The Desantis Campaign Death Spiral

Santis to this was a mistake anyway, Garrison. You just last week we closed out on two great episodes about fash wave and uh, the adoption uh and kind of reposting of a lot of these aesthetics that had become popular on the far right via you know, the the dark branded memes, And a big part of that was how Ronda Santis somehow allowed some incredibly internet poisoned zoomers to make an ad for him that was far too online for a presidential campaign ad and I felt like

it was time to kind of have a discussion about meatball ron because obvious things in Florida are very ugly right now. As a fascist, which he definitely is, Ronda Santis is an effective administrator, yeah, which I mean he's good at twisting the administrative state that exists into a weapon to attack marginalized groups. He's been effective at that. What's happening legally, you know, in the laws, you know a lot of the anti trans laws, the anti drag

laws in Florida is very frightening. What he's been doing to the Florida education system, state education system is very unsettling, And you know that is all of that is worthy of further discussion. But I think because the most immediate concern we have is like, is this guy going to be able to do that on a national scale? Right, Which is not to say that we should just let Florida, you know, sink into the ABYSS. I don't believe that.

But at the moment, Rond de Santis is tied for second place against Donald Trump, So it kind of it behooves us to ask the questions purely for the purpose of self deface? Can Ron DeSantis win? Right? Could he actually become not? Even the first question is like, could he become the Republican presidential candidate? Can he beat Donald Trump? And the short good answer to that is I don't think so. It's not looking good. Not looking good for

all meetball. Ron agreed, and I wanted to get into why and kind of some of the fundamental flaws as a guy who is there was kind of this belief fear, I think a reasonable fear among a lot of liberals and folks on the left that because of how effective he's been consolidating and expanding his power in Florida, and because he's generally seemed like less of a like Donald Trump has certain competences as an authoritarian. There's things he's very good at, but he was not good at being

the president. He was not good at using power.

that stuff. And the worry is that Ronda Santis would be The good news is that Ronda Santis is incompetent as a politician and a political candidate. So I wanted to kind of start with why a lot of his the people who do form his base, which is quite shrinking at the moment, he's losing a lot of support, why they thought he was capable of winning the primary

and the general. And when you look into kind of why a lot of sort of Republican like legacy Republicans, the folks who often be called Rhinos, why a lot

of them decided to back Ronda Santis. The best summer you're going to get comes from Phil Hauffines, who was a businessman in Texas whose car dealership ran a series of ads that are like plastered forever in the memories of everyone who lived in the DFW area in the late nineties early two thousands, and in a CNN interview a few days ago, he said this, when one looks objectively, at who can beat Biden. It's going to be DeSantis. We already had a match with Biden and Trump. Trump

turns out Democrats better than anybody. DeSantis will be able to articulate more clearly what Republicans stand for, and he's not going to be bogged down in other stuff that Trump brings to the election. I don't think that was a logical thing to think a year ago, right, because it is true that Trump turns out the dims. The idea that like DeSantis isn't gonna get bogged down and

shit has become kind of fundamentally silly. Like he's gotten bogged down in the fact that a lot of his you know, backers are invested in culture warship that does not sell well on a national level. This whole like anti trans crusade he's on the anti woke shit is not a big vote getter. It just gets the base behind you, and like, you're never gonna beat Trump in a race to the base. You know, Trump has the core of the hard right Republican Party in his pocket

and they're not gonna like move on from anybody. DeSantis's hope should have been like going after independence people on the edge people who are like unhappy with Biden, and I think when you pick this sort of like hate crusade, it hasn't worked well. But Huffines decided that like, yeah, this guy, this is the dude who has a shot. I think he can actually like pull it out from Trump. I think he's got the ability to like get a lot of people in the middle or close to the middle.

This has been proven kind of absurd over the last couple of months of stagnating poll numbers. Huffine says that the governor recently held a meeting with about one hundred and fifty Texas Republicans in Dallas, where he quote impressed them with his stamina, youth, and performance in recent Florida state elections. And there's a number of reasons to think that this is a bad strategy that like really laying on his performance in the last Florida election is like

a good way for him to win support. One of these has to do with the fact that like Florida is the national watchword for crazy right like the rest.

anything like that place. Like what a horrible what a horrible idea. This is a sentiment that you will find among Republican thought leaders. Quote. One Republican consultant who has worked on presidential campaign said DeSantis was making a classic governor's mistake by talking extensively about his past accomplishments. Yeah, put bluntley. People in Ohio or Iowa do not want to be Florida. They don't care about Florida, and they are tired of hearing about Florida.

care about at least, is like doing reasonably well. And like of the shit that is bad in the US economy, it's not any better, Like inflation is not better markedly better in Florida than it is in Iowa. Right, there's just not a good case to be made because like when you're not when you can't really drive the economic point home, when you can't be like look at how much better Flora is doing than your home. You know, it's a it's a fucking paradise compared to the you know,

shitty economy in Ohio. That's an argument you can make if there's any evidence for it, But when you're like, you can't really make the economic argument. It all comes down to culture war stuff, and most Americans don't want this culture warshit going on in their backyard because it's

like a gross, weird pain in the ass. So right now, the bulk of DeSantis support comes from higher income, old guard Republicans, the kind of were lukewarm for Trump from the beginning, and the kind to point out rightfully that he didn't win against Biden. It's time for new blood.

This is true, but current polling indicates it's not what most GOP voters want, which is kind of the big problem the Republicans have is that this is why Trump's definitely gonna win, you know, as the primary campaign, is that like the hardcore of the GOP cannot be overcome by the moderates because the hardcore is so in lockstep about what they want, and what they want is Trump. The moderates don't have control of the party, but the moderates are the ones who can like actually win a

general election. So Yeah, it's it's a tough situation for them to be in. And one of the things that kind of shows how fucked Ron is is that, like Ron won reelection in Florida in his last scubernatorial campaign by about twenty points a year or so ago. In Florida, Trump currently has a twenty point lead on him.

Trump more than they like him. Bad situation to be in, and a number of early backers in DeSantis's orbit have begun to acknowledge this reality. I'm gonna quote from NBC News here. Yeah, there are a number of people grumbling about it, no doubt. A Desantist owner said, there is an overall sense, including with me, that he just is

not ignited the way we thought he would. And I find that really interesting because you get versions of that a lot that like, we were expecting him to really take off as soon as he started campaigning, and he hasn't,

and that was our only strategy. You get this, and like if you read interviews with like folks who were in the DeSantis orbit and people, because a number of his early backers have like peeled away and rescinded their their endorsements and given them the Trump it was this hope they had that like once as soon as he's out in front of America, Americans are going to love this guy because he's all the good stuff about Trump with none of the baggage. And that was just fundamentally

disastrously wrong. And I think one of the things we're starting to see is that the Dysantis people didn't have another plan for how to get this guy elected. Like their plan was that we think that Trump's policies are popular, but everyone doesn't like Trump, and no, that's actually not accurate.

legislative assistants and all that stuff for elected leaders. And because to me, to just a guy sitting out there, like I'm worried about Ron because what he's doing in Florida. But from the moment I saw the guy speak, I was like, well, this man has no charisma whatsoever. And if you can't think about like how a guy could attract voters. If there's nothing that seems appealing about a candidate to you, if you can't understand their charisma, that's

probably a good sign that they can't get elected. I am not mystified by why any president who was won in my lifetime won. Right, George W. I've been in a room with George W. Bush and watch him spoke in immediately made sense why people fucking love George W. Bush. He had an attitude, he had an air that put people at ease. He was good at putting on a character that people found appealing in that time and place.

There's a reason why so many voters who loved him, you know, especially after the first campaign where it was kind of a but like, there's a reason why he got re elected, Like there's in It's the same thing with like Bill Clinton. Right, you watch old videos of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail before he was president. You can see the charisma, you can see the way he connects to audiences. You can see the things about him that people find appealing. There's not a mystery. It's

not mysterious why Obama got elected. He's a deeply charismatic man. And you know, Joe needed a little bit of help. That's why he lost so many presidential campaigns beforehand. But next to Donald Trump, he seems like a much more appealing person. Like, I'm not mystified, and I'm not mystified by why Trump got elected. Next to Hillary Clinton, Trump felt not like a politician, not like the same people

who would let us down. There was this degree to which like, you should never be you should if you're looking at like whether or not someone can win an election, you should never be like, well, I don't get it, but I guess maybe they have. They must have some sort of charisma, because everybody's talking about them as a serious candidate.

we're probably going to see. I wouldn't be surprised if he kind of has a blowout politically pretty early in the primary season next year, because he raised a lot of money earlier in his campaign. He raised about twenty million or so between mid May and the end of June of this year, which actually put him ahead fundraising wise of Trump by about two million or so. But the Trump campaign ended last quarter with twice as much cash on hand as Wrong Alongside is still dominating lead

in the poll. So Ron has raised a lot of money, which kind of speaks to the number of sort of like Republican institutional backers who hoped that he could win where Trump had failed. But he blew all that shit and it didn't get him anything, right, Like, he didn't raise a like he crept up a teeny amount in the polls, but he's still like tied for second with

Donald Trump despite blowing all of that money. And I think we're going to reach a point pretty quickly where if he doesn't immediately take you know, a state or two or three from Trump in the early primaries, any kind of hope he has for further donations is going to dry up, because, like, why would you keep wasting that money? We all saw how much money got wasted trying to take Trump out of the primaries in twenty sixteen. I do think people are going to be a little

more gun shy this time. There have already been a number of recent layoffs of major staffers by DeSantis. He's kind of purged a big chunk of the people who started his campaign. One of the things that's a little interesting about him in his political career is that as a politician, he has always been kind of noted as kind of weird within Florida politics because every election he's had, he's had an entirely new team of people. He does

not work with the same people twice. He does not have like bring people back for his campaigns, which is really unusual in US politics for a successful politics. When you win, you tend to bring him back a lot of the same people who helped you win the last time. And so the fact that Ron doesn't do that, that he's got such basically one hundred percent churn in his

teams suggests a couple of things. One he's not great to work with, and two the people who work with him and have been successful and are good don't see him as someone with national potential, right. They don't want to keep working with him because then they get kind of trapped in the loop of being a Desantist guy. They want to move on somewhere else because they think

governor is as high as this guy can go. You know, like that is kind of one of the things that you see when you note this dude has such total turnover in his fucking teams. Now again, for all of the money that he spent, Ron's polling numbers have changed basically nil from when he announced his candidacy, according to New York Magazine, kind of related a bunch of this together.

In the Real Clear Politics average of polls starting July first, twenty twenty two, Trump had a thirty four point lead over Ron DeSantis and fifty two point eight percent of the vote in national surveys, with DeSantis at eighteen point five. At present, he's got Trump's lead over to Santas So a year ago, Trump had a thirty four point lead over to Santis. Now he's at thirty two, which is not the speed of movement that you want to see.

After a year of effectively campaigning. On the national surveys, DeSantis has gone from eighteen point five percent to about twenty one percent, which again is just kind of like a disastrous rate of change. Now, this is just one poll. There's PROBA potentially outliers here. I've seen other polls that show DeSantis at more like twelve percent and tied with

Vivic Ramaswami, who is another GOP candidate. Like the fact that Vivek, who is not nearly the kind of national name DeSantis is, is tight with him and some polls now is fucking disastrous. He and Trump are pretty close in terms of funding. Vivec has raised only a fraction of what DeSantis has raged So that's a pretty bad sign. Kind of a fucking disaster. One major area in which Ron lags behind Trump is his ability to draw interest

and what amounts to free advertising from the media. Trump famously got about a billion dollars in free publicity in twenty sixteen thanks to relentless media coverage of his every move, gaff and speech. He understood it didn't matter if it was negative, It didn't matter that they were shit talking

to me. What matters that they're keeping my face out front, right, this is a thing that will bring me support, It will bring me donors, it will make my supporters see me as like this kind of gladiator fighting for them. He leaned into this shit. On the surface, Ron and Trump are kind of the same in their approach to the media, and that if you go to a Dessanta speech, you go to a Trump's speech, they're going to call the media the enemy of the people or some variant there.

They're going to talk about the need to control the press. They're going to like support authoritarian measures against like free you know, the free press, like like again, if you're kind of just looking on the surface, it seems like they have the same attitude towards the media, but the way they treat journalists is completely different, and that DeSantis has no strategy with the media. He just attacks them.

If you're if you're right wing media, if you're some podcaster he likes, he'll go on your show, he'll talk to you. But he ignores the liberal media. He ignores the mainstream media. But that's that's different from having a tactic for dealing with them. Trump has a strategy with the media. He will howl that they're the enemy, of the people in front of crowds. He'll talk about locking up journalists, but if you like read articles about him after a speech or whatever, he always gives the press

their time. He knows a lot of these guys by name. He has relationships with reporters. He's had relationships with like Maggie Haberman of The Times. He's he's able to be like friendly with these people and social with them, which isn't like, doesn't make it's not doing that to be a good person. He's doing it because like he wants them to feel comfortable around him and cover him.

DeSantis has none of this background, so he's just trying to copy like the hostile vibe of Trump without understanding the actual like media backing that Trump puts into his UH, into his like relationship with UH, with like with like advertising and with having you know, any any amount of coverage that will get Republicans be like, oh, this is a guy that's worth voting for.

being unfair and unbiased. Like when Trump would go out and sit down with a New York Times, sit down with the post it down, he would often get coverage that like, let him say his piece, let him make his case like they would because they didn't want to feel like they were being biased and he was giving them some of his time. But when you just cut the media off like the Santas has done, you don't

get that from them. You don't get any of like the benefit of this sort of like idea of impartiality, which cuts down on your ability to actually like reach people who might be converted to vote for you. This is highlighted particularly well in a segment from a recent New York Times article Ontosanta's difficulty getting press coverage. Quote. Assigned to cover the reelection campaign of Governor Ronda Santas of Florida, Miles Cohen and the young ABC News reporter

found himself stymied. The governor would not grant him an interview, aids barred him from some campaign events, and interrupted his conversations with supporters. When mister Cohen was finally able to ask a question about the governor's handling of Hurricane Ian, mister DeSantis shouted him down, stop, stop, stop, and scolded the media for trying to cast dispersions. The Dessanta's campaign then taunted mister Cohen on Twitter, prompting a torrent of

online vitriol. So on election night, mister Cohen de camp to a friendlier environment for the news media mar A Lago, where former President Donald J. Trump greeted reporters by name. He came up to us, asked how the sandwiches were, and took twenty questions, mister Cohen recalled mister Trump, who heckled the fake news in his speech. That evening elevated

media bashing into a high art for Republicans. But ahead of the next presidential race, potential candidates like mister DeSantis are taking a more radical approach, not just attacking nonpartisan news sources but out ignoring them altogether. And yeah, I think that kind of like gets at the core of what a bad strategy this is. And it shows all of the Republicans right now because of Trump's success in twenty sixteen, which we do have to remember, was not

based on converting a majority of Americans. It was based in part on like the electoral system and just raw luck that shit broke the way it did. But they are looking at like his success in twenty sixteen and trying to copy that. But it's like a cargo cult thing, right. They don't actually understand what he did that work. They see him bashing the media and his speech, so they're like, well, I'm gonna be even harder. I'm not going to talk

to the media at all. And it's like, well, you have eliminated for yourself the primary benefit that Trump drew out from this.

his strategy. So, yeah, the same tactics. If de Santis thinks he's going to get publicity for saying some horrible thing in his speech, the media knows what's up now, Like they've already seen this, like playbook get played. It's not like it's you can't treat it like eight years ago.

Nobody gives a shit about Hunter Biden, Like zero moderate it's not a single vote is being changed as a result of the Hunter Biden situation in twenty twenty or it's a different landscape and these people haven't. This is a good thing. I am frightened for in a new you know, there's another coup in conservative politics, and somebody understands that it's a different year. Yea, yeah, but we are we are fortunate at this moment. And you know who else is fortunate.

He simply can't succeed against Trump with the same tactics that worked in Florida's or against Florida's anemic state Democratic Party. When he's tried to rebut the naysayers who see his cause as largely doomed, DeSantis has tried to publicly downplay the significance of national polls. It is one of my favorite things. Whenever people point out, like, your polls have not moved in a year, and you've spent millions and millions of dollars, He'll be like, I don't trust those polls.

Those polls don't really matter. You can't trust the poll to get how wrong the polls were in twenty sixteen articles.

like campaign contributions because it's to a superpack. So these are like the thick pockets people. So we get an idea of how he is marketing his campaign right now that it's in a crisis, and it starts with a state of the race update with a subtitle the ballot is very fluid. Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates they select on a ballot question this

far out, including many Trump supporters. Our focused group participants in the Early States even say they don't plan on making up their mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate. Well, we know Trump's flor is twenty five percent. That leaves three quarters of the electorate willing to consider other viable options. What has not changed to the candidates who are realistically being courted by the electorate.

As it has been for the last year, Trump and DeSantis remain the only viable options for two thirds of the likely Republican primary electorate. Well, Tim Scott has earned a serious look at this stage, as Bio is lacking the fight that our electorate is looking for in the next president. We expect Tim Scott to receive appropriate scrutiny. In the weeks of head we found low to no interest in Vivek Bergham and Nikki, while too many voters

will not consider Pencer Christie for them to be remotely viable. Now, I agree about pens and Christy. Neither of those people is going to be the primary candidate. But again Vivek and some polls is right up there with Ron de Santis. So yeah, note that neither of them's gonna win.

have any hope of building up momentum. Yeah, language like this from the memo has to have experienced Republican politico's nervous While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday. That's slow our momentum in New Hampshire. We expect to revisit this investment in the fall. I'm sure you will not a great sign guys the memo.

he's not very impressive. Most of the social media response to his public appearances have been people making fun of the way he eats in public, Like there's like six or seven different videos out that are him trying to eat something and looking like a goober and people making fun of him, Whereas like again Trump has because he's actually charismatic. Trump can like sit in a truck and look like a dufus playing truck driver and everybody's like,

look at that guy. Even people who hate him are like, well, that's kind of endearing. Look at him. He's hogging the horn. He's pretending to be a big truck driver. You know. Meet ball Ron. I mean we call him meatball Ron because of a food related gaff.

Ron is worth further investment. We found that when voters hear about the governor's bio, principally as a dad and as a veteran, they like him and are open to hearing more about him. This says to say nothing of his successes on parental rights, his leadership bringing Florida's economy back during and after COVID, fighting illegal immigration, and ensuring Border Act security. That he's not just a fighter, but

most importantly a winner. A major paid media effort featuring the governor's bio will help us to convert three big issues that you know. That's again, so the three big issues he's highlighting that he says like, these are the things that are going to get voters onto us enough of them that we can overcome Trump's twenty five percent floor our anti immigration stuff. Well, I'm sorry, man, Trump's got you beat there. The wall is his.

Like again, it's just bad strategy. It's a bad strategy within the context of what his people have laid out as a strategy. Right, Like, if the good strategy is go for the other seventy five percent of the voters, well, you probably don't do that by promising to be even harder on the border.

He's not if you're a donor. He's not exhibiting the idea that he knows how to copy what Trump did and do it one better, like your goal here at if you're running against Trump based on kind of what they lay out, is what their strategy needs to be, which is get the other seventy five percent of people to back us instead of Trump. You need to be you don't need to be yes ending you are acknowledging by laying that out as the strategy that Trump his

appeal is. He's got a dedicated base of appeal, but it's limited, and so if you are trying to make the case that you're more electable than him, you need to show how you have a wider base of a wider appeal than he does. And you don't do that by being like, I'm even shittier on the border, like anyway, just a bad strategy since he doesn't have a strong

case to make an absolute numbers. Ron's campaign has made the call to push heavily on the Forgotten Man narrative, arguing a soft conspiratorial view that a cabal of shady elites is colluding to ruin American greatness. Here's another quote from that memo equally important, we will offer an economic message to disrupt and win economy voters. American decline was not an accident, It was a choice. Our elites do not consider themselves Americans so much as they think of

themselves as citizens of the world. Their loyalty is not to a discrete nation, but to the bottom line on a balance sheet. And the decisions they made in leading this country over the past few decades has reflected that worldview. They have governed in their interests rather than ours. And I do think there's a germ of something interesting there. There's this idea of like economic populism, which was a

factor in Trump's campaign. It's interesting to me how close Ron's idea is to outright anti Semitic conspiracy theory language like, yeah, they don't recognize borders, they're citizens of the world, which is a you know, very similar to a lot of the arguments that like the Nazis would make about the Jews, is that like they're a borderless people who exist within this like financial system rather than like our national like co citizens. Right. It's interesting to me that he's got

that this in that memo. Again, I don't think it's a good strategy. I think the way Trump, Trump's just better at doing this right at like he's made himself like there's a lot of people who consider Trump like their kind of guy, like a working class dude, even though he's a billionaire with a gold toilet. I don't see that DeSantis has the ability to like win that kind of support from working people.

They're like, boy, I do want you to look up legal insurrection dot com because their website's very interesting, like starts with this like phonetic breakdown of the phrase legal insurrection. Like that's their logo that includes like a definition a rising up against established authority, rebellion, revolt in conformity with or permitted by law. That's a nonsense phrase, because there's

no such thing as a permitted legal insurrection. We had this argument actually, like back in around eighteen sixty and guess where it ended. Like, I'm not saying it's bad to have an insurrection. I think some insurrections are potentially really good, but they're never legal. Otherwise they're not an insurrection.

I'm a criminal. I want to I want to overthrow the government. You know what's cool is being a criminal who wants to overthrow the government. We all love criminal This is why Star Wars is the biggest movie series. We love criminals who want to overthrow the government. That's who the founding fathers of this country.

administration and before that, the Obama administration. The federal government, specifically the executive branch alphabet agencies, has been completely corrupted by the Obama, Biden and now the Biden Harris administrations. We all know it, and we're all disgusted and disheartened by the myriad ways the Obama administration targeted political opponents. That's why Trump's twenty sixteen campaign to drain the swamp

was so potent. We knew the depth and breadth of the corruption, the partisan Banana Republic style attacks on political opponents, and we wanted it stopped. Unfortunately, Trump was not able to drain the swamp at all, not even a little bit. So when Biden took office in twenty twenty one, he just got to work picking up Obama's attacks on ascent with a deep state still fully embedded through the executive branch, having spent the intervening years openly working as the resistance

to Trump's the duly elected president's agenda. God, it's such, first off, very funny that they're trying to like make the resistance to be anything but like Twitter libs like I do find it by that they're like fucking trying to treat this like a boogeyman.

I think a strength he has not maybe capitalized on enough is this idea, because this is something Trump proved he was unable to do, like he didn't go in there and unseat the deep state. And DeSantis has actually been kind of effective at resisting the federal government and even sidelining some federal agencies within Florida. And there's some actual like potential for strength here with Trump's base. I don't know that this gets you moderates, but like, it's

weird to me that he hasn't pushed this harder. Part of that maybe the fact that he's, like everything else, really bad at it. Kind of his strongest attempt to provide sort of a countervailing force to federal law enforcement was his activation of the Florida State Guard, which seventeen or so states have state Guards. It's just kind of

like a state version of a National Guard. Potentially, Florida's had not been active in a while, and he reactivated them, claiming that it was going to be a force of volunteers who could respond to hurricanes and other public emergencies. But what he was actually doing was trying to create a paramilitary organization. He is in the process of attempting to do this now. These people are undergoing like military training and whatnot. He's trying to get them access to weaponry.

Like this is potentially kind of concerning, but he's really fucking bad at it. There was a really interesting New York Times article recently that kind of goes into the problems the Florida State Guard have had sort of spinning up, and it's a very funny read, because it's like it's like a little kid's idea about how you would build

a paramilitary organization. So on paper, the Governor's office has said that one of the Guard's missions would be quote to ensure Florida remains fully fortified to respond not only to natural disasters, but also to protect its people in

borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest. And then the New York Times article continues, the deployment this spring has been mired in internal turmoil, with some recruits complaining that what was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization had become heavily militarized, requiring volunteers to participate in marching drills and military style training sessions on weapons and hand

to hand combat. At least twenty percent of the one hundred and fifty people initially accepted into the program dropped

out or were dismissed. And if you get into this, the people dropping out are like the veterans, They're like military officers and stuff who got into this thing, and then are like, I was in the military for twenty years, you know, I did deployments here and here, and I came into this thing and it's a bunch of civilians dressed as soldiers yelling at me to do push ups in march in a field and like trying to be an asshole to me because they're angry that like I

have military experience and they think they know better. Like it is so like the volunteers said the training seemed poorly structured, with an order to minimum amount of time spent, as one of them described it, marching in fields. Some of the men said that as veterans with years of experience in the military, they were offended when they were yelled at by junior instructors acting like drill sergeants who disregarded their previous ranks. I find this really fucking funny.

If you guys seen those videos coming out about like they're these classes where if you're like a rich or you know, upper middle class dude, you can pay like ten grand to spend five days doing a fake version of the Seals Hell week. Like your role you're like incredible, Like yeah, you're like carrying, like hitting stuff with big hammers,

You're like crawling on your back through rocks. You're doing all these like shitty, painful exercises, while like some dude who probably fucking got an other than honorable separation from the Marine Corps as a private second class like screams at you a lot, and it's you know, that's what you feel. Yeah, yeah, rolling around on a one wheel yelling at you that you're you know, just like making a bullshit reasons to be angry at you because idiots honestly have it, Like yeah.

You might get some votes. I don't think you'd win a lot of moderates, but you might get the base away from Trump.

creative than anything else he's tried. Anyway, this is all a bad idea. I want to close by reading one last anecdote from that New York Times article on Ron Meatball. Ron's attempt to make an Army. A fifty one year old former Marine captain who had retired from the military with a disability and later joined the State Guard, also clashed with instructors during initial boot camp last month, raising

concerns about the training. In an assault complaint filed with the Clay County Sheriff's office, the man said he was accused by the State Guard commander of being the leader of the group that had been criticized in the organization and its leadership. He was then forcibly pushed into a van against his objections and driven to the command boost, where he was fired and escorted off base. Of the nine original State Guard recruiters and commanders who spent months

recruiting for the organization, fewer things the third remained. The staff director, who had been a proposion of the less militarized version of the group appointed in January, was removed from his post just two days before the inaugural graduation. The program's personnel director was fired this week.