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Episode Sixty One: A Day For Optimism · The Death Of Journalism

• 0:00
  Welcome the episode number sixty one of the Death of Journalism podcast. My name
• 0:04
  is John Ziggler. I'm your host, and today on the podcast, Ron
• 0:08
  de Santis finally officially announces that he's challenging Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.
• 0:15
  He does so in truly unique fashion, and I'll tell you why this
• 0:19
  may well be the last hope for the United States as we know it.
• 0:24
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• 0:29
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• 0:34
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  help. That's the Dutch Digital Marketingman dot com. And hey, thanks for
• 1:03
  sponsoring the show. So we are recording this episode of the podcast just after
• 1:10
  Ron de Santis has finally made his highly anticipated yet totally unsurprising announcement that he
• 1:17
  was officially going to run for the Republican nomination for president in twenty twenty four.
• 1:23
  And I have just listened to what was supposed to be the first part
• 1:30
  of this announcement process, which was a live Twitter discussion hosted by Twitter owner
• 1:41
  Elon Musk, and I can't imagine that there is a better example, at
• 1:47
  least not in recent memory, where there is a bigger difference between the theory
• 1:53
  of an idea and the practice of an idea. In theory, this idea
• 2:01
  made a lot of sense. After all, it's new, it's novel,
• 2:07
  it is Twitter, and it is involving Elon Musk, who is not just
• 2:14
  a huge celebrity and one of the world's richest men, but a recent poll
• 2:19
  indicated that as a political figure, he is maybe the most popular or at
• 2:23
  least unpopular political figure, if you want to call him one. I think
• 2:28
  he is in the United States of America. So you would get the cache
• 2:36
  of essentially an Elon Musk indorsement, and you do it on a platform that
• 2:42
  is new and exciting and trending towards the right. After being in the stranglehold
• 2:47
  of the left up until Elon Musk took it over last year, so that
• 2:57
  all is very positive. Plus, Twitter is a venue where Donald Trump was
• 3:04
  once banned and he was allowed to come back by Elon Musk. He has
• 3:07
  ninety million followers, but he's never tweeted, and the reason why he's never
• 3:14
  tweeted is now rather obvious. It's because he has some sort of legal reason
• 3:21
  why he can't related to his ownership or contract with True Social, which is
• 3:27
  where he posts on a usually multi per day basis, and so doing it
• 3:34
  on Twitter kind of jabs at Trump rather dramatically. It exposes that further that
• 3:40
  he's not on Twitter, that for some reason he's unable to tweet. And
• 3:46
  by the way, one of the things that doing this basically proves is that
• 3:51
  Trump is banned quote unquote or self banned from posting on Twitter. Because let's
• 3:57
  be serious, if Trump Trump was allowed to post on Twitter, disrupting Rhonda
• 4:04
  Santas's announcement via a live interview with Elon Musk in Twitter spaces would have basically
• 4:12
  been mandatory for Trump to do that. I mean, there's absolutely no possible
• 4:15
  way that unless he was legally procuringly precluded from doing so that Donald Trump would
• 4:21
  ever be able to restrain himself from tweeting for the first time and completely overshadowing
• 4:29
  Rhonda Santas's announcement. So this is one of those situations where when something doesn't
• 4:33
  happen, it's actually very strong evidence that something is in existence, and that
• 4:40
  something, in this case is Donald Trump is not allowed to post on Twitter,
• 4:46
  and that was something I was always dubious of a little bit. Is
• 4:49
  that really the case or is he waiting for the right strategic moment. There's
• 4:54
  been some speculation that eventually during the campaign process, those legal restrictions will be
• 5:00
  lifted and then he'll be able to post on Twitter, but they clearly have
• 5:02
  not yet been lifted, because otherwise Donald Trump absolutely would have tweeted during Ron
• 5:12
  to Sandus's announcement, because he would not have been able to contain himself and
• 5:15
  does not nearly have the self discipline to keep from doing so. By the
• 5:19
  way, from a strategic standpoint, I'm not even sure it would have been
• 5:23
  a great idea for him to be restrained in that situation. I mean,
• 5:27
  if he could completely bigfoot Ron to Sandus's announcement, you know, I can
• 5:31
  see where that would make a lot of sense. However, as it turned
• 5:35
  out, I'm not sure that was necessary. Because this great idea in theory,
• 5:42
  where you're live with the people, with a huge audience and a lot
• 5:46
  of hype, and this is a different way of announcing than anyone has ever
• 5:50
  done it before in presidential history, and you're poking Trump in the eye,
• 5:57
  and you're being associated with Elon Musk, and you're taking questions, you're on
• 6:01
  afraid you know, all these things in theory are great. In my opinion,
• 6:09
  very quickly turned to crap because when this Twitter spaces interview or whatever you
• 6:15
  want to call it was scheduled to begin, it did not start. Now
• 6:23
  you've never been on Twitter Twitter Spaces, it basically looks like a massive group
• 6:29
  chat, and I've never really understood the appeal of this. It's not particularly
• 6:33
  like new technology. There's no video, which I think is a major issue
• 6:41
  in this video age in which we now live. I'll get to more of
• 6:44
  that in a second. The audio quality isn't that great. It can sometimes
• 6:48
  be confusing as to who was actually speaking. But it didn't even start for
• 6:58
  five minutes, then ten minutes, and there were fits and bits and pieces
• 7:02
  that tried to start, and there was another host other than Elon Musk,
• 7:06
  and you never heard Rhonda Santis. And there was at one point about six
• 7:12
  hundred and fifty thousand people waiting in this Twitter space for Rhonda Santis to announce
• 7:19
  that he was going to be running for president. I don't firstly think that
• 7:24
  six hundred fifty thousand is that tremendous an audience, when if you do this
• 7:29
  on Fox News Channel with any amount of hype, you're going to get several
• 7:33
  million people to tune in, at least two and a half three, hopefully
• 7:39
  four million people to tune in for an announcement of this sort. So you
• 7:44
  had six hundred and fifty thousand or so, and apparently that broke their servers.
• 7:50
  And what really pisses me off about this is that it appears, based
• 7:57
  upon the discussion that would later ensue between Elon Musk and the other person that
• 8:01
  he had co hostess, the person I've never heard of before, is that
• 8:07
  this was a situation that was easily anticipated because they apparently had had similar circumstances
• 8:16
  happened before. Because Elon Musk's Twitter account is so large that any activity on
• 8:24
  it can often cause a disruption in all of Twitter. Well, in this
• 8:33
  particular case, with six hundred and fifty thousand people in the Twitter space and
• 8:37
  it being hosted by Elon Musk's account, the whole thing shut down. Personally,
• 8:45
  I got kicked off Twitter at least three or four times trying to listen
• 8:48
  to what was nothing at that time, So there was nothing being broadcast,
• 8:54
  and I've got kicked off of Twitter three or four times, and I'm sure
• 9:00
  I was not alone, and eventually I'm not a technical whiz, but it
• 9:05
  basically it sounds like they rebooted the whole thing under someone else's account. The
• 9:11
  other the co host that must had with him to have this interview with Ronda
• 9:18
  Santis, and finally, I guess about fifteen or twenty minutes late, they
• 9:24
  were able to start this discussion. Now, this was incredibly embarrassing because you
• 9:31
  only get one shot at this, You only get one shot to make your
• 9:37
  presidential announcement, and you know, does it have to be perfect? No,
• 9:43
  But in this particular case, I think it's really important because, as
• 9:46
  I have stated many times, de Santis has only a couple of weeks here
• 9:52
  to close the gap to some significant level or Trump is gonna try to shut
• 9:58
  the whole process down. And many people don't believe me on this, but
• 10:01
  that's what he's gonna do. He has made that very very clear, and
• 10:05
  I think he'd be able to do it if the polling remained as it currently
• 10:09
  is. So this announcement and the momentum that comes from it and the perception
• 10:13
  that it evokes, was way more important than any other presidential announcement that I
• 10:20
  can certainly remember, at least in recent time and maybe ever. And here
• 10:26
  you got to imagine Ronda Santis had to be seething. He's waiting there for
• 10:31
  twenty minutes to give his one shot at a presidential announcement. Six hundred and
• 10:35
  fifty thousand people are waiting, and they finally get to him, and you
• 10:41
  know, he did as good a job as he could do. But he
• 10:45
  gave this very standard sounded like it was half memorized, half read speech,
• 10:52
  a stump speech. He kind of sped through it. Having been in similar
• 10:56
  situations where there are tech issues, I can tell you it is very difficult
• 11:03
  to keep your composure and be able to perform, especially under that kind of
• 11:07
  pressure, and to do so at a high level, and Desandis did a
• 11:13
  pretty darn good job given all those circumstances, but it was still not ideal.
• 11:18
  It didn't feel natural. There was nothing that was said that was particularly
• 11:22
  interesting or knew. He didn't go after Trump at all, not even a
• 11:26
  little bit. And then finally the Q and A started, and DeSantis is
• 11:31
  much better, much better in a Q and A situation than he is giving
• 11:37
  a speech, especially prepared with texts and and so you know, from a
• 11:46
  content standpoint, I think Desandis did as well as he could, especially under
• 11:50
  the very trying circumstances. So I have no issue with DeSantis's performance. He
• 11:56
  actually gave some good answers on Disney and illegal m a great and COVID unfortunately
• 12:03
  and book banning. He did a great job on debunking that whole bullcrap narrative,
• 12:07
  which even Elon Musk admitted that he had bought into. So from a
• 12:11
  substance standpoint, no issues with what the Santists did. But we live in
• 12:16
  a world where perception is reality, and yes there will be a perception here
• 12:22
  that the interest in the de Santis announcement was so great that it's shut down
• 12:28
  Twitter servers. That's great, Okay, I guess that'll help, you know,
• 12:33
  people be able to spend this in a way that's not a complete disaster
• 12:37
  for Rhonda Santis. But on the other hand, by the time that the
• 12:43
  actual content of this event was starting to be broadcast in a way that was
• 12:48
  listenable, they had lost two thirds of their audience from somewhere in the six
• 12:54
  hundred thousand plus range to just over two hundred thousand. And just over two
• 13:01
  hundred thousand, while it's the biggest thing that's ever happened in a Twitter space,
• 13:05
  big deal, that's nothing on a cable news channel for an announcement like
• 13:11
  this, I mean so, and plus you lose two thirds of your audience
• 13:18
  because of a tech issue. That's pretty much the definition of a disaster.
• 13:22
  And it's the reason why this disaster happened that has me so irritated and pissed
• 13:28
  off. I am pissed off at Elon Musk because I think this all happened
• 13:33
  because of Elon Musk's ego. Basically, ron de Santis somehow got used as
• 13:39
  a commercial, a really bad one for Twitter spaces, which Musk is trying
• 13:45
  to expand its use into podcasting and other platforms, and and they should have
• 13:54
  known that this was going to be a massive problem. And I'm sure the
• 13:58
  Santis rusted Elon Musk. I mean, Musk has this mystique of being this
• 14:03
  technical whiz, and I gotta tell you, I think that he ends up
• 14:09
  in situations where there are often things that go very, very wrong, partially
• 14:15
  because he bites off more than he can chew. He loves taking risks.
• 14:18
  But I also think that when you become that famous and that rich and that
• 14:22
  powerful, nobody around you wants to tell you, hey, Elon, this
• 14:28
  isn't going to work. No one will tell him that. And he doesn't
• 14:33
  seem to understand that or doesn't seem to care. And so he let ron
• 14:39
  to Santis down, a guy who it certainly seems as if he supports at
• 14:43
  some level for president. He clearly does not support Donald Trump. He clearly
• 14:48
  does not want Donald Trump to be the nominee. And he basically got to
• 14:54
  Santis to trust him, and he let the Santist down, and he did
• 14:58
  Trump. I don't know if it was a huge favor, but he did
• 15:01
  Trump a favor because there's no question that among Trump loyalists this will be perceived
• 15:09
  as a literal failure to launch and a disaster from a technical standpoint, through
• 15:16
  no fault of Rhonda Santis. However, I will say that the De Santa's
• 15:22
  campaign deserves at least a little bit of criticism for not seeing one that there
• 15:31
  could be a technical issue here, and two, why the hell would you
• 15:35
  do this in an audio format? This is a video age in which we
• 15:41
  now live. Now, I realize that this is an audio podcast itself,
• 15:45
  but I'm not announcing for president, and my face is not one that you
• 15:50
  need to see. Back when Lisabibe was my co host, I was wishing
• 15:54
  every single time we did this that we were a video podcast because people would
• 15:58
  want to see her face. You don't need to see my face. So
• 16:03
  there is a there is room for and a need for audio only content where
• 16:08
  one person, in this case me, is speaking to you in a very
• 16:14
  intimate fashion, long form, without interruptions. I think that that has merit,
• 16:19
  that has meaning, that has value. But that's not what this was.
• 16:26
  This was a massive group chat with no memorable moments. No, I
• 16:32
  mean, there's nothing that I'm going to play for you on this podcast is
• 16:34
  listen to this clip because this was the highlight of what happened, and certainly
• 16:41
  the news organizations aren't going to use anything from that. The only thing they're
• 16:45
  going to report is the service crashed and the audience at the end was less
• 16:48
  than three hundred thousand, and that was a disappointing performance. I'm sure that's
• 16:55
  probably going to be the way that this will be perceived. I'm sure Trump
• 16:59
  is going to jump all over that. But mostly I don't understand the lack
• 17:03
  of video. Now. I guess what they were thinking was we do this
• 17:07
  on Twitter. For some reason, we can't. I don't. I don't
• 17:11
  know why we can't do this on video. I mean, if to me,
• 17:15
  why you can't just do a live video interview one on one between Elon
• 17:19
  Musk and Ronda Santis, that would have been fantastic. I mean that that
• 17:26
  way, you get the live you get the Twitter aspect, you get the
• 17:30
  Elon Musk blessing, you get video. You don't they're technically I wouldn't think
• 17:36
  that would be very difficult to pull off at all. Well, in this
• 17:40
  case, you get none of that. But I guess that the Santist people
• 17:44
  thought, Okay, this will be this will seem like we're we're we're a
• 17:48
  man of the people, and you know, we're we're allowing actual humans to
• 17:53
  ask us questions. Of course, the only people that got to ask questions
• 17:56
  we're very well known and obvious joy voices from the hosts, including Congressman Thomas
• 18:03
  Massey and you know, one a doctor that had worked with De Santists on
• 18:08
  COVID. I mean, so it was all very positive content wise to the
• 18:12
  Santists, but the tech issues really overshadowed the whole thing. And I don't
• 18:18
  understand it. I guess they thought we do audio first, and then we'll
• 18:22
  do a radio interview with Mark Levin, and we'll do a Fox News Channel
• 18:26
  interview with Trey Gaudy. And by the way, those are interesting choices.
• 18:30
  Mark Levin is one of the worst Trump sellouts, a guy I used to
• 18:34
  really respect and I think he's very intelligent. I have not listened to that
• 18:38
  interview yet. I'll be very curious to hear how that went. And Trey
• 18:42
  Gaudy was at one point very pro Trump. I think that Goudy and De
• 18:48
  Santists served together in Congress in the Republican Caucus, so that might be the
• 18:53
  connection there. But you're not going to get the same level of interest a
• 19:00
  Fox News Channel interview after the announcement has already been made. You only get
• 19:06
  one shot at this. This is basically like giving up your presidential virginity,
• 19:11
  and Musk botched it, I believe, largely out of overinflated ego and an
• 19:21
  unwillingness to listen to concerns that people might have that this might not work.
• 19:26
  And what really again pissed me off most during the whole thing is when Musk
• 19:30
  just casually, almost out of nowhere, mentions, yeah, we've had problems
• 19:34
  doing this from my account previously, Well, why the fuck would you do
• 19:38
  that when you're dealing with not just a presidential announcement where this is obviously very
• 19:45
  very important to this guy's life and career, but in this particular case,
• 19:48
  it's really important to the entire goddamn country. Because this announcement is so important.
• 19:59
  Maybe I think it's more important than the vast majority of people, because
• 20:02
  when I say things like this on Twitter, I inevitably get responded with People
• 20:08
  respond to me with, Oh, you're overblowing this. This will be forgotten
• 20:11
  in a couple of days. It's not a big deal. Maybe we'll not
• 20:15
  have much of an impact. I hope it doesn't, but folks, we're
• 20:19
  running out of time here. This was a massive missed opportunity. This was
• 20:26
  a situation where it basically needed to go perfectly, and it did not.
• 20:34
  It did not go perfectly. And now you know, I don't know how
• 20:41
  it's going to influence what's going to happen over the next couple of weeks,
• 20:45
  but that the polling data has got to get better in the next couple of
• 20:52
  weeks if it does not, based upon the news that de Santis is now
• 20:56
  officially in, and you can't claim that he's not in yet, and you
• 21:00
  know he's in it to win it, and it's not theoretical anymore, and
• 21:06
  you'll like what you're hearing, and he gets back some of those people he's
• 21:08
  lost over the last several months. If that doesn't happen, Trump is gonna
• 21:14
  shut the whole thing down, and I think he'll get away with it because
• 21:18
  the conservative media won't buck him on this, even though it's in their self
• 21:22
  interest to do so, because if the entire process gets shut down, they
• 21:27
  lose a whole lot of content and a whole lot of ratings. But I
• 21:33
  just don't think Trump would be. It'll be criticized in some areas, but
• 21:37
  I don't think it'll be overwhelming if Trump in fact decides to play the coronation
• 21:42
  card and say, if Biden doesn't have to go through a primary and debate
• 21:47
  process, why should I. I'm winning by just about the same amount over
• 21:52
  to Santis as Biden is over RFK Jr. And frankly, that's not an
• 21:57
  irrational thing to say. So we're at a really urgent stage of this and
• 22:03
  for this to be fucked up the way that it was is really aggravating.
• 22:10
  And again for those who claimed, wow, it was only twenty minutes John
• 22:14
  they got it on track, they lost two thirds of their audience and the
• 22:18
  audience wasn't that big to begin with. Yeah, it was massive for Twitter
• 22:23
  spaces, unprecedented, but big flipping whoop. It just feels like this was
• 22:30
  an idea that was not particularly well thought out. It had too much faith
• 22:36
  in Elon Musk, and it tried to get a bit too fancy. There's
• 22:41
  no reason why it couldn't have done this in a live one on one video
• 22:45
  feed via Twitter. It would have been a heck of a lot more easy
• 22:52
  to use, and the rest of the media, other newscasts would have used
• 22:55
  it. No newscast is going to do any use anything out of that Twitter
• 22:59
  spaces other than maybe the technical screw ups, and so I am very disappointed.
• 23:06
  I was one of those who thought, Okay, that's an interesting idea.
• 23:10
  I'd like to see and hear how it's going to work in practice.
• 23:14
  But I can see the logic to it. But it did not work.
• 23:18
  And it did not work because of Elon Musk, a guy who I am
• 23:21
  very conflicted about. I like a lot about him. I love his free
• 23:25
  speech stands. I think it's fantastic that he bought Twitter. It's an incredibly
• 23:30
  important historical development. I'm not thrilled with who he's hiring as the new CEO
• 23:37
  of Twitter, a female from NBC who seems rather woke. That has me
• 23:41
  concerned. But remember, this is the guy who is most well known for
• 23:47
  building a company that builds electric cars, and electric cars may end up being
• 23:52
  one of the biggest boondoggles on behalf of the whole climate change global warming scam
• 23:56
  that's ever been created. So I don't fully trust him, and I really
• 24:02
  don't trust him from the standpoint of ego, not necessarily anything to do with
• 24:07
  him. I think it's just natural for any human being that becomes that rich
• 24:11
  and famous, it's going to be very, very difficult to keep their bearings
• 24:15
  and to listen to people when they say or want to have people around them
• 24:21
  who are willing and able to say, hey, elon, this isn't gonna
• 24:23
  work. My guess is it was all happy talk. Because I've never been
• 24:29
  involved in this kind of a situation, but I've been in circumstances where I
• 24:33
  was the lone person going, wait a minute, this isn't gonna be easy,
• 24:37
  this isn't gonna work, and the general just is shut the hell up.
• 24:41
  We only want to hear happy talk here. And this is at a
• 24:44
  much higher level what's going on with Musk and DeSantis. So this is my
• 24:48
  guess as to how this disaster was allowed to occur. Again, I don't
• 24:52
  want to overblow it from the standpoint of what kind of impact it's going to
• 24:56
  have on the actual race, but as far as an announcement is concerned,
• 25:02
  I do think this is in the disaster category, especially since you only get
• 25:07
  one shot at this. If this was an interview happening the day after the
• 25:11
  announcement, I wouldn't care. Oh. In fact, the narrative would be
• 25:18
  the audience was so large they crashed it. They had to go to a
• 25:21
  different Twitter account. That's great news for de Santis. Look, how many
• 25:23
  people are interested in this, But it's the perception of the launch, especially
• 25:29
  when you think about all the failure to launches, the failures to launch that
• 25:34
  Musk has had in his space program over the years. And so I mean,
• 25:40
  maybe I'm overthinking it. I hope I am, but I was very,
• 25:45
  very disappointed with how that went with regard to Elon Musk. As far
• 25:52
  as the reaction to DeSantis's actual announcement, that has been quite interesting and that's
• 26:00
  been very telling as well. The most dramatic and absurd reaction came from Vanity
• 26:06
  Fair, and this was actually alluded to during the Elon Musk Roda Santis interview.
• 26:11
  Vanity Fair under a news story this was supposed to be a news story
• 26:18
  had had the headline report, Ronda Santis will formally announce his twenty twenty four
• 26:25
  bid with Elon Musk COMMA because apparently David Duke wasn't available. David Duke,
• 26:33
  of course, the former KKK leader, obvious racist. I mean hasn't been
• 26:41
  really a major public figure for several decades. But that's the best the Vanity
• 26:47
  Fair could come up with in a news headline. Now, what's interesting.
• 26:49
  And I thought I was the only person that was confused, but apparently they
• 26:55
  were also confused at Twitter when they referenced this in the RHN de Santas announcement,
• 27:02
  because it's a little bit unclear as to who's the David Duke character here.
• 27:07
  Is it Elon Musk or is it Rohn de Santis. For the record,
• 27:12
  I'll repeat headline report Ron de Santis will formally announce his twenty twenty four
• 27:18
  bid with Elon Musk because apparently David Duke wasn't available. You can read that
• 27:23
  either way regardless. That's that is how unbelievably biased and scared and biased against
• 27:33
  and scared of Ron de Santis and Elon Musk a liberal outlet like Vanity Fair
• 27:41
  obviously is there's I mean Elon Musk. Let's presume it's Musk. They're referring
• 27:48
  to Elon Musk is now David Duke because he dares to help Ron de Santis
• 27:52
  announce his candidacy. Now, of course, this was before the candidacy announcement
• 27:57
  got botched, so maybe they're now actually happy that Elon Musk botched it for
• 28:03
  Ron de Santis. But this is before the announcement, the same day of
• 28:07
  that announcement. But this is the level that they will go to. And
• 28:12
  by the way, you know, this is on the right. This kind
• 28:15
  of thinking by the left wing media has created a I don't know what you
• 28:22
  would call it, but I guess a narrative is the right right word.
• 28:26
  A narrative that it almost doesn't matter who Republicans put up as their nominee because
• 28:33
  that person is always going to be worse than the previous person, right.
• 28:37
  I mean, McCain was supposed to be a media darling until he ran into
• 28:41
  the Obama buzz saw and the media turned on McCain hugely in a way that
• 28:47
  I'm sure stunned John McCain because he was used to being a media darling his
• 28:52
  entire political career. And then the Republican Party and I supported this nominate admit
• 28:59
  round the twenty twelve and somehow Romney was worse than McCain. They somehow turned
• 29:04
  Mitt Romney into a horrible guy, you know, anti woman, anti black,
• 29:11
  I mean all sorts of horrendous things that were just absurd. And so
• 29:17
  if you make McCain and Romney too, I believe stellar human beings, not
• 29:22
  perfect, but stellar human beings who were basically rhinos politically, if you make
• 29:27
  them into horrendous characters, basically, I think what happened was that was part
• 29:33
  of what helped Trump in twenty sixteen was a lot of Republican voters thought,
• 29:37
  you know what, you made McCain and Romney into almost Hitler. We're gonna
• 29:42
  give you Hitler because we don't care. I'm talking figuratively here, I mean,
• 29:48
  go screw yourselves because you're gonna call whoever we nominate Hitler. So why
• 29:52
  don't we just go with the guy we think is the most fun or is
• 29:56
  going to blow up the boxes the most. And I think that that man
• 30:00
  reality absolutely helped Trump in twenty sixteen. And there have been those who have
• 30:03
  said half tongue in cheek and half I think based in reality, that if
• 30:11
  de Santists were to be the nominee, the left wing media would go,
• 30:14
  well, he's worse than Trump. And we've seen some of that already,
• 30:19
  and Vanity Fair is clearly implying that even though they've been telling us that Donald
• 30:25
  Trump is the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of the country,
• 30:27
  a grave threat to democracy, de Santists will somehow be worse, even though
• 30:33
  by there's no measure by which he is worse, even through the liberal prism,
• 30:38
  than Donald Trump is. And it's not just the liberal media, although
• 30:44
  you might consider this to be liberal media, the so called never Trump media,
• 30:51
  for lack of a better term, the Lincoln Project people, the frauds,
• 30:56
  the grifters that have tried to remain relevant and make some money from being
• 31:03
  former Republicans who are adamantly opposed to Donald Trump, have really exposed themselves.
• 31:11
  Just as I've told you many many times was the case. I have been
• 31:15
  vindicated in spades in my view of so called never Trump Republicans because I was
• 31:22
  a part of this group. I was literally a part of this group.
• 31:26
  When Trump first got elected president, there was the so called Meeting of the
• 31:30
  Concerned in Washington, DC that once every week or every other week would have
• 31:37
  a meeting early in the morning some weekday, I don't know, maybe it
• 31:41
  was tuesdays. I would get up ridiculously early on the West Coast to join
• 31:45
  the meeting via teleconference. And these people were nuts, completely delusional, and
• 31:51
  Bill Crystal was one of them. Bill Crystal is a guy I know a
• 31:55
  little bit. I've spoken to him on the phone. We have a connection,
• 31:59
  at least we used to through my father, and I mean a guy
• 32:05
  I used to actually have respect for. But he is completely gone off the
• 32:09
  rails when it comes to his not just opposition to Donald Trump, now his
• 32:15
  opposition to anything anything that is conservative or Republican. Why and this is how
• 32:22
  the media works, folks, because his audience that he now has to appeal
• 32:28
  to is completely liberal. The only people who take him any seriously at all
• 32:32
  are liberals on Twitter and liberals who are bookers at liberal media outlets that might
• 32:42
  ask him to come on television, So he must appeal to them. He
• 32:45
  cannot do anything that might offend them, and that means you must not embrace
• 32:52
  and in fact must attack Ronda Santis, even if it means helping Donald Trump.
• 33:00
  And on the day that the Santists announced, after it was made clear
• 33:04
  that he would do so via this Twitter spaces event with Elon Musk, Bill
• 33:08
  Crystal tweeted the following and then, by the way, this is as Bill
• 33:14
  Crystals as it gets. This tweet, he wrote, I tend parentheses,
• 33:19
  perhaps foolishly on parentheses to discount the alpha slash beta mail stuff. But DeSantis
• 33:30
  was always on Fox when Rupert was for him. Now he announces on Twitter
• 33:35
  when Elon's for him. Kind of beta. No Trump does CNN town Hall
• 33:44
  goes into the pseudo lions Den looks kind of alpha, no question mark,
• 33:52
  I'm not even on what the hell Crystal is talking about. Here is why
• 33:55
  it's beta for de Santists to go on Twitter with one of the richest men
• 34:01
  in the world. That's not a beta move to have Elon Musk be very
• 34:07
  excited about helping you launch your presidential campaign, even though he did it in
• 34:12
  a way that I don't think was productive, at least not in practice.
• 34:15
  But the most important part of that tweet, by far is that here Bill
• 34:21
  Crystel, who has given up his entire lifelong career as a conservative to oppose
• 34:27
  Donald Trump because Donald Trump is such an incredible threat to our way of life
• 34:31
  and democracy itself, is willing to promote Donald Trump because there's another candidate who
• 34:43
  might even be more dangerous, not to the Republic but to Bill Crystel,
• 34:49
  and what's left to Bill Crystel's career because if Rhonda Santis is president in the
• 34:57
  United States a long shot possibility, and Trump is in the dust bin of
• 35:02
  history. Guests, who goes in the dustbin of history with Donald Trump?
• 35:07
  Bill Crystal Because you don't get to do this twice. You don't, You
• 35:14
  really don't. I mean, if you made a living, whatever left of
• 35:17
  a living, you maintain some semblance of a career and some semblance of relevance
• 35:23
  because you used your conservative Republican bonafides to attack Donald Trump. I get that.
• 35:32
  I mean I was in that camp during the twenty sixteen campaign. This
• 35:37
  is a principal stand and look, look, I'm a Republican and I'm I'm
• 35:42
  threatening my own career, which is what I did. I am doing something
• 35:46
  against my self interest to stand on principle and stand up for what the truth
• 35:51
  is and what I think is right. And I will not support Donald Trump.
• 35:55
  But then when an alternative to Donald Trump that's viable comes along, guess
• 36:00
  what you bets get on board with that. Otherwise you're a fucking hypocrite,
• 36:06
  You're a fraud, you're a grifter, You're just doing this because you now
• 36:12
  no longer have any conservative credibility, and you need to appeal to liberals,
• 36:17
  and therefore you must attack any and all conservative candidates, especially those that are
• 36:23
  really dangerous to liberals, like Rhonda Santis. Now, thankfully, this is
• 36:30
  so overt that some people are catching on, including my old nemesis, liberal
• 36:35
  Nate Silver, the former ABC News data guru who just got let go by
• 36:42
  ABC Disney. He tweeted clearly in response to what Bill Crystal had tweeted,
• 36:50
  at least I believe so, but certainly it could have been. I believe
• 36:54
  the timing of this works out that this was in response to Bill Crystal,
• 36:59
  but regard list, it's obvious where Nate Silver is going with this, he
• 37:02
  tweeted, remains pretty amazing to me how disdainfully the never Trump crew treats Republican
• 37:10
  candidates other than Trump. In other words, if you were really never Trump,
• 37:19
  but you were maintaining your conservative credentials and credibility and principles, wouldn't you
• 37:24
  embrace somebody who could actually defeat him and keep him from being the nominee and
• 37:31
  the next president. Yeah, you would if you had any actual credibility,
• 37:37
  If you had a soul, if you cared about the truth, if you
• 37:42
  really were a principled person. And look, I think taking a fake principal
• 37:46
  stand is way worse, way worse than just being a coward. And that's
• 37:52
  what the Bill Crystals of the world have done. So fuck you Bill Crystal,
• 37:57
  and fuck you Lincoln Project and all of them, those frauds and those
• 38:01
  grifters. I cannot stand them because they should have known better, and they're
• 38:07
  doing They have become exactly what they claimed to be condemning. And I have
• 38:14
  to say, I mean, I realized that I'm not objective here, although
• 38:17
  I try to be that when it comes to opposition to Donald Trump. I
• 38:22
  don't know of anybody that has stood more consistently on principle than I have.
• 38:30
  Now, I didn't have as nearly as much to lose as a lot of
• 38:32
  never Trump conservatives did back in twenty sixteen, but I have consistently opposed Donald
• 38:37
  Trump. I have been consistently fair to him. I have praised him at
• 38:42
  times, I have defended him at times. I have criticized him when I
• 38:46
  believe it was warranted. But I have always looked for any and all avenues
• 38:52
  to keep him from being either the Republican nominee or being president, because I
• 38:59
  believe he was a unique problem. Not that the Republican Party is anywhere near
• 39:02
  perfect without Donald Trump. That's that's the case. That's not the case by
• 39:07
  a long shot. But it's a hell of a lot better than what the
• 39:09
  Democratic Party has currently become. And I'm I'm about saving the country. I
• 39:15
  honestly, really do believe that that's my number one goal. I know it's
• 39:21
  my number one goal for my children, and because I care about all the
• 39:24
  people that have sacrificed in the past to make this the greatest country that humans
• 39:30
  have ever created, and now we're all blowing it an incredibly swift fashion for
• 39:36
  reasons that I don't even fully understand and certainly don't agree with. So I'm
• 39:40
  trying to save the country, and the only path I see to save the
• 39:43
  country at this point is to keep the Santis in the game, keep Trump
• 39:47
  from being the nominee, and somehow get Ron de Santis to beat Joe Biden
• 39:52
  in the general election. That's the only path I see for this, And
• 40:00
  because if that doesn't happen, I don't see a path where the country survives
• 40:05
  as we currently know it for very much longer, and so look, I
• 40:12
  mean, I hope if you're listeners podcast, you probably already know that I've
• 40:15
  been incredibly consistent on this issue because I guess it's if I have an appeal,
• 40:21
  that's probably what it is. And I hope I have some credibility on
• 40:24
  this. But today, because it's the day after Ron De Santis's official announcement,
• 40:32
  I want to make the substantive argument, the detailed argument for why the
• 40:38
  Republican nominee ought to be Ron De Santis and not Donald Trump. So what
• 40:45
  exactly is the case for Ron De Santis to be the twenty twenty four Republican
• 40:52
  presidential nominee. Now, for many De Santis supporters, it's so obvious that
• 40:59
  it almost doesn't need to be stated, but I still think it's important that
• 41:05
  somebody make it, at least for the record. I mean, for De
• 41:07
  Santis supporters, this is like choosing between sour milk being Trump and fresh milk
• 41:15
  being To Santists, it's not a tough choice. However, for many Republicans,
• 41:20
  it clearly is a tough choice. And it appears as if right now,
• 41:23
  nationally, the majority of Republicans are choosing Trump, and the percentage that
• 41:28
  they are choosing to Santis is shrinking at least until his announcement on a daily
• 41:32
  basis. However, as I make this case, I promise to be as
• 41:37
  optimistic as possible, because this is a day for optimism. The day after
• 41:43
  Rhonda Santis officially announces you. I'll save my pessimism for a couple of weeks
• 41:49
  from now if things don't dramatically change in his direction. But today I'm hoping
• 41:53
  this is all going to be about optimism and making the for the record argument
• 42:00
  as to why it is so obvious that Rohn De Santis and not Donald Trump,
• 42:04
  should be the Republican presidential nominee in twenty twenty four. First of all,
• 42:08
  let's talk about the Santist himself, and his biography is extraordinary. Now,
• 42:15
  I want to be clear, nobody is perfect, all right, There
• 42:19
  is no perfect human being. I am a cynic at heart. I believe
• 42:23
  that Homo sapiens are inherently flawed in almost every way. There are no perfect
• 42:30
  heroes. There are good people, there are fewer and fewer of them than
• 42:35
  there used to be, or at least we thought there were. But I
• 42:38
  am of the belief currently that Rohn de Santis is nearly as perfectly designed as
• 42:46
  a human being as you could hope for realistically when it comes to the twenty
• 42:52
  twenty four presidential nominating process. And a lot of that is based in his
• 42:58
  biography. Some of that is based in the fact that he is as trumpy
• 43:01
  as you could get without having the negatives of Donald Trump. But before I
• 43:07
  contrast him specifically with Trump, just the basic biography here is rather extraordinary.
• 43:15
  I mean, this is a guy whose education is exemplary. He graduated from
• 43:21
  Yale, went to Harvard Law School as a lawyer. He studied in the
• 43:29
  Navy, he served in the military. None of those things, by the
• 43:35
  way, can be said about Donald Trump, and they used to matter a
• 43:37
  great deal, especially in the Republican primary. Hopefully they still matter to some
• 43:42
  people. His wife, Casey is not just beautiful, but she seems to
• 43:46
  be amazing in every known way. Three beautiful young kids. The youth element
• 43:54
  here is particularly important, not just because youth is always seen understandably as a
• 44:01
  positive human quality, especially when you're at that perfect age of forty four for
• 44:06
  leadership, which is what Ron de Santis is, but especially when your general
• 44:10
  election opponent is going to be in his eighties and looking every single day as
• 44:17
  if he's in his eighties, and seemingly becoming more and more decrepit. So
• 44:25
  his age is just about perfect for what you would want to design for this
• 44:30
  particular situation. And then there is his political biography. He has served in
• 44:37
  Congress, which is important not just from an experience standpoint, and he likes
• 44:43
  to joke that, you know, he hopes that you'll forgive him for having
• 44:45
  been a congress person, but there is an important lesson that has learned there.
• 44:52
  He understands not just how the system works, but how incredibly screwed up
• 44:55
  it is. So if he were to ever be presidents day, he would
• 45:00
  have a really solid understanding of the process and all of its weaknesses. By
• 45:07
  the way, I want to mention the same thing with regard to his education.
• 45:10
  There are many Trumpers who now see, we've somehow gotten to the point
• 45:15
  where graduating from Yale and Harvard is a negative. Now, nobody has more
• 45:21
  disdain for elite academia than I do. And you know, some people argue
• 45:25
  that I'm a product of elite academia. I would not necessarily agree with that,
• 45:30
  but I graduated from Georgetown University, and so I at least am very
• 45:35
  familiar with this world. I know people who went to Harvard and Yale and
• 45:38
  other Ivy League schools. They're incredibly overrated, incredibly overrated, but it's still
• 45:45
  it is an indication of your intellect, and it's an indication of your experience
• 45:52
  academically and by the way, in your real world experience as well, because
• 45:55
  being exposed to these types of people is incredibly horton and maybe the most important
• 46:01
  part of the Harvard Yale experience for a potential president is this, much like
• 46:07
  being in Congress. This gives the Santists a really strong understanding of what we're
• 46:14
  really up against. And I think it's a big part of why the Santists
• 46:20
  understood very quickly that the so called experts when it came to COVID didn't know
• 46:25
  what the hell they're talking about. I remember very very clearly when I first
• 46:31
  went to Georgetown. Both my parents went there. That's where they met,
• 46:36
  and that's a large part of why I got into Georgetown. I fully acknowledged
• 46:38
  that. But when I went to Georgetown, I was intimidated academically. I
• 46:44
  thought these people must be super smart, way smarter than I am, and
• 46:47
  it had a major impact on me as a freshman. I barely survived my
• 46:52
  freshman year. By the time I was a senior, I had completely flipped
• 46:58
  my view of the student at Georgetown. I remember I went to Georgetown in
• 47:02
  the eighties, right after the Patrick Ewing era. Georgetown was like the hottest
• 47:07
  school in the country, not just because of Patrick Ewing and the basketball team,
• 47:12
  but Saint Almost Fire had just come out. My class was the most
• 47:15
  competitive in the history of the university at that time. We also happened to
• 47:21
  be graduating in the two hundredth anniversary year of the school, so I mean
• 47:28
  this was a big deal and I was around a lot of supposedly very smart
• 47:30
  people. By the time I was a senior, I realized these people are
• 47:35
  not that smart. They really don't know what the hell they're talking about.
• 47:38
  Not that they're dumb, but it's just incredibly overrated. There are no so
• 47:45
  called, very few actual geniuses or so called experts. And I think having
• 47:52
  gone to Yale and Harvard Harvard Law School gives De Santis an even better understanding
• 47:58
  of that than I had having gone to Georgetown. So that experience have seemed
• 48:04
  properly instead of oh he's an elitist. He went to Yale and Harvard,
• 48:08
  it should be seen through the prism of wow, he really gets what we're
• 48:13
  up against. He also understands who these so called experts are, understands the
• 48:21
  root. That's I mean, that's like the lion's den of wokeism, especially
• 48:25
  since he went there in the two thousands, since he's only forty four years
• 48:30
  old, he has seen fairly recently what elite academia has become, what a
• 48:37
  huge problem it is, and how you know, it's so different than what
• 48:43
  the media still portrays it to be. So I think that might be the
• 48:47
  most important part of his Ivy League education. It just doesn't mean that he's
• 48:52
  smart or that he came from a highly competitive academic environment. He gets it,
• 48:58
  and I think he showed that during COVID that he understood the true nature
• 49:04
  of this elite expert class, the industrial complex as they became during COVID,
• 49:15
  of these so called elitist experts that don't really know what the hell they're talking
• 49:19
  about. So I think that for what he would be facing as president,
• 49:24
  having an inside knowledge of what elite academy is really all about really is important,
• 49:32
  and it does show I think that he is certainly way smart enough to
• 49:37
  do the job, and much smarter than Donald Trump is in a lot of
• 49:40
  ways. So he's got this great biography, served in Congress, and then
• 49:47
  he gets out of Washington and he goes back home to Florida and he runs
• 49:52
  for governor. And yes, Donald Trump, as he will tell you every
• 49:57
  other day on social media, had a major impact on how and why he
• 50:02
  got elected governor of Florida, no question about that. Now, somehow Trump
• 50:07
  has turned this into an issue of the Santus being disloyal. How dare he
• 50:14
  how dare he run against me in twenty twenty four after I helped him get
• 50:20
  elected governor of Florida in twenty eighteen. I don't even know how that works.
• 50:24
  So you do something that is a benefit to the party or the leader
• 50:30
  of the Republican Party, as President Trump was in twenty eighteen, So you're
• 50:35
  benefiting the National Republican Party, and therefore anybody you endorse isn't inherently beholden to
• 50:44
  you for as long as you decide they are. This is like the way
• 50:47
  a mob figure would think about things. Trump. I've often referred to Trump
• 50:52
  as a mob like figure, and I just don't understand this. Now.
• 50:57
  If Trump was still president running for reelection, as he was in twenty twenty,
• 51:01
  then that argument holds water. But Trump forfeited that argument when he lost
• 51:09
  the twenty twenty election significantly after having lost the twenty eighteen mid terms and then
• 51:16
  being a big part of the reason why Republicans did not do nearly as well
• 51:21
  as they should have in the twenty twenty two mid terms. So Trumps long
• 51:24
  ago forfeited this idea that he asked the right in the authority to prevent anybody
• 51:31
  that he has helped in the past from running against him. I mean,
• 51:35
  it's laughable. Somehow it still resonates with his cult, but it's ridiculous.
• 51:40
  But it was as governor of Florida from twenty eighteen till today where De Santis
• 51:47
  has truly shown that he would be the perfect person to be our next president.
• 51:52
  There's no question about that. In so many different levels he has turned
• 51:58
  a purple stage, which is what Florida was shown by the fact that he
• 52:02
  barely got elected the first time into a deep red state. In virtually every
• 52:08
  aspect of the state, including even in the Miami Dade area. Now,
• 52:14
  you know, Democrats just won a merrill race in Jacksonville, which is confusing
• 52:19
  in an off year election. But you can't argue that Florida has not gotten
• 52:24
  much redder under Rohn de Santis. And you can argue it's amazing what people
• 52:31
  will come up with when they want to believe something. You can argue any
• 52:37
  state has its problems, but Florida is in much better shape. If you
• 52:40
  own a house in Florida today that you purchased before twenty eighteen, it's worth
• 52:46
  a hell of a lot more than it was then. That's for day,
• 52:50
  I'm sure. Now are there more people in the state, Yeah, that's
• 52:52
  a pretty good indication people want to live there for some reason. And you
• 52:58
  know, it's obviously COVID played a big role in that and the response to
• 53:01
  COVID and how Florida led the way out of that quagmire. But by every
• 53:07
  economic measure of Florida is doing extremely well. And from a legislative perspective,
• 53:14
  the Santist just had the most successful conservative legislative session in modern Republican history,
• 53:22
  at least in a large state. Now, as a libertarian, I would
• 53:28
  Normally, maybe five or ten years ago, I would have been a little
• 53:32
  concerned about the Santist's brand of conservatism, because it's very proactive, it's very
• 53:39
  much on the attack. It's very much using government to forward the cause either
• 53:49
  of conservatism or of fighting back against progressivism or wokeness or whatever you want to
• 53:53
  call it. However, I am at now convinced that libertaris heringism won't hack
• 54:00
  it in that particular situation. It has now gotten so big government has and
• 54:07
  wokeism and progressivism has so gotten a foothold and gotten traction in every aspect of
• 54:15
  our culture that using the law and using government is really the only option.
• 54:22
  It is the least good option in my view as a libertarian, because I
• 54:28
  can't stand regulation, I can't stand big government. However, I get what
• 54:34
  he's trying to do. He's trying to eradicate this disease of wokeism at its
• 54:40
  root and making sure that it can't grow in a significant way going forward.
• 54:49
  And this appeals to me because I live in California, and I have seen
• 54:53
  what has happened in California. I say this all the time. People in
• 54:59
  the rest of the country seem to think, well, California is just full
• 55:02
  of nut jobs. It's an anomaly, and therefore we don't really need to
• 55:07
  worry about California becoming the rest of the country. Well, first of all,
• 55:10
  Gavin Newsom could very easily be elected president in twenty twenty eight if things
• 55:16
  don't go well in the twenty twenty four election, and therefore all bets are
• 55:22
  off. But that is just not the case. There is not nothing that
• 55:28
  makes California particularly vulnerable to what has happened here. It was a demographic shift
• 55:37
  over time that changed California from one of the most conservative states in the country,
• 55:45
  a state that gave us Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon not that long ago,
• 55:50
  to a state that is now probably the most liberal. In most cases,
• 55:57
  is the most liberal in the country. Illinois and New York sometimes give
• 56:01
  it a run for its money, but I would say that overall California is
• 56:06
  the most liberal, and certainly on the coast it's by far the most liberal
• 56:10
  area of the entire country, and San Francisco and Los Angeles, and these
• 56:16
  are areas that I mean. It's one of the more historically funny facts of
• 56:23
  our lifetimes, or at least some of our lifetimes that Barry Goldwater, the
• 56:29
  most conservative, at least on paper, Republican presidential nominee maybe in history,
• 56:35
  certainly in modern history, was nominated at a convention that took place in San
• 56:40
  Francisco. I mean, that's just unfathomable. I realized that nineteen sixty four
• 56:46
  was a long time ago, but that I mean, it's still within the
• 56:50
  lifetimes of a lot of people who are still alive. So, but the
• 56:55
  thing with California is that things have gotten so out of control that there's no
• 57:01
  chance. There's no chance to bring it back. Because once this whatever you
• 57:07
  want to call it, wokeism or progressivism, grows to a certain level,
• 57:13
  you can't kill it. It becomes too big to fail because it goes back
• 57:19
  to the whole notion of once a society has more takers than it has makers,
• 57:24
  and the takers have political power, then you're doomed, especially when there's
• 57:31
  a racial component to it, as there is with the demographic shift that has
• 57:37
  occurred over the last two generations in California. So there's no hope for California.
• 57:42
  It's only going to get nuttier and crazier as the remaining sane people die.
• 57:46
  Off or move out of state. And I think that the Santis,
• 57:52
  it seems to me, has looked at places like California and said, WHOA,
• 57:58
  Okay, So this is not a situation where we can remain pat We
• 58:01
  can't just stand by our conservative principles and hope for the best. No,
• 58:07
  no, no, no, we need to fight back. We need to
• 58:12
  create a beach head here. We need to create a situation where we are
• 58:17
  not going to allow this progressivism to take hold and to grow and to have
• 58:23
  this cancer take over the host. The cancer of progressivism and wokeism has completely
• 58:29
  taken over the host in California, and DeSantis has done in a heck of
• 58:32
  a job making sure that that doesn't happen in Florida. Now. He's done
• 58:38
  so in ways that can be confusing to people. I said in the last
• 58:42
  episode of the podcast that that the Disney thing I don't think was a great
• 58:46
  idea politically. I have no problem with it philosophically, even as the father
• 58:52
  of a family that has used to be hugely pro Disney, whose two young
• 58:58
  daughters still love Disneyland and Disney movies, and whose wife has been a big
• 59:02
  Disney fan her whole life. I get it. I get it, but
• 59:07
  taking on a massive media company, especially one with many national and local news
• 59:12
  organizations, didn't seem like a great idea to me, and it certainly hasn't
• 59:15
  turned out particularly well. Now. It might not hurt in a Republican primary,
• 59:20
  but I think it would hurt him in his general election polling against Joe
• 59:24
  Biden. And maybe we've already seen some of that, combined with the six
• 59:28
  month abortion band bill, which he signed, and which also is not a
• 59:32
  great move if you're about to run for president. But the Santis has proven
• 59:37
  time and time again that he is a man of principle. I have to
• 59:42
  respect that. I mean, politically, it would have been a lot easier
• 59:45
  for that abortion band to be at twelve weeks or fifteen weeks. That's a
• 59:51
  lot more easily understood, And it's an argument I think that you can make
• 59:54
  with a lot more people that Okay, all right, maybe that's your but
• 1:00:00
  maybe it's not. Two restrictive six weeks is really a tough sell. It's
• 1:00:05
  basically, on paper at least, an actual abortion ban, and that's going
• 1:00:10
  to be a tough situation in a general election. I don't think there's any
• 1:00:15
  question about it, but he understands that he's smart enough to understand that.
• 1:00:19
  And I have to respect the stance on principle. And so when somebody is
• 1:00:24
  standing on principle, you have to take the good with the bad. And
• 1:00:28
  I'll take a principal stand sometimes even if it's a losing one, especially when
• 1:00:34
  the contrast are two people without any principles at all, Joe Biden and Donald
• 1:00:38
  Trump. If you ask me what their principles are, I have no idea.
• 1:00:43
  Joe Biden's principles seemed to be whatever he's being told by progressives to support
• 1:00:49
  at that moment, and Donald Trump is whatever he perceives to be in his
• 1:00:52
  personal self interest at that time. Those are their overriding principles. Well,
• 1:01:00
  the Santis at least has real principles. He believes in things. Doesn't mean
• 1:01:05
  you're going to agree with him on everything. And by the way, politically,
• 1:01:07
  that often harms somebody a principle, because you might agree with him on
• 1:01:12
  nine out of ten things, but that one thing just really bothers you,
• 1:01:15
  and you're going, now, I'll go elsewhere. And I already said that
• 1:01:19
  that was going to be a problem for the Santis, that taking the independent
• 1:01:22
  minded Republicans and corralling them together would be like hurting cats because inherently they're the
• 1:01:29
  non cult members, they're the independent thinkers, and any little thing that they
• 1:01:35
  don't like, especially when there are many other options in a primary, is
• 1:01:38
  going to be problematic. But again, I'm gonna try to be as optimistic
• 1:01:42
  as possible in this the day after Rhonda Santis officially announces that he's running.
• 1:01:49
  So the main thing with the Santist to me is that he has the balls
• 1:01:54
  and the brains and the principles. Those have been proved, proven at every
• 1:02:02
  step of the way. And if he didn't have the balls, the brains,
• 1:02:06
  and the principles, that would be already incredibly obvious at this point because
• 1:02:12
  he has been battle tested, and obviously the biggest battle test he faced was
• 1:02:17
  with regard to the COVID pandemic. And for a lot of people, and
• 1:02:22
  I'm certainly one of them, this is the main reason I feel so confident
• 1:02:29
  supporting Rhonda Santis for president. Without COVID I would still have questions because you
• 1:02:37
  never know how someone is going to be until they actually face fire, until
• 1:02:43
  you know the old Mike Tyson thing. Everyone has a plan until they get
• 1:02:45
  punched in the mouth. Well, COVID was the biggest test ever for someone
• 1:02:52
  like Rhonda Santis, a first term governor of a major state. And to
• 1:02:58
  be clear, and Trump is trying his best because Trump knows deep down that
• 1:03:01
  he crapped the bed on COVID, and so he has been scared out of
• 1:03:07
  his mind that the Santists were going to be able to use that issue and
• 1:03:10
  the whole doctor Fauci thing to really blow a hole in the side of his
• 1:03:16
  ship. And that's why he's been trying to change history. And part of
• 1:03:22
  the way that Trump has been trying to change history and the Trump fans have
• 1:03:24
  been trying to change history, is that they will point to all sorts of
• 1:03:29
  statements that the Santists made and things that he did back in March of twenty
• 1:03:34
  twenty or April of twenty twenty, or maybe early May of twenty twenty that
• 1:03:37
  sound very much like he is on Doctor Fauci's team. Well, that was
• 1:03:45
  understandable at the time because the world was in a panic and Donald Trump,
• 1:03:51
  the leader of his party, the President United States, the guy who helped
• 1:03:54
  him get elected governor, was vouching for doctor Fauci and the rest of the
• 1:04:01
  health elites and the health industrial complex, and so everybody's telling the Santis this.
• 1:04:10
  The media is certainly telling the Santis this. So he goes along with
• 1:04:14
  the program, and he did nothing that was out of the ordinary in that
• 1:04:19
  early couple of month period of twenty twenty. But then the Santis did something
• 1:04:25
  that Trump was never able to do. He was able to look at the
• 1:04:30
  data and to talk to the experts and decipher on his own what was really
• 1:04:38
  going on and how we were going down the wrong path. And then he
• 1:04:45
  did something that was remarkable. Shouldn't be remarkable, but it was. He
• 1:04:54
  shifted course. Now, it should be pointed out the Brian Kemp of Georgia
• 1:04:59
  and also South Daka. South Dakota deserves some credit. But I don't really
• 1:05:04
  think South Dakota counts because the stakes aren't as high in South Dakota. You
• 1:05:10
  have no real liberals in South Dakota. There's no not a lot of media
• 1:05:15
  attention on South Dakota. So South Dakota was important just to show that it
• 1:05:18
  wasn't going to be a complete shit show if you did nothing regarding COVID restrictions.
• 1:05:25
  But it wasn't until Georgia, which obviously is a major state with the
• 1:05:28
  massive city of Atlanta, where against Donald Trump's urgings and in the face of
• 1:05:35
  Donald Trump's severe criticism, Bryan Kemp opened up Georgia and shortly after that,
• 1:05:45
  Ron de Santis did the same thing in Florida, which was obviously a situation
• 1:05:48
  and even bigger stakes than Georgia. And when Ron de Santis did that and
• 1:05:56
  basically went against the entire tie the title wave of what all the so called
• 1:06:03
  experts were saying, what everyone in the media was saying, he became a
• 1:06:09
  massive target for destruction because if he got away with this in Florida, then
• 1:06:17
  the news media was going to have the biggest embarrassment in their modern history,
• 1:06:23
  if not their entire history, because if they were as wrong about how to
• 1:06:29
  respond to COVID as they would have to be for Florida to not be a
• 1:06:33
  crap show after basically dropping all major restrictions and keeping schools open, you know,
• 1:06:41
  not having mask man dates, mocking masks, all of that, then
• 1:06:47
  how could they possibly maintain their credibility? Well, of course, what they
• 1:06:54
  did was they went on the full blown attack against Florida through everything they possibly
• 1:07:01
  could against Rhonda Santis and Florida. This was a war, this was a
• 1:07:09
  situation. It was literally a war, that's what it was. It was
• 1:07:13
  a war without bullets. This was a war for our way of life.
• 1:07:17
  And Rhonda Santis stood up for the cause of freedom and our founding principles and
• 1:07:24
  the Constitution, and for school kids. And he did so with great bravery
• 1:07:30
  and courage, and most importantly, with intelligence. He didn't just make these
• 1:07:38
  decrees and sit back and let the chips fall where they may. He went
• 1:07:45
  out on the attack and explained to the people of Florida what he was doing,
• 1:07:51
  why he was doing it, why everyone else was doing it wrong,
• 1:07:55
  and why what they were doing was the right way to go. And guess
• 1:08:00
  what happened. People came to Florida from all over, including many liberals that
• 1:08:05
  were sick and tired of what was happening in their own states. They came
• 1:08:10
  to Florida sometimes you know, on the down low well an incredibly hypocritical,
• 1:08:18
  hypocritical fashion. So Florida became this haven for people who were back home claiming
• 1:08:27
  that COVID restrictions were mandatory and important and saving lives. But when it came
• 1:08:32
  to their own situations and they wanted to get the hell out of Dodge.
• 1:08:36
  Where'd they go? They went to Florida, and so Florida showed the rest
• 1:08:43
  of the country that what we were doing was totally wrong. And it took
• 1:08:47
  a long time before the media decided, you know what, this is a
• 1:08:54
  losing battle. We're just going to drop this. We're just going to pretend
• 1:08:58
  it never really happened, and we're not going to admit that we were wrong
• 1:09:02
  or that the Santis was right, because we never do that, especially not
• 1:09:06
  with a Republican who could be very dangerous in the future. But we're just
• 1:09:11
  gonna We're just gonna pretend it's all over. Heck, you know, the
• 1:09:14
  pandemic is over, and so therefore there's no real need to talk about this
• 1:09:18
  anymore. And by the way, I think that the way that COVID has
• 1:09:26
  been covered both on the left and on the right is probably the biggest core
• 1:09:34
  problem. I know I'm trying to be optimistic here, but I think it
• 1:09:38
  bears repeating in this portion of my commentary. Is the biggest core problem for
• 1:09:44
  the de Santist campaign, because on the left, they never admitted that they
• 1:09:49
  were wrong, and that the santist was right. If they were fair,
• 1:09:51
  if we had a fair news meeting in this country, RHND De Santis would
• 1:09:56
  have at least gotten his You know what, We gotta hand it to him.
• 1:10:00
  De Sandus wasn't wrong, we were wrong. That never happened, and
• 1:10:06
  if it had happened like it should have, that would have been huge for
• 1:10:13
  De santiss national footprint, especially among independent voters. But the media made sure
• 1:10:18
  that never happened. I mean, my god, when you think about the
• 1:10:20
  COVID coverage, here's a situation we're going into COVID. We never had a
• 1:10:26
  national debate about any of this because we were all in a panic. There
• 1:10:30
  was no national debate about school closings that there was no national debate about business
• 1:10:35
  closings. There was no national debate about mask mandates. There was no national
• 1:10:40
  debate about vaccine mandates. It just got done, whether you liked it or
• 1:10:45
  not. No media discussion of the pros and the cons and whether or not
• 1:10:48
  this is a good idea. In fact, the opposite happened. Opposition got
• 1:10:53
  censored, literally censored, oftentimes punished, kicked off social media major figures because
• 1:11:02
  they didn't want the debate, and then when it was over, there was
• 1:11:06
  no post mortem, no autopsy, no hey, why do we get right?
• 1:11:13
  What do we get wrong? It was, uh, we've decided it's
• 1:11:16
  finally over, even though, by the way, the same number of people
• 1:11:19
  basically are dying of COVID on a monthly basis, and it turned out that
• 1:11:24
  the vaccines did nothing to stop the spread at all, and you could even
• 1:11:29
  argue didn't really stop death in the long run. It's certainly not after the
• 1:11:33
  first couple of months. So it's just astonishing no debate prior to our actions,
• 1:11:41
  and no post mortem afterwards. Now that we've decided that, you know,
• 1:11:45
  for convenience sake, it's suddenly over, and that's extraordinary. It's it's
• 1:11:50
  an damning indictment of the news media in general, but it has a massive
• 1:11:55
  impact on this twenty twenty four race because Desandis isn't getting except with a small
• 1:12:00
  portion of the population to figure this out for their own he's not getting the
• 1:12:04
  benefit that he should have for having been right. When you put all the
• 1:12:10
  chips down in a poker game, when it looks like you have a bad
• 1:12:15
  hand and you win, you get to collect all those chips right, you
• 1:12:23
  win a big pot. Well, the media prevented Rohnda Santis from being able
• 1:12:27
  to collect his pot, except among a relatively small portion of mostly conservatives nationally
• 1:12:35
  and among the people who were actually benefiting from him being right about COVID,
• 1:12:43
  the people of Florida, because that was the only real vindication he got,
• 1:12:48
  which was when he ran for real action against a former governor of the state,
• 1:12:54
  a former Republican. He won by basically twenty points. He blew the
• 1:13:00
  doors off. It shocked everybody by the margin of victory. I'm sure even
• 1:13:03
  Donald Trump, who tried to ding him three days before the election, calling
• 1:13:08
  him rhnd to sanctimonious. It was a resounding victory that should have been the
• 1:13:15
  moment where the Santists officially got his vindication, officially got to take his victory
• 1:13:24
  lap. And instead that night, and we documented this on this podcast,
• 1:13:29
  the only network that carried his speech live major network was Fox News Channel.
• 1:13:35
  None of the other networks even gave the Santists any semblance of credibility with regard
• 1:13:45
  to his victory speech, which directly articulated how the COVID response was the essence
• 1:13:51
  of why he won and why did they not do that well because they're all
• 1:13:56
  invested in the fact that the public not figure out that they were wrong on
• 1:14:00
  COVID and that some people got it right eventually and fairly quickly under the circumstances.
• 1:14:06
  And Rhonda Santis was right at the forefront of that. He was the
• 1:14:10
  one that took the greatest risk because he was in charge of the largest state
• 1:14:14
  that went in the other direction. And it bears repeating that if de Santis
• 1:14:19
  had not done that, I really believe that blue areas of this country would
• 1:14:24
  still be in major COVID restrictions today. If Florida had gone with the flow
• 1:14:30
  and there was no proof in a major state that this was all bullcrap,
• 1:14:36
  then people like Gavin Newsom in California and certainly in Illinois and New York and
• 1:14:44
  maybe some other areas, they would have stayed the course with this. Now
• 1:14:47
  they'll never admit that. That's why they decided to finally pretend that this never
• 1:14:53
  really happened, that everything's back to normal now. And by the way,
• 1:14:57
  when we went back to normal, nothing bad happened in any way, shape
• 1:15:00
  or form. But it was Florida that allowed this thing to end. It
• 1:15:06
  was Florida that did that. It was Ron de Santis that did that.
• 1:15:12
  So I mean, if you live in a blue area of the country and
• 1:15:15
  you can thank Ron de Santis almost single handedly for why it is that we
• 1:15:21
  finally got out of this quagmire. And this is where life is often unjust
• 1:15:29
  because while DeSantis led us out of this quagmire and deserves huge credit for the
• 1:15:33
  courage and bravery and intelligence that he showed during COVID, I actually think he's
• 1:15:40
  going to be punished for it in some ways, and not just by the
• 1:15:43
  fact that the news media never gave him the credit that he deserved. By
• 1:15:46
  the way, it's not just the left wing media. This is where de
• 1:15:49
  Santis, you know, it's it's a unique situation where nobody is incentivized to
• 1:15:56
  give to Santa's his due. The left wing media give the Santas his due,
• 1:16:00
  because inherently they would be admitting that they were wrong about COVID, which
• 1:16:03
  they'll never do because it goes right to the heart of their credibility. And
• 1:16:08
  the right wing media, while they'll go after Fauci and so DeSantis can make
• 1:16:13
  some headway there, they never do a full excoriation of the COVID response.
• 1:16:19
  Why because that would require criticizing Donald Trump, and they will never do that
• 1:16:27
  because that will piss off too much of their core audience. So in both
• 1:16:31
  the left wing media and the right wing media, De santiss COVID response does
• 1:16:38
  not get nearly the credit or the traction that it deserves. And now that
• 1:16:44
  COVID is perceived as being over, de Santis gets the worst of all worlds.
• 1:16:51
  It's a lot like what happened with Winston Churchill after World War Two.
• 1:16:57
  Churchill lost his job as Prime Minister of great after miraculously pulling out a victory
• 1:17:02
  in World War Two because the war was over there was no need for him
• 1:17:06
  anymore. Now. He eventually came back later, but once I guess they
• 1:17:11
  figured out that they had made a mistake, but he was super old at
• 1:17:15
  that point. But I mean that to me is an amazing and important historical
• 1:17:17
  fact where bravery and going against the crane and pulling off a miracle victory will
• 1:17:25
  not often be rewarded if they don't think, If the people don't think,
• 1:17:30
  they still need you to do the same thing in the future. The same
• 1:17:32
  thing, by the way, happened with George Herbert Walker Bush to a lesser
• 1:17:35
  degree with regard to the Iraq War, me served one term in office and
• 1:17:43
  at one point had approval ratings in the eighty percent range because of the Iraq
• 1:17:49
  War. Well, by the time nineteen ninety two came around, the Iraq
• 1:17:55
  War was over, we thought we'd never worry about Iraq again. It didn't
• 1:17:58
  turn out that way, but there was no need for him anymore. That
• 1:18:02
  was in the distant past, even though it had basically just happened in a
• 1:18:08
  real world timeline. So there is this weird phenomenon where we do not reward
• 1:18:15
  the victors, even under extraordinary circumstances, if the source of their victory is
• 1:18:24
  no longer seen as relevant. And it is stunning even to me as to
• 1:18:30
  how many people don't seem to think here in May of twenty twenty three,
• 1:18:35
  that the COVID response is still very relevant. I mean, to me,
• 1:18:42
  it's it's incredibly relevant, one from an accountability standpoint, but two, because
• 1:18:48
  this thing ain't over. They're gonna do this again if they can. This
• 1:18:55
  was the progressive wet dream. This was what they could never have possibly imagined,
• 1:19:03
  what they were able to get away with when it came to telling other
• 1:19:08
  people what to do with their lives. This is the greatest thing that ever
• 1:19:12
  happened to progressivism. They were able to bring the United States of America down
• 1:19:15
  to its knees. Our very foundation was shattered. They were allowed to make
• 1:19:26
  us do all sorts of completely insane things, even to our children, and
• 1:19:30
  people didn't fight back. I mean, there are still liberals who write articles.
• 1:19:38
  One woman did this recently in a major publication about how they missed the
• 1:19:43
  lockdowns. Now, I don't think that's a huge portion of people, but
• 1:19:48
  I'm telling you, among the elites and among government officials, especially on the
• 1:19:54
  local level, these whackadoodle health directors, this was the greatest thing that ever
• 1:20:00
  happen to these people. And if they ever get the excuse to do it
• 1:20:02
  again, they are damn sure gonna do it again unless there's somebody in a
• 1:20:09
  position of real power to stop them. And Ron des sant As has already
• 1:20:14
  proven he's willing and able to take on that fight and win, and not
• 1:20:18
  just win on a micro level, but to win on a political level as
• 1:20:24
  well, because he's able to make his case to the people and basically sixty
• 1:20:30
  percent of fuller Indians a formerly Purple States, said yeah, I get it.
• 1:20:38
  I'm with you. That guy's with me. He saved us during COVID,
• 1:20:43
  He saved my kid. He did the right thing. He explained why
• 1:20:49
  Trump isn't capable of doing anything that We've already seen that Trump's not capable of
• 1:20:54
  doing anything like that at any level. Trump failed at every possible level during
• 1:21:00
  a crisis, and for me it was particularly frustrating because I had predicted that
• 1:21:04
  all along. I said, there are all sorts of reasons to fear a
• 1:21:09
  Trump presidency as a conservative, but the number one is what the hell happens
• 1:21:13
  in a crisis, because he is he is incredibly unqualified to be able to
• 1:21:19
  handle it, And even I was shocked at how poorly handled he handled COVID.
• 1:21:26
  I went to a I used to at the beginning of COVID, but
• 1:21:29
  I used to ask me to speak at some of these local rallies against these
• 1:21:33
  restrictions until they realized there was a non Trump guy, and these things just
• 1:21:38
  became pro Trump rallies and I had no interest. But I think the first
• 1:21:42
  time I was asked to speak, I mocked Trump, saying, you know,
• 1:21:46
  I was told there would be balls. Where are the balls. I
• 1:21:51
  was promised balls and a Trump presidency. There are no balls, And I
• 1:21:57
  mean Trump came up completely empty at every level intellectually, from a courage standpoint,
• 1:22:03
  bravery, perspective, consistency. My god, he shifted his position every
• 1:22:08
  other day, which is, by the way, typical of Trump, partially
• 1:22:13
  why his cult stayed with him. I wrote about this at the time,
• 1:22:16
  Because his position changed all the time, you could go and find whatever position
• 1:22:23
  you liked and say, see he was saying this at the time, Well,
• 1:22:27
  yeah, he contradicted himself two or three days later, and because he
• 1:22:31
  was throwing everything he could up against the wall to see what might work for
• 1:22:35
  him, and his cult forgets the bad stuff. Trump is like a bad
• 1:22:43
  family vacation which you only take once a year. By the next year,
• 1:22:45
  you've forgotten all the bad stuff, so you take it again. That I
• 1:22:49
  mean, and when it came to COVID, that's a large part of why
• 1:22:54
  his base simply refuses to understand how badly he blew it on COVID. So
• 1:23:01
  I am skeptical, even while trying to be as optimistic as possible, that
• 1:23:06
  COVID is going to be the be all, end all issue for DeSantis here,
• 1:23:12
  it's faded way too fast, and because of the media dynamic I've already
• 1:23:15
  articulated, I don't think it has the power nearly that it should have,
• 1:23:21
  even in a Republican primary. Now, maybe Desantists can make it into one
• 1:23:29
  during the campaign, but that would require basically a one on one debate with
• 1:23:34
  Trump, and I'm not sure we're ever going to get that, because I
• 1:23:39
  don't think Trump is dumb enough to do a one on one debate with Desantists,
• 1:23:42
  Because a one on one debate between DeSantis and Trump would go very poorly
• 1:23:47
  for Donald Trump, very poorly in my opinion, even as pessimistic as I
• 1:23:53
  am, even much as I think that Trump is very difficult to defeat and
• 1:24:00
  look bad in a multi candidate debate, which is what he's gonna get,
• 1:24:03
  Which is why he's thrilled that the race is as crowded as is currently,
• 1:24:08
  is why he's congratulating Tim Scott for getting in the race like he's congratulated Vavec
• 1:24:14
  Ramiswami and allowed his former campaign manager Korey Lewandowski to run Vaveag's campaign. I
• 1:24:19
  mean, you know, as I said in a previous podcast, Trump may
• 1:24:23
  not have colluded with Russia in twenty sixteen, but he's sure as hell is
• 1:24:27
  colluding with Vivek Ramiswami in twenty twenty four. That's for damn sure. Whether
• 1:24:31
  it's just a wink wig nod, no, I don't know, but that
• 1:24:35
  effectively that's the reality. But to me, for the COVID issue to really
• 1:24:42
  start to resonate with Republican voters, there would have to be that one on
• 1:24:47
  one debate with Trump, which unfortunately, I don't think we're ever gonna get
• 1:24:51
  unless something really dramatic. I mean, everything would have to go perfectly from
• 1:24:57
  this moment forward for that occurrence to her actually happened, for Trump to be
• 1:25:00
  forced into that situation. Now, I've stated before the stakes of this twenty
• 1:25:09
  twenty four election are incredibly high, and just for the record, you know,
• 1:25:16
  it's amazing to me that not more Republicans understand this. Some do.
• 1:25:24
  I don't know what the percentage is, but if Joe Biden wins reelection in
• 1:25:30
  twenty twenty four, he is going to resign in twenty twenty seven. Just
• 1:25:35
  after the twenty twenty six mid terms. Kamala Harris is going to become the
• 1:25:40
  first female president in American history. She will be then running as an incumbent
• 1:25:46
  in twenty twenty eight, which will completely change her persona completely. Now she
• 1:25:53
  is a horrible, horrible candidate, but so is Joe Biden. And at
• 1:26:00
  point Biden will have won election and reelection, and who the hell is going
• 1:26:04
  to be the candidate in twenty twenty eight. If Trump loses to Biden in
• 1:26:12
  twenty twenty four and he wins this nomination and he's still healthy in twenty twenty
• 1:26:17
  eight, he's going to be the Republican nominee again in twenty twenty eight.
• 1:26:25
  And at that point, I mean, he's in his eighties, and Harris
• 1:26:30
  is an incumbent president and he will have been running for the fourth consecutive time.
• 1:26:34
  I mean, there's no independent voter in the world that's going to vote
• 1:26:38
  for Trump over Harris in that situation, and the demographics will further have gone
• 1:26:44
  and the Democrats favor and so I think Harris wins that that matchup with Trump
• 1:26:50
  in twenty twenty eight, assuming Trump is still healthy enough to do that,
• 1:26:56
  which I think he might based upon his current helps situation. And so now
• 1:27:01
  you've got basically twelve more years of Biden Harris because once she wins election the
• 1:27:10
  first time, she's gonna win reelection because there's no one gonna be run against
• 1:27:14
  her. Who the hell's gonna run against her in twenty thirty two. Even
• 1:27:16
  I don't think that that Trump is going to be the candidate in twenty thirty
• 1:27:20
  two, and hopefully it won't be Donald Junior. But the reality is,
• 1:27:27
  if Biden wins, the most likely scenario is twelve years of Biden Harris,
• 1:27:35
  with Harris being president for almost ten years, and that is the end of
• 1:27:42
  America period, end of sentence, stick a fork in US, And I
• 1:27:47
  don't think there's any question about that. It's over at that time, It's
• 1:27:53
  done, nails in the coffin the United States ceases to exist. And that
• 1:28:00
  is why it's so important that Biden not be reelected. So how do you
• 1:28:08
  stop that? Well, do you go with Trump, who already lost to
• 1:28:15
  Joe Biden once by a significant electoral college margin, a significant popular vote margin,
• 1:28:24
  Yes, forty four thousand votes go the other direction. It would have
• 1:28:28
  been in two sixty nine to sixty nine tie, which, by the way,
• 1:28:30
  it's important to point out, in twenty twenty four would actually have gone
• 1:28:33
  to Trump because the electoral College vote allocation has shifted slightly in those states in
• 1:28:39
  the Republican's favor. But that is a You're putting all your eggs in that
• 1:28:46
  basket, which is incredibly precarious because Trump has extremely high disapproval ratings. Over
• 1:28:55
  half the country seems to hate his guts. And you give up with Donald
• 1:29:00
  Trump, you give up maybe the biggest issue when it comes to Joe Biden,
• 1:29:06
  which is his age. Now, yes, Trump does very well in
• 1:29:13
  general election polling on this issue of age, because Trump is a couple of
• 1:29:17
  years younger, and he's far more with it and more vibrant than Joe Biden
• 1:29:24
  is. And I fully acknowledge that Trump could use that issue to his benefit,
• 1:29:30
  and he could even win the election in twenty twenty four. That is
• 1:29:34
  a possible scenario, especially if Biden continues to deteriorate. However, you cannot
• 1:29:43
  argue that running a guy who will be in his eighties as president have elected
• 1:29:48
  Donald Trump is a better contrast if you're trying to make age the issue than
• 1:29:57
  a guy who is forty four years old with three young kids and a hot
• 1:30:00
  wife. I'm sorry you're giving up, Maybe not totally but at least in
• 1:30:09
  good portion and incredibly poked an issue. The contrast between De Santis and Biden
• 1:30:15
  will be stark on the age issue. The contrast between Trump and Biden will
• 1:30:23
  be subtle. Not to mention the fact that, again, we've already gone
• 1:30:29
  through this once before. We've seen this movie, we know how it ends.
• 1:30:32
  Why would it be different this time? No one has ever gotten an
• 1:30:36
  explanation from the Trump people for this. Why would it be different? They
• 1:30:41
  say that twenty twenty election was rigged, Well, he was the incumbent president.
• 1:30:45
  Then how the hell is the twenty twenty four election not going to be
• 1:30:48
  rigged against him when he's no longer the incumbent president? How's that going to
• 1:30:54
  work? By the way, for the record, the election in twenty twenty
• 1:30:58
  was not rigged. Was it a perfect election? Nowhere near? I hate
• 1:31:01
  mail in balloting, I hate it. I think COVID distorted the entire election.
• 1:31:06
  I think that was partially why the media did what they did with regard
• 1:31:11
  to COVID and why Democrats did what they did with regard to COVID. But
• 1:31:15
  by the rules of that election, as distorted as they were, Joe Biden
• 1:31:18
  won, and no one has been able to come up with an explanation for
• 1:31:24
  how it is that Trump will do any better or differently dramatically in twenty twenty
• 1:31:29
  four than he did in twenty twenty. I mean, so right there,
• 1:31:34
  why would you go with Trump? Why would you go with a sour milk
• 1:31:38
  when you got fresh milk right here? Why would you go with the guy
• 1:31:42
  who can only serve one more term? By the way, if he wins,
• 1:31:45
  which again I think is possible, that's how weak Biden is. It
• 1:31:47
  is possible that Trump could beat Biden. Now I'll get to that scenario in
• 1:31:51
  a second. But why would you go with the guy who can only serve
• 1:31:57
  one term under the constitution, Donald Trump? When you got a forty four
• 1:32:00
  year old guy who can serve two terms? And I know that Trump people
• 1:32:02
  say, wow, you give Trump one more term and then the Santis runs
• 1:32:05
  in twenty twenty eight and we get twelve years. Yeah right, That's never,
• 1:32:10
  never, ever, ever, ever ever gonna happen. For a number
• 1:32:14
  of reasons that should be rather obvious, so that to me should be game
• 1:32:19
  set match. The fact that the contrast on the age issue is not nearly
• 1:32:26
  as strong with Trump as it is with the Santis the fact that Trump can
• 1:32:30
  only run for one term. De Santis can run for two terms. But
• 1:32:33
  there's also the issue of the key states and who plays better in those states.
• 1:32:38
  We already know exactly where this election is going to be one and lost.
• 1:32:41
  It's gonna be one and lost in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona,
• 1:32:45
  Nevada, and Wisconsin, maybe Pennsylvania. No other states matter. Those are
• 1:32:53
  the only states that matter. That's a fact. That's an incredibly small number
• 1:33:00
  of states. And in poll after poll which have compared how Trump does against
• 1:33:05
  Biden as opposed to how the Santist does against Biden in those states, the
• 1:33:12
  Santist does better basically every single time, and it's usually by a fairly significant
• 1:33:17
  margin, up to about five to six seven points in many cases. And
• 1:33:24
  just use your brain, folks Georgia. How is Georgia not more likely to
• 1:33:30
  vote for De Santis than they would be for Trump against Biden. We already
• 1:33:34
  have the twenty twenty two election to show US Governor Kemp won reelection fairly easily.
• 1:33:41
  Herschell Walker, Donald Trump's candidate for Senate, lost twice by two solid
• 1:33:46
  points. It was about a five to seven point difference at seven point difference
• 1:33:51
  between how the governor of Georgia Kemp did as opposed to how herschell Walker did.
• 1:34:00
  The Santis is clearly a Kemp guy and vice versa. Kemp would clearly
• 1:34:05
  endorse the Santis and probably will do so in the primary. I'm guessing Trump
• 1:34:12
  hates Kemp, he hates everybody in Georgia. He may get indicted over what
• 1:34:15
  happened in Georgia for election interference, which obviously would not help him in a
• 1:34:21
  rematch in Georgia. So I mean Georgia. Georgia. Georgia is really the
• 1:34:28
  heart of this whole matter, and Arizona is similar. The twenty twenty two
• 1:34:32
  elections showed us that Trump scubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake and his senatorial candidate. They
• 1:34:40
  both lost winnable races, and in a state that Republicans should should be able
• 1:34:48
  to win. Well. Recently, there were poles indicating that the Santists would
• 1:34:53
  win Arizona against Biden while Trump would lose. And if you win Georgia and
• 1:34:59
  you win a Arizona, now you're basically one state away from pulling this off,
• 1:35:02
  as long as you hold on to North Carolina you hold on to North
• 1:35:05
  Carolina, you win Georgia, you win Arizona. I truly believe that that's
• 1:35:10
  what the Santists would do. I believe the Santis holds North Carolina, wins
• 1:35:15
  Georgia, and wins Arizona, then he's just got to basically get lucky in
• 1:35:18
  one more state, Wisconsin being the most likely scenario, though Nevada is certainly
• 1:35:25
  possible. And so that's the path. Nobody can explain to me what the
• 1:35:30
  hell of the path is the Trump's victory. And yes, there are these
• 1:35:33
  national polls now showing him beating Biden by seven points. I want to see
• 1:35:40
  a state by state breakdown because that doesn't make any sense to mean we don't
• 1:35:45
  elect presidents by national polls. Is it possible that Trump beats Biden. Yes,
• 1:35:50
  I do think it's possible, because Biden is just that week and Democrats
• 1:35:56
  are trapped. And that's what's so frustrating about this situation. Democrats are historically
• 1:36:00
  trapped here. This is the residuals. The residual either benefit or negative side
• 1:36:09
  depending on your political perspective of the Obama presidency. Democrats should be being forced
• 1:36:15
  to pay for the Obama presidency what I mean by that is they made Obama
• 1:36:20
  into such a god, such a hero, that he blocked out the sun.
• 1:36:27
  He literally blocked out the sun, and they could create no new stars
• 1:36:32
  because it was all about Obama. So all they had left in twenty sixteen
• 1:36:39
  with Hillary, and we saw how that went, and by twenty twenty,
• 1:36:42
  all they had was a relic of the Obama administration, Joe Biden. Well,
• 1:36:48
  now they've played the Hillary card, they're playing the Biden card, and
• 1:36:56
  they're forced to play the Biden card way after its expiration date, where he's
• 1:37:02
  in his eighties and appears to have dementia and is barely with it on a
• 1:37:06
  daily basis. This is the moment they have to pay. Well, Trump
• 1:37:13
  is the only path where they may not have to pay, or at least
• 1:37:16
  the path that's most likely where they wouldn't have to pay, because he's already
• 1:37:20
  been discredited in the minds of the key voters in the key states. The
• 1:37:26
  Santis has not been and the Santis can make a far better argument than Trump
• 1:37:30
  can, and has all the attributes that I already articulated that Trump does not
• 1:37:34
  have. That's another reason why this is such a key election. This is
• 1:37:41
  as vulnerable as Democrats are going to get on the national level. I guarantee
• 1:37:45
  you there are people on the Democratic side who are terrified of the Biden candidacy.
• 1:37:50
  They would love to dump him, but they have no better option because
• 1:37:57
  Kamala Harris is no short thing at all, So they can't even ask him
• 1:38:00
  to resign or not run. And if he were to suddenly change his mind
• 1:38:06
  and not run, Harris would have to be the candidate because you can't as
• 1:38:12
  a Democrat. It's against every rule in their playbook to go against the person
• 1:38:16
  who's next in line when that person is a female of color trying to make
• 1:38:20
  history. There's no way around it. So this is the moment. This
• 1:38:28
  is the moment Democrats need to be forced to pay, and going with Trump
• 1:38:32
  gives them an out. It gives them a path around being forced to pay.
• 1:38:40
  This was a you know, monopoly game. This would be a get
• 1:38:44
  out of jail free card that a Trump candidacy would give the Democrats. And
• 1:38:51
  so and by the way, you know, when you're comparing Trump and the
• 1:38:57
  Santists, I mean, it should be so obvious which person you go with,
• 1:39:02
  but it should be pointed out the Santis has never been indicted for anything.
• 1:39:08
  He's never been sued for rape, not been indicted for hush money to
• 1:39:13
  a porn star with whom he had an affair while his after his wife had
• 1:39:19
  given birth to one of his children. I'm very confident that that's never gonna
• 1:39:25
  be known or found out about or because it's never happened with Ron de Sandis.
• 1:39:30
  And by the way, everyone knows that there's nothing like that about Ron
• 1:39:33
  de Santis, because he's clearly a guy of good character. And so you
• 1:39:39
  know, these indictments, while they clearly don't seem to matter to the majority
• 1:39:43
  of Republican voters, if they continue to pile up, especially, they're gonna
• 1:39:47
  matter to independent voters. They have to at some point. I can't believe
• 1:39:53
  we're living in a world where they don't seem to matter to Republicans. In
• 1:39:57
  fact, they seem to actually be a benefit Trump on the Republican side.
• 1:40:00
  I've even joked that DeSantis is only hope at this point maybe to get indicted
• 1:40:05
  in San Francisco over something related to COVID response or transgenderism that might get him
• 1:40:13
  right back in the race. That's how crazy things are, That's how much
• 1:40:16
  PTSD the Republican voting base has when it comes to the elites and the media
• 1:40:23
  and the establishment, and how much they despise everybody who is in charge,
• 1:40:28
  by the way, not without decent reasons. And so these indictments should matter
• 1:40:35
  because they're gonna have mattered to independent voters, and it's only going to be
• 1:40:40
  a negative for Trump. It's not an issue obviously with the Santis. But
• 1:40:44
  of course, as I've said many times before, De Santis is gonna get
• 1:40:46
  punished because every time one of these things happens, he's gonna be forced to
• 1:40:49
  take Trump's side publicly. Otherwise he's going to be seen as a cuck or
• 1:40:54
  a rhino by the conservative media and by the Republican voting base. So that's
• 1:41:00
  a catch twenty two situations. On the bright side, since I'm trying very
• 1:41:04
  hard to be optimistic on this, today, after De Santis announces his candidacy,
• 1:41:09
  it appears as if De Santis's money has weathered the storm, the storm
• 1:41:15
  of the last couple of months where Trump's polling numbers have blown through the roof
• 1:41:21
  and the santiss have shrunk. I was very concerned about that, and understandably
• 1:41:27
  so, but by all indications, both publicly as well as what I'm being
• 1:41:30
  told privately, the fundraising has not been negatively impacted in a significant way,
• 1:41:38
  which surprises me because clearly that was one of Trump's goals. Trump targeted very
• 1:41:44
  publicly de Santis is fundraising. It appears as if that has not worked,
• 1:41:49
  and so the Santis at least at first, is going to have a major
• 1:41:55
  money advantage, both in his campaign as well as his political action committee.
• 1:42:00
  Now, when you have money, that means you can have organization, and
• 1:42:03
  there's a very good chance then in theory, he can outorganize and outspend Trump.
• 1:42:11
  Now, do organization and money still mean as much as they used to?
• 1:42:15
  I don't know the answer to that. I think they do in Iowa,
• 1:42:18
  but they may not matter as much in the rest of the country.
• 1:42:23
  So I've already made the argument that you got to go all in in Iowa,
• 1:42:26
  and I think there's a shot to win in Iowa, and that at
• 1:42:29
  least keeps you in the ball game, that keeps this race from being called
• 1:42:32
  in the mercy rule. However, the next two weeks are critical critical.
• 1:42:41
  If there's not a major bump for DeSantis. The next two weeks with a
• 1:42:44
  good announcement, and with a major money buying, money spending spree on campaign
• 1:42:53
  ads and what have you, then I do think we're going to be in
• 1:42:56
  mercy rule territory because Trump is going to be very eager to invoke the mercy
• 1:43:01
  rule. What I mean by that is, you know there's little league games,
• 1:43:04
  or sometimes baseball games or other sporting events where if it gets two out
• 1:43:10
  of hand, they just call off the rest of the game. Trump doesn't
• 1:43:14
  want to play the rest of the game because he doesn't want to debate the
• 1:43:15
  Santis. He doesn't want any kind of accountability. So I am very much
• 1:43:20
  in the camp that believes that if in a couple of weeks DeSantis hasn't made
• 1:43:25
  major headway in the national polling, then Trump is going to announce he's not
• 1:43:30
  going to do these debates because he will have the leverage to do that,
• 1:43:33
  and the conservative media will not attack him hard on that, and I don't
• 1:43:39
  think there would be that much of a price to pay. And then it's
• 1:43:42
  basically checkmate, because I don't know how you get out of that situation where
• 1:43:47
  you know the debates will be a disaster without Trump. DeSantis is in a
• 1:43:50
  no win under that circumstance, so these next couple of weeks are critical.
• 1:43:56
  I do think it is possible if the announcement is seen as having gone well,
• 1:44:01
  and the money being spent is done so prudently, and the impact of
• 1:44:08
  him actually being in the race has the effect of bringing back a lot of
• 1:44:13
  this support that he seemingly has lost over the last couple of months, then
• 1:44:16
  we're back in the ballgame, and it would be very interesting to see the
• 1:44:21
  media coverage of DeSantis today is all about optimism, or at least mostly about
• 1:44:28
  optimism from my perspective. But I'm sure in the next episode of the podcast
• 1:44:34
  will return to reality and talk about how it is that the media handles coverage
• 1:44:41
  of de Santis, because there's a massive difference between what the coverage of the
• 1:44:45
  Sandis's announcement should be. In a remotely fair world, it should be Obama
• 1:44:51
  like that, this is a conservative hero who was vindicated during COVID and now
• 1:44:58
  is taking aw the bad guy, the guy we've been telling you is a
• 1:45:03
  mortal threat to democracy for several years. Here's the one guy who wants to
• 1:45:09
  slay the dragon. Right, So if the media was remotely consistent, they
• 1:45:15
  would at least give De Santis credit for that, but as we've seen from
• 1:45:19
  the never Trump frauds like Bill Crystall that I've already mentioned previously in the podcast,
• 1:45:26
  that's unlikely to very unlikely to be the case. They expose themselves by
• 1:45:30
  not embracing De Santis because they don't really fear Trump very much. They actually
• 1:45:35
  want Trump to be the nominee one because of the ratings and content he provides,
• 1:45:41
  but also because they believe he will be the least effective person to go
• 1:45:45
  up against Joe Biden and would be the person most likely to give them twelve
• 1:45:49
  years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, which is what they really want,
• 1:45:55
  at least from a policy and agenda perspective. So the Santists announcement coverage should
• 1:46:01
  be Obama like, but it's much more likely to be in the camp of,
• 1:46:08
  well, this guy's basically Trump, only worse, more dangerous, He's
• 1:46:11
  smarter, more effective, He's Trump two point zero, only we should be
• 1:46:16
  far more worried about him, and hopefully Republicans, enough Republicans will see that
• 1:46:23
  as the liberal media reaction and go, wait a minute, hold on,
• 1:46:26
  isn't that a signal that we should actually be going towards the santist camp.
• 1:46:30
  I'm hopeful that some people are going to get it. I'm still doubtful that
• 1:46:33
  that number is going to be high enough to win the day in the end,
• 1:46:38
  but these next couple of weeks are critical. There's got to be enough
• 1:46:41
  people that at least start to get it to pump the brakes on this Trump
• 1:46:47
  coronation. That's the key for the next couple of weeks, and we will
• 1:46:51
  cover all of it right here on the Death of Journalism podcast. Until next
• 1:46:57
  time, please remember to subscribe, rate, and review you this podcast episode.
• 1:47:01
  If you share it on social media, make sure you tag me and
• 1:47:03
  I'll be happy to share it to my followers on Twitter and my friends on
• 1:47:09
  Facebook. This has been episode number sixty one of the Death of Journalism podcast.
• 1:47:14
  My name is John Ziegler. Thanks for listening.