing his woke
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: Mad Libs thing to, um, talking about omnibus spending bills
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: and the, the power, something executive power under article two
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: of the, of the constitution and how he would do regulations.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like, this is so fucking boring. I mean,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: it's so boring.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: I think you are discounting the point when he announced
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: his support for the rains act, which came out of
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: committee yesterday.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A bill that came out of committee. What is
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: going on? What are you doing?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: What I think, and we'll talk about this with Tim,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: but his, his, he is a typical politician. And that
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: is the contrast. It's not who has baggage, who doesn't,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: who can speak MAGA better. It's one's a typical politician,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: one is not. And Ron DeSantis sounds exactly like a
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: typical politician. One who speaks MAGA fluently, but a typical politician.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Wasn't a single mention of Donald Trump until about an
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: hour into the conversation when right-wing radio host from Iowa,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Steve Deese, asked about Trump not finishing the wall. the
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: closest DeSantis got to criticizing the guy who's ahead of
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: him by 30 points was, quote, our voters are sick
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: of the empty promises. They want to see action. What
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: do you think? Is that never back down enough for you?
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: I think it is fitting that the candidate who announced
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: his campaign on Twitter thinks his best strategy is subtweeting
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: his way to the nomination.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It's just like, Maybe they're waiting for the first debate,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: for that first exchange between Trump and DeSantis that people
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: are going to see. Although I have to say they
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: might never get that moment at this point. Trump might
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: just skip the debates.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's nothing that people like us want more
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: than DeSantis and Trump to fight each other.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: That is absolutely what we want. You know, Lovett always
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: uses the alien versus predator approach. battle and Ron DeSantis,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: clearly alien in that situation. But there's no point in
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: his announcement, however stupid the format for which it was,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: to directly go after Trump. This is not the moment
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: for that. That moment is coming very, very quickly and
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: it's coming faster. I don't think his argument is a
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: sharp enough implicit contrast to achieve what he wants, but
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: this isn't necessarily the day for explicit contrast.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: I think that's mostly right. Though, if I was Ron
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: DeSantis and I just realized that my campaign announcement fucking
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: exploded because no one could hear me for the first
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes, I might think to myself on the spot,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: maybe I should hit Trump because maybe that will get
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: some coverage. That kind of crowds out the no one
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: could hear my campaign announcement speech because Elon Musk's platform broke.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: His audio only radio show. His conference call that he
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: got on.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, he could have just done a podcast interview.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: He could have done a podcast interview.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: We would have put that shit on YouTube, right? You
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: would have seen the video.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have looked nice. Okay, a quick break,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: and then we are bringing out the big guns to
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: talk more about DeSantis' announcement in the 2024 Republican primary.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Tim Miller will be joining us next. Joining us on
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: the pod today, our Never Trump pal, bulwark extraordinaire, author
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: of Why We Did It, Tim Miller. Welcome back.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: Guys, I love to be called out of the bullpen
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: on a day like today. I'm excited.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: I know you had some takes. I know you had
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: some takes. You're bursting at the scene with some takes.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I am.
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: I've got to pull back.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So I want to just trigger you to start with
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: a tweet from, when I know you've seen this tweet,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: of course, because you're a Twitter addict like me. From
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: National Review editor Rich Lowry about Meatball's announcement. Tech debacle aside,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: DeSantis is knowledgeable, a fluid speaker, and has command of details. Tim,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: is the woke mob just too blinded by Twitter shouting
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: fraud to appreciate the rhetorical power of yesterday's performance?
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: I don't think so, John. People might have meatball derangement syndrome.
• 24:46
  Speaker 5: That's possible. But I got to say, the derangement syndrome
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: might be coming from inside the house at National Review. Now,
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: for listeners who aren't aware, National Review is basically like
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: a DeSantis fanzine. And so what happened yesterday is pretty noteworthy, actually.
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: I was prepared for this question. I didn't know it
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: was coming. It was kind of like, remember the beginning
• 25:03
  Speaker 5: of the Russian invasion of Ukraine when like on state TV,
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: there were a couple of anchors who were like, I
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: don't know how well this is going, you know, before
• 25:11
  Speaker 5: they were silenced, right? This moment happened yesterday at National
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: Review because Rich's own colleague, Jeff Blair- I pulled this out.
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: I figured I was going to bring it out later,
• 25:20
  Speaker 5: but you started with the National Review, so here I am.
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: Here's what Jeff Blair said. This isn't the bulwark. This
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: isn't Never Trump TDS. This is Jeff's take on the announcement.
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: DeSantis would hit powerful points about his Florida record. You
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: know it's the National Review with that throat clearing.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: But.
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: Often only 10 to 20 minutes apart with gormless air
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: in between devoted to discussions of esoteric technical issues of
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: interest to absolutely nobody except cryptocurrency speculators. Twitter users checking
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: in to hear from the newest Republican candidate about his
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: plan for America instead got to hear VC guy David
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: Ballsacks blather.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Ballsacks was me.
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: Blathering 10 times as much as his hosting duties called
• 26:00
  Speaker 5: for and Thomas Massey calling in to rhapsodize about how
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: much he enjoys his Tesla. That was published in the
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: National Review yesterday. So I think that is a pretty
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: clear sign that we are not blinded by our wokeness,
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: never Trump, you know, resistance biases. And I think that
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: it was really just a total disaster show that Rich
• 26:21
  Speaker 5: was trying to, you know, he's just trying to polish
• 26:24
  Speaker 5: the turd as best he could.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Tim, Dan and I were just talking about this. Do
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: you not think that the Republican primary will be decided
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: by Bitcoin enthusiasts and ESG opponents? Is that not the
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: median Republican voter?
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: When Doge, my favorite moment of the announcement was when
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: David Sachs meatballed David, brought up Doge, and then under
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: his breath was like, you know, for any Doge enthusiasts
• 26:50
  Speaker 5: out there.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: It was like, even if.
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: He needed to realize, like maybe a lot of listeners
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: might not catch the reference, you know, about the Doge coin. No,
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: I don't think so. And these guys that run this
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: all-in podcast that for some reason Ron DeSantis handed over
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: his campaign announcement to, like there is a, you know,
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: in the concentric circles, there's some overlap between the concerns
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: of conservative contrarian billionaires who live in Silicon Valley and
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: are annoyed by by their liberal colleagues and the concerns
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: of an average MAGA voter that lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina, who.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Has never heard of what an RSU.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Is, right?
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: Like they have a couple overlapping concerns. Like they both
• 27:31
  Speaker 5: don't like woke capital, you know, like they both don't
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: love the pronoun stuff.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: But, but there's also a whole nother bale of concerns
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: that these like rich white bros have that like regular
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: people have no idea what they're talking about. And they
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: seem to have completely infected Ron DeSantis his entire announcement. And,
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: and I, you know, I think that the campaign required
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: somebody who like didn't go to college and and maybe
• 27:59
  Speaker 5: one time attended a Trump rally as a fan to,
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: to be in their meetings, you know, to just vet
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: like whether this stuff was going to land, because I just,
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: I just met multiple times over the course of the announcement.
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: He was mentioning things that I, that regular people, MAGA folks,
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: we listened to in Borg focus groups, things that they
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: never mentioned. ESG is never volunteered by an actual voter.
• 28:20
  Speaker 5: Like it was like the, the digital currency mandate is,
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: is never something that is brought up voluntarily by a voter.
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: It's weird. It's a niche concern of these losers. And
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: Ron decided that that's what he was going to center
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: his campaign announcement on, which seems like a miss to me.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Dan and I were trying to get inside the minds
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: of the people on the DeSantis campaign who decided that
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: doing this would be a good idea. What's your thinking
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: about what led them to this idea?
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 28:52
  Speaker 5: Well, I think there are two things at play. One
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: is you have to– the DeSantis team is really kind
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: of new and I think not aligned, right? He had
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: a very small Tallahassee group, people that had never done
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: a national campaign. There are some people that he had
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: flown in, a lot of whom people I know that
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: are like not big Trump people or not MAGA people
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: or old establishment Republican consultants that he's brought in. And
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: so I think there's a lack of trust there, right?
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: So I think that they're just– for starters, like this
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: campaign– doesn't have a clear North Star with a candidate
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: and staff that are all working towards it. So that's
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: one problem that I think is pretty obvious at this point.
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: The thing, I was also trying to put myself in
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: their shoes. As a pundit, you want to not overreact,
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: You've got to think to yourself. I'm like, I'm the
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: comms person for Ron DeSantis.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Shiver.
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: I'm in the room. Someone proposes the Elon Musk thing. Initially,
• 29:47
  Speaker 5: I'm like, this is stupid. But then how do I
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: talk myself into it? And I think the answer is
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: you get this lift. If the other idea is, oh,
• 29:55
  Speaker 5: we're going to have a weekday announcement in Tallahassee. The
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: turnout is not going to be anything like a Trump rally.
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: It's not going to look like Springfield when you guys
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: did your announcement 20 years ago, however long that was now.
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: It's going to look, you know, it'll be a nice crowd.
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: And Jeb's announcement was really nice. It was the best
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: day of our campaign. So having a good announcement doesn't
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: mean it's going to be a good campaign. And the
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: inverse is true.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: That's worth marking.
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: But, you know, we had 4,000 people in a small
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: basketball gym. It was full.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: It was nice.
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: The news cycle lasted six hours, you know, Donald Trump
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: announced the next day and it was over.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: So, so I think that they were, they were considering, well,
• 30:33
  Speaker 5: we could just do this sort of average Florida thing,
• 30:36
  Speaker 5: not make a lot of buzz or Elon Musk is
• 30:39
  Speaker 5: like one of the most famous people in the world.
• 30:40
  Speaker 5: We can kind of get some residual glow and, and
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: boost off of this and make it seem bigger. And
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: I think that was their, I assume that was their
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: thinking and, And that just utterly backfired in every possible
• 30:54
  Speaker 5: way because the opposite happened, right? He looked smaller. It
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: felt like the Elon show, not the Ron DeSantis show, right?
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: And he didn't get any boost in coverage, I guess,
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: unless you count people making fun of him, right? Like
• 31:05
  Speaker 5: the numbers didn't look– it was smaller than it would
• 31:09
  Speaker 5: have been had he just announced on Laura Ingraham's show.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Dan, could you imagine a scenario that was like something
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: in between what they went with And the traditional stodgy
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: announcement speech that's typical, like what would have shown that
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: he was like a younger, new generational candidate reaching new
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: people in new places?
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: Don't overcomplicate the simple. The campaign announcement is supposed to
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: be the best day of your campaign. It's the easiest day.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: The press, it's the day you'll get the most press coverage.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: It is the day the press will cover your message.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: They will give you the headline you want. Even if
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: you're a loser candidate, the press will treat you somewhat seriously.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, just listen to the conversation you, Tommy, and
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Lovett had on Tuesday about Tim Scott. I was like–
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: you treated him as if he was like a frontrunner
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: for the race. He was like such a serious individual.
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: It was a little– That was, that was love it.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: That was very establishment media.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: High on Tim Scott.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Mike Murphy or just.
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: Uh, he had just done the jet bushing in for
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: that and was intrigued. Bullish takes about Tim Scott. I
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: don't know if there's like a triple bank shot. I'm
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: sorry to interrupt you.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Uh, so just do the simple, get the 30 seconds
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: on the local news. If you, with your message, get
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: the headlines you want. And, No one's going to remember
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: that he fucked this up. I don't think it's going
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: to call some votes. But there's an opportunity cost to
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: screw up your announcement because that's the day you should
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: have your best coverage, the day you should be your
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: best fundraising day for probably almost a year. It should
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: be the day that you're on the phone with all
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: the folks in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina trying
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: to get them to endorse you. And when you fuck
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: it up, it has an opportunity cost. And that part matters.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: And so there's no logic to this. Do the normal
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: announcement and then do the quote-unquote, and I know this
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: word triggers Favreau, the buzzy thing with Elon Musk the
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: next day. Do your announcement, get your on-message coverage, and
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: then later on do the thing that will get you
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: additional attention, the Fox primetime interview, the morning show interview,
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: the Elon Musk Twitter space or whatever.
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: Just one small follow-up on that that proves this point
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: is in addition to the announcement, not a lot of
• 33:10
  Speaker 5: people are going to tune in to the actual announcement speeches.
• 33:14
  Speaker 5: You'll get super fans. But what else do you get
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: out of your announcement? What does every candidate get? The images.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: You have the visuals. You take the three best delivered lines.
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: You package them. You can put them in an ad.
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: People see them on their Instagrams, where they are engaging
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: with stuff. DeSantis didn't have that. It was just his voice.
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: And this man has a voice for newsprint. That's not
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: his strength. And so it's just his voice. And so
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: they put out– did you see the– I know John did. Dan,
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: did you see the video they put out? Like with, uh,
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: from the, it was a, yes.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Clipped with the Elon Musk picture.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:51
  Speaker 5: They, they took what they thought were DeSantis's best lines
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: from the Twitter space and, and compiled it into like
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: a clip art show of, of Ron and Elon, like looking,
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: doing weird.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a parody account. I couldn't believe,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, why do they have, it was like
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: old pictures of Elon Musk that would just pop up
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: in the video when he was bald. Yeah. What was
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: going on there?
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: They photoshopped F-16s into the photo. Of Rhonda Sanders overlooking
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: the governor's mansion, which ever the reporters knew because they
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: used that exact image in an ad before without the F-16s.
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: And they could have just had the announcement with the
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: sign behind him. Florida's where woke goes to die or
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: whatever their message is, you know, and had a nicely
• 34:31
  Speaker 5: packaged thing. But they they couldn't do that because they
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: didn't have any video. It was an audio only video.
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: It's just, it was, again, you can overstate how important
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: an announcement is. There have been people with, I don't
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: remember what Joe Biden's announcement was. He became president. So,
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: you know, I'm sure it wasn't a 10 out of 10,
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: whatever it was. But it's noteworthy that it was this bad,
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: especially when purportedly the DeSantis contrast with Trump is like,
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: he's normal. He's competent. You know, he can get the
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: MAGA stuff done.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Trump without the baggage, except now he's got some, he
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: started with some baggage. Announcement aside, Tim, you've heard longer
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: versions of DeSantis' stump speech many times before. Is there
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: a compelling message in there for Republican voters once you
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: get past the Bitcoin, ESG bullshit that Sacks and Elon
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: foisted upon him?
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah. Great job, by the way, David Sacks. Just wanted
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: to shout you out one more time. Really, you're crushing it.
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: You should become a full-time political strategist. These guys....
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: He's a donor. He's a new brand of political figure,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I heard. He's the donor influencer.
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: The donor influencer. This is why I left the Bay Area.
• 35:43
  Speaker 5: It's guys like this. We need like a Nepo baby
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: term for people who are the fifth employee at a
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: company that did well and so they made a billion dollars.
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: I don't begrudge Elon and Peter T. At least these
• 35:56
  Speaker 5: guys had ideas. David Sachs was just like, you know,
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: their butt boy, and he got a billion dollars out
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: of it. Now, okay, anyway, I'm sorry, that's the end
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: of my David Sachs rant. Back to DeSantis. I did,
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: I went to see him at the villages, actually. So
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: I saw it in 3D in the Republican, you know,
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: in the core Republican, you know, where the base voters,
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: you know, are these older, kind of mix between rich
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: folks that moved down to Florida that are sunbirds and
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: Floridians who moved to the villages. And, um, And his
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: speech was really long. It was like 80 minutes. But
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: there were 20 really good minutes. And this is the thing.
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: When I said earlier about how they seem confused, like
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: they don't have a North Star, they aren't aligned. DeSantis'
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: line about having the same enemies as the Republican base voters, right? Like,
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: the media hates me. Fauci hates me. I fought them
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: and won. We were in a state that used to
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: be a swing state, and we won by 20 points.
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: And that's why these guys lie and complain about me
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: all the time. There's some material there that I think
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: really does resonate with the base. And there's a reason
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: why DeSantis and Trump were tied around Christmas and these polls.
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: There were people who were like, I like Trump, but
• 37:07
  Speaker 5: this guy won. He showed that you can do it.
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: And he didn't shut down schools like these woke libs did.
• 37:15
  Speaker 5: There are a few areas in the macro where DeSantis,
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: I think, can really resonate with these base voters. The
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: problem is when he gets down into the micro, it
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: has been off. and also his personality has been off,
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: and he seemed to be a bit of a beta, right?
• 37:32
  Speaker 5: And so it's like, if I was on his campaign team,
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: I'd be thinking, how can we put him in a
• 37:36
  Speaker 5: position to just maximize this sense that he's a winner,
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: he took on the big fights, and kind of avoid
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: all of this other, you know, all the other stuff
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: that have weakened his candidacy. And they have done the opposite.
• 37:49
  Speaker 5: They've like leaned into all of his, you know, weird picadillos.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Dan, how do you think his message, DeSantis' message at
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: its let's say at its best, compares to Trump and
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: what Trump's trying to do?
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: So there's two elements of this. The first is on
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: the culture war stuff, their messages are sort of the same.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: DeSantis is actually, I think, a little smoother in it.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: I agree with Tim in that sort of 20-minute core
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: of the message when you put aside all the other
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: sort of Fox News marginalia around woke capitalism. He has
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: a culture war message that is He is the person
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: who has done the best job of that other than
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: Trump in the party since 2016. DeSantis has two problems.
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: The first is Trump marries culture war stuff with economic populism.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: And DeSantis marries culture war with either no economic message
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: or Paul Ryan economic messaging, which is an anathema to everyone,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: but particularly the Republican base. And the message is only
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: as good as the messenger delivering it. And DeSantis, as
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: of right now, is a shitty messenger. He's got a
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: weird personality. He has no charisma. He has no ability
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: to deliver it dynamically. He is not good at actually
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: getting his message heard in the way that Trump is.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: And Trump is out there just kicking his ass because
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Trump is a weirdly compelling, bizarrely charismatic messenger, particularly among
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: the Republican base. And Trump has one more advantage that
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: DeSantis does not have, is that Trump has an absolute
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: thirst for the jugular. And when he finds a candidate's weakness,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: and Tim knows this unfortunately all too well, he hammers
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: it and hammers it and hammers it. And he's been
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: doing it to DeSantis for months now. And DeSantis has
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: not shown enough inclination to fight back. So regardless of
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: what his mess is, it's not getting heard because Donald
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Trump is dominating the space.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: You know, as much as we, you know, we talked
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: a lot about the CNN town hall, but think about
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: like Trump's performance at the CNN town hall. and him
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: just sort of like steamrolling Caitlin Collins, you know, whenever
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: he wanted and sort of owning that and doing what
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: he wanted to do versus DeSantis, like struggling to get
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: a word in edgewise with Elon Musk and David Sachs.
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: That's just, that sort of tells you everything right there.
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. The Trump people put himself
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: in this position in that CNN town hall to be
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: the alpha, right? And Caitlin, I think, did the best
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: she could and was fact-checking him, right? But if you're
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: watching this, You're like, oh, man, look at this. Trump
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: went into the lion's den. People are cheering for him.
• 40:16
  Speaker 5: And the other thing is Trump is so weird. You've
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: spent seven years on this podcast talking about how dangerous
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: and awful he is. So you can sometimes ignore that
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: when you're getting down into analyzing the campaigns. The Trump
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: attacks feel like Trump attacks. like they might be lies,
• 40:36
  Speaker 5: you know, they might be exaggerations, but you kind of like,
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: this is what this guy really, really believes.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: And did you see his insane attacks on DeSantis on
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: truth yesterday? Like they put up this video that no
• 40:46
  Speaker 5: real campaign would ever put up. It's like a, a
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: fake Twitter space and Hitler's in there and the devil's
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: in there. And George Soros is in there and DeSantis
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: is in there and Trump comes in and he's like,
• 40:57
  Speaker 5: you guys are all terrible.
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: And like, Trump is great. Trump should win.
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: I mean, This thing, if any staffer had ever pitched
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: it in any other campaign, Republican or Democrat, they would
• 41:07
  Speaker 5: be like, never walk into the office again, whoever pitched
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: this thing.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: What about his first truth? His first truth was, Rob,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: my red button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: in parentheses, truth. Yours does not, and then in parentheses,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: per my conversation with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, soon
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to become my friend. I mean, that is like, I
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: saw that and I laughed and I'm like, that is
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: fucking deranged. I didn't know what it meant. And then
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: I was like, one, how is this guy the front
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: runner again? How, how is this the guy, the front
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: runner again? And two, like, I wanted to ask you
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: guys this. Do you guys feel at all guilty about
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: how much you're enjoying this? To the Trump DeSantis content?
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: I'm covering my laugh up while you read the tweet
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: right now.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: I don't want to laugh.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: Some of my friends did this to me in 2016.
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: They laughed at Trump's hits on Jeb. And I was like,
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: it's not funny. I was like, he's an asshole. I
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: keep trying to put myself in that mental space. He's dangerous.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: He's an asshole. Don't laugh at him. That said.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: It's, like, real.
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: And it is. He's funny in his weird way. Sometimes
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: you're laughing at him, and sometimes he does a good neg.
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: You know, I remember one time I did laugh just
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: unwillingly during a debate when he, like, made fun of
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: Rand Paul's size in the middle of a debate, and
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: I was, like, in the war room, and I just
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: couldn't help myself, and I laughed. I was like, oh,
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: don't do that to him. Bad to him. Don't laugh.
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: But it's real. Then you have the DeSantis. Like, the
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: flip side of that is it's just, like, it's so, like, these,
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: it's poorly packaged stuff. The vibe is, oh, this is
• 42:38
  Speaker 5: a traditional campaign done poorly, is what DeSantis is putting out.
• 42:41
  Speaker 5: And what Trump is putting out is like, this is
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: weird and crazy, but it's real. It's Trump, right? And
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: that is what the Republican voters like about Trump. He
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: doesn't seem like that he's running a real campaign. And
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: so every time DeSantis puts out one of these limp
• 42:55
  Speaker 5: pushback attacks, it only helps Trump more. It ricochets back.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: It's like, oh, yeah, this guy is just another Jeb.
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: You know, this guy's just another Marco, right? It's the
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: same old, same old. I don't want the guy doing
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: the weird, you know, going for the jugular, as Dan said,
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: with the weird devil George Soros video memes.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Dan, do you think it's any bit of a political
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: problem for Trump that he may get charged with a
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: few more crimes between now and Iowa? Wall Street Journal
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: reported this week that Jack Smith is wrapping up his
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: investigation into the classified documents. There's January 6th. There's Georgia.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels' hush money trial was just, the date was
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: set for March 24th, which is right in the middle
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: of the Republican primary. You think it's possible for Trump's
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: opponents to persuade voters that maybe multiple criminal charges make
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: the guy less than an ideal candidate to send on
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: to the general?
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: It's actually likely not to be in the middle of
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: the primary, but the very first week of the general election.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: Because the Florida primary is March 19th. If this is
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: a– Oh, wow. If this– Contra to Tuesday's pod about
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: the strength of Tim Scott, if this comes down to
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Trump DeSantis, if Trump beats DeSantis in Florida, it's over.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: And his next move is going to be to show
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: up in New York for a criminal trial where one
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: of the outcomes is he goes to prison.
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you were trying to, like, what is
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: the possible case for DeSantis to bounce back from this?
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: It is simply to be the other person standing when
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: Trump collapses under the combination of his own crimes, his
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: own looming electability problems because of those crimes, and possibly
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: a billion dollars in ads spent against him by anti-Trump
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: forces on both sides of the aisle. Now, that's the
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: same strategy that everyone put in place in 2016 that
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: resulted in Trump ending up in the White House. But
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Trump is now lost, right? And there is a different world.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: So maybe that's what happens. And it's going to be
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: incredibly weird that there are going to be all these
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: pre-trial motions happening, dominating the news as Trump is trying
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: to lock up the nomination in a battle for all
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: the marbles with Ron DeSantis in Florida on March 19th.
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: Isn't it over if Trump beats DeSantis in Iowa?
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: No, the Iowa is a terrible predictor of the GOP nominee.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I guess my thought on this is like–
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Where is the comeback? Well, yeah. Where does– yeah. Where
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: is– I could– if DeSantis wins Iowa, it's clearly not over, right?
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Like I think then Trump has plenty of time.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: To come back.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: He could also lock this up in South Carolina. He
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: could lock it up in South Carolina.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: I mean he absolutely could lock it up in South Carolina.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: So the order here is you have those three.
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: Unless Tim Scott emerges.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:48
  Speaker 5: Then they'll have another chance.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: Dan doing Aaron Gordon tomahawk dunk on a Tuesday pod
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: is my favorite piece of content.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: In a while. Tim, I want your take on the
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Tim Scott announcement. First do Tim Scott's announcement, and then
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: do you think that any of these other candidates can
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: emerge as a legitimate challenger to Trump if DeSantis keeps
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: doing Twitter spaces with David Balzac?
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: I think that Tim Scott's announcement was like would have
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: been really a nice serviceable B plus announcement in 1999.
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: You know, I think that he would have, I said
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: 2012 really on track to be George W's VP after
• 46:30
  Speaker 5: that announcement. You know, I think that he would have
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: been one of the leading contenders. It's just, it's nice.
• 46:36
  Speaker 5: I mean, some of the themes appeal to me, obviously,
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: but now they, they feel on inauthentic, right? It's like
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: when you're talking about personal responsibility, it's like, well, I mean,
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: don't you ever– doesn't Donald Trump have to– don't I
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: have to have responsibility for Trump? Don't you have to
• 46:51
  Speaker 5: be responsible for your enabling of him? The Capitol was
• 46:54
  Speaker 5: stormed and you did nothing. You said it wasn't Trump's fault.
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: So these traditional conservative themes start to ring a little
• 47:00
  Speaker 5: bit hollow in the context of the Donald Trump presidency.
• 47:02
  Speaker 5: But on paper, I liked it. It's obvious he's running
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: for VP. And I, and how do you get inside
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: Donald Trump's deranged mind and to think about like, what
• 47:10
  Speaker 5: kind of VP he might want in March, right? Like
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: at some, some days he's probably like, I want Carrie Lake.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: I want a loyalist, you know?
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: And then other days you might have someone in his
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: ear that's like, no, you need a black person might
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: help you do better than you did last time in
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: the suburbs. And so maybe Tim Scott is in the mix,
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: why Tim Scott would want to be Donald Trump's VP
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: and why proud to save America would praise him for
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: skilled effort to do that. Those are two open questions
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: for another day. Um, To me, look, Sarah Longwell wrote
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: for The Bulwark a really good thing about how everything,
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: like Trump's going down the escalator is like 00 BC
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: AD in the Republican Party, right? And anything that feels
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: like it's from the Old Testament is not going to happen, right?
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: And so if someone else could emerge that could beat
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: Ron DeSantis, it would have to be somebody that feels
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: like they're from the MAGA era. And that's nobody else
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: in the field except for, I guess, this Vivek man,
• 48:02
  Speaker 5: which doesn't seem legit, right? So- Couldn't it Tucker? You
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: know what I mean? Now we're getting into fantasy politics.
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: Could someone else come off the sidelines who's more from
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: the last eight years, doesn't have the stench of the
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: pre-Trump party on them? Could somebody like that emerge? Maybe,
• 48:17
  Speaker 5: but the clock is ticking on that. And I do
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: think that I agree with Dan that in theory, this
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: thing could just fall into DeSantis' lap against all odds
• 48:26
  Speaker 5: if the Trump thing totally implodes. But it's just the
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: longer we go, the less and less likely that seems.
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: It's not as if he hasn't already been indicted once.
• 48:34
  Speaker 5: One other just really quick thing, if you don't mind
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: me taking over the show.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: I'm mentally prepared for what's coming next. And I'm okay
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: with that.
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: I don't think you are. Did you see what... DeSantis
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: did make some news today. So he didn't make any
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: news on the first day of his campaign. But did
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: you see what he said on the Clay Travis podcast recently?
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: I missed that. Missed that.
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it just happened. He said that he's open to
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: pardoning January 6th participants who were politically targeted all the
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: way up to President Trump.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: So....
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: So now we have day two of the campaign, I think,
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: is the clear newsmaker, is that DeSantis would be open
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: to pardoning Donald Trump for the insurrection.
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: What a beta.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: He's such a beta. Yeah, he did it in more
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: of an alpha way that was like, when I'm pressing enter.
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: I might consider pardoning Donald Trump if he asks me
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: for it. OK, then maybe now you're sort of good.
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: But that doesn't seem to be the path that he
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: decided to take. So, you know, again, how do you
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: contrast yourself if it's like, hey, Trump has all these
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: all this legal baggage? And so we should go to me,
• 49:40
  Speaker 5: who's going to carry vicariously all of Trump's legal baggage
• 49:42
  Speaker 5: with me into the general election, but not have the
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: charisma that he does. He's putting himself in a pretty
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: small box as far as where his line is.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you always want your campaign to start by genuflecting
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: to Elon Musk, David Sachs, and then ultimately Donald Trump,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the person you are trying to beat for the nomination
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: for president. Dan, I noticed that even terminally offline... Joe
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Biden weighed in last night with a few DeSantis dunks.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: He tweeted a fundraising pitch that just said, this link works.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Then he tweeted, no matter what happens, you can hear
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis' agenda loud and clear, included a video of
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: DeSantis bragging about his most unpopular positions and laughing like
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: a fucking weirdo. You like the idea of Joe Biden
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: becoming a bit of a Twitter troll for this reelect?
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know that Twitter trolls the persona that I
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: would suggest, but I do think his digital team has
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: been very nimble and aggressive. And that's what you want, right?
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: That is particularly in this period here where Republicans are
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: going to be offering him all kinds of points of
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: data points about his argument about Republican extremism. So have
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: fun with it, make it compelling, do it quickly and
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: use it to raise money and recruit volunteers. And so
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: that's great. I was impressed with what they did yesterday.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: What about you, Tim?
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, going back to the DeSantis contrast, right? It's a
• 51:02
  Speaker 5: typical political campaign.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Response, right?
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: But it's well executed. It's like, here are my opponent's weaknesses.
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: I'm going to make fun of them a little bit.
• 51:10
  Speaker 5: I'm going to try to raise money off of this.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: Nobody thinks it's really Joe Biden behind the pressing click
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: on the tweet, right? It's like, here's our campaign's message
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: to this, and we're going to use Joe Biden's platforms
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: to do that. That's like the best DeSantis could do, right?
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: You would want DeSantis to have that type of rollout, right?
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: Like not... he's never going to be Donald Trump. He's
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: not going to do a weird, I'm coming down the
• 51:31
  Speaker 5: escalator and saying strange things. It's like, okay, this is
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: a competent person that can execute an announcement well, deliver
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: a contrast against his opponent, deliver a clear message. And
• 51:42
  Speaker 5: he totally failed to do that. And Biden did it
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: just perfectly adequately yesterday. And I think that that's how
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: they should continue to position him for the next year
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: and a half.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I hadn't thought about the advantage of Biden being
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: able to sort of use all the Republican primary candidates
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: attacks on each other, like to benefit himself in this,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: partly because like last time this happened in 2016, Hillary
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: really couldn't do that because she was embroiled in the
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders fight. So you didn't have like one Democratic
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: incumbent or Democratic candidate who was able to just sort
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: of like take advantage of all the fighting on the
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Republican side. And now Biden can do that. And it
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: was good to see him taking that opportunity.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: You look a lot like a guy who was on
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: the 2012 campaign with me.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: When we did, I mean, I'm, well, that was before 2016. Again,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: this is, this is, this is, this is BC. This
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: is when politics was normal.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: I was sure it was this Jon Favreau who was
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: the one on the campaign, not the other one.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: So talking about Romnesia, um, You guys were really rude
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: to me. It's just in retrospect.
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: In retrospect.
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: We're cutting it here.
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: We're cutting this part of the podcast. Our only politician
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: with dignity left on the Republican side. You guys had
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: to smear.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: We all know that the Big Bird attack and the
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: binders full of women, that's what swung that election at
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the end of the day. Those were the attacks. Tim,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: thank you for joining. This was fun as always. And
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: when we come back, Dan and I will finally get
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: to the fun stuff, debt ceiling negotiations. All right. We
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: all had a few laughs at Rob DeSantis' expense. But
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: now it's time to turn those smiles upside down and
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: talk about the debt ceiling negotiations. With just seven days
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: to go until Treasury thinks the U.S. will default on
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: its debt, Democrats are sounding anxious and Republicans are sounding cocky.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: So cocky that they're openly admitting to holding the economy hostage.
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: Here's Kevin McCarthy and then Matt Gaetz.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: You've been asking for the White House to make 100 concessions.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: Are there any concessions that you're willing to make? And
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: what are those concessions?
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: We're going to raise the deficit. That's your concession?
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: How would you characterize the mood among your conservative colleagues
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: right now?
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: I think my conservative colleagues, for the most part, support
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: limit-safe growth, and they don't feel like we should negotiate
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: with our hostage.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: So there you go. Kevin McCarthy says the concession that
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: Republicans are giving in their negotiations is raising the debt ceiling,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: which is also known as preventing a catastrophic default. That's
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: their concession. And Matt Gaetz is saying, we don't want
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: to negotiate with the hostage. Those comments certainly didn't seem
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: like accidental gaffes. Why do you think Republicans are so
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: confident right now and just openly bragging about this shit?
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: Can I just yell about this for one second?
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Yes, you can. That's why you're here on this podcast,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: Watch It American.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy, put aside Matt Gaetz. He's a fucking clown.
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, admits in front
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: of the entire Capitol Hill press corps that he is
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: engaging in extortion by threatening the default of the United
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: States and a potential global financial collapse. And almost no
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: one covers it. We just go, well, let's get back
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: to our discussion of the very serious negotiations. It's not
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: a negotiation. When a bank robber puts a gun in
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: the face of a bank teller and asks for them
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: to empty the safe, that is not a negotiation about
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: how much money they give. It is armed robbery and
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: it's fucking insane. And I do think the press has
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: done an absolutely miserable fucking job covering this. They have
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: normalized a deeply dangerous behavior. Because the question for Kevin
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: McCarthy is not what is your concession or what deal
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: are you going to get? It's what happens if there
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: is no deal on the X date? Are you going
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: to let the country default or are you going to
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: pass a short-term extension? That's only he can do that.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden can't do that. Only Kevin McCarthy can decide
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: whether we default or not. And the press is putting
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: all of the pressure and responsibility on Joe Biden. And
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: that is a huge failure on behalf of the vast
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: majority of the reporters covering this. Okay. Rant over.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: Sorry.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: But do you, yeah, no, I, of course, of course.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: I wonder though, if Biden getting into negotiations is what
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: has allowed them the press to to cover it as
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: your typical negotiation with just this threat of default looming.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: That is definitely true, but that is a poor fucking
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: excuse on the press's behalf. Your job is to report
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: what's happening. You can say Joe Biden is engaging in negotiations,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: but at the end of the day, the dynamic driving
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: the negotiations is the Republicans threatening default. This is not
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: the negotiations over the shape of the budget. It's not
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: a budget negotiation if, it is a budget negotiation if
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: everyone has truly agreed they're not going to let the
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: country default. But Kevin McCarthy's statement is implying that they
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: are going to let the country default if they don't
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: get the deal they want. And that should change it.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: And did the Bidens, that first meeting between Biden and
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: McCarthy and the negotiators and all of that, give them
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: permission to do that?
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: But that does not excuse your jobs to portray what
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: is happening accurately, not portray what you wish was happening.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like they're confident and cocky because
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: they're willing to shoot the hostage and that they are
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: betting that they won't get blamed for it. And the
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: reason they're betting they won't get blamed for it is
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: because most Americans aren't paying attention to this. And if
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: they do pay attention, it's probably because we defaulted. And
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: then the Americans who aren't paying close attention will just
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: know that Joe Biden's president when we defaulted. And so
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: it seems like that's the bet they're making. And if
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: even the Americans who are paying attention to it, you
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: look at some of this polling, they think that, yeah,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: it's reasonable to ask for spending cuts, right? They think
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: that's a reasonable thing because people are predisposed to believe
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: that the government spends too much money. And then, of course,
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: when you ask them whether they favor cutting specific programs,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: then they take the Democrat side and say, no, I
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: don't want to cut that program, that program or that program.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: We've talked about this before, but it certainly seems like
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: that's why Republicans have the upper hand or appear to
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: have the upper hand in these negotiations because they're willing
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: to shoot the hostage and Joe Biden isn't.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And the question of who the public blames
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: in the immediate aftermath of a default is a largely
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: irrelevant question. It does not matter. It certainly doesn't matter
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: to the millions of people who lose their jobs and
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: the people who can't afford things because interest rates skyrocket
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: because of it, or the people whose 401ks and retirement
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: plans are nuked. It doesn't matter to them. But even
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: if you just want to focus on the politics of it,
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Let's say we default Joe Biden and every Democrat uses
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: every available outlet to hammer the Republicans. You convince them
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: that it's the Republicans' fault. When people actually vote again
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: in November of 2024, who do you think they're going
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: to blame? The largely anonymous groups of fucking weirdos who
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: made this happen in the summer of 2023 or the
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: guy sitting in the White House while unemployment has doubled?
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: And we're in a recession and the stock market's at
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: half of what it is, whatever. They're going to blame
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden. And Republicans know that.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: And Donald Trump's out there saying, elect me and I'll
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: fix it all because the economy was great when I
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: was president until COVID. happened.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: And Ron DeSantis is saying how he's going to use
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: Dogecoin to bring the economy back.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: But no one heard it because it just, it was
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: only five seconds and then that was it. And then
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: it crackled. Yeah. So there's obviously Democrats are voicing frustration
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: on the record, off the record, on background. about how
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: the White House is handling these negotiations. They think they're
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: losing the message war. They're worried they'll have to vote
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: for a shitty deal. Let's start with just the message.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Republicans have been talking to a lot to reporters about
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: the negotiations. They've been available to any reporter who asked
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: them a question about these negotiations. The White House has
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: not said much at all about the negotiations. Why do
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: you think that is? And should the White House and
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Biden be out there more. I mean, at this point,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: we're a couple of days away.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the ship has sailed on that. And
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: the White House clearly made a decision that the most
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: important thing here was to avoid default on the best
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: possible terms. And understand those possible terms were not going
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: to be good. And so they were going to take
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: any amount of shit in the short and the medium
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: term to avoid the fate I just talked about for
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: the country and for their politics. And this is going
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: to be rough for them. If we default, it's obviously...
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: disaster for everyone involved. And if they get a deal,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: it's going to be a deal that most Democrats are
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: not happy about. Some of them are going to be
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: forced to vote for it who don't want to vote
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: for it. It is going to– the Republican– and Biden
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: is going to be limited in what he can say
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: about it because if he says it's a victory for himself,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: that he's going to need to deliver more Democratic votes
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: because more Republicans will peel off. It is– this is
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: a shitty situation. They made a decision and I can't
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: say whether that's the right decision or the wrong decision.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: We won't know until we see a deal that the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: best way to get the best possible deal was to
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: stay quiet and try to avoid poisoning the well. Right.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: Because again, Biden doesn't want the hostage to get shot.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: And he's worried that if he goes out there and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: says something that pisses off Republicans, they'll shoot the hostage.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, we dealt with this in the Obama White
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: House many times, which is, this is the price you
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: pay for being the responsible leader who doesn't want to
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: see people hurt and the economy tanked. And it is
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: not necessarily a fair fight when you're up against hostage
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: takers who don't give a shit.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: And there's an asymmetry here because Republicans aren't worried about
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: poisoning the negotiations because they do not care about the
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: outcome on people. And Biden does. He is responsible. So
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: he has to take on political baggage to try to
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: avoid an absolutely disastrous fate, not just for the United States,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: but for the entire world.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: Did you see, I think Punchbowl had this this morning,
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: that there's an emerging trend potential deal where debt ceiling
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: gets lifted through 2024. And basically, they all pledged to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: figure out all the spending bills and the budget by
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: the end of the year. And if they don't pass
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: all the spending bills and pass a budget, then there'll
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: be like an automatic, automatic budget caps, which means like
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: a cut a big spending cut and like a CR
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: continuing resolution that would just basically fund the government and
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: for another year with just one big cut on a
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: whole bunch of programs.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: So as I understood that reporting, it was the following,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: is that they're going to agree on budget caps as
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: part of this negotiation. And those caps at that exact
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: top line number will go in place one of two ways.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Either the appropriations process works and then this Congress with
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: the influence of the White House gets to decide how
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: the money under that cap is spent. Do you put
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: a little more education? a little more into this, under
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: each of the however many appropriation bills there are, 13
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: or 14 or something like that. And if that fails,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: then the CR will go into place automatically, and they
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: won't have to vote on it. I'm not sure how
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: that fits with House and Senate procedure. But that's what
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: would happen anyway. When you don't have appropriations bills, you
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: have two choices. shut the government down, or pass a CR.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: So this is basically, I think, just taking one step
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: out of it. And what matters here is what those
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: caps are, not the fact. There are going to be
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: caps under all scenarios. Any sort of budget agreement would
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: have caps. And so I think this is, the Republicans
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: want to keep putting out information that suggests a deal
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: is imminent, because what they want is for the markets
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: to not react yet. Because if the markets start reacting,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: then pressure will be put on them by their donors,
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: by the Chamber of Commerce, and others. move more quickly
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: and it erodes some of their leverage. The White House
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: would also like that because what really hurts the economy
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: is not just default, it's all the turbulence in the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: run-up to potential default. And even when you avert default,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: you still pay a price. In 2011, we set the
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: economy back a while because we came so close to default.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: And so it's also in the White House interest to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: make it seem like a deal is right around the
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: corner because it keeps the economy moving apace as opposed
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: to getting hit.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: And, you know, one of the ratings agencies just put U.S.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: credit rating on watch, on negative watch, meaning like we
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: could downgrade you. Careful. So I think that and the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: fact that even if a deal is reached today, Thursday,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: probably one is going to be reached in the middle
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: of this podcast because that's always what happens.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Not while we're recording because that would be too easy.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: It will be.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: Right. Ten minutes after. Yeah. But even if they reach
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: a deal today, it probably couldn't become law at the
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: earliest until June 3rd or 4th. And, you know, they
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: think the X date is June 1, but like whatever,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: we could have a couple days here and there. So
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: it does feel like there is a lot of external
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: pressure on both sides to just get something done like
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: today or tomorrow. And I do wonder if in that
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: scenario where you're agreeing on caps, the actual details of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: what gets cut, do get punted. And then I feel
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: like both Republicans and Democrats and the white house at
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: that point are like, we're going to figure it out later.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Let's just, you know, and, and, and the bet there
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: is that it's not going to have a huge political
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: impact either way.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: But we will, you will know that which, um, areas, right.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: Which agencies are going to take a hit because you'll
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: know the Delta between 2023 and 2024. Or 2022, 23
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: plus 23, 24 because of how the fiscal year lays out.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: The Republicans want to get this done by Friday because
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: they have a 72-hour rule as part of their House procedures.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: And they would really like that 72 hours to be Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: Memorial Day weekend or Saturday, Sunday, Monday. As opposed to
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: everyone running around the Capitol ginning each other up about it.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: And if they have a deal, two things will happen.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: One– There are ways to figure out how to extend
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: things for 24 hours or whatever to get there. That
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: happened a little bit in 2011. And Jake Sherman responded
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: to a somewhat trolly tweet of mine with great earnestness
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: to say that his understanding from the Republican House is
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: that if a deal is being drafted or they're very,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: very close, the Republican House would agree to a short-term
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: extension just to get to pass the X date and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: not have any speed bumps.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: Well, everyone's working really hard on Capitol Hill. They're really
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: focused on getting a deal. Before we go, there is
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: just one other thing that the Republicans have been focused on.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: On Tuesday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy's partially used chapstick was auctioned
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: off as part of a Republican fundraising event. The winning
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: bid was from none other than Marjorie Taylor Greene, who
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: paid $ 100, 000 from her campaign account to get a taste
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: of Kevin's cherry chapstick. So she's donating $ 100, 000 to the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: NRCC that elects House Republicans. I don't know where the
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: chapstick came in. She got interviewed about this. Here's a clip.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: Can I ask you about the chapstick?
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: What about it?
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: I guess, is it worth $ 100, 000?
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 5: I donated to have Kevin McCarthy come to my district
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 5: to see my constituents.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: Dan, Can you figure out why the fuck any of
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: this happened? I get the donating from your campaign account
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: to the NRCC. I get that, right? They ask people,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: politicians who've raised a lot of money for themselves that
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: might not need it all, please donate it to other
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: Republican candidates, whatever. Where's the chapstick come in? Why the chapstick?
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Use chapstick?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Look, I think Republicans looked at the landscape and thought
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: voters thought they weren't weird and disgusting enough. And so
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: they decided to lean into it. I mean, it just.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Shows– Days from default. Days from default. We're auctioning off ChapStick?
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: It shows just how weird it is that Marjorie Taylor Greene,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: of all people, was defensive about it. To be like,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't pay for ChapStick. I paid to bring Kevin
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: McCarthy to my district to meet with my constituents because
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: I'm a serious person who didn't just buy ChapStick that
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: may be one degree removed from Trump's ass.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: Like, it's like– And now he's going to show up
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: in her district with cracked lips? I don't know. It's just,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: it's really weird. These people are really weird, Dan.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a weird thing. Remember the last time we
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: had a debt ceiling?
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: Destructive, dangerous, and weird.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Remember two debt ceiling crises ago, the way Kevin McCarthy
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: rallied the troops was to show them the scene in
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: the town where Ben Affleck gets Jeremy Renner?
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: The good old days.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, real Joe Mazzola move there. Do you understand that reference?
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: All right, Dan.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: I think that's all for today. We are out.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: We've done it all today.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: We did it. Thank you to Tim Miller for joining us.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: Everyone have a great weekend. There will be no pod
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: on Tuesday because Monday is Memorial Day, but we will
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: be dropping in the PSA feed a best of episode
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: of our subscription only show, Terminally Online, which is the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: most fun show we record here at Crooked Media, where
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: we all bring items that show how terminally online we
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: all are. I am the host of Offline as well,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: but I wear two hats for this show. And if
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: you want to get the show every week, which you should,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: go subscribe at crooked.com slash friends. Come join our Friend
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: of the Pod community. So everyone check that out. And
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: then Dan and I will be back next Thursday. Have
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: a good weekend.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: Bye, everyone.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our producers are Andy Gardner Bernstein
• 1:09:33
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• 1:09:37
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• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: This week's episode of On the Media from WNYC Studios
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: tells the story of how On the Media reporter Michael
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: Loewinger's expose of the role of the Oath Keepers on
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: January 6, 2021, led to a subpoena to testify in
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: the federal trial of the group's leader, Stuart Rhodes. And
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: they hear from someone who had a front row seat
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: for the creation of the Oath Keepers, Rhodes' estranged wife.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: Listen to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.