The Dispatch Podcast - What’s With These GOP Senate Candidates?

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

This week's Dispatch Live, which is a weekly live stream for Dispatch members only, ran into some issues because Substack was completely down on Tuesday. So, because most members did not get to hear it we are offering it in its entirety as The Dispatch Podcast. If you're not a member of The Dispatch and liked what you heard here, click the link below to join so you can tune into Dispatch Live weekly on Tuesdays at 8pm ET. In this episode, David, Declan, Andrew, and Audrey discuss the Senate GOP candidates for the midterm elections, the latest in the Mar-a-Lago search, and the chances of DeSantis 2024.   Show Notes: - Join The Dispatch Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm David French. Not your normal dispatch podcast host. And this is not your normal dispatch podcast. We had some technical difficulties around our dispatch live Tuesday night. Substack was down. So very few members were able to access the broadcast. But it was a fantastic discussion. And we thought we would reproduce it for you for the main podcast feed. So without further ado, this is Tuesday night's Dispatch Live with me, Audrey Falberg, Declan Garvey, and Andrew Egger talking politics. Welcome to Dispatch Live. A unique dispatch live. We're broadcasting, I'm not going to say into the void. But close to it, because Substack is down right now. That means that only the most tech savvy dispatch members have figured out how to access this live link. And you're now watching it exclusive, intimate presentation of Dispatch Live, but it will be released as a podcast. So if you're hearing this, the chances are you're hearing this as a podcast. So, and it's just too bad, actually, that so few people are seeing this live.

because this is going to be premium content tonight. I'm David French. I'm going to say this because a lot of people will only be listening to this. I've got Audrey Falberg with us, Declan Garvey, Andrew Eger, and we are going to talk about three broad topics as well as answer questions that the select elite few, the SEAL Team 6 of dispatch team members, who are able to watch us live, will answer your questions. So we're going to talk about three broad things.

One is, is the GOP throwing away the Senate? Number two, how is the post-search news cycle working out for the DOJ and for Donald Trump? And number three, is Ron DeSantis rooting for the feds? So these are three interesting, good questions. And I want to start with throwing in question to Audrey. and it's somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But the general thrust of the question is, how bad do MAGA candidates have to be in this environment to lose?

And we'll just start with Georgia, Audrey. How many secret sons will it take for Herschel Walker to lose his Senate race? How much trouble is he in? That's a great question. The polls definitely have him trailing Raphael Warnock by quite a bit. but yeah so the Daily Beast several weeks ago posted published this story

that Herschel Walker had a secret son and then there were more and more and more stories it turned out he has two secret sons and daughter we double checked before this dispatch live but you know that's not even the craziest thing he's done or said we talked about this a little bit in his sleep and Declan Esther wrote about this in the morning dispatch this morning

But, you know, he's said, he's talked about air quality saying, quote, our good air decided to float over to China's bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move, talking about the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, which the mainstream media likes to label the sweeping climate change health care bill. He said, quote, a lot of money is, it's going to trees. Don't we have enough trees around here? The list goes on and on.

But, yeah, it'll be interesting. to see how this plays out. Clearly, he's not very well-spoken. He's not the only gaffe machine on the trail. Clearly, in Pennsylvania, there's been an issue for Dr. Oz as well, who got a lot of flag from John Fetterman for, you know, posting this video on Twitter, complaining about inflation. And he said that his wife wanted him to come to the grocery store to make a veggie plate,

but he called it a crudete. Is that? I've never even heard the work. Crudite, yes. And he mispronounced the local grocery store, Redner's. He actually tried to say Wegmans, but then ended up saying Wegmans. And so, you know, John Federman ends up making fun of him in a fundraising email, it ends up with a $500,000 fundraising hall in the 24 hours after that gap, which is pretty astounding.

But I'll let Declan and Andrew Way in here. It's kind of crazy how bad these candidates are. And then with Herschel Walker, I mean, we can laugh about sort of the secret son scandal, although certainly no laughing matter, this family arrangement. We can laugh about the sort of the gaffs, but there's no laughing matter as to is he okay. And then we have the scandal about he allegedly held a gun up to his ex-wife. I mean, this is pretty remarkable stuff. So, Declan, let me come to you. Yeah.

Where are you seeing the GOP in the most trouble in the Senate? I mean, it feels to me that Hershey Walker may still pull it out. Dr. Oz seems pretty and a lot of trouble, like Master's a lot of trouble. What are you, where are you seeing the GOP at the most risk in this potential wave year? Yeah, I mean, well, that's that's the first thing to note is that GOP shouldn't be really in trouble anywhere. They should, you know, with Biden's approval numbers where they are, with inflation near 40-year highs, with just the general, you know, midterm effect of the party out of power typically regains control of Congress historically pretty much every time. the Republicans should be kind of on a clean sweep on their way to taking back control of Congress. And they are in the House. They're not in the Senate. I think the most election models

still give Democrats something like a 60, 70 percent chance of keeping control of the Senate, even gaining a seat or two. And part of that is because Republicans are defending much more seats. They have kind of a much unfriendlier map this cycle this time around. But They are, they're in huge trouble in Pennsylvania, in Arizona. Less so in Ohio. I think J.D. Vance gets lumped in with these other candidates and he's, I think, a little bit stronger. Ohio is a little bit redder.

He'll be fine, most likely. But it's really, it's, I spent yesterday talking to a lot of different Republican strategists, and I think some of them are tuning in now or they were supposed to before Substack went down. But, you know, it's really frustrating them because this is basically Trump got everything that he wanted, you know, for the most part, pretty much any Senate candidate that he wanted, that he endorsed one, you know, Oz was hand selected by Trump, Herschel Walker was hand selected by Trump, J.D. Vance, Blake Masters in Arizona. And now that they're polling poorly, you know,

because you have to do certain things to win the Trump endorsement and get out there with Republican primary voters now that they're polling poorly in the general election. Trump's like, well, why isn't Mitch McConnell doing more to support them and to give them money and everything the Republican strategists are like, Trump, they're your candidates, you fund them, you give them money from all the donor money that you're collecting. So it's kind of a Trump just cared that he got his people through the primary. You know, it doesn't matter much to him whether or not they win the general election. We'll see how close they come.

But it does seem like it's going to be a much, much more difficult road than it needs to be. So, Andrew, Declan raised a point that it seems as if J.D. Vance is being lumped into the trouble group that includes Blake Masters, Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz. fair to lump him in there? It depends what you mean by trouble, right? I mean, just going by the polling, he is not nearly as underwater as some of those other candidates are. And we discussed this, I think, a little bit, a little bit last week, but these are some kind of shocking gaps that we're seeing in Pennsylvania and Arizona,

in particular, like double-digit polling leads in what are supposed to be neck-and-neck races, which we would expect to tighten. In Ohio, it's not nearly so bad. I think J.D. Bance is still a pretty strong favorite to win that race. The role that he plays in this conversation, and I can't remember whether it was in TMD today or in the sweep today that we mentioned this

because it's all one big mind meld over here on the editorial side. But it is the fact that there is just enough of a chink in his armor where it's not set it and forget it. We've won Ohio. and we don't need to think about it between now and November whatsoever. There's just enough question mark there that Republicans kind of nationally, strategically, have been forced to pour a bunch more money into that race supporting.

A bunch being $30 million. Right, right. Then they otherwise would have had to do, wanted to do money that could have gone, in theory, to making up some of this ground in some of these other states. where obviously like your top priority is is is the defense you don't it you don't want to you know sweep in a bunch of brand new and potentially like weaker um um just strategically it's nice it's nice to maintain you want to you want a Republican to replace a Republican with Rob Portman so so I think like and and part of that is just purely on vance mean he hasn't

really been campaigning he hasn't really been fundraising he's kind of been been happy to leave the financial element largely to Peter Thiel, who's been funding his SuperPack. And plainly, Mitch McConnell and J.D. Vance have different levels of risk assessment for how close you can let it get before you have to have to sweat it. So I think, I think, yeah, he plays that role here. That's the problem with running as populist a campaign as he is, is that. that essentially, I mean, he's throughout the primary, he was maligning basically every, you know, elite American institution, financial sector, DC politics, like these are all the people that theoretically would be funding his campaign. And he's turned a lot of them off. He's really not fundraised in a way

that he should be able to just kind of like a base level, get enough money to run your ads on TV. And so that's why the Senate Leadership Fund, that's the Mitch McConnell-aligned Super PAC here in D.C. felt the need to pour so much money in is that he's not doing the work to do the kind of grassroots fundraising from voters. He's also not attracting enough money from kind of corporate general, you know, historically traditional funders of Republican campaigns. And so he's just kind of left in the middle where Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee is just, you know, traversing the state, covering it completely with ads. The Democrats are flush with money right now. And so there really is just kind of like a name ID, get your name out there, disadvantage there, that it's going to cost $30 million to fix. And that's money again, that like Andrew was saying, could have gone towards Colorado, could have gone towards Oregon or Washington, Nevada, places where Republicans could actually be picking up a seat rather than just trying to not lose as many as they can. So Audrey,

Sounds to me like you could call J.D. Vance like a canary in a coal mine. In other words, if J.D. Vance is in trouble in Ohio, which I believe was Trump plus eight or so in 2020. Not close. Not close. So if J.D. Vance is in trouble in a Trump plus eight, is it fair to keep talking about a red wave? Is that outdated? Is that an outdated conversation to have right now? Well, one more thing on J.D. Vance, J.D. Vance that I think we haven't really talked about. Declan kind of alluded to this. But Tim Ryan's also just a really, really good candidate for Democrats in that he's really good at towing the line. And even though he's voted with Biden pretty much 100% of the time, this term, he is really good at engaging with reporters. And, you know, for example, the other day I asked him if he hopes that Biden will join him in the state. And he said, you know, we're running your own race. We're not really asking many people to come in. And that really appeals to Ohio voters, right? I think in terms of the red wave question, I think, I don't know, we've been taught, like election analysts and reporters have talked about a red wave for quite some time. But I think that the understanding from the get-go, at least from a few months ago, is that that was always going to be the case at the House. But the Senate was always going to be really, really tricky. And I think a lot of it had to kind of became clear before a lot of these really tricky Republican primaries, including in Herschel Walker. I mean, excuse me, in Georgia, where, you know, there's been some criticism of Rick Scott and McConnell

for perhaps not involving themselves more in Republican primaries, that it's not clear that, you know, D.C. establishment involvement in Georgia would have, like, put a dent in Herschel Walker's support. Maybe that would have made a difference in a place like Pennsylvania, right, where Dave McCormick probably would have made a much better general election candidate. it. But, you know, I don't know, there are a lot of other races that we haven't really talked about yet, including, like, in Nevada, Catherine Cortez Mastas, rated by Cook Political Report to be the most endangered incumbent. I think Republicans will probably pick up that seat. One that I think is really fun to write about is Colorado. I mean, yes, Joe Aday will probably lose. But I think the fact that McConnell is even appearing at his events. And I'm guessing, you know, maybe we'll see some Senate leadership fund money being important to his race. That's, again, a warning sign that, like, people like Vance are doing really, really poorly, that they might end up having to rely on other states that otherwise weren't on the map. Like, I think, honestly, yes, the Senate leadership fund has poured, I think,

a total of $34 million into Pennsylvania, but I think they're kind of nearing the point where they're like, all right, what can we really do to save his time? Yeah, I mean, Dr. Oz's team did mock John Fetterman's stroke today, so there's that. Okay, here's a question. No, go ahead, Declan. Well, whether or not, I think, you know, we are going to get a red wave or that should still be, you know, in the cards, Republicans expected a red wave. And they've been told there's a red wave coming for, you know, a year and a half now. And, you know, if that does not materialize, there will have to be fall guys.

And I think we're starting to see early signs of who that might be. I mean, right now, we're basically seeing kind of a not so subtle, you know, pissing match between Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump right now over it's going to be your fault that this happened versus your fault that this happened. There was a Trump did one of his truths, which is a tweet, but on his own website about Mitch McConnell and his wife over the weekend criticizing them. And a reporter asked him today, McConnell, do you have any comment? responding to this and McConnell just leans into the microphone goes no so there's you know they're

fighting over over who's going to get blamed for this if if the wave doesn't come to fruition and then today this is a very inside the beltway DC thing but there was a kind of a hit piece laundered on Rick Scott who's the head of the national Republican senatorial committee which is you know in charge of electing Republicans on a nationwide basis and in Axios today there's a a piece written about how he took a vacation with his wife for their 50th anniversary while Republicans are floundering in the Senate and that he's not here working on that every day. That's not a piece that gets written if things are going well. That's a there are people out to get you.

You know, we're frustrated with how you're leading this. And, you know, we don't think you're handling this the best way that you could be. So we're going to start, you know, the corners are closing on him. him. I think he saw this as a potential launching pad to kind of build his name and network ahead of a 2024 campaign, but if it goes the way that it's going

right now, he's really kind of, I think, hurt himself rather than helped. Which is a real shame because otherwise Rick Scott would make such a compelling dynamic presidential contender. I will say the scandal had one

benefit for him, which is in his spokesperson responded basically saying like how dare Rick Scott go take his wife on a trip for the 50th anniversary and finding out that he's been married for 50 years I thought he was like 50 so he is actually 70 he looks fantastic for for how old that he is no kidding so yeah I think you know if that's the one thing that comes out of this forum you know that might be worth it alone honestly maintaining like a like a healthy work life balance is is a commendable thing I mean like like good for good for him like if you promise his wife a trip for their anniversary well this is a whole

this is a whole other thing though i mean think about some of these representatives like nancy pelosi and then you know senator like chuck grassley these guys are working well into advanced age without maintaining i should say much of a work life balance so you know there's maybe maybe this work life balance is oversold but that that's a topic for another dispatch live Andrew right now, 538 gives Republicans about a 78% chance of taking the House, which is overwhelming odds, I think, fair to say, gives the Democrats a 63% chance of retaining the Senate, which is solid. If that's how it works out, if that's how it works out, what is the story that Republicans tell themselves after November? Well, the thing that's been interesting to me,

as we've been talking about all this, all this, this fall guy stuff, is the way that the Republican apparatus for kind of like understanding unfortunate things that have, that have befallen them in the elections has really gotten kind of short-circuited in the past two years. Yeah. Because there's a very substantial part of the base that has gotten really used to seeing, uh, unexpectedly bad election results, uh, as proof in and of itself, just the fact that the results were significantly worse than they themselves anticipated as proof of some kind of funny business or, or fraud. I mean, we've seen this in, in a lot of even primary elections this year, like in the, in the couple, in the handful of races, uh, where,

where Trump's candidates have, have not done very well, um, like, like what we saw in, in a lot of the statewide elections in, in Georgia for governor and, uh, and, uh, secretary of state in particular, an immediate kind of flowering of, of the fixes in, you know, they, they, the, the current governor did that for himself in, in the gubernatorial, uh, primary in Arizona. We saw the fascinating spectacle of, of the, the Trumpy candidate there, Carrie Lake, who won her primary, still spent the first, you know, the first few hours immediately after the polls closed before she took the lead, waving a big fraud flag. And then after she retook the lead, counting overnight, basically just saying,

thank you all for turning out to vote and outvoting the fraud. Literally just based on the fact that at one point in the counting, she was behind, it's a tainted, tainted result. And so I think, I mean, when you look back at like previous times that the Republican Party has tried to do some soul searching and gone back and licked their wounds and like, gosh, how can we stop ourselves from being embarrassed like this again? I'm not sure you're going to see much of that. I mean, I think you will see the personal blame going around that basically just lets everybody reinforce whichever politicians they were already pre-inclined to hate.

But I think that it's just kind of a leak in the pipe, the election fraud stuff, that will prevent any kind of, like, real momentum from from building up to have a critical mass of people say, gosh, like, plainly that the kinds of races that we're running here are not working out as well as we thought they should. The last time that this happened for Republicans, you know, in 2010, 2012, both times where they thought that they should win back the Senate and did not, But that they made some real changes before the 2014 midterms. They took much more active role in primaries. They ensured that Todd Aiken or Christine O'Donnell was not going to get the nomination.

Sharon Engle. Right. And so the Mount Rushmore of the lost Senate. Yeah. Yes. And so that was, I think that was kind of a hope that, you know, we've been covering this dating back two years, is Mitch McConnell going to take such an active role in shaping who these nominees are. And for the most part, he has not. You know, I was talking to people yesterday. They were very, you know, adamant. He did in Missouri. He did stop Eric Wrightens from getting the

nomination there. But for the most part, he's been relatively hands off. And, you know, whether that's a deliberate strategy of, okay, Trump, see how your guys do and go from there. Or if it's a me getting involved in this rate is only going to backfire. And, you know, because the establishment coming in to say the candidate isn't necessarily what primary voters want to hear. We've seen just a kind of a reversion back to the hands-off approach from 2010, 2012. All right. So, Audrey, quick question for you from Kevin, who asks, what's the over under for McCarthy not getting to be speaker, assuming Republicans win the House? Are you hearing any rumbles that McCarthy might actually not be speaker? Or is that just sort of pundit talk?

To me, that's pundit talk. But what will be really funny to watch is when somebody like Joe Kent, who I did not think was going to be Jamie Herrera Butler, he hates McCarthy, has said that he would not vote for him for speaker. What happens when he likely wins? And he joins the ranks of the, you know, House Republicans. Yeah, I mean, I honestly, I don't know what you guys are hearing Declan and Andrew, but I think that McCarthy has played this pretty well. I think, like, unfortunately, a lot of the pro-impeachment House Republicans have lost, but, you know, McCarthy has really tried hard to fundraise on their behalf. He's fundraised also, his take back the House 2020 leadership pack, his fundraise for somebody, you know,

pro-impeachment Republican, David Valadeo, for example. And so I think he's really tried to play his hand. I think, you know, even Jim Jordan at the House Republican Issues Retreat in late March, a lot of people thought that he would challenge McCarthy. And, you know, he still technically could, but he kind of made some tacit endorsement of McCarthy at that issue's retreat, which I thought was pretty interesting. So I think he kind of has it in the bag. But I did want to add one more thing to what Devin was talking about in terms of McConnell's involvement in Senate races. He did get involved in Missouri, but he also got involved in Alabama, which I thought was really interesting. and he was successful in preventing Mo Brooks from winning a primary. That was kind of a funny part of this midterm cycle, but I don't think got that much attention.

Yeah, we're getting a couple of questions that are similar, sort of what was McConnell doing during all of this candidate selection? And if the GOP does lose the Senate majority again, who will MAGA world blame, since they're obviously not going to blame Trump? that's a very good question. I mean, you think the default for Maga World, if anything negative happens in the Senate, is to blame McConnell. I mean, we don't have to draw a line from A to B for people to blame Mitch McConnell here. But question for the group, was McConnell asleep at the wheel when it came to candidate's selection? Or was this a situation where Trump's guys were going to just win? this is this is what I was trying to figure out in my reporting yesterday and basically the

sense that I got was he picked his battles where he thought he could actually make a difference in Missouri and Audrey thank you for mentioning Alabama is another one and then I saw one of the questions had to do specifically with Herschel Walker in Georgia. Herschel Walker was going to win that primary even if I don't even know who was running against him honestly because even if that person got airdropped $4 billion to run ads. They're not going to beat the Georgia football star endorsed by Trump in Georgia. And so I think, you know, you could agree or disagree whether, you know, McConnell should have tried anyways. But it's kind of a little bit of a keeper powder dry. Why bother spending both money and, you know, picking fights with Trump in places where

it's not going to have any real tangible benefit anyways. It might be worth, you know, showing that there is an opposition or there is an alternative, even if it's not going to win. But McConnell World kind of clearly came to the decision that there were very, there were places where it just was not going to make one whit of difference. And so it wasn't even worth engaging. I'm just going to say, Declan, real fast, on behalf of Gary Black, I'm deeply offended that you do not remember him.

13.4% of the vote to Herschel Walker 68.2. I think we all saw you looking that up a second ago. What? The screen was flashing. No, no, that's fake news. That is absolute fake news. And then also, oh, hold on my screen, I'm not saying that I'm looking at a screen, but my screen actually cuts off the last name of the third place finiture. it says Latham sad. And I don't think it's into the SAB.

It's not his name. It's his, it's Latham is sad. Latham is sad. 8.9% of the vote. So can I say one thing on one thing each on, on Georgia and Missouri? Because I think Declan's absolutely right. The thing about Georgia is that during that Republican primary, nobody was paying any attention to Herschel Walker because from the minute he announced it was,

it was, okay, he's a lock. He's a lock for the nomination. he's he's uh he's trump endorsed i mean georgia republicans were not like going out of their way to to like oh this herschel walker guy i wonder what he's about they knew enough based on the fact that he was you know the the unbelievably popular former football star endorsed by the president and that was plenty and as far as like the political press and and everybody were concerned all of the oxygen during that primary was getting sucked up by by the governor and and secretary of state races with with Brian Kemp and versus David Perdue and Brad Raffensberger versus Jody Heist.

So, so, you know, you get this, this barrage of like the negative press for Herschel Walker. And that's to be expected, you know, during a primary, sorry, during a general election, that's when Democrats are going to start dropping all of their oppo. But as far as even like the Republicans are concerned, like there, I totally agree. I don't think there really ever was any lane for McConnell to get involved there. And then I think Missouri is a really illustrative example of the exact far opposite end of the spectrum, where you have a candidate in Gryton's who is a target-rich environment for McConnell in a lot of different ways. Like one, he has pledged that if he's elected to the Senate, he will vote to oppose McConnell as majority leader. I mean,

he made this a campaign plank of his. So obviously, not a guy McConnell wants in for that reason, but also just a man with an unbelievable amount of personal baggage that in theory, his nomination could be the only thing that would even in a million years give a Democrat like Trudy Bush Valentine a tiny chance of sneaking away with the seat. So that's another reason for McConnell to want to get involved. And then the third thing is that the other candidates in the race were just not hitting Brighton's very hard. So there was an opportunity to come in, do some outside spending, really play up his negatives in a way that was getting that message in front of voters who would not have seen it necessarily otherwise.

And I think all those things together sort of lined up in order for McConnell to think, okay, here is a place where I can really actually make a difference. And even then, I mean, Gritens finishes in third place, but he finishes in third place with, I don't remember the exact numbers now. He still gets like 20% of the vote. You know, it's not like, even with all these things lining up, there's only so much ground McConnell can help like a better off in his eyes

Republican make up. So I think that goes a long way to explaining why, he kept powder dry in so many of these different races. All right. So I'm going to answer a last reader question on this topic before we move on to the next. And this was a question was, is there any, Phil asked, do any of you think there's a cohesive establishment Republican effort to make Trump candidates lose or look bad? I think the answer to that is a no with the capital N-O. Mitch McConnell would be super happy to ride an Oz, Walker, Vance, Masters wave into Senate Majority Leader.

he would want to be Senate Majority Leader and then if he doesn't like these guys some of the guys who don't make him Senate he can sideline him when they're in the Senate but he would want to be Senate I just don't think there's any effort on the part of Establishment Republicans to tank anything

he wouldn't be putting a combined $70 million into I mean obviously it's not him per se but his super PAC wouldn't be giving them that much money just to let it inspire Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious.

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dot com slash dispatch application times may vary rates may vary all right so let's move on to the marilago search since the raid one thing two one thing was absolutely clear maga world rallied around don't trump instantaneously um a lot of folks called the um the the the doj raid on like an in kind country in kind campaign contribution to Donald Trump. Since that time, since the raid, since we learned of the raid, we've seen the search warrant in the exhibits. We have seen from a variety of letters that have been released, other information that's been released, that Trump was hanging on to some top secret special access programs information, hundreds of pages of classified information that the

government says he shouldn't have had. There have been some really amateurish legal filings. from Team Trump, which is, of course, par for the course, as we've seen over the years. Two weeks out. Is it two weeks? Whatever. These days have felt like years, my friends. Let's just go around the horn. Two weeks out, start with you, Audrey. Is the raid or search or whatever you want to call it still benefiting Donald Trump or has that worm turned a little bit? I think right now it is. I think, frankly, so you think about like amateurish legal filings. I think for the average voter, they are not going to follow that kind of thing, right? True. You see this is another attempt to, you know, like they painted, Trump is a Russian asset last time.

You know, we don't trust the federal government blow, blah. He's our guy. He's a victim. I think, if anything, you know, we're seeing that he's fundraising off this a lot, obviously. So I think at this point, it's still probably helping him. It'll be interesting to see how this changes, this things you want. But you talked about how MAGA world instantaneously rallied. behind him. That clearly happened in the House, especially with House Republican leaders with the Stefanikosk calling saying live in a banana republic, you know, the Biden weaponized the DOJ against his enemies. But in the Senate, McConnell, Joni, you know, and his fellow members of Republican leadership issued a much more measured response saying, you know, some of them even

waited a couple of days to say, okay, well, yes, the American people deserve answers. We need to see transparency immediately, right? But obviously, the House and Center very different bodies. To me, that was the most interesting aspect of all of this. Declan, Andrew, how's it going two weeks later? Is it still a campaign contribution to Donald Trump? I mean, yes, in the fact that it forced basically every Republican to go on the record defending him again when they, you know, he obviously has plenty of defenders in the Republican Party,

But there were, you know, a select few that were getting less and less vociferous in their support of him. We're kind of keeping a lower profile, prepping, assumingly for their own presidential campaigns in 2024. But this, you know, if you couldn't be silent on this in Republican politics, you had to weigh in. You had to let people know where you stood within, you know, an hour of the news breaking. Ron DeSantis was out with a statement calling, you know, this a banana republic completely, completely unhinged an act of the quote-unquote regime going against Americans and Trump. And so it kind of like, you know, people were crawling away from the grasp of Trump and it kind of pulled them all right back in.

And so that, I think, is one of the biggest benefits for Trump. And two, it's just he's back in the news again, and that's kind of, you know, we've been dealing with this for seven years where, you know, regardless of whether it's negative press or positive press, it's 100% always about him. And that's enough oftentimes, especially when the quote unquote press is the opposition force, you know, being criticized by them is not a bad thing in any way, shape, or form. So, you know, obviously I think, like, Like, there's hypocrisy abounds on every side of the story, whether or not you care about... You can just stop with the bounds. Just stop with the bounds. Yes. You know, so is there a world where in a couple weeks we find out that, you know, what he actually had was nuclear documents that he was selling to X, Y, Z country for whatever to help them help so that they would help him get back into power or something, you know, whatever that is. He's a businessman, Declan.

I mean, he's a businessman. Man. Maybe that happens. I highly doubt it. I don't want to give too much credence to the people who are saying this because of who they are and, you know, what they've done over the past six years and not demonstrated a lot of truthfulness. But there does seem to be kind of a recurring theme that like he likes to scrapbook and keep memorabilia. And, you know, that I think a lot of this stuff is probably things that he thinks are cool, you know, shiny objects from his presidency that, that, that. he wants to keep. It's not saying he should or should be able to. I think that, you know, there's plenty of justification to go get that stuff back, but it's not necessarily going to be that they are there that really turns Republicans away. And to be clear, we were joking about the selling bit. Yes. There's no evidence of that. Even French predicts. David French accuses Trump of selling secrets because he's, quote, a businessman. Andrew, I know how this works.

I know how Twitter works. So, Andrew, here's where I am right now, agree or disagree. As of right now, it is more likely that Trump will be the GOP nominee than he was than it was before the search and less likely he becomes president. That's a, you're giving me a two, a surprisingly complicated agree or disagree question. I hadn't formulated it in those. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think it's correct that it plays in the favor of. of Republicans, as far as the primary is concerned, I grant the first half of that. I honestly don't know how it, I mean, it just, it just seems really hard for me to believe. I feel like all

of these stories, like any Trump scandal, it's always kind of predicated on this notion in, you know, in the minds of a lot of the media and stuff. It's like Trump has captured this remarkably large group of people. And is this the story that's going to peel some of those people away? Is this the story that's going to peel some of those people away? And it almost never is and I agree it's probably not that either. But for people outside of that bubble, I almost wonder like really like this is Trump. I mean, obviously it depends what it, what it turns out he brought. That will matter a lot. But if it is like, you know, his his correspondence with Kim Jong-un, as it's been suggested that maybe that, you know, things of that nature, I mean, like you, really,

you, you, you sat through the him trying to steal the 2020 election and, and, you know, any number of other things like you don't remember the trump years those were crazy and and this is the thing where you're like he's really gone too far you lost my vote it's hard for me to imagine that there are that many people in that camp so i think i would maybe dispute the second half of what you said well here's what here's why i would say the second half i think he's got a hair a pretty high floor of support i mean we just have his floor is really high he's all of this of oh it like It was the class, it was the Kim Jong-un letter that finally did it for me. It wasn't the, it wasn't the insurrection. It wasn't, none of that. It was the Kim Jong-un letter. He should never, no, of course not. I mean, that's, he got a really, really high floor. The question for me is how low is his ceiling and how hard is that ceiling. And I think that anything that just reminds people who are not in his base of just how nuts it is to be involved in Trump drama all the time. either his ceiling was already pretty low, let's be honest.

He never got a percentage of the vote even as high as Mitt Romney's. So his ceiling was already pretty low. I think it's just a matter of like fixing that low ceiling. And I don't see how this helps him outside of that Republican base in any way, shape, or form. Talking to Republican strategists yesterday for this other story, that is one of the main reasons that they cite in Democrats kind of rebounding and polling averages. over the past couple weeks. It's, you know, there's two camps there. It's either, and I think it's, it's actually a combination of both,

but either the Dobbs decision from the Supreme Court, that's kind of sinking into the electorate in a way that, you know, nobody really predicted. The other thing is that Trump is back in the news and reminding people why they did not, reminding people specifically independence, why they were not super crazy about the Trump years. You know, it's easy to,

be looking at, you know, the past year of the year and change of the Biden administration, like, I'm not feeling super great about my finances. Inflation is really out of control. This is the year anniversary of Afghanistan. And then you remember what the alternative is. And it's Trump, you know, talking about banana republics and random scandals and just exhausting stuff. And that's kind of dampened Republican enthusiasm a little bit, according to these operatives. All right. So I'm going to do a lightning round, unilateral answer, question answering,

and then we'll move on to the DeSantis discourse. Will the Marlago search warrant affidavit be released? And if yes, will we get to see enough of it to learn anything? Highly likely some of it will be released. Totally don't know if it will be of any use. I tend to think it will maybe be of some use. This is a good one. Was it a raid or just a search warrant served? Yes. uh to both a raid is it's not there's no technical term for this so it was not a raid like a no knock raid it was not a raid like a quick knock raid so far as we know like the terrible brianna taylor case but a lot it's kind of colloquial to say if a whole bunch of cops show up at your house and they are going to come in the door whether you want them to or not it's kind of um you

know it's fair to call it a rat i mean i wouldn't worry one of the other. I say search because raids can apply no knock. Yes. This could be a good transition to our next segment. There is a video. I think we put it in the morning dispatch a couple of week or two ago of Ron DeSantis. I think it was in December. Getting really mad. Yes. Getting very upset at reporters for calling the execution of a search warrant a raid because it was of Rebecca Jones, who was a former, I think, Florida Health Department employee who alleged that he was fudging COVID number, something like that. And police got a warrant and executed a search warrant on her house

and a reporter called it a raid and DeSantis was furious. Like he spent two or three minutes talking about how that's pushing a narrative, using unfair language, totally biased, whatever. And then now he hasn't quite. expressed similar outrage of that. But I know that that's what we're going to get to next. Well, let's do that transition. So, Audrey, if you're Ron DeSantis, if you're Ron DeSantis, is lead advisor, and are you telling

him, governor, in public, you're condemning the FBI, in private, you're rooting for the FBI. I think who was it earlier, Declan, who mentioned that, you know, DeSantis is one of the first Republicans to come out. And I think his tweet was one of the tweets that got the most, like, set of all of the tweets condemning the search. And he coined the term mall, which I think we're all just supposed to pretend was a term before the tweet to mean Marlonko. I mean, but yeah, I think DeSantis knows that now is his time, right? And I think that most of us, I think, would agree that he's going to run. Obviously, it's going to be tougher if Trump does run. But I think we were talking about, you know, democratic and independent and suburban voters tiring of all this Trump discourse.

And I think Ronda Santis, like, yes, Trump does have a very high floor of support. But I think DeSantis can say, like, look, guys, I'm on your side with this stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, aren't we ready for something new? Are we ready for a fresh young face? We'll see. Yeah. So, Andrew, on this point, so here's one thing that I've been thinking a bit about. I think DeSantis has positioned himself very well to be the heir of the Trump movement.

But it is very difficult to be the heir of the Trump movement if the king doesn't want to abdicate the throne. And so I'm very curious as to what the dynamic looks like because the people that really love DeSantis, that I'm, you know, aside from a few folks who have been Trump skeptics for a long time and they're like, come on, guys, DeSantis is our best chance, by and large, the people who really love DeSantis also really love Donald Trump.

And if DeSantis runs against Trump, he runs to state the obvious, against Trump. How much do you think that changes the dynamic of the Trump DeSantis world? I think that it is, you're absolutely right, that it's the big outstanding question still facing DeSantis. He has navigated basically everything up till now, basically flawlessly, in terms of sort of capturing the id of where the party's at, picking smart fights to be elevated as like

an heir apparent, he has been able to do that while functioning as kind of like a guy on a parallel track with Trump. And in the last couple of years, going on kind of without Trump, like as Trump is hanging out in his state, you know, taking a lot of these fights. But Ron DeSantis is kidding himself. All these people are kidding themselves if they think that a confrontation is avoidable if Trump wants it. Trump, first of all, has every opportunity in the world to announce before DeSantis because DeSantis has to win his current race before he can announce the next one. So if Trump wants to, he can totally preempt to DeSantis by coming out in the next couple of a couple months and doing that. At that point, a DeSantis announcement

immediately becomes the kind of implicit criticism that he has never offered before against Trump, not to mention the fact that one of Trump's biggest political geniuses all along has been his ability to turn any kind of fight internal to the GOP into kind of a personal referendum of are you with me or are you against me? Right. And Ronda Sannis hasn't been subjected to that yet. I do agree with Audrey

that there's a possibility of a lane there that he can come up and be like, look, I stood with you like while you were president. I applauded you all the good things you were doing for the country. I stood with you, you know, when you were down, I was your ally in the Marilago stuff. when I didn't have to be, like when I was thinking I was going to do this, where maybe it would have been in my personal interest for you to get swept aside. I don't think you'll say that,

but, you know, that kind of, that kind of vibe. But I have, you know, I'm kind of the guy with my finger on the pulse. I've been, I've been out here working, you know, there are various things that DeSantis has done a lot about, specifically like anything in the kind of woke cultural space that that has kind of emerged even more as like an issue of Republican political valence since 2020. And so Trump wasn't ever, I mean, there was like the 1776 project, like kind of smallish things like that. But Trump was not, Trump was not an anti-woke warrior so much. He was not, Trump was not like a product of the, of the online right in the same way that DeSantis is. So I think there's a, there's a case for DeSantis to come out and make that he kind of suits

the id even a little better than Trump does. All right. So Declan, that, that's a great. segue to this question. Is that right? Is there a lane that says, Mr. Trump, thank you for all you've done for our great country and all you did to resist the forces of darkness. It is now time, though, for you to hand the baton over. Something about that tells me that all Donald Trump hears is you must lose. And there is no way to pay tribute enough when you're running against. Tim. Yeah. No, that that's not going to be, I don't think you can make that argument. I don't think that's the argument that these candidates are going to make. I think really the only thing that

you can say, and you know, Trump's going to go nuclear regardless. You know, it's not a matter of can you stave that off. It's a matter of can you convince voters that you're right is we love you. You're amazing. Unfortunately, you can't, you're not going to win the general election because the media is against you so much because this FBI stuff, because of X, Y, Z, you're older, whatever, you're going to have to make the case that, you know, believe me, I wish I could vote for you again, but you're just, there's not enough, like, you're going to lose. So that's going to be, I think, the only way that you can mount kind of a semblance of a campaign. And I'm less and less convinced by the day that even that's going to work. But the people that I have talked to

that are, you know, were fairly supportive of the Trump presidency to very supportive of the Trump presidency that are now less so. That's kind of the biggest point, or that's kind of the easiest departure from the Trump train that I've seen is essentially like his presidency is going to age very well. I think he did a lot of great things. They're never going to let him be president and get whoever they is, kind of in that mind. And so to be able to make the case that, like, you know, I'm going to follow in your footsteps. You've taught the Republican Party so much. But I'm going to be able to actually win and govern in the way, whereas, you know, you might lose to Joe Biden again.

I mean, you know, DeSantis could go with the Sith rule of two, not to get too nerdy here, which is, of course, there can be only two six. one to hold the power and one to crave the power. But the deal is the apprentice, when the apprentice believes he can take down the master, it is understood that he will challenge it. So, you know, that's, I don't know, had to introduce a little Sith ideology, but Audrey. And I think Trump will understand that as well.

You know, he's an absolute Star Wars head. But every Sith master fights to stave off the apprentice. So, Audrey, in your capacity now, once again, as senior DeSantis advisor, you have a constituent by the name of Phil, a dispatch member, who says, wait a minute, why are we talking about this? Won't DeSantis see his age and Trump's age and wait four or eight years? In other words, doesn't he only gain by waiting? or by saying, hey, Mr. Trump, let me be your VP. How would you advise Governor DeSantis on that idea? I think the VP lane is a different question entirely.

I think that that would be of a good move for him, potentially. But I think that there are two power-seeking both to both. I don't know if that would work out. It sounds to me like DeSantis and Trump have a very strange relationship. So I don't know how Trump would feel about that personally, but maybe I'm wrong. But in terms of him waiting a few years, I think that might be right. But, I mean, you know, politics can change in an instant, right? And I think right now Desantis has a huge fan base.

Yes, Trump's fan base is bigger, right? But, you know, for example, if you look at Mitt Romney in 2012, it's very clear that that was the, obviously, he didn't win, but that was the time when he was meant to run. You know, if he launched a campaign four years later now, he obviously would not have a shot at all. Chris Christie thinks that he's still got a shot for some reason. But to me, I mean, that's just not going to happen. I think DeSantis, people feel really good about him right now and he's just got a lot of support. So I think that he knows that now is his time. But I'm curious to hear what you all think.

I, you know, I think there's a lot of, you know, it's interesting. I've seen conventional wisdom change over the last several. several years. I remember hearing from a lot of smart people 10, 15 years ago, so-and-so's young, they've got time. I've heard that many times. And then you're right, Audrey, we've seen people kind of come and go, like they've been the flavor of the month. And especially in the GOP politics, GOP politics has got a lot of flavor of the months to it. President Scott Walker, President Herman Kane, President Herman Rick Perry. I mean, you could go down the line. Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio, Ted.

I mean, there's all, there has been a ton of people who've crested. And so I think that there's just no real, the new conventional wisdom is if you have your window, you go for your window. All right. Let's end with Andrew. We're going to go a little, a couple of, a couple of minutes longer. Because I want to hear Andrew answer an objection that I got when I did a simple little tweet. a day or so ago, where I said, look, DeSantis is better than Trump. There are a lot of Republicans I'd prefer to DeSantis, and therefore it's really premature

to just make this a DeSantis Trump contest right now. And I got a very fair question in response. Well, if it's not DeSantis, is there anybody else, Andrew Eger, that could possibly beat Trump in a primary? This is an interesting question. To me, it's an interesting question because it's something it does. Declan and I have talked a lot about, the thing that I have maintained, and I don't know whether you disagree with me, I know Declan has disagreed with me. The thing I maintain is that it sure

looks right now like it is a, it is DeSantis or Trump. That is the way that I, that I see it currently. I think that DeSantis has landed in kind of a rare spot where not only is he plausible to Trump's base, he is plausible to a swath of, say, Glenn Yonkin type Republicans and even some former never Trumpers who are as you alluded to earlier who are literally just like will no one uh what's the what's the what's the line will no one say rid ourselves in this troublesome yeah yeah who will rid me of this of this of this of this metal priest yes um and and they see randis like consolidating a base of support and they're like sure him sure fine whatever and like you can't you can't buy that kind of synergy you know like

I mean, it's very particular to the moment. It's very particular to kind of like all the weird dynamics in the Republican Party right now. And he has kind of lucked into this place where like the entire, basically like the entire staff of like national review will get behind him. I mean, not that they are like, you know, kingmakers in any way anymore. But you understand what I mean. Like there's not going to be a split in kind of the respectable right over him. If he decides to challenge Trump, people will be anybody who has any reason. to think that Trump is, is not necessarily the guy will be, will be in his corner, it seems like

to me. And with, with some, like, sort of very particular principled exceptions. But, but, uh, I, I just don't see Liz Cheney or Larry Hogan or Rick Scott or Tim Scott or Ben Sass or any of these people coming out and changing that calculus in the slightest. Yeah, what's interesting to me is, We have seen, again, in this fickle Republican world of the last decade, well, it's not that fickle anymore. I mean, seven straight years of some pretty strong Trump support win or lose. But during the fickle period, shall we call it, we saw a lot of people rise and fall based on sort of moments, moments on television, moments and debates, etc. And I guess that's one thing that I have a question about is really how much have people seen? Ron DeSantis. Let's, let's be honest. Really, how much people have, have people seen Ron DeSantis and know they like him? Or do they know about the idea of Ron DeSantis? And Declan, you raised your hand.

Yeah, because I'm in school again for some, I don't know. Yeah. That was actually what I was going to just about to say is. You do it like this now, Declan. You do it like this with that. Oh, that's a good. Yep. Yeah. Podcast listeners will not understand that at all, but David just put his little hand emoji icon. on a Zoom panel. Yeah, that's essentially what I'm going to say. There's a quote from Steve Jobs that I'm going to totally butcher, but it's something along the lines of like people don't know what it is that they want until you show them. And I think that there's some element of that at play here too where, you know,

so many times if you paused presidential punditry at any freeze frame moment where it would look like there's such a clear. error apparent. There's such a clear nominee that it's not even worth getting in the race. You know, if you paused it in June 20, June 13th, June 12th, 2015, which was the day before Donald Trump announced, Jeb Bush had just got into the race, had the most money, had the biggest campaign, had an incredible launch event where he spoke in English and Spanish and had a diverse group of supporters behind him and rolled out a ton of endorsements like he was going to be the guy. It was so, so chosen. And then after it was him, people were like, oh, he's not

connecting. So obviously, Scott Walker's got it in the bag now because he's the only other real option. I think Ron DeSantis is not immune to that. I think Donald Trump is. I think his support, the people like him, and they're going to like him until he dies. And then well after he dies. They're going to be talking about the great years of Donald Trump's life. But DeSantis, I think, you know, he is that flavor of the month right now and he sustained it for a really long time, you know, a year and a half or so, kind of been the leader on this front. But to your point, like people see Fox News clips. They see his press secretary's tweets. They see kind of little spats with reporters. Everything that I've heard and, you know, doing some preliminary reporting on

on him he's not a very interpersonal person he's a little bit awkward um he doesn't like interacting with people uh and and you know i think we haven't really seen that he's started to come out and give campaign events with d mastriano and pennsylvania with jd vance in in ohio and they've been a little stiff they've been like kind of stilted and he released a really really weird Oh, top gun parody. Awful. Just truly should disqualify him.

I know. And so like that honestly that was so I was texting with somebody about that today and they're like that might have been the moment that DeSantis jumped the shark was when he put the little aviator hat on. But, you know, I do think that, you know, as soon as he gets out there and decides to start a campaign, if he does one, people are going to realize, oh, wait, he's not infallible. and then there's an opportunity for it might not you know trump might get 40% and run away with it but there's an opportunity for other non-desantis alternatives that you know you won't know until you

jump in all right so i started with audrey i'm going to give audrey the last word all right to quote mad max beyond thunder dome two men enter one man leaves okay how do you see a trump desantis debate playing out and that is something that I've thought about it quite a bit. From a standpoint of charisma, you know, all of the intangibles that apply to debate, two men enter, one man leaves, who is left on the field of battle and who emerges triumphant from the debate stage? You know, I haven't really thought about that question, but I do think that Trump would probably come out looking better. Declan is right. Was it the New York magazine profile that talked about how awkward DeSantis is?

One of something like that. Something like that, yeah. But apparently interpersonally, he is very awkward. When he walks in a room, he doesn't really acknowledge people. So, and, you know, when he gives speeches, they're really kind of lackluster. Trump has this way of being very, very casual with things. I think DeSantis has really, like, mastered his conversations and engagement with reporters. is that one video that he has in the TopGov ad where he's like, you had the narrative, I've disabused you of the narrative, it's a false narrative or whatever.

So yeah, I don't know. That would be definitely fun to watch, but I think Trump, I mean, my instinct tells me right now that Trump would probably come out. Because in his supporters eyes, he can do nothing wrong, right? And he's so fine with like being casual and awkward,

or not awkward, but being casual. and, you know, riffing and whatever. And I'm not sure that DeSantis is as equipped in that department. So one last thought. Just, and I'll just throw it out there for dispatch members to mull over. Is the actual kiss of death for DeSantis when a critical mass of never Trump endorses him? Is that? Is that it?

Andrew, I'll let you. I'll let you. You're about to say something. Oh, it is very plain that he does not want to see that happen. He does not want your endorsement. The utility of his showing up on a debate stage with Doug Mastriano of all people is to ward off, you know, Kevin Williamson from getting behind Bill Crystal, you know, God forbid, potential Ron DeSantis bid. So I think, yeah, I think he does not, he never wants to be seen as anti-Trump. And the longer he can stave that off, the happier he'll be. all right there you have it thanks for hanging with us on this we we gradually gained people over the course of this hour as substack came back up and it's now alive and well again but thank you

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