Behind the Bastards - Part One: Ron DeSantis: Florida Man

Episode Date: August 22, 2023

Robert sits down with Katy and Cody to talk about the life, career, and violent implosion of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. 2 Part Series.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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podcasts. What's Meatball My Rons? This is behind the bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history. And this week, we are talking about Ronnie the Big D Dessantis, Meet Ball Ron, Ron Dessank Demonius. Lockdown Ron, I think is the other thing that Trump calls anyway.

We all have horrified faces right now. I know, I know. You all have beautiful faces. And let me introduce those beautiful faces right now because no one else could be the guests on our Ronaldan sanctimonious D episodes, but Cody Johnston and Katie Stoooo. That's right, we are oh, oh, uh, his animatronic Cody in the

hall of president. Oh no, it's when I become president and that's the big reveal. That's what I'm going to do. Yeah. I actually am like this. So guys, y'all, Yins, what would your nicknames be if Trump gave you a nickname? Probably something like Like dirty coat here something

It'll lose to like the the unkempt nature of my my persona to shovel dusty Cody dusty Cody, yeah, something like that. Um, I don't know. Beardow Cody. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Beardow. Yeah, Beardow. Beardow. Yeah. I don't know what mine would be. Probably crazy with a K or something.

Crazy Katie. Oh, crazy Katie. Mine would just be that woman. That woman. That woman. See, I think he would just alter his, uh, his Ron DeSantis nickname for me and call me Meatball Rob because, because Ron and I are both very Italian, tragically Italian. Um, that's not wrong. But I have never, ever

thought of you as a rob. I thought you're going to say you never thought of me as a meatball. Wow, Katie. Thanks. Wow. Wow. I mean, occasionally, sure. Yeah.

Okay. We're honest with each other. No, just the rob. Just wait, though, seriously, has anybody called you Rob before? Not in lived. No. Yeah. So, okay. So Ron, get on it. Something with machetes,

maybe. It is. No, that's too cool sounding. Very funny. My favorite thing about Donald Trump, because, you know, he's a bad person, hate him, then trim into damage damage both to my family and to the world. But I have, you know, as a writer, as a longtime comedy writer, game recognized game. And he is an incredible nickname giver. Just one of like stunningly effective. My favorite example of that is meatball Ron because people may not be aware of this.

He hasn't publicly called Ron DeSantis meat ball Ron. In fact, it was like back in February, a story broke that in private, Trump was calling him meat ball Ron as an insult. This is back when he was publicly calling him like lockdown Ron and Dessank Dimonius, which are both much worse nicknames. And as soon as everyone heard he's calling him this in private, it instantly became like nation wide. DeSantis worse nicknames. And as soon as everyone heard, he's calling him this in private, it instantly became like nationwide. To say it to his nickname.

It did, yeah. And Trump was even like, from the privacy of your own home, you still did it. Trump has even been like, no, I'd never call him that. You know, it's an appropriate. I'm not gonna engage in it to the Italian description. Oh, he's an amazing, oh, it's so funny.

He's so good at the marketing and just like the, he's an amazing. Oh, it's so funny. So good at the at the the marketing and just like the he knows how to do it because all he's do is like, I would never call him that. I maybe you know, maybe some people call him Ipa Ron. I would call him that me. That's the color. People off the tongue. It's great nickname made up by a smart man, but no, but I would. So are you all ready to learn the ballad of meatball Ron? And we will not be titling this episode. I have a question for you before we begin. Yeah.

Do you address his name? His last name? Oh, yeah. Wait, his last one. Yeah, because this is Cody's favorite thing about. Yeah, it's a little hobby horse, just a little factoid. His name is pronounced desantis. Yes.

But he pronounces it desantis. Yeah. Because when he was running for governor, he, people called him desantis. And he was like, I guess it's desantis now. He just changed the way he pronounces his name under like vague social pressure. I mean, it's pretty amazing. And that's, and very consistent to the, to the man we are going to be talking about.

Exactly. I wanted to color it with a little. Oh, yes. Yes. So, Ronathan J DeSantis was due to a filing mishap born under the legal name J. DeSantis was due to a filing mishap born under the legal name Ronald Deon DeSantis on September 14, 1978 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Now, but you're all wondering about that middle name, right? Deon, that's an odd middle name for a meatball. Well, Ronnie's father also Ron DeSantis was a huge fan of Dion D'Amucci, the duop singer, whose most well-known hit was the 1961 song Run Around Sue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is a overtly funny last night. Yeah, that's why Governor Ron DeSantis' middle name is Dion. That's so funny.

Oh my God. Yeah, just right out the gate with some with some mind blowing fat on a De Santis. Yeah. Deon De Santis. Mm hmm. It's a good change. Almost to De Santis. Yeah. Almost the same name as Deon Sanders, who would have been a better governor of Florida. Probably. He might have been a terrible person. I feel like we are all in on Sanders. Okay. That's good. That's good.

So I should note off the top here that when I say Ron was born in Florida, I am referring to the state in the southeastern portion of the United States, not the seminal genre defining rap artist, flow, writer, aka, Tremard Dillard, who recently represented San Marino in the 2021 Eurovision song contest. Listeners get confused whenever we mention the state and I want to assure you that Meatball Ron was not birthed Zena Morf like from the belly of one of America's great cultural treasure. Are you sure about that? Yeah, I double checked.

I double checked. I even sent in an email request to the sheriff of Jacksonville who responded, please stop messaging us about flowwriter. It seems like a pretty good confirmation. So any trust any trusted them? Well, you know, I just, I legally, I can't further by suspicions until we get some sort of like a photo for the police. Okay.

Of Ron's bursting out for it. All right. See, AI will not be of any use to me until we can generate a perfect, a perfect cover of that scene from Alien, where it's Ron DeSantis bursting out of flow right as chest and flow right as singing whatever song flow right I got famous for. I know nothing else about flow right. I'm pretty sure it's called me wrong to this. I mean, someone has to be able to do something like that.

Sure. We'll see. Prove me right or wrong. I figure it which. So before we discuss Rod DeSantis's childhood, we should talk briefly about his family background. His mom and dad were the first generation of their family to move to Florida. He is a fairly recent, bad news. I think about as recent as my family is immigrants to good old fashioned the United States. Most

of his relatives remained in Western Pennsylvania and Northwest Ohio, which is why I'm now yeah. Classic, classic, classic grease ball stuff. But yeah, just Italians in Western Pia in Ohio, damn right? Oh, yeah, no, it's what we do, baby. Get up there, Farrell, get to Akron, come on. Yeah, yeah, Akron, the promised land. That's what for generations, Italians were like sitting around in Tuscany, looking out at like the unfolding glory of nature and going, fuck, I wish this was Akron.

I want greater skies. Some guys. So because of the fact that most of his family has stayed in this chunk of the Midwest, Ron claims in his memoir, which he published immediately prior to launching his presidential campaign, that despite growing up in Florida, he is culturally a Midwesterner. Quote. I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay, but culturally, am I bringing reflected the working class communities in Western Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn is keep. This made me God

fearing hard working and America loving. And there's a lot that's funny about that, particularly the fact that it's kind of insinuating that Floridians are like shiftless, godless degenerates. Which is true. Exactly what he's saying. And there's this element of like, I invaded the place and took over with like, it's like this weird like reverse,

like Americanized like great replacement thing of like culturally I'm here and I'm bringing those values to Florida, but also he wants to make America Florida, right? Yeah. So what is it? Do you want to actually make America like Ohio's version of Florida? Like what is he saying? Yeah, the Ohio version of Florida, which I don't know, there's a Jimmy Buffett joke there,

but it's not coming to me right now. So Ron's decision to do this has been writing to the Buffett Jimmy Buffett joke there, but it's not coming to me right now. So Ron's decision to do this has been right. James Buffett. James Buffett. That's the Midwestern Jimmy Buffett. He's scared of the water. He doesn't get anywhere close to the coast. I think it's actually pronounced James Buffett.

James Buffett. Uh, so this has been made fun of by a lot of people. It's worth noting that he only very recently started claiming to be culturally midwestern in his initial congressional campaigns and first governor, gubernatorial campaign. He described himself repeatedly as from Florida, from Tampa Bay. So this is something he has picked up as an attempt to get votes in the Midwest. And he made himself. Yeah, the common man. Yeah, the common, the common, the common idiot.

Like that's what, that's how he's, what he's saying about Midwesterners is like, they're so dumb I can pretend to be from there despite growing up as far away almost as you can. Right, it's funny because like he's like, he's insulting the Midwest by like, you're, you're, you're dumb enough, you'll believe in this. Yeah. But also he's insulting Floridians by being like, yeah, they're fucking stupid. I'm not one of them. And I'm not one of them.

I'm bringing my good shit over there. Like, it's just both. And it is, it has not seemed to work. A recent article on floridapolitics.com notes that he is at least 10 points behind Trump in Pennsylvania. And he recently dropped to third place in the Ohio primary polls behind Vivek Ramaswamy. He is 55 points behind Donald Trump there. So that's painful.

Hasn't exactly played out. Wait, see? That's Ohio. Okay. That's the Midwest in him isn't doing so. How's he doing in Florida? He's not beating Donald Trump last I checked. Yeah. And thanks so much. How could he be realist anyway? That's actually what we're talking about. That's the whole point of this week's episodes. So back to his family, Ron gets his interest in politics from his grandfather, who was

a major figure in the Republican Party of mid-century Ohio. He was on deck in 1960 for a major political scandal, where a number of voting machines failed during an election. And let's do something like 1,500 people's votes failing to be accounted, effectively disenfranchising them, right? This is a very serious issue. The Secretary of State, who was a fairly rare Republican and state government at that point in time, cleaned house and put Philip Rogers, Ron's grandpa in his director.

By all accounts, he was very good at this job, and he became a respected expert on election integrity. The Republican Party in Ohio in those days was not a mighty force, but Philip gained widespread respect and traveled around the state helping to ensure integrity in a number of smaller elections. When the local steel workers union needed to do a vote, they trusted him to manage it and ensure that it was done with integrity. He was even contracted out to other states, including Louisiana, to help them set up modern voting machine systems.

Rogers is described by one colleague as quote, someone who believed in the way the system worked. He was political, but not a politician. And so instead someone who believed enough in the system to work a pretty thankless and intricate job by all accounts he was not especially ideological. And I've read and run into no complaints of him taking advantage of this job to further his own political ends. Crucially, Roger was on the moderate wing of the Republican party. One right up from NBC News Notes, there was a group of gold water rights who were a thorn in the side of the party at the time, says Benning, referring to accolades of Barry Goldwater, the failed ultra conservative presidential candidate in 1964.

Phil wasn't in with them. This was one of his like fellow Republicans in Ohio at the time. So he's not not an extremist, not a hard right guy. Ron DeSantis, uh, the dad of our Ron DeSantis, the son of this dude, uh, moved the family away from its Midwest roots after he graduated in 1970 and got a job for Nielsen, the company that used to determine what TV shows got renewed. Most of our Gin Z viewers will not know what the fuck we're talking about, we say, mention Niels and families, but once upon a time, people paid money to subscribe to something called cable because we hadn't yet invented lime wire.

TV should, they're not gonna remember lime wire either. Yeah. Oh, that guy, what the fuck is that? TV shows lived or died based on how many Nielsen viewers turned into them. The basic idea was like a percentage of families in each state got like sent a box that they would hook up to their TV and it would record what they were watching. And then Nielsen would do some whack-ass math to determine how many people are actually watching the show, and advertisers would

use this data to decide where to buy ad space and what the value of ad space was. And thus was American popular culture shaped for decades. Old Ron, as he probably is not called, was a low level cog in this system. He's physically putting the boxes into people's houses. Our Ron DeSantis' mom was a-generation Polish immigrant and became a critical care nurse. It's interesting to look at what some of the elder adults in Ranz-Youth did for a living. His parents' siblings became a priest in a nun, respectively, which suggests a strong Catholic

upbringing. Ar-Ran doesn't talk about this as much as he speaks generally about God and going to church. But it's worth noting that from what is publicly available for us to see, his none-aunt does not seem to be the kind of Catholic you might expect given her nephew's path. Here's NBC again. Be open to diversity. Sister Regina said during a 2020 commencement address to graduates at Ursula and High School, do not be afraid of those who are different from you. It's okay to change your thinking. change is the constant in our lives. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So that's different from our in one year, maybe out the other.

Yeah. In one end of the meatball out there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His priest uncle, Father Rogers, has been known to recite Teddy Roosevelt's man in the arena speech from the pulpit, but doesn't have a reputation for bringing up politics in a more relevant modern sense. He has a sizable fan pace among the Catholic subculture, including many people who have followed him from two different churches because of his raw charisma. It said he doesn't need a microphone to reach the back. Puse.

I bring this up because it's a notably distinct difference between our Ron and his Elkekin. DeSantis is known for a lot of things, but in person charisma is not one of them. People who know the family will say that he takes after his mom, Karen Moore, as she is something of an introvert and uncomfortable with the spotlight. Even as he's become a national figure, she doesn't really show up in public, which, you know, is her right. He should take her advice. Yeah, avoid being known by people. Yeah.

You know what? A big weakness for Ron seems to be being perceived. Being perceived. Exactly. If no one could see or be aware of him, he would be a lot more likable. Man, I bet he was, I bet he wanted to be like his uncle so bad. Was he? Yeah, right? Was he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He just never had that juice. No, no, it's too much of a meatball. Not a speechball. A dry meatball at that. A dry meatball. Absolutely. The driest meatball.

As a kid, young Ron was bright and a good student. Excellent student, actually. His grades were so good that one teacher would describe him as having a steppford report card. He was also a very capable athlete, and in his youth Ron's first love was baseball. He was known to other kids as D, which he still prefers to be called and claims to like more than his real name. So you know, that's, that's the ad he should have gone with. Florida got that D, you know? Yeah, they should.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's D. Take this D, take this D. D N U. Ron, if you weren't to coward, we would support you. Just based on that. Don't even care about your politics. I, I, I, can't, can't, can just based on that. Don't even care about your politics. I did. Good D joke. I can't go find that. I feel like if you weren't to coward, he'd be, uh,

uh, saying a lot worse stuff than he already got. That is almost certainly true, Cody. K money. See money. Anyway, the earliest influential book that Ron read as a kid was the science of hitting by baseball legend Ted Williams, uh, when a Ted's pieces of advice in that tone is to be very careful about the swings that you choose to take. Ron's father claims his son took this advice to Hart, telling the New Yorker, I must have thrown half a million pitches to Ron. I think he swung at about 500 of them.

What do you laugh at about their Cody? He went after Disney like seven months. I know. I know. He did not learn that fucking lesson. Come and not stick with you, man. Well, it's actually, you know, I might argue Cody, and this is what I think I find interesting about Ron. He did abide by that advice in his life and career up until like a year and a half ago. Like he's even the most of his political career,

extremely consistent. It's really about, little less than two years ago, that he decides to take some really wild swings that have just shattered him. Which is interesting to me. Like you almost get the feeling like this guy is like this disciplined, coiled spring and managed to like keep himself in line.

And then just for whatever reason, 2022 decides it's time to go off the leash. No, it was not. No, it was not. Yeah, maybe the trumpification of it is desires. And I think the lives of TikTok, talkification, Like he's got some people surrounding him that are very online and radical in the bad sense of the word, badical, you could call them. You could. I feel like even that gives him too much. Yeah. Brad, but like the, yeah, this sort of like, he's been sort of injected with a lot of

awful shit that he's let sort of. Yeah, he's a dry meatball, so they're pumping him full of like the poison. Yeah, meatball juice, which he needs. Oh, okay, okay. I don't know. I'm mixed up. I don't know. His hometown was Dunedin, which is famous both for its long standing lawsuit with a token

estate over its name. And for baseball, it was the spring training home of the Toronto Blue Jays, so as a kid, Ron could easily go down the street and watch the pros play. His upbringing was very parochial, and he notes that he graduated high school, he had rarely traveled further than 5 miles away from his house for anything, but baseball. In his memoir, he writes, Baseball was the engine that expanded my horizons. In those days, little leagues like Dunedin National

had a regular season in which the individual teams each sponsored by a local business would compete against each other. Now, I also played Little League baseball. Did you play Little League, either, Yalls? I did. I sure did. Yeah, I think it should be a federal felony to make children play baseball,

but I'm not sure what if you guys had a better experience, maybe, um, slightly better. I enjoyed it personally. Okay. Okay. Wow. Well, there's diversity on the panel today. It's good.

Sure. Yeah. Criminal. A variety of opinions. Well, meatball, Ron loved it. Uh, couldn't get enough baseball. And he was very good. And so was his team.

He kind of like lands in with this group of boys who were all, they make like a pact when they're 11 or 12 together to get to the nationals effectively. And you know, they do very well. The first big year they get to the district tournament. They're eliminated by game three, but like it's further than they thought they were gonna get. Ron and his teammates are super debt. Like four of them are gonna wind up getting drafted into the majors.

Like they are, like, it's kind of a dream team of little boys. baseball run. baseball run. So after getting eliminated in game three, the district tournament, they train even harder to compete the next year with the hope of earning a spot in the prestigious Little League World Series in Williamsport.

News articles often include a photo of Ron's team from this period. You see him holding an aluminum bat on his shoulder. One local Tampa source described him as staring into the camera with a look so assured it's almost a nerving on a 12 year old. You get similar hype in other writeups, most of which describe him as an unusually serious kid. I don't see it. I haven't found that photo, but I found I've got another one here and like he just looks like a normal preteen boy.

Like, yeah, I want to see that though unnerving ones. I feel like unnerving is a very, another good word to describe him and his interactions with people. Yes. He's a very serious kid. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't, in this photo, he looks, he's just laughing like the others. Like he just looks like a smiling kid.

He does look like a meatball. He's not put on the face, right? No, no. We've also all seen him laugh at this point. He does think. Yeah. His nightmare laugh, like the, like the crowing of a fucking funeral bird. Oh, yeah. He's like, like, smiling. Like a boy, like a happy kid. Yeah. Yeah. What happened, Ron?

What happened? Well, that's what we're talking about today. Whether or not he was an unusually serious kid, he was openly ambitious in a way that is not the norm for pristine boys. From that Tampa Bay write up, quote, I always knew he was going into politics, said Brady Williams, who is now the race, AAA manager and Durham, and was then one of DeSantis' closest friends. His goal was to be the president of the United States, was that far-fetched. A lot of things we talked about that somewhere were far-fetched and a lot of them happened. So he is one of these and I do feel like I think we need a government agency specifically to go after little boys who talk relentlessly about becoming the president or they need to be in air. Yeah, they need to be in the right manner at all costs. Yeah, parents have to like register

them like yeah, my son's been talking about becoming the president or the first trillionaire, you know, we got a, down on that, got a tamp down on that. Yeah, with those ambitions. Yeah, are our kids um, fucked up.

Yeah, this is, this is a use that we could have for like Philly sports fans, right? Where the government sends a bus of them out to each of these kids with just like eggs to just like start pelting them. Like, oh yeah, you're going to be the president. Yeah. Oh, the president boy. Actually, I think we may have solved a major societal problem here.

Oh, great job, too. Yeah, great job for Philly sports guys, most of whom are unemployed. Yeah. There's nothing anybody could possibly find wrong with this. Mm-hmm. I think we've got a, I think we've got a plan for this. Solve the meatball wrong brother. Yeah, we've got it now. The next year his little league team does much better. He describes them as storming into their regional tournament and making mincemeat of the other Southern teams. One of his former teammates has discussed how manically they had to train that year, rarely going two days in a week without playing.

They eventually made it to the regional championships where they won the Southern regional title and earned a spot in the national contest or in the um, the World Series. Quote, I was surprised at how big of a deal it was for our community. We found ourselves on the local news and on the front page of the local newspapers, a long way from being a bunch of kids putting on a far-fetched motto beneath the brims of our hats. Williamsport is the Shangri-La for Little Leakers. The games take place in an actual stadium that can hold more than 40,000 spectators, thanks

to the terrorist hills beyond the outfield fence. The field was perfectly manicured. When we first got a peek at the stadium, it was like entering Finway Park or rigly field for the first time. The teams all stayed in cabins on site and there was a dining hall for all meals. And this is, this is Meatball Ron's first brush with fame. This is the first time he's like on TV. He gets like a hard made of himself. Yeah. Seize himself. How he can be how he should be. How he has the right to be. How it's his destiny to be. You do get that feeling. Again, bring in Philly sports

fans for the Little League World Series, you know, let give them free batteries. Just keep he pigs. Tam dad. And now free batteries. Oh, batteries. Oh yeah, Phillies, guys love their fucking batteries. So every biographical look at Rod will discuss his little league teams rise to the championships. It does seem to have been a crucial moment for his self-conception. The time where he realized that his humble middle class upbringing wouldn't lock him out of national aspirations. In his memoir, he also uses it as an excuse to make a baffling political point about China.

So apparently the big little league competition includes a team from Taiwan. It is the world series. And like, I don't know why they lost their big game at Williamsport. And he describes the other team's picture as throwing like Nolan Ryan, which makes me think of the time Nolan Ryan cold cock that dude on the field. And I want to see Ron the Santa's taking a maker from anyway, whatever. Sure, sure. After losing to the Taiwanese team, this is the thing I don't understand why he brings up. So they eventually lose to this Taiwanese team. And then after noting this disappointing loss, Ron gives us this gym.

I also think it may have informed some of my later political judgments. For example, while my hostility towards the Chinese Communist Party and my support for Taiwan is reflected by my general political outlook, the respect I had for Taiwanese baseball no doubt made my pro Taipei stance more natural. After all, I remember playing ping pong against these guys and they were just normal kids having fun, not Maoists trying to further a cultural revolution Yeah, I'm sure and preteen shinies kids are hardcore Maoist You're political opinions yeah, yeah, like the idea is so it's just like

Step out of yourself if they've been Beijing kids you would have had the same experience because you're all fucking kids Game like getting they're not gonna be just like reading from the fucking red book to you That's so good. I just speaks to like the way Like his mind like yeah, this mine works of like yeah, I didn't an experience Why'd one experience with people who were different from me? And now that that informs my entire worldview, whether it be negative or positive, it's just a weird like, whatever. Yeah, I hate meatballs now. I don't like meatballs anymore. So after graduating high school, Rodn claims to have worked full time at an electric company that had sponsored his little league team in order to pay for college. So he's, they sponsor his team. The guy

who runs the electric business company thing is like, you meet ball, Ron, if you ever want a gig when she'd done with them with the baseballs, you got a gig here. So he, he gets this job and he, he will not shut up about this job, right? This is like the one blue color moment of his life. And he, he's gotta milk that. Absolutely. As hard as he can and he will use this, he's gonna make as much political hay out of this motherfucking gig as it's possible to make.

But you know who else will milk a meatball, Cody? You know who loves milking meatballs? Can't get enough of that ball milk as they call it. Yeah, who's the ball milk milkers? Well, if you want ball milk, wow, Katie, if you want ball milk, meat it. It's your question. Uh huh. Yeah. Well, you can ask meatball run that. Her name is Casey. So, you know, here's an ad. You know, here's the dad.

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What he does make time to do in his memoir is shit on those lazy millennials. Well, thank goodness. Well, it was come and for rising college freshmen to spend their summer enjoying themselves on the beach and sleeping in until noon. I was up at the crack of dawn to start work just after 6 a.m. Five days per week as an electricians assistant. I made a mere six bucks an hour, but it felt great to receive a paycheck for a good day's work.

Okay. Yeah. She's just running a job. Yeah, also, yeah, because you were a kid that didn't know better just sprouting a job. Yeah, because you were a kid that didn't know better than you had a job. Also, you are going to Yale, and you are legitimately one of the few working class kids there, but I'm going to guarantee you most college students at most colleges worked because they're not Yaleies.

They don't have millionaire parents with legacy. Right. Like go to a different school, and your experience will be like, oh, everybody's kind of doing this that I'm thinking I'm doing. You chose to go to the school for Rich Assholes, which is what Yale is. Everyone knows it.

It's the school for Rich psychopaths. And like, you're being like, wow, nobody else here has a fucking job. Yeah, of course not. You expect that they're all fucking Yale. Yeah, it's a mix of George H.W. Bush's blood sons and fucking illegitimate children. That's all of Yale except for you in this period.

I assume. So let assumes. Yeah, one assumes. So Ron also uses his early work history to make the usual litany of conservative complaints against the regulatory state. When I showed up to work that first day, I wore a tire that was typical of what an electrician would wear.

Jeans, a log-sleeved shirt, and an old pair of work boots. Then I was promptly sent home. Why? Because it wasn't clear if the old worn-out boots were actually OSHA approved. I didn't know what OSHA was, but I soon learned that the occupational health and safety and health administration was a federal agency charged with promulgating workplace safety rules. The net result for me was that I had to spend the lion's chair

of what was, what was ended up being my first week's paycheck, buying a pair of boots that were clearly approved by OSHA. I doubt this made me any safer, but it did make me a tad bit poorer. Now, you, I have my doubts, we'll talk about this, but I have my doubts as to whether not this happened. More accurately, I doubt if Rod DeSantis at the time had a serious issue with being required to where approved safety footwear.

It is very silly that he chose to complain specifically about footwear to make a point about unreasonable regulations because electricians die all the fucking time if they don't wear proper footwear to make a point, about unreasonable regulations, because electricians die all the fucking time if they don't wear proper footwear. It's an extremely reasonable regulation written in blood. Here's one quote from a 2015 article in Electrical Contractor magazine titled, Feet on the Ground. Bad things can happen with the wrong footwear.

These are two real life examples. An electrician wearing cowboy boots loses his footing and slips and he comes into contact with a life conductor, resulting in his electrocution. In another example, alignment wearing tennis shoes is electrocuted when his foot comes into contact with a fallen energized wire. The incident occurred when the victim was attempting to restore power disrupted by a severe storm. Both incidents could have been prevented, had the victim's been wearing proper protective footwear, and he does describe his boots as worn out. Now, worn out. I was going to say thank you.

Yeah. Yes. You said your boots sucked. Like this is a job that can't. Go out of that. And it more to the point. It's it's it's it's this. Yes. Element about regular regulations. It's that Dave Rubin thing on Robin out of you've seen. Where he's like, yeah, all these regulations for building stuff. This is, yeah, it's so, you don't cut corners and like houses collapse or like the wires for it. Like there are reasons that these exist on not every single regulation in the world, but it's such a weird complaint.

Also shouldn't your boss buy those? Maybe that's the argument. That is, see, that's what I was going to say. Like, this is not an issue with, this is not an issue with regulations. This is an issue with the fact that independent contractors are like the legal classification is so fucked that your boss doesn't have to equip you with proper safety gear.

Like, that's the issue here. That's the fact that the bosses provide these that you need. Yes, you need them. They're making you get them. You shouldn't have to pay for them necessarily. There's your little complaint, Rob. No, but you can't, that can't be the complaint

because that doesn't go along with conservative dogma. And it probably, that probably was the complaint at the time. Like that's probably what bothered him at the time. I can't believe I have to buy these. Why do I have to buy this for myself? But I will say I wish he'd been allowed to work as an electrician wearing. Let's just look forward to it. Those are the more now.

Yeah, yes. Yeah. Now, because he was such a good student with excellent grades and extracurricular performance, Ron earned admittance to Yale. He was not a legacy admission. His parents certainly did not have the money to bribe a spot for their son in the prestigious school. It seems clear to me that Ron Psy Yale is an opportunity for him to increase his social class and network with powerful rich people in the hopes of becoming one himself.

He was successful there, becoming captain of the baseball team and rushing for the famous Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Now, he is going to, as we'll say, really try to downplay the degree to which he fit in at Yale, but going to this fraternity puts him in rarefied air because D.K.E. is one of the oldest frats in the country. It's alumni include George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Teddy Roosevelt, and Rutherford B. Hayes, who I know is your favorite president, Cody. You're a big. Okay. So, Rutherford is Stan, as we call them.

Hayes heads. Yeah, Hayes heads, sure. Geez. Yeah. Um, you got Hay fever. That's another good term for Rutherford B. Hayes fans. Uh, yeah. Although I will say Dan Quale was also a member of D.K.E.

So it's not that rarefied, right? The L. Quale. also a member of D.K.E. so it's not that rarefied, right? If they'll let Quail in. Sure, sure, sure. But it's the club that little boys growing up who won the president go to. It is exactly that club. And like it is the kind of thing. Clearly, this was the thing he did because he thought at the time, this is the way to become president, right?

You go to Yale, which is a very fancy school for presidents and you go to fucking, you get into D.K.E. right now because Republican politics have since taken a major populist plunge, particularly in the last six, seven years, Ron has now been forced to disavow his alma mater. Roughly half of the first 20% of his memoir is just him shitting on everyone but him at Yale to try to salvage his blue collar credentials. He does this by trying to paint the school that both George's Bush went to as a breeding ground for communists. What? Yeah. Oh, oh, trying to dance a tight rope right now.

All these different people. Yeah. This part's fun. Well, Yale's popular motto made homage to God in country. The ethos of the university's academics was hostility to the Almighty and disparagement of America. Before I got to Yale, I believe that almost all Americans were proud that our nation defeated the Soviet Union to win the Cold War.

But at Yale, I was told that the United States was to blame for the conflict in the first place, not the Stalin era Soviets. Well, the late 1990s was one of the most prosperous times in human history. At Yale, we were led to believe that communism was superior. Even though it was impossible for me to even one example of the superiority since real communism had never been tried. I wanted some of my professors and classmates rooted for Ivan Drago to her defeat Rocky Balboa and Rocky IV. Just a, what an amazing paragraph. What a rich, rich, rich, rich passage. Yeah, you didn't get his book back.

Wow. I don Um, wow. I don't believe. Comedy word trail saying that. That's what I'm saying. I don't believe you. Anybody could push back on this. They've never taught that. No, not then.

No, it's so funny how like, I simply don't believe it. It's like red scare stuff. It's so funny. And I mean, it's alarming for sure, but like, just like how hard he's going in on this. Like, oh, I just need to like say that communism is bad and also like distance myself from the clear path

that I chose for myself. I don't believe you Ron is my point, I think. Yeah, I don't believe Ron. You're the highest. He's definitely a liar. Oh, the commies at Yale, what the fuck? The fucking commies at Yale don't believe wrong. You're the highest. He's definitely a liar. Oh my. Oh, the commies at Yale. What the fuck? The fucking commies at Yale don't even like Rocky.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, don't even like Seminole film Rocky IV. Yeah. Not even one of the good Rockies anyway. It's such a like a such a funny like he's such a Ted Cruz and so many of us too of just like that touch that cultural touchstone.

I know it too. I'm rocky for you. You were on that culture pop culture. Ha. Yeah. Just fucking a fucking meatball. Anyway, DeSantis goes on to note that experiencing unbridled leftism on the fucking Yale campus was pushed him right.

So he does say that. He includes that line. I was forced into conservatism by those Yale communists. Oh my God. Oh, I'll put the gender studies at Yale. Look at me, I'm fucking wild. Now, as you're probably not gonna. So you're the Sarah Lawrence or something. Yeah. As you're probably not going to. Sarah Lawrence or so. Yeah. Yeah.

As you're probably not going to be surprised to hear, not everyone who went to college with old Ronnie D had a positive opinion of him. And I'm going to quote from an article. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a fun quote from an article in the New Yorker. Some recall that the Santis was so intensely focused that he wasn't much of a team mate. Ron is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with. Another teammate told me, he has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I'm speaking for others, he was the biggest dick we knew. But the same teammate prays to Santis' intellect.

This is the frustrating part. He's so fucking smart and so creative. You couldn't even plagiarize off his work. He'd take some angle and everyone knew there was only one person who could have done that. So yeah, he's a smart asshole who likes to bully people. That's that's that's that's make a president. I tell you what. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like not that smart though, because sometimes he's well, this guy may not be very smart, right? He's another Yale dude and yeah, he's given us a lot of dipshits. So, well, there's an element too of just like, yeah, you got good grades, you like worked

hard, but like, there's like, that's different than it's related. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is intelligence, right? That gets us into a anyway, whatever. Let's, let's move on.

He's a dick and selfish. After he graduated with honors, Ron became a history teacher and taught for a year at the prestigious Darlington School in Rome, Georgia. It is here that he first runs into his, his first serious controversy. Last year, a source with quote, close knowledge of the matter provided information to the hill about a photo that had started going viral. This photo showed a young adult Ronnie D posing with teenage girls, some of whom were students of his while holding a beer.

Now this picture that first came to prominence when Trump started his campaign against meatball Ron. The former president shared this picture from another user's post with a text that's not Ron is it he would never do such a thing question mark. Now the original he did indeed and this original post like Trump was the post he was sharing included a caption by another user that read. Ron DeSantis was having a drink party with his students when he was a high school teacher. Yeah.

Such a weird way to frame it. Having drink party. Having drinks. But also Trump. But also Trump. But also Trump. Trump. Yeah, Trump.

There's a lot that's that's silly about this. Wait, so who's used the phrase drink party? Yeah. The person who originally posted. Okay, because that is a Twitter blue ass phrase. That is a very party. The person who originally posted. Okay, because that is a Twitter blue ass phrase. That is a very Twitter blue phrase. God, a drink party. We're having your drink parties with your leftist, Saint-Yale.

Yeah, that is a phrase written by someone who has forgotten the face of his mother in favor of an Elon Musk Snapple fact. Unreal. And has never been invited to a drink party. And never would be invited to a drink party And never would be invited to a drink party. Never would be invited to a drink party. I also love just like obviously we don't need to get too much into the Trump of it all. But the idea of Trump sharing this photo.

Bro, there are stories of you walking in at Miss. Oh yeah. USA. You were on Epstein's plane. It's like a dog. What are you doing? But also like he's tough on. It doesn't matter. Yeah. It doesn't fucking matter.

God, man. Fuck that guy. Yeah. Um, the, the, the post that Trump was quoting went on to say, having drinks with underage girls and cuddling at them look pretty gross and a feebefiliesque. Oh, honey. It's also you get a lot from the post. Yeah. Very Twitter.

Because it's like, yeah, you got to make a, you got a like the very libertarian thing to like really emphasize the difference between pedophilia and a fee, but you got to make a barrow and a profile. Oh my god. Yeah, this guy owns an aboard ape. Absolutely. Absolutely. All his apes are gone though. All his apes are gone. That's lurch juice. You know, it doesn't have slurped juice. Meat bowl run. That's right. Can't even slurp. Now, this created an uproar on conservative social media,

and the Hill, which is a liberal leaning publication, talked to someone who had apparently, yeah, yeah, it's kind of liby. Yeah. More on the Lib side. That would be called a conservative. It's not, it's certainly not like a left wing rag or whatever, but it's like, no, it's not a not conservative media.

Yeah, talk to someone who had apparently been at the party where Ron has his arms around these girls drinking a beer. According to our whistleblower, very silly thing to call a whistleblower. Fucking ridiculous. Yeah. with the board. Fucking ridiculous. Quarantino, like the micro-feesh we thought. Yeah. Yeah. Come on.

DeSantis had a reputation among students for being a young, the hot teacher who girls loved and the girls in the photo are believed to have graduated in 2002, making them seniors at the time. The reporter also added, the source who provided the photo says that it was taken prior to graduation, meaning the young girls would have still been the Santa's responsibility at the time. That's correct. That is gross. It is gross.

I would pause it even if they weren't his responsibility. He is. Grab and drink with... By the time you have graduated college and are working as a teacher, shouldn't be drinking with high school girls. Not a drink party. It drinking with high school girls. Especially not a drink party. It's not a drink party.

It's not a drink party. It is also sad. It's like we all knew guys. Oh, it's very sad. I suppose you could drink some water with some teenage girls in class, I suppose, but that's not the same thing at all. Although I would say if anyone ever described to me that they were drinking water with teenage girls at their school, I'd be like, well, why are you, why are we talking about this this

way? That's peculiar. Most people don't describe it that way. Yeah. So the New York Times followed up the Hills reporting here, positively IDing DeSantis as the man in the photo and finding further sources that would back up in several interviews that quote, several students recalled Mr. DeSantis as a frequent presence at parties with the seniors who lived in doubt.

So that is deeply off the day. For frequent. Frequent. He is crashing team girl parties. A regular face at the drink parties. Yes. Which I don't think their parents would like that. Yeah.

And the times has repressions, nothing damning in a legal matter, right? There's no, no one is accusing him of sexual harassment or assault or of anything like that. Those allegations just aren't present. But there's not a good reason why as a teacher and an adult, you become a frequent presence at high school parties. No.

Like there's not a non-creepy way for that to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're not there because you're just, you really get on with these teachers. No. In part, you're like, you're really lit up intellectually from the conversation at the drink party. I don't think so.

The best case scenario is like, you have no friends and no sense of judgment. And what? Yeah. Yeah, feel like you get along better with people who have less life experience. Like, is it's not even like, this is like his hometown or something?

No. Like, oh, I knew, like, oh, I was a senior and this was a soft thing. Yeah, they were like, they were, yeah, freshman or whatever. Yeah, it's like, oh, I knew like, oh, I was a senior and this was a software. Yeah, they were like, they were, yeah, freshmen or whatever. Yeah, it's like, no, a new town and you're like hanging out. Yeah, high school with God. No.

One of the sources that the, I'm going to continue to quote from that Times article, two former students, both women, remembered him attending at least two parties where alcohol was served. But they said that the parties took place after graduation and that they were not bothered by his presence at the time. Although they question it now, it was his first job out of, he was cute. We didn't really think too much about it. Yeah. You were kids.

Why would you? You were the high school. You know how to text. Yeah, that's why it's the adult responsibility to not be weirdo. Yeah. Well, Mr. D shows up in a lot of parties. He's always taking pictures with her. He's like, they're like, Mr. D's not a normal teacher. He's a cool teacher.

But then like five years later, they're like, oh no. Oh, wait. Right, because it's also not even like high school, like in 2020. We're like, that is kind of like understood. It's like, no, that's weird. It's weird. Yeah. Lots changed in the last 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. Good for no, that's weird. It's weird. Yeah. Lots changed in the last 20

years. Yeah. Yeah. Good for that. Changing at least. Yes. And also hasn't changed. Anything. It also hasn't changed. So after this really creepy gap year, he enrolls in Harvard law school. Again, he's doing this because he is trying to maximize his chance of like being accepted as a member of like the upper crust conservative intelligence. So then you can rule the club. You want to be a part of the illuminati. You got to do the game.

Yeah. You got to do the gig. He claims now that he he decided to go to Harvard because he was motivated by Tom Cruz's performance and a few good men. And yeah, like Tom's character, he became a judge advocate general, uh, joins the Navy and gets deployed to Iraq as a lawyer with a seal team. Um, now because the Navy seals have the reputation that they have among conservatives, Ron has attempted to be he's basically like claim like he would be, he will always say I deployed

with the seals, which is technically accurate. But he's he's clearly trying to like like he's he's a lawyer. His job is when they go shoot people to be like, yep, you're allowed to shoot these people. Like that, that's why what he was doing. Um, he makes a big point about this now in all of his campaign events. He told a voter in New Hampshire, this July, I'm the only veteran running out of all these candidates. I'll be the first president elected since 1988 who's actually served in a war. Now, that is true, although he was not out, you know, getting shot at or doing anything. He was, he was, he was looking at paperwork. He was being a lawyer. He was also

not universally popular among his comrades at the time from the New Yorker. No. A colleague who served with DeSantis remembered Ron was a voracious worker and he worked at phenomenal speed. He was a superb writer, especially for his age. But even then his ambition seemed consuming. Ron's a user, the former colleague told me, he had utility to him. He would be nice to you. If you didn't, he wouldn't give you the time of day. Yeah.

I know, I gotta say, this is a little controversial, but I hate people like that. I really do. Yeah. Bold stance. Bold stance. Plenty, bold stance. No, of course he is.

And it's like, yeah, the worst. This is also, it's interesting, because I'm sure we'll get into this, but a lot of these elements are very heavily reflected in his governance. Yeah, absolutely. And everything about how he approaches politics and it's not a good guy, bad meatball. Yeah. Bad meatball.

Now, you know what is a good meatball? There's something like with bison. Yeah, oh man, bison, you can make a fine bison meatball. You guys, what my wild game meat recipe that I really, that I really, it's great if you've got like wild boar, anything that's like kind of get, you know, if you've got like a bunch of ground up boar meat

or whatever, anything like. Yeah, have anything for like impossible beef? You could do this with impossible beef. You could do this with like ground venison. I would take a pound of ground venison, a pound of ground boar meat, and mix them together with a whole sleeve of salty and crackers. Did she just crumble up in there?

You crack one, maybe two eggs in, stir it all together, then you baste it with either barbecue sauce or ketchup and you bake that shit in the oven and you cook yourself a delicious meatloaf. It's perfect. Oh, meatloaf. Meatloaf. Yeah. Meatloaf.

Broccoli. Meatloaf. It's like when do we roll the meatloaf into balls? Oh, I see. No, no, no, meatloaf. No, but meatloaf is the strongest shape in nature. You could do a meatloaf ball, Katie. You could shop up meatloaf and then I'm sorry, that just sounds like a nice thing for party. It's like a, yeah.

It's like the crab shape, how it sort of independently appears in all, yeah, sort of all across nature. The love appears all across. So question, were we about to throw the ads? Yes. Okay. Yeah. That's what this whole thing is about.

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get stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now this is by far the most contentious part of his backstory. And so I will be very careful in my phrasing here in a 2006 interview with CBS. DeSantis told his interviewer that at one point several prisoners launched a hunger strike while he was at Guantanamo. He says that his commanding officer asked him, how do I combat this? And Ron answered, hey, you can actually force feed. Here's what you can do.

Here's kind of the rules for that. Now, there's some questionable elements of this recollection because force feeding started at Guantanamo. Somewhat slightly before DeS's actually got sent there. So he's probably exaggerating in order to take credit for what is torture, right? This is this is torture we're talking about. I actually invented a fun new way to torture people. Yes, I heard it was my idea.

Ultimately, the Pentagon authorized force feeding detainees would be strapped to a chair. A nurse would force a lubricated tube down their nose and then would pump in nutritional supplements. Lawyers for detainees have argued that this was torture because force feeding is banned by a UN convention against torture. Former inmates now released have accused a santa's of having played a role in their torture. Former inmates now released have accused DeSantis of having played a role in their torture. Mansour Adafi wrote an article for Al Jazeera and described meeting DeSantis, who initially told him that he was at Guantanamo to ensure that prisoners' rights were respected.

Quote, I remember him asking why we were all still on hunger strike. We told him to look around. Camp Delta was constructed from metal shipping containers, divided into cages with wire mesh. In the summer, the cages were like ovens. In the winter, they were cold and wet. They were loud with huge fans and the echoes of all the men's voices. There was the persistent harassment by guards, desecration of carons, non-existent medical care, systematic torture, and being cut off completely from the outside world. We told the Santas we were on hunger strike because we wanted to know why we were being imprisoned, because we wanted a fair judicial process

to prove our innocence. He took notes, he promised to register our complaints. Now, Ron Mayr may not have registered their complaints. We don't know, but it had no impact on what happened next. Days later, a day fee was brought back to the rec yard where nurses and Navy Cormin, which is Navy medics, essentially, were waiting with a restraint chair in several cases of insure. Ron DeSantis and other Jag officers stood nearby, observing.

Quote, I was informed that the US government was determined to break the hunger strike. The doctor in charge, a colonel, told me that he did not care if I was innocent or protesting mistreatment. He was there for one thing, to make me eat. I refused and was immediately and violently strapped into the chair, so tightly that I could not move. A nurse forced a thick tube into my nose and down my throat. My nose bled and the pain was so great that I thought my head would explode.

The nurse would not stop, instead he began pouring and shurring into a feeder bag attached to the tube. They poured can after can into a feeder bag attached to the tube. They poured can after can into the feeder bag until my stomach and throat were so full that insure poured back out of my mouth and nose. I thought I was going to drown. If you throw up a corpsman said, we'll start from the beginning with a new case and fill you up again. As I tried to break free, I noticed DeSantis's handsome face among the crowd at the other side of the chain link. He was watching me struggle. He was smiling and laughing with other officers as I screamed in pain. It is very upsetting, yeah. Cody, you got a good meatball joke? Uh, something about, oh no, but I did think when you were describing this, it sounded

like you said, jag off. I get you. I did too. That's good. I thought you were. The other's, the jag off. I'm glad we pulled out of the tailspin. I do.

Um, also, I mean, there's been some references to him being handsome and I don't agree with that. They keep saying he's handsome. Yeah, I keep looking at mom and being like, is he? But I know that multiple people, there's been multiple suggestions today. And I've had a, I take issues. It is, it is really interesting that a day fees specializes, like specifies that that he's like getting torches like

and face. Damn, man, guys, kind of good looking though. Anyway, peculiar. The things that occur to you when you're in an intense situation. So a day fee was one of several former inmates who claimed to have recognized a Santos. He was featured along with several whistleblowers in an unreleased vice documentary. The whistleblowers include a former US naval sergeant, Joe Hickman. So Joe was on guard duty during a night when three prisoners, the ring leaders of the hunger strike, died somewhat mysteriously. Our government claims that these guys all were part had a suicide pack together, right, that they committed suicide. Hickman does not agree with this. Again, he was on guard duty that night

and he believes the men were assassinated to restore order and put an end to the strike, which was very bad PR for the US government. From a write up by the Daily Beast, quote, Hickman, who later contributed as a whistleblower for the Justice Department's investigation into the deaths, recalled the Santas as popular and extremely handsome. There we go again.

Navy girls would go crazy. I feel like you added that in. Just the fuck me. No, no, I swear to God, I'm not added. Like it's just a thing that comes up with, like everyone from these girls at the school he taught at, to this sergeant, to the duty was helping to torture. I'll mention this.

I don't get it, but it's like an undeniable thing. You have to acknowledge it. Like. You have to ignore it? Yeah, yeah. I agree. I do agree for the record. I don't understand this.

And it makes me question my own sanity. It's like fucking it's like fucking, being best friends with Jimmy Stewart in that movie where he sees the giant rabbit and you're just like, is there really a rabbit? Like he's so consistent about this. What am I missing?

Yeah. Fucking Harvey somewhere around here. Great movie, by the way, Harvey. Fucking absolute classic. Yeah, classic. So yeah, check it out. Absolutely classic. Yeah, classic. Um, so yeah, I'm going to continue that quote. Maybe, maybe, and Navy girls would go crazy over him. Hickman said, although he added that he doesn't believe DeSantis, who became a jagged straight out of Harvard law.

I'd argue he's been a jagged forever. He would have been in the room that night. They weren't going to give somebody like that, that kind of responsibility. Hickman said in the transcript. So that vice documentary was canceled at the last minute for very shady, but unclear reasons. It seems likely that it was killed to avoid angering a potential future president out of cowardice at the highest levels of a failing media company.

But I just really have nothing more to say because it's unclear still at this point. In the spring of 2006, Ron met his future wife Casey at a driving range at the University of North Florida. Again, not, not Florida. He and his wife did not meet on Florida. Again, we get, we get the subreddit fills with confusion every time we mention this I just want to make sure we're really keeping it straight It is from this period that we get our only context on Ron's flirtation techniques, which I know everyone's very excited to learn about how to Handsome man flirt I'm gonna read you how we open our threat asking that. Yeah, this is how he opens with his future wife Hello somebody left these balls behind. Would you like to have them?

Me balls? No, golf balls. It's a driving rage, right? It's a driving rage, yeah. You want my balls? Yeah, very, very funny. Wow. This works on Casey and their first date

is that evening at Beef O'Brady's, which is apparently a restaurant. Got meatballs. What do you like? Just... Balls? I don't know what he's like. The balls and beef?

Some people say I'm very handsome. Some people, this guy I tortured, I said I'm very handsome. This guy I tortured. That's a very handsome guy tortured and teenage girl. He's got a poster in his like I imagine his apartment is completely empty aside from a pillow and a blanket on the floor and a poster he made that says like people who think I am attractive. Guys I tortured it Guantanamo, teenagers.

I'm drinking water. I'm drinking water. I'm drinking water. You question March. I'm drinking water. I'm drinking water. You question March. Oh, great.

So Jill Casey Black, usually called Casey, had grown up in Troy, Ohio, one of two daughters of an optometrist and a speech pathologist. She had also been an active student athlete and had done very well in school. She went to the University of Charleston and graduated with a degree in economics and French. She competed as an equestrian

and had started a promising career as a reporter and on screen talent for the local Jacksonville station, WJTX. The one story I found of her as a TV reporter is that there was a story about an alligator that had gotten into a suburban neighborhood, which she described as a story with real teeth. If you're curious as to the level of rigor, she brought to journalism as a profession. You know what they call getting a degree in economics and French?

What's that? Monet. Okay. Studying Monet? No, studying Monet. You proud of yourself, aren't you, Daddy? No, that is good. Yeah.

Studying Monet. Yeah, no, no, no, we get it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Good one, buddy. Good one, buddy. Yeah. So they get hitched in 2009 at Disney World. Oh, now that is funny because of the war he's going to have with Disney later. That he wants to do it. Yeah. By all accounts, it's not a very Disney Disney wedding. There's not like Mickey or any characters hanging around. They go to Epcot after, which is like the least Disney thing to do at Disney World. I think it's more of a rich Florida people thing than a Disney super fan thing, right?

Like Disney World's just like. Yeah, yeah, you gotta get the photos. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God, the Prince is here and the other Prince. Oh, yeah, yeah. You gotta get the photos. Yeah. And stuff like that. Oh my God, the Prince is here. And the other Prince. Oh, the Prince is over there. Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, the two are a famously power couple and Florida politics, where Ron is tight-lipped and reserved and introverted. Casey is an extrovert. She's going to do when he runs for office. She does a lot of on the ground campaigning, even like knocking on doors for him. She does a lot of on the ground campaigning, even like knocking on doors for him. She does a lot of introducing him at events and stuff.

Like she is the the talker of the two of them. She's more likable. Here's my weird husband. By far, isn't he handsome? Yeah, look at me. Just look at him, don't listen to his words. I'm attractive and charismatic. Please ignore my husband's words.

Yeah, I studied Monet and college. Yeah. Way'm attractive and charismatic. Please ignore my husband's words. Yeah. I studied Monet and College. Yeah. Way to go, Cody. So these ambitions, and she is, you know, the two are by all accounts deeply in love and partners in Ron's political ambitions. And those ambitions would become evident for the first time in 2012. When Ron noticed that the newly drawn sixth district in Florida had it again, not

Florida, Florida had an open campaign for Congress. It was a tweener district in between Jacksonville and Orlando and had no incumbent. Because of the demographics of the district, it would be a guaranteed win for any Republican who could win the nomination. With Casey at his side, meatball Ron decided he was going to be that Republican. And we will talk about that and his rise to power in part. I think there's also something to say about the phrase tweener district. Yeah, Ron's. Yeah, it's uncomfortable to me. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, well, his wife is age appropriate though. So yeah, good for that. That is good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He is married to an adult. That's positive. Shows growth. We like to end things on a positive note. Yeah. Yeah. Modern politics. Yeah. Well, thanks for having us here for this. Yeah. How you feeling, guys? I'm excited to see me balleron up on stage. Yeah. Yeah. You know, just being in circles. Just being himself. Yeah. Just be and just you just be

yourselves. You know, if you are a relentlessly dedicated psychopath who wants to become the president purely for reasons of self gratification, don't let anything stop you, you know, relentlessly craft a life towards that goal and and proceed on a rocket ship like course towards it until fucking biff Tannen, Kojou, Meet Ball Ron, and utterly annihilates all of your dreams. In a single shot. Just drift down and get back to the Earth. Yeah, it's like the Death Star shooting a taxi cab.

Just absolutely wiped out. That's some taxi cab. Yeah, a handsome taxi cab. Anyway, you guys got some plugs? Sure, you got shows. Oh, yeah, we got shows. Yeah, check us out. We got a YouTube show called Some More News.

It's also a podcast. Okay. And we have a companion podcast called Even More News. Hell yeah, you do. Hell yeah, we do. Podcast. I've got, oh, we've got a Patreon for that as well. Patreon.com slash some more news.

I've got a band called The Hot Shapes. That's an album out now. Check it out on band camp and SoundCloud, The Hot Shapes.bandcamp.com. Yeah, we have to work this out. We're, we split up the plugs because I, yeah, I got it all. Well, you said, you said Cody go. So I did. But then I was like, well, Katie's not going to want to plug my band. So you're right. Yeah, I agree with what he said. But also, I do want to plug his band. Go ahead, listen to his band. Oh, it's sweet.

It was good stuff. Check it out. All right. See you next episode, probably. Yeah, see you next episode. You can find us at Cooler Zone Media. If you want to get this without ads, you can subscribe. And I'm going to also put in a free plug

for a YouTube channel that I like. Just Google Bobby Fingers YouTube Watch the watch the Steven Segal video first you'll be pleasantly surprised all right No, no, no, this is just like my favorite thing that exists this this artist. I don't know why he doesn't have Cody you need you need to watch these videos Bobby fingers I don't know I don't know I'm not familiar with this but You need to watch these videos, Bobby Fingers. Okay. I don't know. I don't know.

I'm not familiar with this, but the thumbnails are everything. Yes, I have no way to describe this to you. There's three videos so far. Watch the one about Steven Seagull. That's all I'll tell you, listeners. I have no affiliation with this guy. I just love him. All right.

We'll support that. We support supporting. Bye. Bye. Alright. Looking forward to that. We support supporting... Bye. Bye. Bye. Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. From more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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