America's Talking - DeSantis: Trump Is Too Old to Be President

Episode Date: December 10, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attacked former President Donald Trump’s age and sparred with former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over Trump’s mental fitness to be president during the Republican primary debate at the University of Alabama on Wednesday night. The remarks came after DeSantis was asked about previous comments in which he said Trump has “lost the zip on his fast ball” and whether that meant he was questioning Trump’s mental fitness. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. Casey, how are you? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well. Thank you. We are recording this on Friday, December 8th. Casey, the fourth GOP presidential debate was held this week. Only four candidates were on the debate stage. considerably from the first debate. You covered the debate for us. What were your big takeaways? Yeah, it was interesting to see that the podiums are dropping off one by one, Dan. There's been many, the first debate, it was so crowded up there that the candidates maybe only got, you know, 30 seconds to answer a question two or three times. And I think most Americans would agree that

it can often feel counterproductive when there's so many people up there and they're talking over each other. But this debate felt different. It was very, you know, hotly contested, I guess I could say. There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of attacks, even personal attacks, but, you know, to, you know, there was time for people to be heard, which I thought was a win, you know, it wasn't just like, here's 30, here's a major, um, issue that's threatening the future of the country. You have 15 seconds. It's kind of silly, I think. Sometimes you have, you know, 20 seconds to solve some really highly complex problem. And and so I thought it was good that people got, were able to be heard. There were definitely

themes that emerged. And some of those themes were from, that we've seen already in the debate. One of those is the businessman businessman Vibake Ramoswami was going after Nikki Haley very hard, which is similar to the last debate. You've probably seen the memes online and where he holds up a piece of paper. It says, Nikki equals corrupt. That was a big theme of his performance at the debate that Nikki Haley did a, did her time at the United Nations and then received millions of dollars from defense contracting. She was on the board of Boeing, and he tied that and basically saying that she supports these overseas wars, which will benefit the military contractors. And that she, his, I mean, he was some very strong statements. Like, she'll send your sons and daughters to

die so she could buy a bigger house. I mean, it was very pointed attacks against her. She really mostly tried to smile and laugh it off, but I think it was probably her worst debate performance so far, partially because Vivek went after her so hard. And I just don't think she was able to respond very well. Now, that is not to say that Vaveh Ramoswamy looked amazing. I think he succeeded in taking Nikki Haley down, but I'm not sure that he really built himself up too much. He can come across as kind of combative. You know, I think he had some good one-liners. I think there is a percentage of the Republican base that really loves him. But I think there's just kind of some more moderate Republicans who just can't get on board with some of the things he's

saying. He was all in on pretty much on James. January 6 being some kind of inside job, which I know a lot of Republicans are down for, but I think many are not. He talked about 9-11, you know, there being lies around 9-11, which I think is not palatable for some Republicans. And so we can get more into it. Dan, I'd love to hear your perspective. Chris Christie was there. I think he was kind of irrelevant other than saying, hey, we should talk about Trump. And he did defend Nikki Haley when Ramoswamy was going after her. And then I think DeSantis had the best performance that he's had so far. He looked strong. He got some good attacks in. You know, while Nikki, Christie was kind of irrelevant and Nikki Haley and Ramoswamy went after each other, both kind of going down.

I think he was able to avoid most of those attacks look a little bit more presidential, but it might be too little too late because, as we both know, Trump is so far ahead in the polls. It's questionable how relevant these debates really are. Well, why don't we talk about that the elephant in the room, former President Donald Trump has not participated in any of the four. Republican primary debates, despite the fact that he is the frontrunner by far, significantly polling ahead of his closest competitor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and all of the others. He was a topic of discussion, maybe not as much as he should have been, but he was a topic of discussion last night.

in your story from the debate, you reference Governor Ron DeSantis saying President Trump is too old to run for presidents. Let's talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, I mean, this was a, this is notable because for a couple reasons. One, DeSantis has been reluctant to attack Trump outright and with a lot of viciousness on the campaign trail so far. He's had his moments where, you know, he's, but he's been very soft in his attacks on Trump. he's talked about how Trump is not the same guy. He used to be, which seems to be a way for DeSantis to say, I support the old Trump,

but not the new Trump, which I think is kind of a hard argument to make for him. But he said Trump is too old to be president. He said that, you know, this is not the job for an 80-year-old man. It is, he said he's not as bad as Biden, but he is just too old for the job. And so I think he said, of course, he's also zip on his fastball, which is kind of a politician line, a way of not saying anything, I think. But it came down to questioning Trump's mental fitness. And he said, you know, Father Time is undefeated. The idea that we're going to put somebody up there who is 80 and there's going to be no effect from that, we all know that's not true. So that was an interesting moment. But then when he was really pressed on it by Christy and the moderator say, yes or no, is Trump mentally fit or not? He wouldn't quite say, no, he's not mentally fit. He just said, hey, we need somebody younger. Trump is too old. It's not the job for an 80-year-old. But he wouldn't say Trump is mentally unfit, which I thought was interesting, just showed that DeSantis is still reluctant to really throw punches at Trump the way that, like, Chris Christie has been willing to.

And of course, that's relevant because Trump is buying, you know, buying away the biggest competition for DeSantis. And DeSantis was initially seen as the heir apparent, the only one who could potentially take down Trump. And we've now seen that that is really coming to question. Casey, we're just about a month away from the actual voting. We've heard all year about the polls and how, you know, Trump's had a lead from the start. And that leads only gotten bigger and bigger even after he faces his own criminal indictments, four separate criminal indictments against him, alleging almost 100 charges. Despite that, Republicans are still overwhelmingly supporting him. Iowa caucuses are about a month away. That's when people have an actual Iowa residence. Iowa voters, of course, will put the first marks on the primary. How does DeSantis, how does Nikki Haley, how do the others, do they have any shot at closing the gap, or is this just going to be a runaway for President Trump? Yeah, well, this election is unique for one very specific reason. And it's that the leading candidate in the Republican primary has nearly a hundred

criminal charges filed against him, which of course is unprecedented and means that his campaign campaign could theoretically be sunk sometime next year and make second place more important than ever. Now, it seems like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are fighting for second place right now, tooth and nail. I think it really is, you know, the polling shows maybe a lead for DeSantis, but I think it is really pretty close. And Haley has been able to raise, you know, a lot of money, get some big donors recently, which she did take fire for at the debate. So that's what makes this unique. If the election were, the primary were held today, all these things, I think Trump wins easily. Just decimates them. Real clear politics. Polling average shows them, I think, is 61% support.

More than all his opponents combined, our polling, the Center Square voters' voices poll found the similar thing that, you know, Trump has more support than all the Republican opponents combined. And even if everyone else dropped out, there's no one candidate who could take on Trump. You know, it's not as if everyone dropped out and got behind Nikki Haley or got behind DeSantis, then they could then take on Trump. Trump still wins in that hypothetical matchup. So he's dominating. The difference is that these criminal charges against Trump are very serious. I've read, you know, I've read through some of these indictments and in detail.

And it doesn't look good. I think there's some really strong evidence against him on the classified documents case, for example. And so, I mean, if Trump ends up in handcuffs behind bars, Are people, is he going to become a martyr who's guaranteed the election? Or are people going to say, I can't vote for a guy who's literally in prison? And that's a good question. The other question is, what if, what obligation does the Republican Party have, or our legal power even, to remove someone who is going to prison?

That's the question. I don't know the answer to. But those are the kind of things that make this race for second place unusually significant this time around. Thank you, Casey, for your insight. we are out of time. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKeel. Please subscribe and thank you for listening.

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