Countdown to the Edgelord Announcement

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the next level.

I’m j v l here with my best friends. Sarah Longwell and Tim Miller of the Bulwark. Before we get started, hit the thumbs up button, hit the subscribe, give us five stars. And when you’re done with all that, head over to the Bulwark dot com and sign up for all of the free stuff we give away. We give away a fabulous morning newsletter by Charlie Sykes every single day for free.

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Okay. Also, housekeeping note, come and hang with us on YouTube tonight at eight PM where we’re going to talk about the

wonderful, beautiful, big d energy, Ron

DeSantis announcement, as he sits down in a Twitter space with Elon Musk, can you feel the excitement?

A lot to say.

I do think it’s kind of funny that Camala Harris was able to do

a big, gigantic, everybody look at me, thousands of people there,

launch event. And Ron DeSantis is like, I’ll be over on the slightly better version of rumble,

Clubhouse. I’m in I’m in a clubhouse with a with with an anti semitic memer, audio only, audio only.

Sarah, let me go to you first. Again, I feel like we have to say this, make a disclosure on every single one of these things that we do. All of us would prefer that any other human being on the planet, then Donald Trump, be the Republican nominee, we would probably prefer, of the declared candidates, I speaking only for myself, in descending order, Acea Hutchinson followed by Tim Scott, followed by Nikki Haley. The point is, we’ll even take Ron DeSantis, who who is, in many ways, perhaps almost as dangerous as Trump, but in a couple key ways, probably not quite as dangerous as Trump. And so we’ll take any of this.

We’re not rooting against any of these people. We are simply trying to give you real analysis, because one of problems we have right now, especially in anti anti Trump world is, they want Rhonda Santa so bad that they won’t actually tell you what they really think. And that’s not how we work here at the bulwark. Good for us. So Sarah Longwell all that disclaimer out of the way, so you don’t have to make it yourself.

That was quite the wind up.

Tell us.

It was. I mean, I I’m just enjoying watching Tim so desperate for a take. I I’m like, I incentivized to talk so slowly right now. I know.

That’s why I went deeper.

See if I could if he’ll, like, explode with takes, and get takes all over the screen. Here, I’m only gonna say one thing, Tim, one big observation. It’s it’s only it’s adjacent. To the Musk Twitter announcement. The Musk Twitter announcement coupled with did you guys watch his launch video?

Mhmm.

The launch video is like him getting ready to take the stage to a fake crowd, and it is voiced. I was listening to it being like, Is this voice British? And I was like, is this a famous, like, churchill speech? Like, I’m finding myself googling the language, and I’m like, No. No.

Wait. This is like him. Like, this is meant to be like the opening thing, but it’s not DeSantis’ voice and there’s no real crowd.

His

voice is horrible.

So here’s what I know. The hack in me knows this as sure as I know anything. They tested an ad with Ron DeSantis voicing his own. Video and it tested badly. And they had to go get a voice over, and they were nervous about the crowds, And like, I had this whole thing about Ron DeSantis being too online, which is what the Musk thing is.

I guess I’d sort of been like, No. This guy is a real governor. He won by twenty points. Like, this is not but, like, the idea that he would announce on Twitter with Elon Musk. I I just like, I don’t know if he realizes how old most Republican voters are.

Like, the gerontocracy of our voters preclude any idea that they would be sitting on Twitter and waiting for Rhonda Santos’s tech announcement. But I’ll let Tim go now, but that’s my top one.

Well, I’m sorry. I have a question for you first, Sarah. Do you think this counts as an in kind contribution?

I shouldn’t forget all my take. Some of them are leaking up as out. Sorry. Continue.

The no. Does this count as an in kind contribution? Or because Twitter is most definitely not a media platform they say all the time. Right? We’re not we’re not like you can’t hold us to the same legal standards that you hold news sources like the New York Times or CBS News.

We’re different from that. And so if they’re different from that, is this a contribution then?

I love that question. I don’t think so, because I don’t know the monetary value of it, which I’m not sure you could price, But

It’s not forty four billion dollars. That’s for sure.

It’s not. It’s not. So I don’t know that it’s an in kind contribution. It’s all very weird though. The idea that Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis

—

Having already endorsed him is now hosting him to make his announcement on his platform. It’s weird. Musk hasn’t endorsed

him for twenty four, though.

He

did. He did. He in he pre endorsed him, like, eight months ago. It’s kind

of like a straight week. I don’t I don’t know if it was an official endorsement. Yeah. I mean, Musk Musk tweets a lot.

He said, I will I am supporting Ron DeSantis for president.

Here’s the thing. Like, my favorite thing about Elon Musk is how he doesn’t understand what free speech means, and it does seem perfect that Elon Musk is going to have Ron DeSantis on, they will probably con fab about their mutual love of free speech, and both of them are massive restrictors of free speech that they don’t like. Okay. I’m done with my takes, Tim. You go.

I thought that a problem with the last Twitter regime was that they were biased against a particular ideology. So is this an endorsement, I guess No, I

don’t think so.

One of his blue check fanboys tweeted asking if he had support to send us in twenty four and he replied, yes.

But we don’t know if that context was in the primary or in the general.

An economy of words there from Elon Musk, which is unusual.

Yeah.

So I I I wanna get back to Elon Musk, and I have big take about David Sachs, meatball Sachs, is I like to call it meatball junior, who is also in this audio only Twitter space. I think that that’s worth just everybody batting around a little bit, but just on the strategy side of why Ron DeSantis is doing it like this. I think both of you hit on interesting points. Sarah Longwell gerontocracy side of things. I had a reporter call me the other day or yesterday and ask, you know, if this might be a smart idea, right?

Because Donald Trump dominated the the cable news, the TV battle space with his call ins and, you know, and he dominated the conversation that way. And maybe DeSantis can can do that for a modern, you know, using more modern tools than cable. Now we’re eight years on, you know, more fewer people have cable, etcetera, etcetera. And and it wouldn’t be a bad point if Ron DeSantis was a Democrat, but he’s a Republican and my point is the median Republican primary voter is sixty five plus didn’t go to college and is not engaging in audio only, which I’ve mentioned three times now, Twitter spaces. It’s a very, it’s very strange.

I get is not reaching the target audience. It is the audience that it’s reaching is the people he doesn’t need, right, which are the people that already me with him. The college educated, highly online, Uber, you know, engaged in politics, Ben Shapiro listening, you know, Chris Ruffo fans, you know, who who, you know, follow this stuff very closely. Day, the Twitter space Twitter would be a native platform for them. But but those are already gonna be desantis’s people.

The people that he needs to get let either, it never got on Twitter in the first place, barely understood how to use it, just had Donald Trump alert coming to their phone. You know, have already moved over to truth and obviously we’re cast, you know, this is generalizing. There there may be a handful of people, but it’s not the core base that you would want to reach to. So then I guess what’s the strategy? It’s, oh, we’re gonna get a lot of buzz for this and other people talk about it.

And and there’s maybe something to be said for that. Right? I can see myself in a meeting. And I was trying to imagine myself in the Ron DeSantis high command room, which shivers a little bit once I started thinking about it. I said to started to wash myself and I was like, I could see myself being initially saying no, this is a bad idea and then hearing some other Jabroni try to convince me it’s a good idea because of the impressions and and we’re gonna get a lot of attention on this and We’ll

be able to say that we got three million simultaneous listeners, and Donald probably had a thousand people at Mar a Lago when he announced.

And

there’s something to that. Right? He would be able to get more attention for this than if he did a midday Tallahassee announcement where he, you know, talked about the Florida miracle and the war on woke and just gave his normal stump speech like this will be you’ll get more interest on this than that. That’s true. But like, is it gonna be good interest?

That’s what you ought to find out tonight on our livestream. Tonight being Wednesday by the way, if people listening on Thursday, eight Eastern tune in for our livestream. We’ll see what he says, but my sense is that he’s gonna be beta. Right? Do we need to listen to it’s like, do you really want to put Ron DeSantis in a stream with Edge Lord, Elon Musk, where you know Elon Musk is the no matter how good around detained his performance is, no matter how effusive Elon is in praise, Elon’s kind of the alpha, you know, where Elon will surely say something you don’t like and there’s all the baggage.

He did the anti Semitic tweets recently. He’s done some very weird sexist tweets recently. He did some Russia friendly tweets recently. It’s like you’re now carrying all that baggage with you? That seems to be really stupid.

Lastly, just before we get into the Elon side of this, the the crowd side of this, which you mentioned JBL. Amanda and our Slack made this point, I think it’s really smart. I think that probably what this comes down to for them is they’re like, we can’t draw that I mean, we can draw a kind of big crowd. I mean even J So Jeb, we drew a very respectable crowd for the announcement. It was our biggest crowd.

I’m going from memory. I think it was probably like four thousand people, maybe five. We spelled we filled like a small gym. It was like a, you know, like d three college gym in Kendall, Miami. Right?

And so, you know, it wasn’t like the hurricane’s gym. It was another basketball team college, small college basketball teams gym. We filled it, it felt full, it was nice, to say it just could’ve done something like that, right? But that’s still then you start to get into the Dick size comparison. Right, with Trump and like, well I could fill a football stadium and like you seem really weak and this allows him to avoid that.

So I think that the attention, you know, the argument that he could get more attention for this and the crowd size element were the real drivers, but it just it feels it feels beta.

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I want you to keep talking because I feel bad for making you wait so long, but I also wanna hear some Musk thoughts from you.

Well, the Musk thing So David Sachs is the other guy that is in the there’s I guess moderating this space and he is a he’s a bundler out out of Silicon Valley. Now I’ve been monitoring this asshole for a while, and I think that it’s important to understand David Sachs to really get what happening here.

Isn’t he the one who was told that he wasn’t needed at the Twitter meeting famously?

I believe so. I believe he was he was the one that Elon was like, you have no expertise here.

This is a technical meeting. You wouldn’t understand what’s going on here. Correct. Basically, he is Chris Christie to Elon exactly.

And and he’s Chris Christie also to Peter TL’s Trump. So David Sachs is the Chris Christie to two alphas. So so him and TL were friends in college. They co wrote Teal’s book together which has a lot of like you know, race you know, things are kind of like quasi racist like multiculturalism is bad and we shouldn’t be encouraging diversity and like things like this. So He wrote this book with Teal.

He’s one of the big these guys who I were really one of the core reasons I believe the Bay Area, which are the biggest assholes in the world, the people who are like sixth employee at early, you know, startup companies, you know, were like, they were they didn’t do anything special. Like, he was the COO. Like, he was like the h had HR man for PayPal, and it was like Elon and Peter Teels like baby, like, because they they were the smart ones who deserved the the money on the back end. But since he was the sixth employee, he had a bunch of shares and he becomes like a billionaire. Right?

So capital is three cheers. So Yeah yay camera. He also founded something called Yammer, which I guess he sold, which I would have really heard of. But maybe maybe it was a good product. I don’t know.

So anyway, so he was Peter Teels kind of Robin De Teels Batman and then and then now has kind of glommed on to Musk and he’s got this podcast called the Secret Podcast, which is like for these contrarian right wing Silicon Valley guys. There’s a token live and and at Jason on Twitter, who’s awful. And Shamath who some of you feel right now. So I’ve been monitoring this thing for a while because it’s really influential in a certain space and and tech. And these guys initially positioned themselves, just like Elon did.

As like we’re center right, the woke stuff has gone a little too far in Silicon Valley, Like, we’re gonna be a ballast against that. And and one of my friends actually, my brother and a friend suggested, listen. So you might like this, these guys are a little more conservative than you, but they’re they’re moderate, they’re in the middle, and you know maybe it’s an interesting, okay, so I started listening to them. It’s full red pill. Like, it’s full reactionary.

Like, like, to to the like, these guys are moderate in the opposite way that we are. Right? It’s like, oh, you know, the we shouldn’t be in the war in Ukraine, right like totally, you know, reactionary on that stuff. You know, completely reactionary on immigration, right? But like but oh, I’m against Paul Ryanomics.

You know, it’s like it’s the it’s the inverse. I’ve gone culturally right you know, to push back against the cultural left on economic stuff like, okay, maybe. Alright. So that’s sort of like these guys have gone and and and I think that that is the most telling thing about this that a lot of people aren’t gonna appreciate about the Ron DeSantis announcement. They’re gonna focus on the Elon piece.

They’re gonna focus on how it’s kind of weird that’s a Twitter space. But Having the his now inner clearly his inner circle are the people that he wants to launch his campaign with, being these contrarian anti Neocan, anti woke, you know, culture war, you know, types like me, that is the core of what of the kind of campaign that the Santos is gonna run. And and and I think that there’s gonna be a lot of, you know, people in our national review friend, our Wall Street Journal friends that wanna like deny this and kind of act like, oh, he’s just He’s playing foots you with that but but this is the core of of what this campaign is gonna be about. I’m deeply skeptical that the republican base like cares about, you know, all the things that these rich contrarian white assholes care about, you know, ESG and DEI and digital currency. I all that makes sense.

When I wrote last month about how it’s kind of weird that the Santis of some speech includes ESG and digital currency stuff. Like, I when I wrote that about the to your point stare about the being very online, I was like, what is what is behind this? And what I initially thought it was his staff or like super online, weirdos are pushing it, that increasingly I think, no, like, this is his circle now. He’s getting texts from these Silicon Valley contrarians who’d really care about the fact that in their social circles, they think the Liberals have gone too woke and crazy. And now we need to push back on this and that is influencing DeSantis to go down this rabbit hole which includes the Disney fight that all of which all all of which feels just, you know, not hostile to what?

And I’m not sure what you think about this, Sarah. Not hostile with the focus group folks care about, like, a little bit, like, two steps away from their core interests. Right? Like, they also agree that woke his bang. And they it once you explain what DEA is to them, they don’t like it, but like, it it it feels a little alien.

Like, I don’t think they want a Silicon Valley contrarian billionaire Secret Podcast concerns are not the same as the average concerns of a Greenville, you know, MAGA Republican.

So what you’re saying is that we are like three weeks away from having mencius mold bug in bronze age pervert as, like, informal advisors to the Santa’s campaign. Yeah. Basically. Right. Yeah.

And so this brings me to use era. What are the people saying?

So first, I just wanna before I tell you this, because I do have some I got some breaking news just for you guys. Actually, it’s not breaking news, but but I do have some good focus group stuff. The thing about Elon and DeSantis and why I think it’s weird, actually, I didn’t quite realize, I hadn’t clocked the idea that the Twitter space is just audio only. Like, they’re not even gonna show their faces. Okay.

So Elon and Peter Teal, Ron DeSantis all have something in common, which is like they’re not great at eye contact, or being with other humans, or talking to them in ways that are normal, I’ve done so many fucking scripts in the way that people identify with Trump. And you’re like, but I’m sorry. How do you identify with this guy with a gold toilet? And it’s because Donald Trump talks in ways they can understand, makes politics accessible to them, he’s repetitive in the way that he talks, like hammers and points and people can get it, they can like follow him, and if he feels normal and real to them. In a way that I think it took all of us a long time to like understand how that is because we see a big distance, but sort of makes sense as you’ve gone along, like he was a celebrity, so they just feel like they know him, he was in their living rooms for a long Ron DeSantis and, like, all of these guys who are in this weird Silicon Valley bubble, like, their human instincts are terrible.

This is his signature problem right now is people are like, you like short circuit as a human being. Like, you don’t know how to talk to people. You seem fake and your laugh is off and you seem weird. So for him to lean into this weird crowd, to me is for him doubling down on the thing that is not working for him right now.

It’s probably what makes these Silicon Valley guys Good. Like, why what made them brilliant? And what made them billions. Right? Is that they’re a little they’re a little strange, like, you know, conventional thinkers don’t come up with like Paypal idea.

So that probably maybe not David Sachs, but Peter Teal and Elon, it probably was. Like like their personality disorder I contribute it to them thinking they could do this thing, you know, that that other people who aren’t like egomaniacal wouldn’t have thought about. Right? So there’s something to be said for that, but that doesn’t translate as well to tooks?

It doesn’t, although you could see a world in which DeSantis is actually something of a competent executive.

Sure.

His story from Florida is, like, warped. I actually think by now his national profile. But, like, the reason, like, if Jed Bush would tell you they like around the Santos, is in part took the environmental stuff really seriously in the state. He’s been quite good. And like before his profile got so national and like this legislative session, like his last legislative session, was quite good.

And, like, the way that he handled COVID, like, we don’t like the yelling at reporters, but he did just make a decision. I’m gonna open things up, and I’m gonna leave them open. And So and people liked that. Like, that is why The

vaccine stuff was also really bad.

The vaccine stuff was bad, although he was good on it at first. Right? It was like he moved on that. Right? Because he’s a different version.

Now, I was like, as his profile got more nationalized, he felt the need to be an anti vaxxer, But in the beginning

because remember, as the cruise ships, it was pretty early. He was bad on vex.

I don’t

are you sure?

The cruise ships are trying to require vaccines. And he was like, no, you can’t require vaccines to get on cruise ships. That was like really early before we even really knew, you know, we were trying to figure out what the details So I I think he was bad on Vax pretty early. I I I agree with all of your other points.

My point is that the idea that he is, like, a competent executive, but that doesn’t really translate to a national profile where, like, people aren’t digging in or feeling the impact of what you do every day, your decisions. And so they kinda need to like you. So I think it’s weird that he has decided to go with this yeah. That that where they they, like, are incapable of having good human instincts. So I went ahead, someone on my team, pull all of the focus groups where we did just straight two time Trump voters.

Now we do people across the political spectrum, we do screens where we ask people if they have high favorability of Trump or low favorability of Trump, these but we’ve done a whole bunch. Since the last election, twenty two, since November, that are just straight two time Trump voters. And From eleven twenty nine, so November twenty ninth in twenty twenty two, to immediately before the Trump indictments, in the groups when we asked head to head, who do you want Trump or DeSantis? Forty four people wanted DeSantis, and twenty six people wanted Trump.

That was November twenty ninth till when?

Right before the Trump indictment. Okay. Right before he gets indicted. K? So from the Trump indictment to now, thirty two people versus nine went for Trump.

So thirty two people went Trump. Nine went to Santa’s. And I don’t usually it’s not good usually to take your call and, like, make it quant because it’s not the same thing as a poll. But, like, we’ve done enough of these.

Not enough.

Right? Like, it’s not this is, like, seventy people in the first sample. Right? Where you’ve got forty four people for DeSantis and twenty six for Trump. After the indictment, you’ve got thirty two for Trump, nine for DeSantis, the exact same kinds of groups.

We’re not they’re just the same kinds of just normal two time Trump voters. That reversal is stunning. And there’s gonna be a lot of conversation today, in the next couple of days, about why Ron DeSantis fortunes appear to have reversed. And a lot of people are gonna focus on Trump and the indictment, like accelerating Trump’s profile, and they’re that’s part of it. I actually think it has a lot more to do with the fact that people started to see DeSantis.

So right around Trump’s indictment, two things happened. One, his Ukraine, deal where he had to walk it back because the establishment got mad at him. And then his comment around Stormy Daniels, when MAGa got mad at him, he had to reverse that and say, No, no, no, I’m gonna do an extradition for you. I won’t extradite him from Florida, and Trump was like, screw you, and Trump started attacking him. Right?

Those things all happened, and also Jeff Bush endorsed him. But, like, all of the those things started to happen, and, like, you just see him drop like a stone. And I was listening to the focus group, we just did one a couple days ago, and they’re mad about the indictment of Trump. They’re on his side about that. They just, like, the Disney thing is, like some people are, like, yeah.

Disney sucks. Like, most people are kinda, like, what? I don’t like, why? And it’s just it’s not it’s not the thing. Like, that is not the thing that is going to get everybody on Ron DeSantis’ side.

And these people are not on Twitter. Just this is the thing about the focus groups. Again, always they keep me grounded, and like some people are on Twitter. Some people say I don’t like the tweets, people say I don’t like the tweets and they’ve never actually seen the tweets. They just know — Right.

—

that the tweets are bad or they see them on TV or send some other medium, but these people are not on Twitter. But they are people who vote in primaries and in general elections.

One sentence on the Disney thing because it relates to the Saks point. And again like this idea about this concern about woke capital like there is a legitimate niche group of College educated, high income Republicans who care about this deeply. Right? Who are like, the boards are woke, they’re making us invest in green companies, blah blah blah. And the David Sachs, Elon Musk guys are at the center of this.

And and my understanding from I’ve our friend Ron Philkowski and Peter Sources and Austin reporters that in Florida, there’s also some personal Disney stuff happening. But like that stuff is tied that, like, Ron DeSantis thought that this Disney thing was gonna be a winner because that the MAGabase is upset about Woke Capital. And it’s like, It’s a specific slice of it that really cares about this. And I’m sure if you ask in the focus groups, are you mad that companies are woke? People’d be like, yeah.

Sure. I’m mad at companies are woke. Like, I I it’s not like he’s going against them. But is their core concern? Boardroom fights?

You know, and and investment portfolios? You know what I mean? Like, maybe if you had leaned into, like, the target display. Right? There’s this story just yesterday that in a lot of red areas, Target has had to take down their pride supply, not really because they’re anti pride because they had changed their mind, but because like they’re worried about the safety of their employees, like things have gotten hot.

Like that’s in the face of these voters.

They’re just worried that their customers might violently assault their employees, perfectly normal for business.

Right. Hey. Nothing to worry about here.

Just like Republican politicians worried about their voters hurting them.

And I’m sure the same people don’t matter about BLM are really mad about this. But the point is, that is, like, at least in their face. You know that like maybe the MAGavoders are like yeah it does annoy me that there’s like trans stuff when I walk into the store, right? But but that’s different than saying, oh, I’m mad about these corporate, you know, like fights that they they engage in and so the combination of I can getting kind of beat it into this by the David Sachs world and I’m getting slapped around by Disney. Isn’t maybe the number one thing that has caused his numbers go down, but it’s it’s all related.

It’s made him seem weak. It’s a little weird. It’s a little out of touch. Like it’s it’s a piece of of all the other of all the other elements.

There is a simple explanation for all of this, which is that DeSantis has decided that he’s going to position himself as a demagogue. And that is I mean, his campaign is I I am a demagogue who is on your side against the people who you hate. Trump is also a demagogue, but Trump is a lot better at it than DeSantis is. And this is

Does Santa’s is like a simulacrum of demagogue. Like he’s like an imitation, like a pale shadow of a demagogue. Like, I think this is how a demagogue acts with this accordion hands.

Yeah. I mean, look, Trump sees the Disney thing for what it is, which is right, he’s gonna demagogue then to Santa saying, oh, look, you’re costing all these jobs. And I think that that is more likely to resonate with voters than, like, DeSantis’s, I’m mad at them because they have gay characters and crappy movies. And the the Silicon Valley Bank, right, the failure Ron DeSantis decides he’s gonna demagogue that by talking about you know, it’s the their woke ESG stuff where Trump then looks at it’s like, yeah. We’re gonna have a run on the banks, and the entire system’s gonna collapse, and we’re all gonna be poor.

It’s just a much more effective thing, I think.

Something stupid helps them here. The Santos isn’t stupid. And he went to Harvard to Yale and he was on a baseball scholarship, so, you know, maybe not the top of class, but but he’s not an idiot. Ron DeSantis is smart. People have talked to him thinking he’s smart.

Right? Like, Trump’s more like New York Post of like reading level, you know, even though he kind of has his like weird Trump affect, like like the words that he uses are are more in line with with what republican voters are. I will say this about We’ve been dogging all the de sanded stuff and I stand by all of it. The thing that worries me about all this is there is this desire particularly among a pundit class and everybody to be like, oh, because he seems so weak that’s over. Like, oh, it’s already it was over before it started.

Like it might be over before it started, but It is important to go back to the Biden lesson. JBL was the only person that stuck with Joe Biden, besides his campaign, all the way through, you know, him finishing sex place in New Hampshire. Like sometimes things fall in your lap, and Ron DeSantis like

remains, like well positioned for this to fall

in his lap, like against his against all, you know, strategic imperatives. Right? Like that just happens in politics sometimes, politics is not chess. Like like you know, it’s not always the person that is best player that wins. And so I I just I think it’s worth saying that, like, his positioning is like a little off, two steps off, and it’s and it’s worth analyzing that, but but two steps off might be enough because everybody else in the races position is like eight steps off.

Right? Like there are are are are not even they’re not even on the field. Right? And you know, I think we might get to to to January and and and this The same reason why DeSantis was doing well last December might be relevant this December when people are just like, I just I just want to win. And that is I think where as it rings Zached.

That is why this the analysis of his style and then all that is is so important because he’s got to seem like he can win. And he kinda doesn’t now.

So I I did a deep

dive on this for the Triad, which is my newsletter, which is gonna come out on They usually go to the bulwark dot com and sign up to get it. It’s quite good. Sarah reads it forty percent of the time. Mhmm. Yeah.

Very good.

And sometimes to get the third one, you gotta be a bohr plus subscriber. And I it’s the best eight dollars I spend, except for I mean, I guess, there are a couple other things.

Well, maybe not the best

eight dollars.

But it’s a very twenty eight dollars. Here’s the thing. So I went back and actually pulled the data for goal, everything going back to two thousand. Trump’s position is so much stronger than any other front runner during that time. Hillary Clinton remember how Hillary Clinton

Even Hillary Obama?

Even Hillary Obama. At this point in the race, Hillary’s lead was between fourteen and twenty points. The biggest her lead ever got It was in September, and it was in one or two polls where she popped a thirty, one or two polls. The average of Trump’s lead right now is thirty six. And the other thing that happened is that her lead was against Obama who slowly chipped away chipped away chipped away, chipped away, and then broke through.

Obama never

fell back. Right? I mean, this is

in fallback is important because what it means is that voters have taken a hard look at the candidate. Right? A lot of times, what you’re what you’re looking at

is you’re looking gaffrey thirty one, Iowa. He fell back briefly after Right.

Briefly. But even then, in the national polls, like, they’re right there. You know, there he didn’t lose forty percent of his support, which is what DeSantis has done over the last three months here. And, you know, that that a lot of politics is struggling to get a first look from voters. Right?

Like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, are dying just to be looked at. And DeSantis achieved that, and the problem is and that’s good for him. The problem is that once voters saw it, a fair number of them were like, no thanks. Right? And so now he’s gotta earn a second look.

And you look at it and you say, well well, why would a look work for him. And historically, when this is is worked out for people, like John McCain. John McCain got his second look in two thousand and eight. Why? Because he based his entire campaign around the idea that George w Bush should use should follow David Patrice’s plan for a surge in Iraq.

Nobody else was on this. McCain was the one who was banging this drum, both on the campaign trail and in Washington where he was sort of betting his candidacy on the wisdom of this. What what is that version for DeSantis? Right?

Biden did this. Biden got a second look, but what was it? It wasn’t so much an issue like McCain. It was a specific slice of the electorate. It was black voters.

Right? Like black voters basically said, I like, Ron DeSantis have that? And it’s like, I guess college educated whites, but they they they don’t play as big of a role in the Republican primary as black voters do in the Democratic primary.

I really agree with this. So it’s not that Ron DeSantis, I think explodes in popularity. I don’t think that’s the scenario. I think that there is, you hit Iowa, which is a good state for

Rhonda Santos. Right? And,

like, None of this matters till the voting starts, and you have a caucus, also good for DeSantis, and DeSantis pulls out Trump’s polling NAS let’s say, twenty points ahead going into the election. But DeSantis pulls out a win. Okay. Well, now this is interesting. And then you go into New Hampshire and Trump keeps it super close.

They’re, like, kinda neck and neck. But DeSantis is hanging in there. And then From

the south.

Well, The problem is is then you hit South Sarah Longwell. And but but again, I don’t know what what did Nikki and do they cut a deal? Nikki and Scott for VP there. Like, how does that break? I will say going into Nevada, I think that’s Trump’s.

That’s what catapulted Trump into Super Tuesday the last time is coming out of Nevada. Like, he He was back and forth in the early states, and then Nevada. He just crushed and bounced. Here’s the thing, though. So I think that could happen again pretty easily.

I actually see many more paths for Trump than I do Santis, but I also do just see, with all the indictments, Trump being Trump, like, who knows what might just break right around then? Where people sort of say, I’m going for the younger, more electable guy.

Right. But you need exogenous events

—

Yeah. — is the point. Right? Because as Tim says, you’re the understudy, and you’ve got to wait and see if it falls apart. To be honest, what this race really feels like to me?

I’ll just spoil the newsletter since you won’t read it anyways, Sarah. It feels much more like the Gore versus Bill Bradley. Right? And Bill Bradley made it a race sort of. Right?

Bill Bradley, you know, was down by thirty five points, and, you know, it was, like, seventy, thirty, or something. And then He came back to to push Gore in Iowa, and put a scare into him, and Al Gore. Right. So Rhonda Sanchez prevents this from being a coronation. Because absent to Santos, this is a coronation.

Right? I mean, maybe maybe the state chairs just say, we’re gonna do this by acclimation. We don’t even need to vote. And so there will be some horse racing and maybe DeSantis, you know, maybe Trump falls apart Ron DeSantis can regather momentum or or maybe DeSantis himself implodes. Who knows?

But but the point is we’ve got, like, three different pathways here, each of which is probably about as likely as the other.

It’s interesting you said the Hillary thing because I didn’t I haven’t come back and looked. And I compared the the Bulwark case for DeSantis is that he’s Obama, Vervey Hilary. Right? That that she’s strong but like has these underlying weaknesses and that that I didn’t realize that the lead never got that that large. No.

I thought closer.

Also, Obama was a generational political talent and to say

this is

Not right. This is another problem with that with that analogy.

This is the problem that none of these candidates are particular Like I was watching Tim Scott have his opening conversation, and he’s sort of figured out how to handle the Trump quest. Right, which is, by the way, one of Trump’s built in structural advantages, is the way that everybody’s gonna ask each of the candidates about Trump all the time. But when he got asked it, he was like, I’m here I’m not here to talk about another candidate, I’m here to make my optimistic pitch. Like, okay, that’s how he went around Trump fine. But his whole talk is boring as all get out, and it’s canned, and it looks like he’s been rehearsing this in the mirror for a long time, and it just sucks.

Like, it’s not good. And, like, I like Tim Scott taking any day twice on Sunday over most of the field.

The interview so we did Bradley Whitford this week? For the next Sunday show. We just taped it and like his thing was about how the most unrealistic thing about the West Wing was that we had to make the Republicans too nice. You know, because we don’t want to turn off Republican viewers and like we couldn’t have a Trump or pale an escrow Republican, but Tim Scott would have been a great TV Republican, right? Like he’s generic in that sense.

The thing that bugs me though to you that you said that because I I just we haven’t spent a ton of time. We spend about as much time with Tim Scott as his campaign for vice president deserves, I guess, but like I hate that everyone gets him off the hook with that answer, actually. It’s like, he’s losing to Donald Trump by fifty five points fifty five fifty four, excuse me, in the RCB average. He’s one point eight. Trump is fifty six point three.

Okay? Fifty six point three to one point eight. You cannot go into a race where you’re at one point eight and someone else at fifty six point three, and people ask you about that fifty six point three person and and you’re like, I chastise you media for caring about the inter, you know, the that you just won a Republican food fight and you don’t Mona Charen about the majors. It’s like, no. You’re entering a campaign where there’s already a person that has fifty six percent support.

You have one. What is your argument for why people should move off him onto you? Like, there’s no other case in the world where, you know, somebody would enter into a competition and be just getting absolutely slaughtered and get away with the why I’m gonna stand? I’m just gonna talk about optimism, and cheeriness, and and everybody looks at it, you’re an insane person. Like, that’s that’s insane.

Like, this is we’re in a competition here. That sounds nice. And I’m sure that you’re one point eight percent of the Republican primary voters like that, and I have respect for those people. But, like, It’s absurd. It’s absurd.

It

also sounds like politics as usual. It sounds like the old politics

—

Yeah.

—

and that’s not what Republican voters want. Trump’s phony authenticity is not phony, if that makes sense. Right? I mean, like, he just says the things that come to his mind whether they’re true or not. And he is unscripted and that stuff is gold.

It’s cool. You you see this all the time with Sarah Longwell you talk to them about? Like, they they want someone who’s authentically themselves. Right?

Yeah. And they can sniff out the phonies. And also, it’s not just that authentically themselves, like, Trump changed the standard of behavior in all kinds of ways. Obviously, like, now sexual assault is okay and being horrible and being racist, all those things are okay. But he also changed the game in terms of, like, how loose you need to be.

Like, you Are you gonna give me a seventy minute sum speech? Because I’m gonna tap out. I don’t care. You know, I wanna see the town hall where you’re running over the pretty young media person who’s a stand in for all the fake phony corporate media that I hate. And, like, you know, they just they want the show.

And so the answer that that Tim Scott gave to me isn’t, like, necessarily it’s not the answer. It’s, like, in his in his hands, that answer is sort of a pathetic mealy mouth political answer. Now, this is what I keep sort of saying, is, like, there is a Lane to consolidate people who wanna move on from Trump. That’s a real not just Lane. That’s a real, like, chunk of the party.

But like somebody has to come seize it

— Yeah. —

and seize it by being like, Why would we talk about Trump? I don’t stop asking me about Trump. Trump is Trump is yesterday’s news. And let me tell you what. This guy changed the game for our party in great ways.

But he’s not able to deliver. And he lost the last election. I mean, like, I know what we can all, like, then pick apart.

Chris

Sununu. Right? Chris Sununu keeps making noises that he’ll be that guy.

Yeah. And I would love to see it. Like, I I I don’t know if you guys saw this just while we were on, and I’m sorry that I did look at my phone.

Apologize got

accepted. Nate Silver Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Okay.

But Nate Silver tweeted something like, I’m surprised by how mean these Never Trumpers are being to every candidate other than Trump. Which, of course, is being quote tweeted by a bunch of people who are like, well, this is just their gift.

Nate is getting redfield so hard.

Yeah. No. He is. He’s he’s part of this whole, like, socially incapable, too online kind of person. What if the reason that we don’t like these candidates Like, I do like Tim Scott on paper in concept.

Part of my I am so frustrated that none of them are good enough to run a campaign to defeat Trump. Like, I would root for Rhonda Santis if Rhonda Santis was running a campaign that was anywhere close to something that could actually defeat Trump. And yesterday, I tweeted something about like, I don’t understand Rhonda Santos’s strategy, over a clip of me talking about like, there’s this available chunk of the party, And for some reason, Ron DeSantis has decided instead of going and getting the people who wanna move on, and then building out a coalition with sort of the maybe trumpers, Right? There’s the move on Trumpers, there’s the maybe Trumpers, like, that’s your coalition you gotta go get. He’s like wrestling Trump for his death cult.

And like, that thirty percent, and I don’t understand why. But of course, the anti antis grabbed it and they were like, yeah, of course, you wouldn’t understand. You know, never Trump or you just think that we should run like Liz Cheney.

I’m sorry. So that should put this tweet in and I’m fucking and I’m off the deep end. Like, my blood pressure just skyrocketed, remains pretty amazing to me how disdainfully the never Trump crew treats Republican candidates other than Trump. Is it amazing? Is it like is it amazing that we would dis that people who are never Trump, it’s right there in the name.

Never Trump would would have disdain for people that lick Trump’s balls every time they’re asked about him? Like, is that what what’s amazing about that? What’s amazing about that? If somebody if there’s a candidate that said Trump was bad, we would like them because we don’t like Trump. It’s right there in the name.

Never Trump. And like they want us to be like, oh, I wouldn’t excused him Scott who said that it’s not Trump’s fault that January six happened because he’s night and he’s like one of these old kind of Republicans that you should like and oh, you should excuse, you know, Chris Christie who went and, like, fetched Donald Trump’s sandwiches for him. And, like, oh, and and did Trump apology even after Trump gave him COVID, it’s like, why? Why? Why?

For eight years, all these guys have done is be Trump little but boys. And and and now it’s like our obligation to to try to shine them up. Fuck you.

Yeah. There’s there’s a category error here, though, which Nate is is touching on, but which is very real in anti Trump circles. Which is this assumption and belief that people who do politics for a living should talk about what they want, and not what they think or what they see. Right? And what what, as I said at the very beginning, what I want is for Asa Hutchinson or Tim Scott or any of these fucking guys to win the nomination.

My job is I see it, and I think your jobs do see it. Are to to try to express the analysis of the world that we see around us, not to run interference and do propaganda in order to somehow play a triple bank shot because if we can just fool an extra, you know, five hundred thousand people, then that will help run disabled. That’s not our job. Our job is to to see the world around it as it actually is in explain it to you, the people. And I’m sorry.

These people are all doing a very bad job of running for president as as reflected in the polls. And the idea that you’re you’re supposed to just pretend that like everything’s great, because that’s the that’s the the mission or some I’m sorry. That’s not look, I I love Joe Biden. Love me some Joe Biden. I go around pretending everything is great with Joe Biden.

When things are bad with Joe Biden, I’m like,

oh, this is And I also don’t disdain Joe Biden. You know why? Because Joe Biden was the person that stopped Donald Trump from ending our democracy. That’s why I don’t disdain Joe Biden because Joe Biden says what he thinks about Donald Trump. Would I do I wish that somebody that, you know, had more classically liberal values that had a political career.

It would say what they thought about Donald Trump too. I do. I do wish that. But I but there there aren’t any, except Mitt. I love you, Mitt.

This is gonna make Sarah mad. I disdain Chris Sununo. And here’s why I just ding Chris Sununu. Chris Sununu, when asked about the the prospect of Donald Trump, becoming president, his stock answer is Donald Trump won’t be the Republican nominee. It isn’t going to happen.

He’s winning by thirty points.

And you know what? That’s a fucking lie. That’s a fucking lie. Chris Sununo doesn’t know that. Nobody knows that.

And also, you know, all signs point to probably, Right? And I disdain the people who are interested in lying about this in order to play some triple bank shot or preserve their own viability or make the just tell the truth. That’s that I mean, I just don’t see any other way. Right? Just tell the truth.

That doesn’t make me mad. In fact, I I think I’ve talked about this before. Oh, I nothing has made me angrier than Chris Sununu, answering the question of, will you support Donald Trump if he’s the nominee, by saying, yes, because that is disqualifying judgment, and this goes to answer sort of Nate Silver’s question as well, which is, Yeah. I’m not gonna use the language that Tim did about licking things, but like, they helped Trump. They built the permission structure for Trump, and I disdain them.

And Chris Sununu is even worse because the more he’s normal and good, and and and has been a good governor and would probably make an excellent president And for him to say, as a means for placating based voters that would never vote for him anyway, to run a presidential campaign that it is acceptable for Donald Trump post coup to be president again builds that permission structure further and for more normal people. And, like, that’s the problem in our politics. And this is where I blame politicians where you’ve blamed voters. You know? I think that that A bunch of people who aren’t paying nearly as close attention as Christinu knew and don’t have nearly as good political judgment have just been told by somebody that they respect and think is normal that Donald Trump is an acceptable choice to be president again.

And I hate that. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take Kristen New over Trump every day and twice on Sunday because I would. So But that’s the predicament that we’re in. But need silver asking that question as though it is not obvious. Why?

We do this, you know, means that they just don’t understand anything.

It’s all about posing. Right? Yeah. Look, in your job as Republican voters against Trump, Sarah. I suspect you you were going to spend a lot of money trying to help some other Republican beach Donald Trump.

Right? I think all three of us are probably gonna if I don’t wanna speak for you guys, vote in a Republican primary for somebody who is other than Donald Trump. Like, what what more support How do you support somebody? Those are the ways. You vote.

You vote or you spend money on them. The rest of it, like, you know, in terms of, like, analyzing the world around us as it is, I’m sorry. That’s we don’t do propagandinate. I’m very sorry about that. Does that hurt your feelings?

You degenerate Campbell?

Can I also just pimp another newsletter of yours this week? From Tuesday. You did another good newsletter this week about Joe Biden. I know it’s been a long show. We’re running out of time here.

So it’s been a really good show, but it was a good newsletter. And I have my complaint to Joe Biden, which we’ve discussed in the past, and and I’m happy to again, but like, here he is, he’s the president, and everyone in his party basically wants him to, like, print print a coin to solve the debt limit problem, and and he’s like, I’m I’m gonna go work with Kevin McCarthy who like really like doesn’t deserve to to shine his shoes like based on Kevin McCarthy’s behavior, but he’s gonna suck it up maybe a little later than he should have, and he’s gonna sit there with Kevin McCarthy and try to come up with a reasonable deal that maybe the Republican caucus will sink. We don’t know yet. We’ll see that that they’re discussing a pretty reasonable deal about that flat making spending flat or maybe dropping it point five percent from from last year’s spending baseline, you know, something that that certain interest groups on the left won’t like, and I’m sure be certain harms that come from, you know, that, but, like, you know, you gotta bet you gotta, you know, be reasonable when it comes to budgeting.

I’ve we’re spending a little too much money, obviously, that contributed somewhat to inflation. And so, he’s coming to the table with a reasonable deal, and there’s this like expectation that that we, as never trampers, I don’t wanna speak for everybody, are supposed to, like, like, be mad about that. Or, like, not be not be satisfied with this. Like, what, like, Joe Biden has given people like who want centrist politics on the margins like basically what they want. Like there have been things that we’ve disagreed with, there have been things that we’d agree.

Agree with, but every time we’ve come to one of these crisis, every time we’ve come to one of these big issues, he’s tried to do a bipartisan thing. There have been a couple areas times where he’s fallen short on the student loan thing comes to mind, but like most of the time, he’s tried to do a bipartisan thing, tried to do a reasonable thing, and And and when your choice is that, or people that are running up doing apologia full time for someone that tried to literally end our democracy, I I don’t I don’t know what’s confusing about how we’re assessing those choices anyway.

I can’t wait for Nate’s show on Twitter’s faces.

Will be good. It’s gonna be great.

Got some free time on his hands after getting fired from five thirty eight. Alright, guys. Good show, long show. There’s all sorts of other stuff we were gonna talk about, but we didn’t get to it. Come and hang out with us tonight on YouTube at eight PM in the east where we are going to have listened to the Twitter space and and we will talk about it and have fun with it, and everybody will be there.

The whole gang is gonna be like fifteen people from the bulwark. It’ll be a mega cast. Hit the subscribe button. Hit the hit the join button. Give us the thumbs up because

all those things help. Help.

And actually, telefriend, we’re gonna be flirting around with you guys in the comments on YouTube too as well if you want. And then when you’re done with all that, go to the bulwark dot com. And just sign up to get all the the free stuff we give you in your in your inbox. It’s good stuff.

Does anybody wanna hear a quick story about the the live show we did, which was awesome in New York? So I had said on one of the podcasts about when I was at the principal’s first meeting, this woman, I was at the valet, and I didn’t have money to tip. I remember, like, the valet version. Yeah. Right?

Okay. So that woman was at the live show, and I was like, hey, you’re the woman who gave me ten bucks. And I was immediately like, crash. I don’t have to unbox on me. Like, I just did a live show.

And so I was like, man, I gotta pay this woman back and I was saying it to how people come back and there’s always people around us talking to us and I was like, this is the woman who gave me the ten bucks. And like, five other people reached into their pockets to hand me ten dollars. And I was like, this is just perpetuating the cycle of you kind people, then I just owe you ten bucks. Other person I’ll never find. But I just our people, they’re the best people.

They’re

the best people.

Alright. See you guys in a few hours.

Bye. Bye.

Dissecting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary, and humor. Useful idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Mate.

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