America's Talking - Ron DeSantis Announces 2024 White House Bid

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday evening that he is running for president. "Our border is a disaster. Crime infests our cities," DeSantis said in his announcement. "The federal government makes it harder for families to make ends meet. And the president flounders. But decline is a choice. Success is attainable. And freedom is worth fighting for." DeSantis took subtle shots at former President Donald Trump, saying he had frustration with Trump's inability to enact his agenda and blasted the "culture of losing" in the GOP. 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, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today, as he does most weeks, is the Center Square Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief, Casey, we are recording this on Thursday, May 25th. Before we get into the big news from this week, Casey, I want to acknowledge that this is Memorial Day weekend. So let me say thank you to all those brave Americans who served in the U.S. military and paid the ultimate price to a preserve the freedoms we sometimes take for granted. Absolutely. So let's get into the big news this week. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, long rumored to be a potential presidential candidate,

made it official last night, Wednesday night on Twitter. You listened to the announcement live. What is this? Tell us what happened and what does it mean? Are you there, Dan? Can you hear me? I can. Oh, hello?

Yeah. No, I'm making a nod to exactly what the Twitter spaces event sounded like. There was quite a bit of, hey, can you hear me? How about now? And then they would say, okay, we got this settled. Welcome, everyone. And then it would cut out again. So, you know, there's been a lot of talk and criticism for DeSantis over the way this all was rolled out, whether that actually sticks.

Who knows? But like you said, yesterday evening, we listened in. There was hundreds of thousands of people listening, you know, different media. I was reporting different numbers pretty broadly, which is interesting. The DeSantis campaign themselves say that, you know, in the 12, 15 hours of the announcement, like 30 million people. listen to it. It's kind of hard to verify some of that. But it definitely has dominated the news cycle. And so Elon Musk had this conversation along with David Sacks and Ron DeSantis. And DeSantis made his announcement. He made his pitch. He read, I get his press releases. And he actually

kind of almost read verbatim from his press release for his opening remarks. And then he took a lot of questions. Most of the questions were pretty friendly. They were from supporters or, you know, kind of conservative political pundits who had taken his side. The conversation, focused around free speech, around government censorship. You know, we've talked a lot at the CenterSquare.com about how the federal government, especially federal law enforcement, has worked with tech companies and other, and in other ways has censored Americans' viewpoints. There's a lot of talk about that, the southern border, crime.

DeSantis did not mention former president Donald Trump, his main opponent by name. He did take a couple shots at, you know, the culture of losing in the GOP, which is kind of a nod to how Trump, of course, lost in 2020. And then almost all the candidates that Trump picked to win in the recent midterms lost, right? And while DeSantis really won pretty heartily in his state of Florida. So he did make a little knob, but he did not mention Trump by name. Of course, Trump was quick to go on true social and really blast DeSantis as soon as the announcement was happening and we can get more into that.

But this is reshaping the Republican field. It's forcing Republicans, especially party and pundits and people who, you know, who do this for a living to choose side. and what is really a GOP Civil War now. So, yeah, so while recent polls aren't showing a close context currently, Trump leads most polls of GOP voters, by double digits over Ron DeSantis and the rest of the field, DeSantis is in second place in just about every poll there. This could be shaping up into almost like a super heavyweight fight between what currently

is the party's two most prominent figures. You mentioned the midterms where Trump didn't do well and Republicans underperformed. DeSantis crushed it in Florida when he was reelected in November for his second term in office as the governor of Florida. He has gained popularity over the months and past year plus for his conservative policies, attacking the media similar to what Trump has done in the past, going after what he calls woke democratic policies. I mean, so the polls don't show it close right now. I mean, what does DeSantis have to do to close the gap with former President Trump? Do you think he can do it? I mean, I know I'm asking you for some speculation here, but give us your insight. Yeah, I mean, of course, it is speculation, but there's a few things happening right now.

One, you have several straggler Republican candidates, Vivek, Ramoswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, who is a favorite here in D.C., but I'm not sure if he's really going to get, mass appeal. And so, you know, you could look at it like the Republican primary is Trump and anti-Trump, right? So everybody who loves Trump is going to always love Trump and there's nothing you can do to change that. And then there is all these other people who are an alternative to Trump. And so if DeSantis was able to cobble together the Ramoswamy votes, the Nikki Haley, the Tim Scots, all these other people into one into supporting him and quickly becoming the face of the alternative to Trump option, that would be one way to.

get him, you know, a boost in poll numbers for sure. And maybe he could ride that momentum. And right now, there is one Trump option and there are several options for the anti-Trump vote that are splitting it, right? So that's one thing that's happening. The other thing that's happening here, which hasn't been reported on much, is the impact of these investigations into Trump, right? So DeSantis was actually polling much better against Trump a few months ago. And then Trump got raided, right? I mean, he got, the FBI came after him. And after that, Trump's popularity soared. He hasn't come down off of that. Or she was indicted in New York, charged with a crime in New York, arraigned, et cetera, after the FBI raid. And his poll numbers skyrocketed after that as well.

You're absolutely right, the way you laid out the investigation. So I think there'll be the thing to watch because if Trump has to appear in court, that's going to affect the polls. If he actually gets arrested, which I think actually is a real, I mean, he's already turned himself in. But if he faces more serious charges, I think these classified documents thing that he's dealing with is probably the most serious. and best chance that Trump's opponents have at getting him. I mean, he says some things publicly that we're kind of damning when this, if this does go to court, which I think it, you know, looks like it's going to. So how these investigations play out are going to be, are going to be really big. And then, of course, there's the debates because the main line of attack Trump has against

DeSantis is he's basically a policy wonk with no personality and no ability to really do the things that he say he's going to do. So Trump has said that DeSantis needs a personal transplant, right? Which, you know, it's kind of a funny thing, but I think it is a memorable way of saying how Trump and his camp feel about DeSantis, which is he's boring. He's a snooze fest. He can't be, he can't win at the national level. Maybe he can win at the state level in Florida. But oh, by the way, he wasn't actually going to win in the state level because Trump's endorsement of him in Florida is the only reason he won in the first place. So Trump has repeatedly called him basically boring and unelectable, you know, if he can start build some momentum, do well in the debates,

he might be able to change that narrative. Trump, of course, has been on the attack on DeSantis on social media and in news conferences and elsewhere the past few months. But the funny thing is I saw it actually this morning. I saw someone who compiled Trump back when he was president during COVID-19, pre-COVID-19, praising what a great job DeSanis was doing in the state of Florida, keeping the state open when most states were locked down for much longer periods of time, saying how he's just vastly improved Florida's economy. Florida's economy is outperforming most other states. And then when you put the snippets of the videos back from Trump was president, praising the Sanis next to the recent ones where he's just completely belittling him, it's pretty funny to see side by side. So that's just really campaign fodder,

I guess. You mentioned the debates. At some point, let's first say this. You know, the polls say what they say right now. The first primaries, the first primary is actually a caucus in Iowa in January, followed by the New Hampshire primary. It's in March of next year when we get into like the Super Tuesdays where lots of states weigh in. You think by then those secondary candidates, the ones you just name, you think they'll be out by then and this will be a full one-on-one between DeSantis and Trump, again, I'm asking you to speculate. I realize. I mean, who knows, but no, I don't think so because what weak candidates often try to do is they try to take all their money and put it into these really early caucuses or primaries, right? So that if they can just,

it's a small, you know, like Iowa, it's, you know, compared to the rest of the nation and their support there, it can be pretty small. So sometimes these candidates can get big wins in these early, early states because they put, they just went all in. They emptied out the bank account to get a win there. And win in a way that does not reflect their actually actual popularity in the rest of the state. But then they can leverage that into getting more campaign donors and try to build some moments, some more at the very least, do something like Pete Buttigieg, get a promise from the future candidate that you can be a cabinet person, which is me speculating a little bit. But I don't think I'm reading too much into it. So I think that's what these other candidates are going to do. If you're on Ramos Swami's team, you have to win Iowa, right? I mean, you have to put all your money, all your attention. You need to spend every day in Iowa because if he wins Iowa, then he can say, hey, I'm a serious candidate. I beat Trump. I beat DeSantis. Now, that's going to be pretty hard. But that's what we've seen in the past these candidates do. Now, those who don't win or don't perform well in these early, states, you will start to see them, I think, drop out quickly. If they drop out, do they give their support to one of the leading candidates? Do they remain silent? And if they do give their support,

do they give it to Trump or DeSantis? Because, of course, they want to be looked at favorably by who they think is going to eventually win the nomination. And of course, we haven't gotten an official decision from former Vice President Mike Pence, who also was considering Iran. I don't know that he'd surpass DeSantis for second place in polling or, you know, the primaries when they they come around, but he certainly would be somewhat formidable to this. But we've got a long way to go, Casey. I expect this to be a brutal, if not entertaining, but most likely entertaining. Battle between Trump and DeSantis, of course, we will cover it in full at thecentersquare.com, but we are out of time. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulb. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe.