Can There Be Another Star in Trump’s Cinematic Universe? (with David Drucker)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group Podcast. I’m Sarah Longwell, Publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we are going to indulge in a little twenty twenty four talk. Now, I know what you’re thinking. I said I was gonna wrap up on the last election and I promise you I am, but as you may have heard, Donald Trump announced that he is running to be president again in twenty twenty four.

And I’m sorry, but I wanna talk about that for a little bit. Because Republicans lacklustre midterm performance, especially among Trump’s endorsed candidates in swing states, seemed to have sapped Trump’s announcement of his typical dark electricity. I was actually a little bored. And instead, the guy getting all the buzz as a potential Trump challenge right now, Florida Governor Rhonda Santos is fresh off a nineteen point reelection win in Florida where he won Miami Dade County by eleven points, even as Republicans underperformed in most of the rest of the country. Now over the past year, we’ve talked to a lot of Republican voters about their interest in Trump running again in twenty twenty four, as well as their interest in DeSantis and other potential GOP candidates.

So we’ve pulled together a bunch of that sound to give you a sense of how Trump voters are thinking about the Republican Party’s future. My guest today is David Drucker, author of In Trump Shadow the Battle for twenty twenty four and the Future of the GOP, and he is a senior correspondent at the Washington examiner. David, thank you so much for being here.

Good to be here, Sarah. Thank you.

So you’re at the RJC, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s Meeting in Las Vegas right now. There’s a whole bunch of twenty twenty four contenders in attendance. What are you seeing and hearing? Who’s there? What’s what’s the vibe like?

Well, there was a big fundraising dinner last night. Of course, they don’t let us into that. Glenn Youngkin was supposed to be the headliner he had to back out because of that horrific shooting in Virginia. Larry Hogan spoke, Ronald McDaniel, the R and C chairman spoke, and there are a number of Republicans who would like to be president that are going to be here over the next couple of days. And so I’m going to be talking to activists and donors active in the Republican Jewish Coalition trying to get a bead on exactly how much appetite there is for the party to move on from Donald Trump.

As you and I’ve discussed for a long time and as your focus groups have proven, within the Republican base, there is still a lot of fidelity to Trump. The question is coming out of the midterm elections, Do Republicans get restless because it’s been free elections in a row with disappointment? The midterm elections in twenty eighteen, you could toss out by saying, hey, this is what happens to presidents in their first term, although it didn’t exactly happen to Joe Biden. But twenty twenty and twenty twenty two are squarely on Trump’s shoulders. And I’ve already detected more restlessness more willingness to look elsewhere than ever before since Trump announced for president in twenty fifteen the first time But the question is whether once all of the dust settles, this sentiment sticks around and continues to grow or whether as we saw after January six twenty twenty one, we get past the initial shock of it all, and then we realized that the Republican party is still Trump’s to run as long as he sees fit?

Howard Bauchner:

Yeah, I mean, this is the problem. Right? Which is, at this point, I keep trying to say this to people that, like, we’ve learned so much over the last seven years. One of the lessons that we’ve learned is that no matter what Trump does, he seems to survive it. He incited in his direction, he refused to engage in a peaceful transfer of power, He went to Helsinki and stood next to Vladimir Putin and cited it against America’s intelligence community.

He was caught on camera talking vulgarly about sexually assaulting women. And every time it looks like he’s done, he’s not. And so we have learned that lesson, but we’ve also we’ve learned what the vibe of that is like. The vibe of him coming back and not getting sort of taken down by it And what feels different about this? It’s not just the way people were reacting to him.

It’s him. Like his speech announcing his candidacy for twenty twenty four. Both strategically was very poorly timed, but seemed like he’d boxed himself in. It’s like he just had to go ahead with it. But more importantly, and there’s been a couple pieces written about this.

Like, he also seems joyless and bored and not funny and like he’s not enjoying himself and none of the rest of us are enjoying it either. You can’t sort of underestimate just the normal human emotion of boredom and like the interest in something new. Like, it just doesn’t seem as dangerous as exciting. I don’t know. Do you get that sense?

Well,

I do think that he’s in a weakened position. And I’ve been trying to look at this from a couple of angles. Right? And on one hand, I have never with Trump given his potency with the Republican base and his ability to dominate the media landscape. I’ve never wanted to take for granted as an analyst this idea that now they finally got them.

They being, you know, Republicans who oppose them, Democrats who oppose them. If you look at the course of his life in business and politics, the man often seems like he has nine lives. I mean, he had four bankruptcies and still commanded a high rated television show where he was the world’s greatest businessman. Which shows that he’s very resilient and willing to push through more setbacks than most people, including narcissistic politicians. But I think that we also have to understand that Donald Trump in twenty twenty two is not necessarily Donald Trump in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen.

And I wrote about this for the examiner this week. In twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, Donald Trump was the ultimate change agent. He challenged Republican dogma that had grown stale in the Reagan era. He challenged Democratic dogma. He drew in longtime Democratic voters.

He put together a coalition that included support in the suburbs and among the independents. And he was able to do that because he was fresh and he was new And even though he didn’t win the popular vote, he won where it mattered. Donald Trump having lost the presidency and seven years later, is now more of a retread incumbent who is no longer a change agent. It doesn’t mean he can’t win the Republican primary. And if you’re nominated, it means you can win but he is not the same figure, and he even alluded to it in his speech, which I would say did not live up to the standard that Trump has set for himself.

Occasionally, during his presidency, he would give teleprompter speeches that were, you know, at least according to expectations, not bad, and this one fell very short, but one of the things he said during that speech is, I guess, I’m a politician now. I don’t really like the way that sounds, but I guess it’s true. But the thing is He is just a politician now. And we’ve seen with two term presidents usually in years seven and eight, the country grows tired even if they don’t dislike them. And one other thing that could also be different this time around depending on whether these people are willing to challenge Trump in a vigorous way is In twenty sixteen and throughout Trump’s presidency, the choice for the Republican base was often Trump or going backward.

That’s how they looked at it. Well, you keep telling us we have to go back to the Republicans we used to have and we don’t like them. This guy is new and different and represents what we want today. But the figures that are available to Republicans now are not Reagan era retreads. They’re not going backwards.

And so If any of these people are willing to run against Trump the way you need to to show Republican voters that you’re a fighter and willing to do the job, then it’s not going to be as easy for Trump to come up with a catchy nickname and get rid of them.

Yeah. Well, that’s what I guess I mean about sort of learning a lot. I mean, I’m just watching the media, the Rupert Murdoch. Empire back in twenty fifteen, sixteen like they would, crap all over Trump. Right?

They didn’t like him, but they would still put him on the cover to crap all over him. And so there was this constant amplification. And that’s something that Trump knows really how to use to his advantage. This time they put him on, like, page twenty six. They had a totally different cover.

Fox News got away from him. And so there seems to be like an understanding of how you drain some of the oxygen from him. And these candidates will have learned something. Right? They know he’s gonna come at them.

I mean, before Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, they were like, what is happening right now? This is not how these things go, but now people understand how he would come at them. And so they might be in a better position to deflect some of it. So, I wanna start by walking you through how our focus groups have thought about the Trump twenty twenty four question. Now, we did dozens of groups of Trump voters after January sixth throughout twenty twenty one and into twenty twenty two.

And it

was a

pretty hard and fast rule that more than half of any Trump group would wanna see Trump run again in twenty twenty four. That all changed with the January sixth hearings. Now we did nine groups during the January sixth hearings of twenty twenty Trump voters. And in four of those groups, we had zero participants who wanted Trump to run again in twenty twenty four. That was a huge change.

And it is when we started to see a lot more voters starting to think about electability. Starting to think about other potential candidates. It’s what we started to hear, Ron. Santa’s name a lot more. So let’s listen to how some of these Trump voters were talking ensuring the hearing.

I do

not want four more years of Orange Man Bad, and everybody screaming about every time he tweets and believe me he did some really bad tweets. I don’t want four more years of that. I

think Trump did a great job for this country, especially since so many presidents focus on the East Coast, and sometimes the West Coast, and then they forget about all the rest of the United States. And so it was nice to have a president who was focusing on the rest of us. And just so many things he did was great. But then we had all this stuff that happened at the media just pounced. And then since then with the trials and everything.

I think if he won presidency, there’d be so much backlash from that. I don’t know if it could be as effective as the presidency as he did with his first four years. I would

love for Trump to repress on it again. However, my only concern is that, you know, would he actually get elected because I wanna make sure that whoever does run has the best, very, very, very best chance of beating home of the Democratic candidates. And I just think the Democrat side would just have an absolute firestorm if he ran again, and I think they would pull up every punch, every trick, everything they can possibly do to not get him elected. Kinda like what happened with twenty twenty. So for those reasons, I mean, even though the baggage most of the baggage is probably media based, stuff that the media has put on him, which a lot of stuff isn’t warranted.

I just think it would just cause too much of a firestorm.

He’s older and not not to, like, say that somebody of that age isn’t able to do the job, but if you want to get eight years

you don’t know

what’s gonna happen into your early eighties and late eighties. You don’t wanna be like Biden who’s having, you know, issues cognitively, and the same thing happened to Reagan.

Alright. So there’s like a theme that has run through the voters since the January six hearings began. Because that was when we started seeing this drift away. They still like Trump. They’re not mad at him.

They’re not out on him. It wasn’t that they were watching the January six hearings and deciding Boy, now that I know this about him, I’m very upset, and I’m out on Trump. It was more just like, all the ephemeral that surrounds Trump, the fighting you know, like the first woman said, you know, aren’t man bad. Like, they, like, can’t take the circus that kinda, like, comes with him or at least that’s how they explain it. But I will say, one postscript on this is that after the January six hearings happened and then there was the search of Mar a Lago, there was a big rally around Trump effect in early August that people didn’t trust the FBI.

And so I guess I feel like I can sense this shifting away if there are alternatives. But what do you think the chances are if Trump gets indicted, which sounds like he may very well that that is the kind of thing that causes voters to come back to him? Or do you think it’s the kind of thing that has them moving further away from him?

Well, I’m sort of of two minds about this because as we heard in the clips you just played, Republican voters, many of them, still really like Trump themselves. Their potential move away from him is very pragmatic. I’m not sure he can win. He may inspire so much democratic turnout that it makes it harder for Republicans to win. Somebody mentioned the fact that you wouldn’t have the potential for an eight year presidency because Trump only gets one more term.

So these are all pragmatic reasons to turn away from Trump. These are not voters concluding that the juice was not worth the squeeze after all. They’re just worried that he either can’t win or wouldn’t be able to do as well as he did the first time because of the firestorm he would generate around himself, you know, and they said it wouldn’t even be his fault. It’s just the way it is. So it shows you that he hasn’t necessarily lost Republicans.

On the other hand, voters are often rather pragmatic about their choices in primaries. People forget, but one of the reasons why Trump was able to win in a divided field in twenty sixteen was because a plurality of voters determined that he was the least ideological of the group, and they believed he had the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton And so if Republican voters look at their choices in twenty twenty four and conclude that there is a better choice no matter how they feel about Trump, I think given three consecutive electoral disappointments, there’s a possibility they’ll move away from him. But finally, I get to this point, you can’t beat somebody with nobody. You know, and this often comes up a discussion, Sarah, that I have friends and families. Like, when a Republican voters gonna finally get fed up with him and just leave him?

We’ve seen some of that happen. You’ve been at the forefront of that to some degree. But ultimately Trump will be deposed because somebody else takes it from him.

And so

it’s going to require a competitor or competitors in the Republican primary that go at him and make the case and give these voters somebody else to choose even if they ultimately make the decision on pragmatic grounds and not a sense of falling in love.

Yeah. I

think that’s exactly right. And in these groups, when we ask the voters who they would like to see other than Trump in twenty twenty four, There is one name that clearly rises above the rest. You’ll be able to guess who it is, but let’s roll

the tape. Who

wants to see Trump run-in twenty four? Nobody. My Trump voters. Tell me why.

Because I

want to Santos to win. Is there

anybody that you, like, wanna see step up or get a little more attention yet, Trudy, who you

have? DeSantis.

Is there anybody

else that comes in mind that you guys like that a leader in the republican party that you’d like to be jumping to a race like

that? Governor of Florida? Yeah.

DeSantis.

Yep. Who likes for on DeSantis since the current governor of Florida. Mark Maggie, Steven, Chris. I’m hearing the governor of Florida. Seems like he’s really conservative and it’s not that I’m against Trump.

I just feel like it would be awful for the Republican Party of Abraham. That’s how I feel. I’d

love to see a ticket. Of DeSantis and and Christian owned governor of South Dakota. I really think that would be a strong

ticket. Both

of them are leaders I don’t know Brian’s other fan of DeSantis, but DeSantis led.

I

like what he’s done in Florida. I understand what he’s doing.

But if he’s

gonna be president, he’s gotta be able to build a consensus too. And I think all of us know that there are machinations that have been going on for a while. To pave the way for DeSantis to be the the candidate in a couple of years.

And I

think he’s gonna be the next president of the United States. Really would like to see known as his vice

president. There is

like no competition for the name that gets product. DeSantis is always the first name that people say and he is always the one who has the highest name ID of Trump alternatives. But David, I don’t know if you saw it, although I don’t know how you’d miss it. DeSantis’ GAD made a fighter web video that he put out a few days before the election. Oh, I saw it.

I

thought it was pretty

weird. I thought it was pretty weird. But nevertheless, you make the point in your book. I think it’s a correct point that being a fighter is way more important to the GOP based than checking boxes from what you call sort of self important. Conservative groups in DC.

You also mentioned that cheap knock offs of Trumpism are likely to fail and that Trump’s base was intensely loyal because they viewed him as being very authentic. I agree with all that. So do you think that DeSantis is a knock off of Trump? And I had Caputo on here, Mark Caputo, who’s a Florida reporter for one of these shows where we talked a lot about DeSantis, and he said that DeSantis has a bit of a glass jaw. What what do you think of him?

Do you think he’s a a Trump under study? Well,

I think that Rhonda Santos as governor is a product of the Trump era and a Trump inspired candidate. I think Republicans have flocked to him because he has been successful in Florida and because I think they view him as a more trolled, disciplined, effective version of Trump. A culture warrior willing to to pick fights or fight back, if you will, against the media, you know, dope’s like me, democrats, and Republican critics. And those are the very things they liked about Trump, but here they see somebody who doesn’t get caught up in their view in petty fights with nobody. He gets caught up in fights or picks fights with Disney.

In all of the sacred cows that you’re not supposed to mess with. And these are things that they liked about Trump, but here they see a more refined version and Florida having a reputation for being a swing state, in a purple state, they’re thinking this guy has improved his standing in a state like Florida imagine what he could do nationwide. Now we could get into the weeds and talk about the mass migration of Republican voters to Florida during the pandemic because of his leadership in Florida through the pandemic and maybe look at that state as a little bit more friendly territory for Republicans. But the scoreboard as he pointed to the other day doesn’t lie and winning by twenty points even against the weak b trend like Charlie Chris is nothing to sneer at. I would say to to Mark Caputo’s point, and there’s probably no better expert on Florida politics than I can think of, he does have a bit of a glass jaw or at least an unproven jaw.

In that as governor, he’s had the benefit of getting into fights with all the right people from a Republican standpoint. He hasn’t had to get into fights with other Republicans. Other Republicans that people think highly of. He’s been able to work with a legislature in Tallahassee dominated by the Republican Party. So when he wants to get something done, then he says, jump.

They say, how high and it’s very easy to look like an effective chief executive when the other government body you have to work with is willing to do

it. Running

for president, running a national campaign, being attacked by a bunch of people that were praising you until the day you jumped in, and then they jumped in. We don’t know yet how Ron DeSantis will function in an environment like that. He can be a very prickly politician and the pressure that comes with running for president is immense and it’s impossible to understand until you do it. And so I think that he would have a lot to prove, but I don’t think we can discount how much of a following he has cultivated in the Republican Party. I mean, I feel like in some ways I haven’t seen anything like this since George W.

Bush was governor of Texas in the late nineties preparing to run for president. And all of the buzz was surrounding this Republican who had flipped Texas red, which was a relatively new phenomenon back then, who could speak Spanish and attracted a good portion of the Hispanic vote. And man, imagine what he could do nationally, and he ended up being the central figure and nominated in two thousand because of that. Now we’re in a bit of a different era. A lot more people now run even if they don’t know that they can win.

The incentive structure is different, but as many questions as there are about Ron DeSantis, the buzz around him in the party among the grassroots is very real. It is real.

There’s no doubt about it. I guess I I take your point about w, but I also, like, just as much see him as, like, Scott Walker or There’s other people that have risen to start them for picking fights in their own state and looking like an effective governor and then just like collapse. On the national stage. And so I’m just not willing to sort of anoint these guys, especially because so many of these voters, like the extent to which they have engaged with him is for the most part through, like, viral clips of him yelling at teenagers or because of the don’t say gay gay girl or, like, looking at him shouting at a reporter, Like, they haven’t necessarily seen him full on. They certainly haven’t seen him go toe to toe.

And I watched his debate with Charlie Crist. He’s, like, so uncomfortable in his own skin. Smiles are kinda awkward. It suits a little too big. You know, when Chris personally awkward dude.

Yeah. He doesn’t have the natural charisma Trump does. No. He

does not have Trump’s charm. You know, if you engage with Trump one on one,

as I have in

a couple of interviews, both in person and on the phone, he can be charming as much as he can be bombastic. You know, I call it rally Trump versus meeting Trump. You meet with him in person and he’s a twinkle in his eye and he calls you by your first name and he stares at you, you know, on the president of the United States no matter who he is, looks at you and calls about your first name. It’s a very effective tool. Miranda Santos has always been when he was a member of Congress, and I would interview him.

I mean, he was gracious enough to take my questions, but he’s a personally awkward dude. He keeps everything close to the vest. When you run a national campaign, you need to rely on people, you need people willing to take fire in a fox hole with you. And I don’t think that he’s proven yet the ability to build a team and keep a team and deal with the incoming when it’s not the kind of fire that is easily rewarded by Republican primary voters. And on top of which, look, other people will run and once Republican primary voters see who these people are and see how they perform, presuming it’s not just a Trump versus the scientist race, which I wouldn’t anticipate then they’ll take the measure of him.

And look, maybe he’ll perform really well and they’ll conclude your everything we thought you were. But as you noted, we have seen before where candidates come and go at the top. And once voters have taken their full measure of them in the context of a Republican primary, you can either move on to somebody else or move back to person they were with at the beginning. Alright.

So I wanna dig in on something we heard a bit in those other clips. So one thing our groups historically liked about DeSantis is that he can deliver the things they like about Trump, but he is not quite as divisive. Let’s listen to some of the voters talk about

that. His

policies are a lot like what Trump’s were, but he doesn’t bring all of the Trump baggage with him.

And the

second thing is that given he has such a strong performance in Florida, I think he could be a viable contender certainly on the national stage. I

think if you had someone like a DeSantis who would have the same policies as Trump, basically, all the Trump stuff just without that extra baggage that’s baked in there already. I think that would help keep from an alienating a section of voters. I think my my worry, besides what the Democrats would do is, like, are we gonna get those independent voters? And if we have someone like DeSantis, I think he has a better chance pulling a lot of those independent voters out.

I think

that he’s a polished politician. The Floridians love him. He almost won by a lance slide. He didn’t the last time he rattle. He marginally made it.

This goes to show that he has a proven record that he is able to do you know, the things that he promises to do. I mean, not everything, but he’s getting things done. And if you could do that for Florida, especially after this hurricane they dealt with, he he managed it beautifully. I think you’ll do a great job and hopefully help unify our country.

So both

the first guy and the last guy in those clips were actually bought in twenty twenty voters. They were from Flipper groups. And I think that a lot of the elite conservatives interest, although somebody said it just now in these clips, so even our armchair pundits and the focus groups they see DeSantis as being able to sort of put back together the old coalition. Like, these independent voters will vote for him. These burbine voters will find him more palatable in a way that they don’t for Trump.

I understand why people think that, but I also look at him and think This guy is not like quite a unifier. He sort of makes his bones on being divisive. He’s got kind of that bullying instinct. And he’s pretty conservative. Do you see him as somebody who could have a big draw with independent voters?

Well, I would look at it this way. I first of all, let me let me just say, I think he has to prove that he has the ability to be a unifier in the way we think of a Reagan or a Clinton or an Obama circuit two thousand and eight versus a base driven candidate let’s say, circa Obama two thousand and twelve and Trump circa twenty twenty. But what I would say is there were a number of soft Republicans or just Republicans generally not to mention, voters who who are independents, but lean conservative that would have loved to have voted for a Republican for president in twenty twenty. And I’m also thinking of all of those suburban voters in twenty eighteen. But just found Trump unpalatable.

These voters didn’t become liberal all of a sudden, let’s say, or change their positions on fiscal policy or foreign policy. They just simply found Trump to be either unfit, but they were exhausted by his antics and just wanted normalcy. So to the extent that the Republican Party in twenty twenty four nominates a conservative who operates within the bounds of what the broad middle considers normal. I think that that could be a very strong candidate. And if the scientists can do that, by proposing policies that have broad appeal and managing how he picks fights, how he appeals to the base.

Then he could be that kind of a candidate. Look, we have seen in the past candidates that were either defined as very conservative or very liberal do quite well in a general election setting for president because of the way they managed how they presented themselves and how they appealed to people. And it also, of course, depends on what the conditions in the country are. Democrats were able to maintain control of the senate in twenty twenty two that the house is Republican, but only narrowly so. Whether Biden runs for reelection or there is a new Democrat, in his place, voters could conclude after four years and not a big snapback in the midterm that we really would like a change in how the country is being governed from a policy perspective.

And if Republicans couldn’t present somebody that’s broadly acceptable, I have seen voters overlook all sorts of peccadillos before as long as they don’t find somebody unfit or unreasonable. And I don’t see why DeSantis couldn’t be that person. It just depends on how he manages himself in a national campaign particularly if he runs, wins and nomination and ends up a candidate in the general election. Yeah,

I think that analysis is spot on. Questions is like, is he the kind of candidate ultimately that can do it? So to Santa’s as we mentioned it got reelected by a Florida landslide at nineteen points. When we talked over the summer, to people who didn’t vote for Trump in sixteen, but did vote for him in twenty twenty. We found people were largely supportive of DeSantis running for president.

Eight out of the nine people in this group from Florida would have preferred DeSantis for president over Trump. Let’s listen. I

don’t wanna lose

him as our governor.

I like

that he’s not a pushover. I don’t want a soft guy. I want him to be forceful and stand up to people. I don’t want him to be like a Biden where he’s completely lost and doesn’t know what he’s doing. I like his family morals.

I would agree with those statements of everybody else too that he’s very family oriented.

I looked at

it kept floor to open, very refreshing. He does let people maintain their freedom as long as you’re not hurting anyone else, which is why this whole Disney thing is happening. Yeah, a hundred percent a with ten, you know, pretty close to an a plus. But, again, it’s just a guy that aligns with a lot of our lot of our feelings, a lot of our models. So Yeah.

I I hope it makes it to to twenty four, I mean, once a

president.

I don’t like being told what I can and can’t do. I am immuno compromised. I have three autoimmune diseases. But you know what? I’ve been dealing with this stuff since two thousand eleven.

So I stay away from people. I don’t get in people’s faces, but I also don’t like wearing a mask. It gives me high anxiety. And so I like that aspect. Of DeSantis kinda not allowing governments to tell us what we can and can do.

So a

lot of love for him from this Florida group. But let me ask you this. This is one of the things that I think when it comes to Trump, you have to consider is that he doesn’t really care about the Republican party. I’m not really a Republican. He’s a guy who hijacked the party to use it as vessel for his own ends.

And so, like, let’s see, DeSantis mania sweeps the nation. And actually, he he kind of blossoms into maybe a better candidate than we think he’s gonna be. And Trump’s been kind of running against himself for six months because he’s randomly announced in November of twenty twenty two. People are sick of him. What does Trump do?

Like, could he drop out of a Republican primary and go run as an independent and grab fifteen percent of the Republican party in an independent lane and just burn the whole thing down?

Sure, he could. But I think Republicans, given that you could never count on Trump to not do that. Because as you mentioned, he’s not invested in a Republican party. He never has been. He is more interested in adding to his power than adding to the party’s electoral success.

But he has been sort of burning the party down

slowly. And

I think after three electoral disappointments, I think the way they should look at it is that the risk factor is less

given that

it’s already happening. And it’s a matter of whether or not you want to sit around and let it happen slowly and do nothing. Or risk that it might happen fast, but at least you get it over with and you can rebuild. And what I mean by that is, take a

look at the

fact that Republicans are gonna be in sent a minority for another two years. It’s a it’s a counter factual exercise here, but imagine that Trump is a party person and understands that Jeff Flake just doesn’t like him all that much, but that he seems to be a good representative for the state of Arizona in that he reflects what a mix of Republicans and pendants and soft democrats would prefer. So he doesn’t push Jeff Flake out of the party, and there’s one senate seat you got back. In twenty twenty, he doesn’t tank the Georgia senate races by complaining that the election was stolen and rigged and therefore don’t go vote. There’s two senate seats.

Then I could point to Michigan’s third congressional district and Washington’s third congressional district where he pushed out Republicans because not nice to Trump. There are a couple more seats to pad the Republican majority in the House that’s about to get seated in January. In other words, he’s already sort of slowly ripping the the party apart as Republicans tiptoe around him out of fear that they’re gonna make him mad and he’s gonna torch the place. So why not fight back and maybe it burns down anyway, but then you can at least rebuild because it’s happening to you anyway. And look, if Trump had one reelection in twenty twenty, and if they had won a big wave in twenty twenty two, then no matter what any of Trump’s critics think of him inside the Republican party or not, Well, you could just say whatever he’s doing isn’t hurting the party.

In fact, the party is only continuing to build on the success that he started in twenty sixteen by winning those Midwestern battlegrounds, the success in twenty twenty by improving Republican numbers with non white voters, and we’ve got all this policy success and this is the way and not everybody likes it because of the downsides and we know what all those are. But, hey, it’s working. At this point, Republicans are getting none of the upside and all of the downside, and it’s just this slow burn. So If that’s your fear, at this point, what do you really have to lose?

Man, I

couldn’t agree with that more. Just to add on to your point, it’s also like the people who don’t run. Right? Who could? Like Hogan didn’t run for that Senate seats.

Sunuu didn’t run for a Senate seat. They could have picked up a bunch of senate seats. Doosie didn’t run. Doosie

might have run Pat Toomey. Maybe Pat Toomey decides to run for reelection. Totally.

Because he

doesn’t feel like he’s completely at war. I think

that’s totally right. And I think at some point, they gotta rip the band aid off. They can’t let him hold him hostage. Footage with this idea that we could go run

some independent

party. They just gotta do it. Okay. So, DeSantis isn’t the only Floridian looking at twenty twenty four. You mentioned your book senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are looking at the race.

And given that Rick Scott can self fund the presidential race and he recently challenged Mitch McConnell, although didn’t go that great. Is he picking up some Republican conservative fighter credentials? Could you see Rick Scott doing it?

Yeah. It’s a

it’s a good question. So as I write in my book in full disclosure for the audience here, my wife is Rick Scott’s chief fundraiser along with her business partner. And so I don’t dig into his machinations too much, but what I would tell you is as a political analyst without asking him or his team, any questions. Everything that he has been doing seems to me to make sense if he’s planning to run for president, but I have no idea on purpose how serious he is considering that at this point. But I will say Just to add to my point here about senator Scott, getting into a fight with Mitch McConnell, who the Republican grassroots hates with the heat of a thousand suns.

Is a very valuable thing to have in your back pocket if you’re gonna show up in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or elsewhere and ask four votes in a Republican presidential primary because you can say that, yes, I was in Republican leadership and yes, I’m I’m in Washington now. But you can see, I don’t get along with those guys. I went to war with them to try and change things. So it would make sense to me but I purposely don’t ask these questions. Marco Rubio is interested in running again, but he was very clear to me when I interviewed him for interim shadow.

And I have not talking recently about this, that he was interested in doing it again if he felt there was a market for him and his agenda. He overhauled his domestic agenda and it is really much more of an industrialist, populist agenda. His foreign policy has remained the same rather hawkish and Reagan esque. But Marco Rubio has been operating more like somebody who is content with the senate than he is interested in in trying his hand again, but with his kids grown and feeling freed up from a family perspective, to pursue other political positions, I wouldn’t necessarily rule it out. I do think, you know, and this is something that wasn’t considered four years ago that governor Florida has become much more of a figure.

And as Florida Republicans look at the donor pool for Florida money, and the donor pool for outside of Florida money that is going to have an impact on how they look at a presidential race. Although, as you mentioned, and this just a known fact where Scott has a fortune that he made as a businessman before running for governor of Florida. And he’s proven that he’s willing to spend it for his political

campaigns? Yeah. Well, like we said, you’re at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s meeting there in Vegas. I hope you’re gambling. Wanna hear a mash up of some of the other people who are gonna be in attendance there, and then some of them who won’t.

But these are the other names we hear a lot in focus groups that people bring up around twenty twenty four?

I thought Christie Nolan would

be I think she would be great in a while, and that’s who I wrote in at this time.

Oh, who’s the lady? She’s actually a democrat from Hawaii. I’ve really always liked her. I’ll speak

to Robert?

Yes. And I

agree with Texas who sent the immigrants to DC. I like that move. Mhmm. That’s what I like too. What about

Chris Christie? Oh, no.

Any evidence for Christie? Any

hands up? No. Not Christie. You like Christie? Okay.

Yeah. I’m the same guy who closed

the beaches and sat on the beach. Yeah.

How

about ten

crews? Need cruise fans? Maybe if he shaved his beard and got a haircut. Do you know he’s he’s changing, like

cruise? I

think Florida is better, but — Mhmm. —

I don’t

know. Even though

it’s it’s off of what she’s a big shock supporter, and she’s somebody that’s very fashionable and strong. Candice Owens.

What about Mike Pompeo?

Lost a lot of weight.

Yeah. That’s usually a sign that somebody’s gearing up for some photo ops. Right? I like

the better intense.

So I gotta tell you, the names

that come up in addition to DeSantis, you’ve you heard it here. Christie Noam comes up a lot. Like, sort of a surprising amount. Candice Owens also comes up sort of a disquieting amount of time. Part of what I think is funny is how much people are not interested often in, like, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Like basically anyone who ran in twenty sixteen, they’re kind of pretty ish on them and they really want people who like came of prominence during the Trump reign that they see as part of kind of the broader Trump cinematic universe.

Does that surprise you or does that jive with what you’ve heard talking to voters? Well, it doesn’t

surprise me because as I wrote an in Trump shadow after talking to so many Republicans across the spectrum of the party. Republican voters really want candidates that are Trump inspired, if you will. They want fighters. They want fresh leadership. I mean, one of the reasons Trump did so well is many

Republican voters

believe that the party had grown stale. And so Christy Noam, who was another proponent of allowing residents in her state to make their own decisions regarding the pandemic,

That’s a

big selling point for her. But she is somebody that has really come of age as a Republican figure, even though she had been in Congress, in the Trump era, and she was very supportive of him. And so I think what you’re seeing is this trend where Republican voters are looking for somebody new or at the very least they don’t want this sense of going backward. And when Trump defeated everybody in twenty stain. In a way, a lot of Republican voters were saying that as much as we might like Ted Cruz for what he’s done and Marco Rubio, And Chris Christie, for what he did in New Jersey, we’re looking for a new era in the party.

And so I think that’s why it may be a little bit more difficult for candidates that voters believe are from the old guard. Now we are gonna see an are gonna be here at the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Chris Anu, and it’ll be interesting to see how the actives here feel about a lot of these candidates. Pence and Pompeo are planning to run. Will they pull the trigger? Not sure yet, but they are

actively

planning to and have been dropping hints that they will run. And, you know, we will have to see if once their candidates, they can change people’s minds as we were just discussing about, is the scientist really the only guy that can they change people’s minds once they get into the race and attract the necessary support. I think what you’re seeing is that people want Trump inspired candidates. They just would like to do so without what they feel has become ineffective, counterproductive behavior. You know,

speaking of Mike Pence, We’ve got a bunch of sound on Pence. Let’s just listen to how some of these voters have been talking about him in

the groups.

He’s milk toast. He’s a nice enough guy that he is. He’s just milked us.

There’s nothing

exceptional about him. Even when he was the vice president. He was always in the background and it was another instance of what’s he doing exactly? We never really knew. Maybe that’s just part of his

personality. The way

he’s acting let me the show was going down. You know, everybody was getting on his truck up. Well, yeah. He’s on that but I think I mean, you know, don’t be like a worm. I mean, pick your side and

stand with it.

My hands is the one that got rid of Flynn, general Flynn, and some other key players that are patriots. He helped get them out, and I read that Mike Pence was put there to manage Trump. And based on the things he did over the four years, it makes

sense. What initially

made me vote for Trump the second time was, well, if it doesn’t work out, at least I

can

get behind Mike Pence, you know? And if I saw, like, a Mike Pence to say at this kind of ticket, think that that’s something that would be a hot ticket. I’m

not sure Pence is getting over the line. If

he doesn’t have somebody like DeSantis, with him to bring him over. I gotta tell you, there’s basically nobody who lives more in the sour spot with voters than Mike Pence. Like, the swing voters don’t like him because they think he was too close to Trump. And the Trump voters don’t like him because they think he’s boring. Or they think he’s a traitor, you know?

They get animated about him. It’s usually in a negative way. But I guess the thing that I I never understand. Why don’t Republicans talk more about, like, Sunuu or Camp. Like Camp just won by, like, a gajillion points.

Against a Democratic boogeyman, Stacey Abrams, you know, that doesn’t get him any street cred. They’re like Hogan, has been like the third most popular governor in a blue state the whole time, why do you think those guys never come up or get mentioned? I

think broadly, the reason governors like this don’t come up based on the success they’ve had at the ballot box is because Republican voters I think this is true of Democratic voters too. They don’t look at wins in losses as reasons for supporting candidates. They first look at somebody that inspires them. Somebody who shares their values, somebody that that they believe is a strong leader. And then as they sample all of those, they begin to look at electability, even though candidates who make that a central plank in their argument often fall flat, but but that doesn’t mean voters don’t.

Go through the paces on electability. And so I think that Hogan is a separate case because he’s been a Trump critic and he still very vocally harkens back to the Reagan era as the model. But I think it’s possible that if a camp or a canoe who got into the race and they were able to inspire, I think voters would then say, and not only that, did you see the landslide in New Hampshire? Republicans don’t win there that often anymore. Did you see the landslide in Georgia?

Man, Kemp, he just crushed it. So they’re not gonna say, wow, Kemp did great in Georgia or Zenuited great in New Hampshire. Therefore, I wanna vote for him. But because neither of those are not considered never Trump Republicans or even anti Trump Republicans, per se, although Sunu dabbles in that occasionally, if they get into the race and they can inspire then I think what a voter will do is say, oh, man, I’m inspired by them and not only that, I think they can win. If you take a look at the clips you played about DeSantis, it’s like, His values are great, and he’s getting all this stuff done, oh, and he could win.

Did you see what he did in Florida? This is the sort of the order in which voters go through the paces, and they always get to the electability part after they’ve gone through the other things that are important to them. Now sometimes, they will conclude that the person they really like is just simply unelectable and they will make pragmatic choices about just having to vote for somebody else. And in some ways, you’re seeing that as Republican voters now reconsider Trump. It’s like, wow, I thought he was a great president, and I wish he could do it again, but I just don’t know that he can win.

So I think I’m gonna have to look elsewhere I think that’s how voters tend to approach this. Howard

Bauchner: Yep. And with that, I wanna say thank you to David Drucker, the senior correspondent from the Washington examiner, and author of In Trump Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four, and the Future of the Geo P. David, thank you so much for being here, and thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of The Focus Group. I promise we’ll be back to do more election wrap up, and so we will see you again very soon. Bye bye.

Sarah, thanks for having

this was

fun.