What's still meatball? My continues to be ron Uh. How we doing, everybody? I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about Ronathan DeSantis with me again, Cody Johnston, Katie Stole. How do you guys think your lives would be different if your last names were reversed?
Who Stole Katie?
No?
No, no, if you if you were Katie Johnston and you were Cody Stole.
Oh, in a way, I feel like you'd be called Cody Stoley a lot.
Cody Stole probably, Yeah, that would have been your college nickname, like because of because of the vodka. Like, oh, I had asked Cody Stolely, why well why was that?
Why was that not Katie Stoley's nickname?
Because that would not be appropriate?
What does Katie Stoley doesn't sound right to me?
People called me Stolely just Stolely in college because that would be like a cool Yeah, you.
Know, I think would be a nice nickname.
Katy J.
Katie J is Yeah, I'd go by that. I think I'd be a very different person if I'd grown up with that as my nickname.
Katie J.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think if I had a saw that Cody stole too.
I think it'd be different too, Yeah, totally different. Now, yeah, you would be working for the Daily Wire right now, Before we get into Ron DeSantis, I've I've just found a list of gen Z slang terms. Uh and in order to uh to boost our appeal with the youth demographic, I'm gonna I'm gonna key you in on some of these. On some of these slang words, Google's AI has coreliated them from a mix of Mommy, Daddy dot com, uh,
mental floss and parades. So you know, this is the best information on gen Z well researched.
Wait is this an article or is this like a Google search? It appears to be.
Yeah, this is just like the Google search result for Z slang list. Because I was trying to just stay cool. Yeah, it's just it's become great, falling, falling apart. So number three on the list is s I C slash s I c K. Just these are the two spellings of sick that gen Z kids do. It means next level cool, so not just normal cool. That's good obviously. Salty means bitter or angry, lyddy again exciting or wild once more.
Lyddy is it's something I've heard it that is seeped its way into I just.
I know that's what made me.
I used it this morning to describe myself last night.
Does that mean does that mean I'm hashtag cool?
Oh? Yeah, truly Sophie or your coolness.
Those these words are no longer cool.
Yeah.
I'm personally pissed at this because dope is number two and like, that's not a gen Z term. That's that's that's well well before gen zve been.
Saying it for a long time, people saw me had been saying it for a long time.
Yeah, I feel like that's like an ex millennial they have.
There's got to be something good.
Uh, they got Gucci. I do feel like that's solidly gion gen Z.
Yeah, yeah, they've got You've got your word riz.
They do have the word riz that is not on this list.
I was gonna say, it's like, is there anything on the list that's like no correct or like youthful?
No, Like everything that AI puts together it's a piece of ship.
They don't even have a rizz. That's so weird.
They don't have no cap, they don't have any of the charisma based isn't on here.
Riz is gen Z shortening charisma like yeah, you have swag, you have ri.
It's more like in the context of like flirting, but it is short for anyway.
This has been gen Z corner where.
We uh ah olves.
Our credentials with the with the young'insu with the with the ones.
We might it works, we might listen back to this single.
Wow, we should cut this on account of we sound so old, all right.
I mean people have been complaining a lot about gen Z on Twitter lately, about them being you know, prudes, not liking sex and things and stuff, and watching movies weird, watching movies weird. I just rewatched the original Bad News Bears with Walter Mathow, and I think the solution is we got to get cigarettes back in kids' hands. Like fapes aren't doing it. We got to get them smoking. We gotta get them smoking.
Uh shortcut. We just put them back in the mines.
Put them back in the mines just to go for the lungs.
Yeah, and we get some work.
Done to fuck up their lungs.
It's not to make them look cool or make them generally cooler. Okay either way.
Yeah, cheap labor. But if we if we want to make them cool. Then I guess give them cigarettes.
Fine, excellent. So uh we are back, and uh.
We are on top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese, all covered.
In a meat ball, a meatball made of Ron. So, yeah, I.
Find my handsome, handsome meatball that's.
Often described as handsome me. I have not.
Stopped thinking about that, to be honest, I mean I have, but it's been several days since last we met. Yeah, discussed mister Ronald and yeah, Nathan, apologies, I just can't believe it. Anyway, I've spent so much time talking about So.
Ron was thirty three years old when he went on his first political campaign. Running for an open district that your party dominates is a pretty sweet spot for for a politician trying to break into the national level. This is kind of the easiest way you can possibly start in national politics. And the only stumbling block between him and this first step on the ladder up towards the presidency was the Republican primary. Right, because there's just not
going to be a general election competition. He wins the primary, the seat is his, and luckily for Ron, his competition were all utter non entities, so all he had to do to succeed was make himself into somebody. He opted for the smart play here and decided that rather than focusing on his opponents, he would run against President Obama.
This was at the height and we're talking two twenty twelve here, so this is kind of like a little past maybe the peak of influence for the Tea Party, but it's it's still like the big name in Republican politics at the moment, and Ron leaned hard into that movement. He patterned himself specifically off of Ted Cruz. That was his whoa water.
Makes so much sense?
Yeah, uh huh yeah, equally likable man.
That's reflexing.
Yeah, so funny that he's all I see when thinking about him is Ted Cruz. That's so funny. Yeah, it's on purpose, it is. And he's just as doomed as old Teddy. And you get the same thing too, where like his his co workers, no one will say a nice word about Ron as a person, right who works with him? Oh yeah, he's just deeply unlikable. So yeah, he starts attacking Obama's record. He runs primarily on dismantling the Affordable Care Act, ending gun control, you know, border ship,
all that good Republican jazz. It was not do any of that, I mean not really. No, it was not a creative line of attack, nor did it set him
apart from the pack, but it was enough. He kind of is good enough at sort of leaning into these big conservative targets that he gets attention from the usual pack of right wing funders, these different sort of think tanks and packs and whatnot, like Freedom Works in the Club for Growth, who fund all of the really awful conservative candidates that have made life so colorful in our democracy of late. Ron also makes a habit of showing up at tea party rallies, and he's able to build
a reputation for himself as an economic wonk. Another model that he really embraces is Paul Ryan, Right, So like he's trying to do that, he really does. It's so bad national.
Yeah, yeah, he perfect.
It's so funny, especially like obviously you know, hindsight and all that, but to model yourself after after Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan and now try to beat Donald Trump in an election, this is very funny. That's not going to happen, my man, You pick the two wrong guys.
Yep, yeah, yeah, he really did like pick the exactly wrong dudes. Now, kind of the one intelligent thing he did is he also leans into glenbeck stick of portraying himself as a historian. This is like a big part of early Ron DeSantis, and he's really kind of patterning himself specifically on this style of conservative media dude who rewrites history in order to make political points. Key to this strategy is self publishing his first book, Dreams from
Our Founding Fathers. The title, as in everything Else About Ron, was a direct snipe at President Obama, particularly Bama's pre election memoir, but the content was more in line with the work of pop history big name right wing media stars like Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, all of whom had started publishing history books. Now, Ron's self
published book does not hit the best seller list. He seems to have made less than six thousand dollars in sales, which is not bad for an independent book well.
Published.
Yeah, and he's I guess he's not as known as he is now I am thinking, I am thinking of it in terms of right now.
But yeah, yeah, it's not like it's certainly not a big deal. But the book is a success in a different way, which is that he's able to take copies of it with him when he goes to speak at
tea party rallies. And even if they don't sell the fact that he's sort of setting himself up as one of these guys who shows up with their like self published manifestos and tea party rallies, that makes him feel like he's one of them, right, Like that's a He's this very highly educated a Yale guy who is like has been previously tied to the kind of most austere chunks of the Republican Party, and showing up with your self published like manifesto at a tea party rally is
a great way to make like make them feel like you're one of them, you know. Absolutely, So we should probably talk about this book a little bit because it shows off Ron's very consistent obsession with an narrow chunk
of the historic discipline, the history of American federalism. Two of his kids are named after He has a child named after James Madison and a child named after George Mason, both of whom like our federalists who helped write the Constitution, and in Ron's eyes, they're the guys who saved the early Republic from the demagogues who threatened the property of
wealthy Americans. Now we can talk about what that property is, and in fact, well in the second Okay, Dreams of our Founding Fathers quotes liberally from the arguments that DeSantis agrees with that were made by quote unquote founding fathers. This largely means equating freedom with the right to own property, which is, you know, land and people. At this time,
Ron of course, does not defend slavery. In his self published book, he simply denies that our nation's history with it should have any impact on the way people think
about founders, or our constitution or property rights. From an analysis in the Atlantic Quote, it's rather how his entire reading of American history is enveloped in both unquestioning fealty to the founders and an insistence that the role of slavery and race more broadly in that history does not seriously change anything about how we should understand the birth and development of our country. For Obama and his teachers, the problem of slavery exemplified the need to adapt and
improve the constitution. For DeSantis would be reformers who misunderstand the role of slavery in our history are themselves the
root of the problem in our politics. And the most infuriating portion of this book is when Moron makes very limited quotes, takes very limited quotes from Martin Luther King Junior and makes them into an argument that he was a famous endorser of the founding documents of this country, right because he would he would quote from the Constitution a lot to make you know, and the Declaration of Independence to make certain arguments.
Now how it was flawed and made right, we weren't doing it.
Yeah, love love when Whiteman do that, take take him out of context and use it to fit a narrative.
Yeah, it's galling that, Kate, what King was doing pointing out how the country has never lived up to even the promises that it made, and Ron as like, see, he was a constitutionalist. It's just like antonin Scalia.
God, this is absolutely not what he was saying at all.
He's a fucking originalist. By far. The most galling moment in the book, though, is when Ron cites the dread Scott decision as an example of an activist judge ignoring the letter of the law. Something his beloved originalists would
never do quote. There is a consensus among historians and legal scholars that dread Scott v. Sanford, which turned on the question of whether a fugitive slave could sue for his freedom after he crossed into a free state, was wrongly decided because Teney declared that African Americans could not be considered citizens. They had in fact been voting citizens
in numerous states. DeSantis wants to distance himself and the Constitution from Tanee's obvious and decisive hatefulness, so he doesn't mention that the entire logic of Teney's wilful forgetting of statutory laws rested on his insistence that the founding fathers could never have meant for there to be any kind of racial equality. In other words, Taney made a politically conservative notably part as a decision precisely on his interpretation
of the founder's intent. It was originalist to the core. The original originalism where gut feelings about what the founders
thought and wanted trump to trump actual state laws. Desantists can't see or won't admit that it is often originalism that is selective with evidence, So he's basically saying, like the dread Scott decision is like what liberals do, right, They're just going off of their political opinions and not being originalists, where the reality is that like, no, it was a fundamentally originalist decision.
Yeah, do you think he knows? Do you think he read the criticism of the book and was like, I've changed my ways now that people know they're talking about No, of course that's it. No, Like I don't know.
I don't know the degree to which One of the things that's frustrated me about my research into desantists is I don't know the degree to which he believes the shit he's selling m hm, as opposed to just kind of laying it out because it's an effective argument to make to get the things that he wants. I lean towards he's full of shit and this is just what he saw is the best way to get into power, and like he is.
It seems, especially these days like the like knowing this stuff from this book and then seeing where he is now with education and history, yeah, and just the Florida of it all, it does seem like he knows yeah, and is too and is smarter than he is letting on by just sort of yeah, I can say this stuff and people eat it up.
Oh yeah, absolutely, he's definitely doing that now.
But I do think it's pretty calculated, and I do think he's a smart person.
That he's definitely a smart pat's been playing.
But it's all a part of a a game, not a game, but yeah, a plan. It feels strategic. Yeah, it's also feels pathetic because it's.
It's pathetic just now, you know, Yeah, we're looking at it now because his shit starts to fall apart. But you do have to note that like from the point at which he starts running, it works startlingly well for quite a while.
Well that's why he genuinely scared at the beginning of this.
I've had this conversation with you guys of like he actually if it was to take he was to take a route in some way, Like he actually does scare me because he's smarter than a lot of them.
What he's done is very scary. Like he's done a lot. I mean, we'll continue talking about that. So Ron's selective reading of our founding documents in history is not new, but it did solidify a place for him on the wonky side of the post bush Gop This caused him difficulty, namely due to the fact that his new funders liked what he had to say, but didn't like the fact
that he was an extremely obvious void of charisma. The kind of the person who saves him here from the fact that he's just terrible at actually like hand to hand campaigning is his wife, Casey. She is his charisma. One colleague of Ron's later told a reporter he doesn't make small talk easily, but Casey was always with him, and she filled that gap. He puts so much emphasis on her. Every single speech she ever made, he almost always led off with her or within two minutes he
had mentioned her. And she is like going door to door for him. She's like shaking hands, knocking, knocking on doors and shit like. She is his his ground game to a really significant extent, and a big part of like making him feel like a normal person when he's doing these events with donors and stuff. Ron and Casey had been married for just three years when they get start campaigning together, so three years after their fun little Disney wedding. As the election continued, Ron started to collect
celebrity endorsements. Savvy Your Eyes and the Republican fold had marked him out for greatness. He earned Joe R. Pyo's endorsement along with that. How about that celebrity endor celebrity endorsements. Hey, our Pio's a big name, especially in twenty twelve.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
And he also gets the coveted John Bolton endorsement.
Yeah that's a big yeah wow wow. Yeah.
But perhaps his most important endorsement was that of Donald Trump. Trump gave to Santas. Yeah, this and again this is twenty twelve birtherism. Trump gives him an early boost when he tweets out on March twentieth, twenty twelve. Iraqviitt Navy Hero, Bronze Star, Yale, Harvard Law. Very impressive. Yeah, I like to hear.
What Donald Trump has to say about all. He's still a Navy here out. You still like Harvard and Yale? You think those are like not where the snobby elites go to do communism.
Yeah, the communist communist Harvard Law. In his first term, Ron was a reli so he does get elected, by the way, obviously, in his first term in Congress, Ron is a reliable vote on the piece of shit Caucus. He tried to stop Hurricane Sandy aid. He voted to support the government. Yeah, he does of that. None of that don't help people with government money. We need that money to not spend. I guess cloudy with a chance of meatballs, all right, yeah, yeah, he votes to support
the government shutdown. He voted against an update for the Violence Against Women Act. If you want a short idea about what.
A sorry you dare?
Everyone not laugh at that joke for Cody, I didn't.
I didn't catch it, Sophie silently.
I was silently dying, Cody. I guess I didn't really laugh, but that's okay.
It was just a reference to weather and meatballs. Clouding with the chance of meatballs. It was really good, better than my mone joke last week.
Moanent so good stuff. The Heritage Foundation gives him one hundred percent. So if you want to know the kind of dude he is as a as a as a congressman, there you go.
Yeah.
Ron gets a junior seat on the Freedom Caucus. He is one of the nine original members, although he's kind of the least of them. He's not very prominent at this point, but he is.
He is.
This is kind of show some political foresight, right He sees, because the Freedom Caucus is really a precursor to a lot of trump Ist shit hitting. Yeah, and he's he's he's on that right from from an early stage. If DeSantis has a reputation in this period, he it is as a very far right vote who you cannot talk to a reason with. Right, he is going to vote against anything Obama wants to do. Reflexively, Ron openly agreed with Mitch McConnell that there was nothing more important in
this period than interrupting the president's second term. This was a job that played to Ron's strength. He is the kind of dude who does not care much about people or they're suffering, and so can just kind of vote to hurt things, right, Like that's that's what he's doing. It's just kind of like voting to make the country worse consistently.
And like brush it off, like brush off criticism, like you doesn't care about being asked the question about it or being confronted about it.
He's no, he's whatever, Yeah, but purely purely obstructionist point of view, purely wanted and like gosh, we love a public servant that doesn't care fuck about the citizens. That is just about care people's lives, just wants to play that game.
Yeah, here's a quote from Politico that really makes that point. I wasn't really there necessarily to make friends, he once told Politico.
He did not.
Fellow Republicans noted him as a loaner who only got in close with other freedom cock as weirdos. Florida Republican Congressman David Jolly said that besides those guys quote, I don't think he had many relationships at all one peer, former Florida Democratic congresswoman when Graham told Politico he wore earbuds on the floor of the house so he didn't have to talk to people to say he was anti social as a disservice to this term, he does not
enjoy being around people. Now, Gwyn has an obvious bias. She's a dim but former Michigan Republican Congressman David Trott was even more savage in a recent interview with Playbook. I think he's an asshole. I don't think cares about people.
That's bold accurate. But like for like a Republican to point out, like, yeah, it's like part of their you know, at least these days especially, it's like, well, we're a little callous towards people, and like the idea of empathy is like disgusting to us. But even to call out like, yeah, he doesn't care about.
People, well it is.
Yeah.
I think also what you're seeing with that, especially the whole I'm gonna wear headphones on the floor, I'm not going to talk to anyone. He's not He has no interest in being a congressman as the job. He has interest in being a congressman in order to set himself up for the presidency a higher Yeah, and so what matters. You can't think about helping people or doing the job
of governance. All that matters is getting that hundred percent from the Heritage Foundation, locking in donations, locking and support, locking in things you can brag about in a campaign to the worst, most active chunks of the Republican base. So he's going to put those headphones on because he knows he's going to be hurting people and he doesn't
want to be confronted with their existence. Like he wants to be able to ignore everyone around him because he is just here to push some buttons, you know.
He has like having a private office in your ears, yes, which yes, eventually get yeah, yeah.
It's like that. So yeah.
For his part, DeSantis leans into his growing reputation as like the fucking kind of a psycho. From a write up in Politico. Quote, look, Desanta said, I was not in Congress to necessarily socialized. He slept in his office. He liked being at home more than he wanted to be in DC. So that's that's uncomfortable.
Yeah, Like, wait, he slept in his office.
He sleeps in his office. He doesn't talk to people, he sleeps in his office. He's just there to like cast the votes that get him marked down as like good bye the NRA, good by the Heritage Foundation, and then it's a way he has no interest in doing this job. Right. Cool. In twenty fifteen, right as the first stirrings of trump Ism started to ooze into what had been a deceptively placid political media environment, Ron dealt
with the first tragedy of his life. His sister, who was just thirty years old, died of a pulmonary embolism. When interviewed by Pierce Morgan, Ron later claimed, you start to question things that are unjust, and you just have to take faith that there's a plan in place, trust in God, there's no guarantee that you're going to have a life without challenges and without heartbreak, and that's just a function of being human. So there you go.
Is that him being I guess that's.
A weird thing to say about Yeah.
It's a weird like way to talk about it, and like lesson to.
Yeah, I think a normal person would say something like yeah, it's devastating, like I'll miss her forever, you know, something something like that, like you say about a dead person. Not be like right, he's like this republican argument, Well, everybody deals with shit like.
Rights sort of like take that tragedy and turn into like, well you got to pull yourself up by your bootstress to work hard, an't there.
Well he's also taking it into some sort of as an opportunity to paint him self as a masculine, tough type at someone who can handle anything that you know, I'm sure he's hoping to come across as a strong.
Yeah, stuff happens, that's life, you know.
Yeah, it's like, why are you complaining about your problems? Look at me?
It's just that we all.
It also just reinforces Yeah, the bootstraps mentality, which the idea that we all can.
Just buck up and everything's fine.
I think with his best quote best in Bodies is that he is always relentlessly on point in this period of his life. Right, this is the answer that you give because it furthers your political reputation. Is the kind of conservative who can get elected. Right, Like, every single thing that you say in public, every word, every action is based on building your future presidential campaign. Like that's that's who he is.
If that's how you're thinking, that's exactly what. Yeah, that's the move and that's what you do. Yeah.
Yeah. When the twenty sixteen election got well under way, Ron was alindsighted by Donald Trump's rise to prominence as anyone else. This is evident in the fact that he kept his fucking mouth shut for much of the primaries, and when he did speak out about the controversial GOP front runner, it was mainly to dissociate himself from Trump. He said in one interview that Trump's twenty twelve tweet had not been an endorsement, and he made it clear
that he'd never met the man. So he actually this big deal endorsement he gets as a first term congressman, He's like, oh, that wasn't an endorsement that was just a nice tweet about me. I've never met the guy, don't know no opinions, And this is probably fair to see as a limitation in his political instincts. Right, he was not someone who right away he could saw Trump coming. Yeah, and I think this makes sense. Like he's a structure guy, right.
He plays well with the Republican Party, and he plays well with the kind of engine of donors and think tanks and whatnot that support that party and particularly it's far right flank. But as soon as he encounters someone who is running outside of that structure, threatening to upset it and remake it, he freezes. Right, he's just not ready to deal with this.
Yeah, it's just that weird, Like you you're courting this aspect of the party in politics, but you don't really necessarily realize the endgame or like where it's headed. And then it happens and like, well, but I was, but the machine is good. What's this guy trying to wreck this machine? Yeah? I think it speaks also to like the fact that he model himself sort of after Ted Cruz, who also had a similar thing where it's like I don't know what to do here right, you know his wife's yeah.
They don't know to or to kiss him or to cropy him or to yeah.
And then you get that sweaty phone call picture of tatoo is just like begging.
For both so funny, and it is like, it is kind of worth noting that from all the evidence we have, it seems that Ron hated Trump on site, or at least saw kind of making fun of him as a profitable enterprise. One of his former staffers told Vanity Fair Ron made more fun of Donald Trump than anyone I know,
and another added he thought Trump was fucking nuts. So again, very much not on the Trump train initially, but when Trump starts making this inexorable progress and remaking the Republican Party in his own image, Ron is kind of focused continuing his pace towards the White House. He's in his second term by early twenty fifteen, and he's already made a lot of connections among the Heritage Foundation think tank set who determined where campaign funds are going to go.
So when Marco Rubio announces that he's going to run for president and steps down from a yeah, I'm not going to run for reelection for this Senate seat, a representative for the Club for Growth calls Ron and is like, hey, Marco Rubios definitely headed to the White House Senate seats. I'm going to quote from Politico here. In May twenty fifteen, less than a month after Rubio announced his presidential candidacy,
DeSantis announced his Senate bid. He had the post taste backing of the same array of conservative groups Senate Conservatives, Fund, Freedom Works, the Club for Growth, and a year after he got called back to the breakers at a luncheon of at the Republican Party headquarters in the Highlands County, Florida, DeSantis spelled it out. I was the only US Senate candidate that spoke at the Koch Brothers donor summit where they have all their organizations that get involved in these races.
You have everyone from the Club for Growth on. So we built a huge, huge network of supporters that will be able to turn on the most important decision Ron Desanta's made that led to his eventual election as governor. A high profile national Republican consultant said was running for Marco's seat in twenty sixteen. Desantas, he said, was able to go network a group of billionaires that he otherwise
couldn't have done as a congressman. And this is he doesn't get this seat, right because Rubio flames out and returns to his seat, But because he had been willing to play ball and run for this to keep it in house and whatnot and made all these connections. That's what political insiders will argue is what lets him become the governor floors at least, what gives him a fighting chance, right, all right.
I would say that makes sense anyway.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because he shows himself as a team player to these money guys.
Yeah yeah, team player, tool for them, whatever you want to call it. But he is.
Bragging about being a tool of the Koch brothers in this period exactly.
Yeah, like, I'll do whatever. I give you the money, I'll do it. I'll do the thing.
Yeah, I'll do it.
I'll do the thing. I said. A big beat.
That's it. That's perfect.
So fake.
Let's replace our audio sting into and out of every episode with that.
No, she's like noting it.
Here's a spicy god almighty, that's embarrassing, shameful. Yeah, we're doing that. Just ah, we're back. What you guys favorite favorite way to do an offensive Italian accent.
I don't because I'm I'm I'm partially Italian, so defense very Italian.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's the one we've just been doing.
It's Ama Mario.
I love what to do. The fraud No, I do.
Take baths in pesto sauce.
You do, you do, and I commit a lot of insurance fraud. The perfect Italian, the perfect Italians. That is how my family came to this country. Good times. So if you're going to be influential in politics in this country, you have basically two broad families of choice. One is to work yourself up from within the system. You do take bit roles in campaigns, you know, until you're able to get enough support to run for office somewhere, probably
a local office. You win election, you start schmoozing with big donors, building connections to financiers through the think tanks that ask us they're grasping little hands. The other way to get into politics in this country in a big way is just pure populism. You force yourself into relevance by building enough of a following that these same people have to pretend they're not angry that you skipped in line right, Trump is a line skipper. He's great at
line skipping. Ronnie d is not a line skipper. As one of his friends, a former Florida Republican congressman, told Politico, He's somebody who has his view of his strategy in politics, do the right little conservative things. But behind that curtain build a network of mega conservative donors, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson. Ron, more than just about anybody I know in politics, has built that network very successfully. And this is the thing he's actually good at, right, Like this
is his actual skill. David Bossi, the president of Citizens United and former deputy campaign manager for Trump, has given de Santis credit for building an operation with quote very Trumpian tones during Trump's first campaign. I actually don't think this is accurate. Bossy now works on DeSantis' campaign, which
is why he's saying this. But my take is that it would be more accurate to say Ron and Trump focused on the same issues because those issues have been issues for Republicans as long as most of us listening have been a live cutting entitlements, border security, culture, warship against elites. But those are just surface similarities. Ron has always gone after those things in a pretty normal conservative way, whereas Trump went after them in a populist wild card way.
Given his legitimate so yeah, I don't know that's I think, boss, he's full of shit there anyway.
Yeah, And I think well also especially now, like yeah, ron is doing a clear terrible Trump impression right and not doing like he's He's sort of like off the grid in terms of like what he's used to, it seems, and that's part of why he's sort of floundering, is like, well, this is not what I thought politics was supposed to be. I did the things I'm supposed to do, and now I got to be this freak.
He's very much out of his depth in what he's trying in the tact that he's taking here.
Yeah, you're out of your depth, Donnie, Ronnie exactly, Ronnie perfect. Yeah, excellent Doki karaoke. So, given as legitimately impressive history as a ball player, you might expect Ron to have played on the congressional team, and he did, but by all accounts, he did not make an impressive impact, nor did he devote much time towards it. The only impact baseball was to have on the rest of his career so far is that he left congressional baseball practice in the summer
of twenty seventeen just before a gunman opened fire. By the time twenty eighteen rolled around, Ron was ready to take another shot at the brass ring. In this case, it was the governor's seat in his home state of Florida. And again he is running to be the governor of Florida, not flow Rda, the beloved musician who represented San Marino in twenty twenty one. Just want to really be clear about that because we keep getting confusion. Yeah, the last episode, people were did.
You tell me?
I was.
I still think it's Flora.
Well, I think the only way to solve this is induct flow Rider into the United States. Sure, yeah, sure, yeah. And I think for the flag, we just get rid of the other fifty stars and just have one big star on the flag that represents flow Rider United.
Because that would be our biggest star.
Uh huh yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. So still no idea what song that guy wrote. He's got to have at least one, right that was popular? Yes, yeah, otherwise sand Marino wouldn't have sniped him. So his opponent for the Republican nomination Ronda Santis is not flow Rider. Was a guy named Adam Puttingham, a career politician who had been in office some kind of office since he was twenty two at one point. And this is I
think funny. Puttnam is clearly a guy who like is at one point in his career a conservative wonderkin right, Like he's starting office in his early twenties. He's one of these like go getter youth Republican that the party sees is its future. Uh And but shit starts to change on a dime with Trump, and Ron is like, well, I can make Hay by portraying putting him as this like out of touch rhino careerist, you know.
Uh.
So he uses his connections to get a meeting on Air Force one where he makes his case to President Trump. This was an important meeting. No one else's endorsement mattered if Trump was on his side, and no one else could save him without Donald. Now, Desanta has been putting in groundwork here. He like started for months prior to this, about a year or so prior to this, really hitting against Trump attacks on social media and stuff, and these
are this is kind of a shallow thing. Just the fact, and whenever he gets goes on TV, he'll defend the president.
Right.
Uh, it's it's very obvious. It's very like shallow toadying. But that shit works like a dot, like perfectly on Donald Trump, like very much.
Yeah, love that. Yeah.
So they have this meeting and Desanti's chief of staff later recalled what President Trump saw on to stantis somebody that was fighting for him and his agenda on Fox News, whether it was Fox News or on Fox Business. And Asanta's had a pretty smart strategy to use his committee responsibilities and find ways to insert himself into the national debate and get booked on TV. And we obviously had
a lot of media requests beyond Fox. But you know, members of Congress know what shows the president watches and what he doesn't.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it works. Trump tweets an endorsement soon after this meeting. Ron wins his primary handily, and he makes frequent use of Trump's support, name dropping him twenty one times in a single debate. He cuts what one Democratic ad man called the dumbest, most effective ad in Florida history, and it's it is remarkable. It starts with him like reading his son a copy of the Art of the Deal and telling his daughter to build the wall with toylet.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's a real hit. That's a real toy.
It's so funny, just the dick writing his dad.
He's so fulle embarrassing.
It's so transparent and funny. I yeah, And that time passed and it's all gone now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all gone now. So despite all this, Florida was still one of America's most infamous swing states. It is very purple at this point, and the general election is a nail bier. DeSantis barely manages to squeak past Democrat Andrew Gillham with some thirty two thousand votes, less than half a percentage point. Gillim later gets hit with a twenty one count federal indictment for wire fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, all related to fraudulent fundraising from various
entities tied to his campaigns. Gilliam denies all charges, but that doesn't matter for here. What matters is that DeSantis does manage to squeak out a victory and that it is going to be very narrow. But his second victory is not going to be narrow and that's pretty worth noting. So today, Ron DeSantis is deservedly reviled for turning Florida into a laboratory for outwardly fascistic and eliminationist public policy, targeted particularly towards queer people. His early years in office, though,
are surprisingly mild. He is not the guy he is now. His first couple of years as governor. Another Politico article notes he surprised many in the state by tackling towards the center. He signed a bill that nixed a ban on smokable medical marijuana, announcing it with Matt Gets, one of the most trumpy members of Congress, and Orlando attorney John Morgan, long a major fundraiser for Democratic candidates. He veted a bill that would have prevented local bands on
plastic straws. He angled for additional funding for Everglades restoration. He instituted two new state jobs, chief Resilience Officer and Chief Science Officer. DeSantis actually spoke the words climate change after Rick Scott had downplayed it. His approval ratings soared into the sixties and even into the seventies, including sort of shockingly high faves from Democrats and independents too, so that's interesting to me, and I think it does make sense.
It is actually consistent because when he's in Congress, it doesn't matter, like you're not directly accountable to any one really in Congress, like because there's all these other guys voting on everything that happens. Right, So you can be just an obstructionist if that's the thing that makes you palatable to the base, that gets you the endorsements. When you're governor, you do have to do like, especially when you're governor of a state that is a purple state. Right.
That's why he's doing this because he doesn't want to lose office, because that's fucking death to a presidential campaign.
So to do something, yeah, you are the face of it exactly.
Yeah.
So he's he is a fairly you would say, pragmatic guy. Uh, and that is generally like there's political quotes one Republican lobbyist as saying, as someone who has aspirations behind beyond his current office, which I think everyone will concede this probably is not his last office. I think that is how you have to do it. I do think hopefully it will be his last office, but we'll maybe we'll see.
I mean, like all it takes is just like a Trump to walk on stage and interact with him.
Yeah, putting Ron. Bam, speaking of putting Ron. Uh yeah, let's talk a little bit about putting Ron because it is. It is during this surprisingly mild interlude in his career in twenty nineteen that one of Ron's peculiarities would pass into legend. Everyone who worked with the governor was aware that he was a man who did not socialize easily. Or well, he's very intelligent. He's able to digest large reams of data in hours and come back with pointed questions,
but social dynamics baffle him. In March of twenty nineteen, during a private flight from Tallahassee to DC, DeSantis decided to take on some energy by eating a pudding snack. According to two sources who were there, he did this with three of his fingers, using them like a spoon and licking them clean in full view of multiple people. Now, no, no, no, no, that's off putting a bit. I do agree, and I'm
a big oh that was accidentally good. And I spent a lot of time and like you know, the Middle East, I do a lot. I've done a lot of eating with my hands as utensils. But eating putting that way is just so in public, is so off putting too.
In like a work business sort of setting. Yeah. Also, well, just all.
The say is you could just squeeze it in. You don't have to do that at all. You could just squeeze the pudding. You could use the lid like a okay, thank you. I was gonna say, there's this, The lid is foil. Usually I assume he's eating standard pudding cup probably probably a standard putting shape. You shape the lid into a little spoon, and then you have a little spoon. You don't have to use your three fingers. That's what we've all done.
Is putting the shocker, Like God, not those three fingers. That's what I choose.
Like, I know, it's like such.
A silly thing, but there's something wrong with you if you think it's okay to do that around people.
Sorry, it's weird. Now.
Look have I eaten pudding with my fingers when nearly blackout drunk alone in my apartment? Of course, But I can all agree I should not be a governor.
Uh yeah, and then there's that.
But I just imagine you wouldn't do it sober around colleagues in any kind of environment.
But if you did, it'd be like, yeah, I'm this type of governor. Yeah I'm gonna I feel like I'm going to have a meeting and I'm going to take a ship during the meeting to Yeah again that I can.
I could if Ron, if Ron had the kind of natural charisma LBJ had, just like, I don't give a fuck, You're not even people.
This is who I am, and you're dealing with me. Yeah, I go for it. But no, he's just a weirdo who wanted his little pudding snack and I had to your fingers in there to get it. That is gullet.
Because this is an unbiased political analysis show, I do want to note here that at the same time put In Ron was being born, another famously unpleasant politician on the other side of the aisle had a similar experience. The New York Times reported that in twenty nineteen, during a flight to a campaign event, Senator Amy Klobachar was told there was no fork for her salad, and she pulled a comb from her bag and used it to eat. Now, this is maybe the most controversial thing I say on
the show. Both of these are weird things to do. I think Ron's choice was more normal than Amy's because, like people, pudding is it's weird to eat pudding with your fingers, but fingers are acceptable for eating some things.
An Also, I see, we've all seen Amy's hair. There's product in there. Yeah, she's eating her salad and also eating hairspray's unhitched.
Yeah it is.
It's not good.
It's not good. Hell yeah, we're going by klobuch Gang.
Like it's not this, but like it's something like it's like getting your like like your toothbrush out and using a toothbrush to eat the pudding. Sure, but even that is like not the same as the calm, Like there's no equivalent there, like love it.
So, prior to twenty twenty, if you were looking at Ron DeSantis, you'd probably have expected him to hew to that wonky Paul Ryan image, which is kind of what he's he's doing, largely with a little bit of Ted
Cruz thrown in there. Uh, to hold on, yeah, none of that stuff, but to try and hold onto his state through whatever happens with Trump's second campaign, and hopefully plot a less extreme path to picking up his crown after right, sort of let let the Trump storm pass and you know, trust that you're young enough to have, you know, time to get in there afterwards. Given his relatively mild performance at this point, this would not have
been a bad strategy, but the coronavirus pandemic changed everything. Initially, Ron responded more or less the same as everyone else, and and Florida does have a brief lockdown. It's like a month or so, Dan run, lockdown.
Run, lockdown, run.
Once it becomes clear that the pandemic is not like, it's not a civilization ender, it's you know, just a massive three to the most vulnerable people in the country, He's like, well, fuck those people. And he reversed his course and decides to ride the waves of paranoid discontent by flouting every expert recommendation and reopening his state Here's the Atlantic. Initially, Florida faired better than many states, although
its numbers eventually came to look pretty bad. He has since adopted a sort of soft anti vaccine stance, never explicitly rejecting the shots but declining to promote them, and often appearing with skeptics. Desanta's COVID politics hurt his approval with Democrats, driving down his overall numbers, but they endeared
him to conservatives in both Florida and nationwide. His standing remained and remained strong among Republicans in the Sunshine State, and he became a darling of the national right wing media, which saw him in him a rare conservative COVID success story and also a politician who could combine elements of
Trumpism with more traditional movement conservatism. The glow seems to have emboldened DeSantis, picking Trump's example, DeSantis begun keeping legislators in check with the threat of criticism or backing primary challenges, and this is the start of ron as the fearsome force of authoritarian governments that we see today. Right, he
is initially pretty popular governor. At one point he has nearly seventy percent, but he realizes by becoming this culture warrior, he's gonna lose ten to fifteen points, you know, something like that, but not enough to take him out of winning the governor's seat, and in fact, it'll strengthen his overall appeal to his base, so that means more money.
And crucially, not just does it mean more money, it means he doesn't actually need to have any sort of buy in from the left in order to govern, because he can he can get all of the legislators in Florida lockstep behind him, because since he is so popular with the base, he can be like, look, if you don't do exactly what I fucking want, you're out of here. Like I will endorse your opponent in a primary, and
you're fucked. And that's what's allowed him to do, to push through a lot of the stuff that he's done that's really unpopular.
It's interesting to see when you're laying it out like this, how quickly this.
It's not that he.
Ultimately wants We've talked about it this whole time, just how he's adopted this persona over the period of time, but it's been a relatively short period of time.
Uh, with this latest iteration.
Of Ronald yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what else articulates Well, Katie.
Is it something you can row with advertisements?
Yeah? We are actually sponsored entirely by Ron DeSantis. Oh so yeah, here's ron.
Hi.
I'm here to be your president. And you know what I don't like is not well, not pudding. I love putting. That's a really.
Really perfect I have a question as we come back from break here, Sure do we think that there should be some kind of test for elected officials where we give them some kind of food and no solaware and see what they do and if it's and it's.
A great idea, sofy, that's one of the best ideas I've heard I feel in a long time.
And I feel like there's like a scale and it's like, you know, were you on the comb and the salad or were you you know, just you know as Katie, as Katie suggested you, you you eat the pudding without putting your fingers in it?
Because I mean, what I what I would really like to see you would have to do everyone at once, but all of our elected leaders you get it once. You put them in a room and you have them eat like a sandwich or some hummus or something that you have squirted dish soap into and you film them all. You do it just to see. You don't tell them see who powers through it?
Right?
It's like, right, are you gonna are you going to say something I mean like this tastes weird? Or like are you and are you gonna sort of have you had hummuts before? Do you know? What it's supposed to taste like, do you know that it's not supposed to taste like so you're like, oh, yeah, I love my soaphi humus.
It's got that able that we all know about.
Just maybe one of those, one of them, we'll take the initiative to say, hey, don't eat this. It's got soap in it, but probably not up. It is also a good it's an opportunity for them to prove themselves to be a good leaders.
Yea.
If you find out if some of them goes, did you put cilantro in this hummus? Yeah, and you find out who has bad taste buds?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we should not. Maybe we can all agree you should not be able to hold office if you've got the gene that makes cilantro taste bad to you.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, for sure.
I mean I think those are even really people.
I just feel like we're making really good rules right here where I agree. And I feel like the food without support thing should be live streamed.
Yeah for sure, for sure, we can.
We can do it.
We can. Audience of those Philly sports fans from part one, I mean, you.
Know we're not doing though, we're just sort of like paving the way for another Trump presidency because you know he eats the soapy helmets. He's just gonna be like this isn't this is bad? Like what are you doing? Give me a tie of coke? Like he'll just like he'll bulldoze the entire room.
Yeah, you're right, dangerous games anyway, here's a dangerous ad.
Time.
I'm wrong, We're bad. That was horrible Cody, Okay, So yeah, uh there we go. So Ron DeSantis, after covid is now starts to remake himself in the image of Huey Long basically like he goes kind of kind of dictator from this point forward. He bases his power and authority on this vice grip that he's got on the Republican voters of Florida, and he's able to use this to push through very unpopular policies by threatening his legislators with
primary challenges. Aubrey Jewett, a political scientist from the University of Central Florida, says that DeSantis has control over the Florida legislature is historically unique. Historically, particularly in the Florida Senate, you'd see more independence, they'd buck the governor Jem Bush
experienced this, Charlie Christ even Rick Scott. Now, Desanta's approval is below its pre pandemic levels, but this does not change his behavior, and he uses it like his power now to ram through Florida's infamous Don't Say Gay Bill, which bans any classroom discussion of gender identity or sexual orientation in Florida public schools through the third grade. It was and remains an unpopular law, but Ron handily won re election after the pandemic, and in fact he didn't
just win, he absolutely blew out his Democratic challenger. You can say there's one thing for DeSantis, and it's that he knows how to push when he sees an opening. He has responded to the new tenor of Florida politics by remaking himself as the arch culture warrior, making unpopular gear policies geared at hurting the left and enemies of
conservatism above anything that might be called traditional governing. He's helped to push through what many consider the most partisan redistricting map in the country, geared towards reducing the influence of black voters. This has been met with a full on legal assault against what Ron calls voter fraud one, which has primarily targeted black Floridians. A good example comes from October of twenty twenty two, when body camera footage revealed a raid on voters around Tampa, nineteen of whom
were arrested for so called fraud. The ACLU reports quote the footage is disturbing. It is clear that the individuals arrested in and around Tampa have absolutely no idea that they have done anything wrong and why they are being detained. At moments, their confusion and distress are so pronounced that the police arresting them try to console them. As the Tampa Bay Times put it, the police are almost apologetic for their actions. Nineteen people are arrested in this sting,
which focused around Amendment four. This is an amendment to the Florida state Constitution that was approved by sixty five percent to Florida voters in twenty eighteen and restored voting rights to Floridians with past felony convictions. But the year after this happens, DeSantis has his legislature pass SB seven H sixty six, which requires that felons pay legal fines before being eligible to vote. As the ACLU notes, the state has no central database for information on convictions and
the resulting financial obligations. This leaves hundreds of thousands of Floridians unable to assess if they owe money and how much. Essentially, the state created a paid a vote system well, giving people no way to determine how much they must pay, and then he's able to charge them criminally for voting when they haven't paid properly in this thing that they can't know, Like, yeah, it's really fucked up. It is
very clearly targeting specifically black voters. Thirteen of the nineteen people arrested in this first sweep are black, and yeah, it's generally seen as an attempt to chill the vote in low income black and brown communities ahead of the twenty twenty four election. That's absolutely what he's doing here. DeSantis also oversees a ban on critical race theory, one so severe it's led to even math textbooks being censored. One law makes it a third degree felony to distribute
what the state under DeSantis calls pornography in classrooms. The actual text of the statute is incredibly broad, defining pornography not just as erotic material with the intentment to cause sexual excitement, but including instruction on gender identity or discrimination. By teaching that quote, an individual by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin is inherently
racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. So it's basically just like a felony to teach anything that someone conservative might get offended by. And if you know conservatives, you know there's nothing that doesn't offend them.
Oh, it's all that very it Honestly, I don't even know what to say say and we talk about this all the time, it but it does blow my mind.
It's hard for me to wrap my mind around all that he's all the terrible things that he's done in a very short period of time, and the hypocrisy of people talking about, you know, public schools, the schooling is an indoctrination, and then literally what is happening, Literally what the things that are being removed from basic elements of our education and how yeah, I'm preaching.
Classrooms and school libraries just absolutely shorn of books because yeah, yeah, it's ghastly. I'm not going to go into as much. I'm not going to like spend the whole episode just listing every bad thing he's done as governor. I thought it was more useful because you get this every day, right people are reading this, they're watching this. I thought it was more useful to explain why he's able to do this, because this is not how he governs at
the start of his time as governor. This is a change that comes midway through as a rest of the COVID pandemic, and it's important to know that he is able to get away with pushing so many unpopular policies because of how he gains control over the state legislature.
That's what I wanted to kind of get into because that's actually a really useful thing to understand, in part to prevent future authoritarians like DeSantis from doing similar things in other states, you need to at least understand how he got to be able to do all this shit. Right now, this is all awful. None of it, though, has stopped DeSantis from winning re election. There's a lot of articles from right before his reelection campaign that are like,
you know, is COVID is his hard right tilt? You know, is this all going to like hurt his chances of winning? Because he barely squeaks it by the first time his second election, Ron wins by an astonishing margin. He even captures traditionally liberal enclaves in the state, which has led many to posit that, however you want to characterize his reign ethically, he has ended, at least for now, Florida's
status as a per state. Little early to say that, you know, we'll see how twenty twenty four goes, but I think that's probably fair. It is impossible to say at the moment whether or not this will hold true beyond twenty twenty four, but it does point to an undeniable conclusion. Ron DeSantis is probably the most effective elected anti Democratic leader in the country. The good news is that, at least for now, he seems to have overreached his capabilities and what is probably fair to say is the
most major misstep of his career so far. People have been discussing DeSantis as a probable Republican presidential candidate since at least twenty twenty and after January sixth, twenty twenty one, and the brief relative absence of Trump when he was being shunned for that like a couple of months, he seemed to shine as a likely future standard bearer of the authoritarian movement that Donald had helped conjure into being.
There were articles in mainstream publications touting the Florida miracle. Ron had decided to campaign on this. Interviews highlighted his intelligence as a counterpoint to Trump's crudity, But this brief period as a front runner came to an end as soon as the former president made it clear that he intended to run once more. In deference to the fact that DeSantis had defended him a few years earlier, Trump gave a couple of quiet warnings. I think the first
warnings are probably sent through intermediaries kind of politely. You've got some guys who are because they're both Florida dudes, you know, who are visiting both camps, be like, now's not the time, Ron, Now's not the time, Ron. But Ron doesn't listen to this, and when that isn't enough. In November of twenty twenty two, Trump makes a public warning in an interview on Fox News. He threatens DeSantis with a release of private information if he runs for president.
From the Huffington Post. I can tell you things about him. It won't be very flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife is so funny.
I can't believe he did that, but an unbelievable. It's something's something like that that he does every week and it's just gone.
Yeah it is. It is remarkable.
Right, warned him not to run for presid.
You threaten him with that, you that you'll pull pull out dirt on him if he does. You just do it openly on TV.
That's so wild, like during the interview, right, it's not even like off the cough at like a rally.
It's like, no, no, I accept it from Trump because it is really funny, like it is. It's very funny. And I'm sorry I am that shallow with stuff like this. Uh yeah, yeah quote. I think he would be making a mistake. I think the bass would not like it. I don't think it would be good for the party. Any of that stuff is not good. You have other people that possibly will run. I guess I don't know if he runs. If he runs, he runs.
Yeah, well he runs morning and he shouldn't.
It's gonna hurt him badly if he does.
And again he does.
Up to this point, Ron's career has been meticulous. Right, the first time he throws the dice is kind of when he takes this hard right turn on covid uh and that works for him. And I think if I'm if I'm gonna psychoanalyze him, I think after decades of making all of the care choices, he sees how kind of gambling works for Trump, how it gets him into
it at least gets him into the presidency wants. And he's like, he sees how well it works for him in his reelection campaign, and he's like, well, fuck it, guess I'm gonna keep gambling. And he throws the dice on Donald Trump, and Trump is just a better gambler
than Ron DeSantis could ever hope to be. Like, this is a calamitous mistake, but it is in line with this new image that DeSantis has tried to paint for himself since the pandemic, this kind of getting away from the Ted Cruz, from the careful Paul Ryan sort of thing. And this attitude is embodied in the trumpy accessories that he starts selling to finance his re election campaign, my favorite of which are golf balls with the text floors as governor has a pair on them. Oh boy, just sad Ron.
Boy kiels so forced raw.
Yeah, it does. It does. Also, you know you're already dealing with the meatball Ron thing. Maybe don't don't add ball here, but.
Or lean into it. Yeah, sell kits.
With Ron's meatball Selah. Yeah, in fact he should that That's what I would do. Yeah. His only strategy seems to be running against Trump as a better Trump, which is a risky move against a man with so much personal popularity among the same base. And sure enough, as soon as Ron sets himself against Trump, all of this dirt on him starts to spill outcome articles noting that he's had three chiefs of staff and three years at Congress and then three more and five years as governor.
Right Like, he's got all this turnover and nobody likes him. He can't keep a team together. One of his former strategists lets slip to Vanity Fair that Ron and Casey quote use people like toilet paper, and that there's an
unofficial support group of former aids. This might just be dismissed as politics if not for the fact that the Asanta's campaign has seen even more rapid turnover since then, bleeding nearly all of its hires over the course of a year that's seen him go from the best funded candidate on the Republican Party too broke and so reliant on his superpack that Trump's campaign recently made a public warning against Republican candidates coordinating illegally with their super packs,
just to like stick it ron a little bit so funny. Yeah, just yeah, it's very it's a.
Foolish thing to do, Like aside from like all the things that you're pointing out, like why would you try to out Trump? Trump? Mean, you're so severely unlikable. It is like even like I probably Trump, but like he's got he's definitely has some charm and charisma because he's on TV for decades as like a famous guy. But yeah, it is it is hard to sort of like necessarily assess yourself like that and admit it, even if you are a little putting fingers.
Man.
Yeah, he's really far deep at this point, you know, and he's really like gone down the path.
Yeah, yeah, he's locked in.
Yeah, he is locked in. It's a it's interesting to me because it's it's very much like a like you've got like this boxer who's like just just famously good, right hook just knocking dudes out left and right, and he's a heavyweight, and you're like, you know, sometimes you like box at the local gym with your friends for fun, and you see him. You see this guy. Maybe he's doing some sort of like circus thing. He's just pounded dudes, right,
challenging guys from the crowd. He knocks like four or five dudes out, and you're like, you know what, I bet I can take this man who's twice yeah, right, Like it's just what so reckless?
Must It's like, must say he wants to fight Zuckerberg.
Yeah, yeah, no, man, Like, yeah, I think that both what Ron has done and Elon Musk wanting to fight Mark Zuckerberg are just the best evidence you could get of how power and wealth derange you. Like he has lost. He's he's a guy earlier in his career who very small assesses risk and reward, and he's it's just kind of fallen apart. He won for too long, that kind of thing.
Oh yeah, no, it breaks your brain, It breaks yeah, it turns you into a meatball.
Yeah, into a meatball, a ground up little meatball. Yeah. And uh so you know, alongside Trump, DeSantis has chosen to pick a fight with Disney over the extremely mild resistance the company put up to his anti renewals. It's very like he tries to revoke their special tax status and then Disney uses their much more expensive lawyers to cancel a lot of this act.
Should have revoked his marriage.
Yeah, yeah, to do that.
They are like the pope.
Uh.
And it's very funny, like former RNC chair Michael Steele was, after all this happened. Is like once you lose a battle against Mickey Mouse, it's kind of hard to take you seriously.
Max, Like you lose a fight that you started, like.
That you started with Mickey Mouse. Max Stepanovitch, an influential figure in Tallahassee politics, told Politico last year that DeSantis had to resist becoming the protagonist in his own Greek tragedy, claiming the governor's key rival is not Trump but Hubris. I might also add what I said, yep, yep, yep, yeap. His own awkwardness too, you know, putting ron.
Yeah, his laughing and then scowling, yeah, nine and half a second that one of his Nazi didn't help.
No, that that sure doesn't help. Yeah, it's all very funny. I think the best way to close this out is for me to play a little clip of an interview with a with old Meatball Ron at Adasantas twenty twenty four event. This was taking Paul Steinhauser. So I'm gonna I'm gonna do this. Yeah, Katie Eve been waiting.
For this all episode.
Maybe he finally has the juice in this clip.
Can you guys see he got it?
Does he got a juice?
You finally got the juice?
Yeah?
Instead the other day that the knives are out for you at that debate, I got to ask you about that. Plus I got to ask you a memo that people are talking about. So I'd like to get your reaction to both.
Well. On the memo, it's not mine.
I haven't read it, and it's just I think it's something that we haven't put off to the side. But in terms of the debate, look, when you're I know from the military, when you're over the target, that's when you're taking flack. And if you look really, in the last six to nine months, I've been more attacked than anybody else by the Harris, the media.
The left. I feel like the Republican candidates and more times indicted President is probably.
Biggest threat, so we view it as positive feedback. We'll be ready to do what we need to do to deliver our message. But we absolutely expect that and we'll be ready for it. And that means punching back, It means, it means yes, it means defending ourselves, but more importantly, showing why we are the leader to get this country turned around.
Yeah, it's there's so much that. First off, Ron, how many times did you take flack in the Navy as a lawyer? Uh?
Over the combat line?
Yeah? Uh huh okay, Ron Wild time to bring that in. But yeah, yeah, he is grinding his fucking teeth. So the reason that the thing he's asking about is I mentioned that his campaign is broke. His super pac has a lot of money, but you cannot coordinate directly between a campaign and a superpack. So he had his superpack put together his debate prep list, like his his debate prep instructions. But the super pac can't send those to
the campaign. What it can do is put them up in a website in a way that's technically publicly available, right, and then they can say, and that's how we got it right, They published this publicly. Now there's ways to do that where it's not obvious, but like people found it and published his debate prep instructions, which are mostly really like it's do not attack Trump ever, you know, never say anything bad about Trump when you're up there.
Sounds like he's gonna fatal hard.
Viciously attack ignore Trump and viciously attack Vivic Ramaswamy by calling him and and it like this is the saddest part. It's like, you got to give him a Trump style nickname to attack Vivic the liar?
Oh my god, don't even try.
Yeah, you know what Trump would call Vivic. I don't think anything. I think he would basically ignore him because he's not a serious threat. He would go after he would be calling Ronda Santis.
If he did, it might be a little racist, there's a chance.
But he has made clear rhymes about it. Okay, he's rapped about it. You'll see he.
Is like is he well known as a liar on the right?
Like we like because he's like he the things Vivic says are like weird, like misunderstandings of how the government works, and like, wait, you want to do this with a what are you talking about?
Man? But he's not a liar.
I think there's this fundamental misunderstanding about why Trump's nicknames are effective. And they are effective because they get at what most people have as like a primary complaint about a dude in a very like succinct way. Right, Jeb Bush is like the son of a president who was like the kind of evil genius political manipulator and the brother of a president who was like the super charismatic political candidate. Right, yeah, and he just was absolutely bland by comparison.
Low energy Jeb.
Right, he's desperate, but it's the thing that hurts him the most, right, Like he knows that about himself. Ted Cruz Lion Ted. You call Ted Cruz a liar because Ted Cruz is a fucking liar.
He exuded lies.
Well, guess for the Trump if Trump was going to do a nickname of Vivek, is is nobody nobody Vivek? Right, Like, yeah, he's not He's not, right, He's he's a zero, you know, because he is a zero. Yeah, vapid Vivek. You know something like that that gets it his like that he's he's not a serious candidate.
He's just there for his books and stuff, and that's you know, Yeah, vapid Vivec. That's a good one, Katie.
You don't call him Vivec the liar because like, that's not it, Like there's that doesn't get you anywhere.
And also blank, the blank is not something. It's not the that's not the structure of the nicknames.
Also like, yeah, I think vapid is a good one, Katie. That might be the VP vivec rapin rapping.
Yeah, anyway, anyway, guy who wants to raise the voting age to twenty five of.
The veke, I think we need to lower the age to rent cars to eighteen. Uh yeah, And I also think we need to lower the drinking age to eighteen as long as as you're buying your alcohol in a rented car. That's my argument.
Get to drink it in the rented.
Car and drink it while driving in the rented car.
No, No, that would be irresponsible. I just want to It's kind of like how when Texas you can buy liquor at a drive through, but only if they put a piece of tape on it.
That's that's that's the situation.
Apparently.
Yes, it's glorious sixty four ounce margarita in your truck. The size of a Sherman battle tack.
Literally a drive through liquor store and you like.
Yeah, it's called called State's Rights. It's so funny.
It's the best thing Texas does.
And like now that I note exists, I don't want to get out of my car.
No, get boozed like a peasant at some place.
Like a poor No, absolutely not or yeah, anyway, that's after.
Run on Wednesday evening when he is not allowed to talk about Donald Trumpton.
Anyway, good luck to Ron the day before this episode will drop hopeful.
Yeah, yeah, thanks for having us, having.
Us per USU.
Do you want to do your plugs, Katie.
We've got shows, we sure do.
We'd love for you to listen and watch those shows. We have about YouTube channel called some More News and you can watch videos, but we also have a podcast called even more News, and we also have the audio from the YouTube channel in that podcast feed. So it's like there's two different shows in the podcast. Check it out, you'll get it. Check them out and Patreon and Cody. You have a band.
Oh it's so true, Sophie. Oh my god, what a great point from Sophie. Once again, it's my band is called the hot shapes. You can find them on band camp and SoundCloud and maybe streaming where you stream songs. I think I tried to do that. I don't know. Check it out.
And Robert, you have a you have a book.
I I do have a book. It's it's called After the Revolution. You can buy it any where books come from. And you know what else I have is a lot of love in my heart from my co hosts uh and and my producer who listened to two hours or so of Ron DeSantis. And if you at home are feeling kind of bummed out about this, go go on Twitter and find the clip of him in that interview we just played next to Homelander. Uh, the same, the same, like.
Biling's just it's not even under the surface. It is the surface. It's the bundling one to one. I've also never seen, like I don't think I've ever seen somebody grind their teeth like so visibly, Like no, you're you're also bearing your teeth. You're bearing your teeth and you're grinding them usually like no, tight lips, you keep it down, you clenched them.
He didn't seem to be handling things well, no, no, no, or for the past years. But yeah, no, he is grinding and bearing and out in rending and tearing. Is that something from where the Is that a quote? I made it up to stop talking to Katie? The gnashing of the teeth.
Yep, He's going to stop talking.
By Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.