The Florida Man Thunderdome (with Marc Caputo)
Episode Notes
Transcript
Florida is the center of Republican politics these days — and it’s getting redder all the time. Trump lives there, and his political understudy is the governor. Marc Caputo of NBC News — the best Florida Man in the political press corps — joins Sarah to listen to a group of Florida reverse flipper voters (not Trump 2016/ yes Trump 2020). They also discuss Trump, DeSantis, 2024, and how the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago could impact it all.
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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Hello, everyone Buddy, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I’m Sarah Longwall Publisher of The Bullwork. And this week, we’re talking Florida. It used to be one of the swingiest swing states, but now just like a Florida tourist, it’s getting redder every day. Florida has become a bit of a beacon for conservatives of eight.
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It’s Trump’s home state, and it’s apparently where he keeps all of his presidential souvenirs such as the country’s top secret national security documents. It’s also home to Trump’s biggest potential political rival, Rhonda Santos. The focus group we’re discussing today is comprised of people who didn’t vote for Trump in twenty sixteen, but did vote for him in twenty twenty. Couple of them voted for Hillary Clinton, but most either didn’t vote in twenty sixteen, went third party, and then there was one guy who wrote in Marco Rubio. So they’re not hardcore Republican or Mago partisans.
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My guest today is the best Florida man in the National Political Press Corps, Mark Caputo from NBC News. Mark, thanks so much for being here. Well, thanks
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for having
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me, Sarah. Appreciate it. Did
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you like my joke about the Florida Torres?
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I did.
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Okay. Because you didn’t, like, laugh out so it must have to be, like, laugh out loud funny. It’s just, like, kinda Yeah.
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No. It was it was I I liked it. Yeah. There’s a there’s a type of tree that grows in South Florida called a gumbo limbo. It’s red and it peels and that’s why it’s called a tourist tree.
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Ah. Yeah. I thought of that in stone.
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Great. So listen, You know Florida better than most people. Does Santa see data victory there in twenty eighteen, but I suspect the state has changed a lot in the last four years. He seems likely to cruise to victory this time. Just like, what’s your take broadly on what is going on in Florida over the last few years?
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You know, it’s a combination of factors. I think it’s partly just a fulfillment of kind of the inverse of what many people came to believe during the Obama era. About how demographics is destiny.
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You know, at
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the time there was all this talk in two thousand eight, ten, twelve, about the ascended coalition, etcetera. Nationwide and how that was going to buoy democratic prospects. But when you start to look at Florida, we’re a state that’s really built as one of its cores outside of tourism on having retirees move here. We’re really the eldest state in the nation, your percentage wise. I think Maine beats us out, but, you know, it’s made.
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And when you look at the people who move to Florida, why you move to Florida? Well, you have the money. And a lot of people don’t wanna pay the taxes. And usually that correlates with them being obviously old because they’re retiring here. And if you’re old, then you have a lot of money and you wanna pay taxes, you’re generally gonna be white.
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Well, old white and rich kinda correlates pretty closely with Republican. And on top of that, there’s been just a division, an increasing racial division in our politics where more and more white voters are voting Republican as well. And then on top of that, you have Latino voters. Hispanic voters are starting to trend more Republican, and there are different Latino communities here, which I can go into a great depth if you so choose. So when you layer those things on top of each other, you stack those things on each other.
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And then you look at the Democratic Party. It’s just been pretty hapless. They haven’t necessarily had good candidates. They’ve done a poor job raising money, organizing seizing their advantages. And especially when it comes to Latino voters, some of the national progressive ascendance in the Democratic Party has helped the Republican cause and wooing away more Hispanics to the Republican forum.
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And what I mean by that specifically, I live in Miami Dade County, It’s the largest county, the most populous county, the state. It’s also the one with the greatest number of people who are born in another country. Fifty percent, five zero percent. More than half of our population actually has been born in another country, mainly throughout Latin America. And when you look at the polling and you talk to even Democrats who understand the electorate here, they say the combination of Bernie Sanders in twenty sixteen AOC in twenty eighteen, their embrace of Democratic socialism, just the word socialism.
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And then Bernie Sanders is return in twenty twenty was really sort of a toxic combination, at least in the perspective, the Democratic Party in that it gave Republicans purchase an ability to more persuasively argue to people of Cuban American descent and heritage as well as Venezuelan Columbian and Nicaragua that, hey, these folks are leftists. They’re not with you. They align with those strong men dictators or rebel gorillas you fled or your ancestors, your parents fled in these various countries, a stick with us. And so those things have kind of combined together to lead us to where we are today, not just in Miami Dade, but in the rest of the state.
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Yeah. So that all makes sense to me and attracts Although, you know, what’s interesting to me about the focus group that we watch together is that these were people who didn’t vote for Trump, the first time. Right. I really like groups like this because I think it tells us a lot about the ways that Trump kinda changed the party. And one of the things that struck me was there was a bunch of people in this group.
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Right? So like I said, there was two people who had voted for Hillary Clinton, the woman who was probably the most maga, I’d been a Clinton voter and she was just like, you know, I wasn’t following politics before, but then Donald Trump happened, and I started following politics. Now I’m super into it. And she sounded very much like a modern day Trump voter. But the rest of them were kinda like pulled into politics by Donald Trump.
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Right? Like, he he added people and these were all Floridians. He he basically took people who were like, yeah, you know, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to politics or I didn’t vote before or I didn’t vote in twenty sixteen because I was like, Both of these people are terrible, so I, like, wrote in Marco Rubio, but they were all on board with Trump now. And so is there something about Florida that makes it super responsive, and I’m gonna use this to transition here to DeSantis pretty quickly. To this, like, combative style of politics.
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Perhaps one of the things we can say is A lot of money was spent here by Democrats, Michael Bloomberg, especially, to defeat Donald Trump. And Donald Trump in turn spent a lot of money not to get defeated here. Normally when a presidential campaign is run, it divides up sections of the nation into regions. So there’s a northeast region and there’s a southwest region and there’s a mountain region. For the southeast region, Trump actually broke off Florida into its own region to give you an idea of how much he focused on it.
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But beyond that, there is a kind of and I understand we’re a suburban state, so I don’t want to make the sound as if we’re all walking around the coonskin caps and muscle loading guns. But We are sort of a frontier state. We have a frontier mentality. This is a place where people go to sort of reinvent themselves. Florida hustles.
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It’s a place where people come to, not only from the rest of the nation, but from other nations, to participate in the American dream. It’s very much a get the money, get rich, quick sort of place. Like Miami where I live, this is a kind of place where you could be with someone who who suddenly has, like, hundreds of thousands, if not a million dollars overnight. The last thing you’re doing is ask the person how they got it. Because you don’t wanna get deposed or interviewed by the police.
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So but the reality is is this is a place where you have hardworking people. Don’t get me wrong. People who wanna hustle and make it big. You got criminals, shusters, hucksters, all of that sort of mixing together here. It’s a very dynamic place.
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So if I’m to guess and say, well, what is it about Donald Trump that appeals to Florida? It’s that, like, I’m here. I’m living my own reality. I’m reinventing myself. I am who I am.
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And you know what, if you don’t like it, go fuck yourself. Yeah.
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That’s a that’s a good answer. You
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heard in the the focus group. What’s really interesting, especially when it comes to Trump and DeSantis, what do they like most about them? They’re kind of incoherence about policy. Totally. Right?
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But what they loved about both of them is they love their attitude. It’s
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all vibes.
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Right? Like, he doesn’t back down. And, like, people don’t wanna be kind of pushed around here. This is a big gun owning state in part for that reason. So there it sort of tracks if I have to guess.
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Alright.
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So it’s a perfect transition. Let’s get into DeSantis here. Everyone in this group saw DeSantis and not just in this group, but nationally, if if we’re we’re grading it by how many reporters call me to ask what people think about DeSantis in the focus groups, you know, he’s having a real boom lit here. They all think of him as a twenty twenty four contender. And so we asked the groups to grade DeSantis, everyone gave him an a or b, although most, I would say we’re in the a range.
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So let’s listen to what these voters had to say when asked about the
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census. I
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think he is a man that stands for something. I think he knows what he wants to see and he sticks with it and says I believe in this, this, and this, and that’s what I’m gonna lead with and every decision I make and I can really respect that. I think he’s done a hell of a job through COVID. He kept us open. I think he’s fantastic.
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I worked for the Jancor. And so I respect that he was a naval officer and the navy. And a lawyer, obviously. And I like that he’s not a pushover. I don’t want a soft guy.
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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 don’t like being told what I can and can’t do.
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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.
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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.
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It seems
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like he’s family, Florida and America, but he just take a nice aggressive stance on stuff that he believes in. And I
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don’t think
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that makes him, you know, I’m really chump or anything. That’s how we’re gonna start labeling our candidates from now on, you know, either a a mini Trump or you’re a democrat, then that’s pretty silly just because you’re a leader and you wanna make change. So 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 is why this whole Disney thing is happening.
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So I
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wanna note that
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three out of the nine people in this group, when we ask them, hey, do you wanna see Trump run again? There were three people that said yes. And that sort of tracks what the diminished number of people we’re seeing that are saying. They want to see Trump run again in twenty twenty four. But then when we asked them head to head, you know, who would you back between Trump and DeSantis?
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Everybody would have won back DeSantis. Which I gotta say the group in Florida who knows the sanders really well, they don’t sound that different actually from the groups we’ve talked to in lots of other states who also really like to Santis for basically the same reason, which is like the COVID situation that he kept Florida open. That has become the thing that he has known for. So let’s jump into the DeSantis twenty twenty four Scuttlebutt. You’re down there.
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You’re watching them up close. What do you think? Is this guy running for president?
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I think he’s positioning himself to be able to run for president if the opportunity presents itself, but at the current way in which things are proceeding. I don’t necessarily see that opening for him, which is to say, it’s difficult for me to see if the polling holds the way it does, and that’s a huge if. It’s a huge caveat. DeSantis challenging Donald Trump. Like nationally, for instance, Trump is around fifty percent of Republican support in a crowded field, and DeSantis is about half of that.
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That’s a good recipe for getting slaughtered. Now, yes, These different primaries are done on state by state basis. You would have to start in Iowa. We haven’t seen a lot of Iowa polling. But Trump’s had organizers and people in Iowa.
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Since last year. He is planning to run for president again. And so it’s just kind of difficult for me to see on the current course of events if things continue to hold at this rate despite some of the attrition in Trump’s numbers. Descent is seriously challenging. I mean, it could happen.
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Don’t get me wrong. Stranger things have happened. And I’ve been wrong before, and I am hedging my bets. But it’s difficult for me to say. These
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are weird political times for political prognostication to be sure — Right. — because we’ve all been wrong about lots of stuff. Right. But but let let me just push, please. Back on one point, don’t you think like, if if DeSantis waits another four years.
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I mean, everybody can say, oh, you know, DeSantis has four years. Wait, he’s a young guy. He’s got a term in Florida, but also it’s sort of his moment. Like, I’m listening to these groups and how much they like to Santos. And how much people are sort of starting to be like, I don’t know if I want to see Trump running twenty four, guys got a lot of baggage.
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And they have this formulation about the scientists, but they’re like, he’s Trump without the baggage.
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Wait. It’s competent Trumpism, I think.
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Yeah. Right. So why not seize this moment? I
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think that’s certainly an attraction to it. I think on the other end of the ledger, it’s just the humiliation of losing. To say, this is a competitive guy. He’s very analytical. I do buy what many people would call bullshit.
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From the limited number of Desjardins advisors and people who deal with him, that he is not actively courting That does not mean he’s not positioning himself to take advantage of the situation. Should have presented itself, but I just don’t see that there yet. It certainly would be his moment. Yes. But at a certain point, I used this metaphor before running against Donald Trump is kind of a candidate dealing with a a self emulating arsonist who’s made out of asbestos.
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And his technique is just to hug you and burn you to death. And that is what Trump does. I mean, you saw what he did to Marco Rubio. I mean, he he humiliated Marco Rubio. Yeah.
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Marco
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Rubio Like, just kind of psychologically having observed him. I mean, I I first covered Marco Rubio in two thousand three. Okay. That’s what nineteen years ago in the Florida House. You know, I’ve covered him on and off ever since then.
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From the time he was house speaker, you know, the time he was thinking about running for Miami Dade County mayor, to his run for senate and on and his presidential run. He’s never quite recovered from that humiliation that Trump doled out on him. He almost damaged Rubio’s political chromosomes.
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We had
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lost sixty six of sixty seven counties. Will DeSantis lose that many in Florida? DeSantis might win Florida. If you look at the polling, he’s more popular among Republican voters here than Trump is. Don’t get me wrong.
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When I when I look at the way in which the political map lies, the geography, the timing, the calendar, and understanding that if you’re running when you look at those nationwide polls, if you’re running and you’re at fifty percent and the next guy in a crowded field is at twenty five percent you’re probably gonna win. It’s just hard for me to see the math. Yeah.
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I mean, you raised the point that I think is the key one, which is that it’s one thing for DeSantis to be kind of fresh and new and popular with because they like what he did on COVID. You know, and they also make a point that I think is an interesting one. I’ve brought it up many times on this podcast where you do hear a lot of voters just saying a very basic fact, which is if you get Trump, you only get four more years. Oh. Right.
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I know we all kind of laugh at that. Like, we’ll see. Maybe we get them for six more terms. As
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soon as this.
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Who knows? But, you
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know, you
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take DeSantis, you get eight years. So I sort of have seen the opening for DeSantis. I do think it’s his moment. I think there’s risks to missing a moment. On the flip side, you don’t know what any of these guys are made of until they have to go toe to toe with Trump.
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And he just makes them look so small. I mean, Marco Rubio is a broken man, as you note. And I can’t tell you how much the strength and weakness sort of frame is used all the time in these groups how much it comes up. I don’t know though. I mean, I’ve also heard some people who know DeSantis well kind of being like, you know, yeah, he’s got this reputation and people have seen him combative with the local media.
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But, like, also doesn’t have much of an operation. He’s very insular. He’s a little bit of a sour push. Very much. So, like, does he have what it takes?
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To to even if let’s say it’s not now. But, like, is he the kind of guy who, like, everyone will talk about and then you get him on the national stage and everyone’s like, man, he’s not a great No. It’s
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certainly possible. He he could wind up kinda like Scott Walker. Right? He can wind up having kind of a glass jaw — Mhmm. — like, you know, this is the reason you actually have to have the fight in the ring to see what happens.
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I don’t know. I can tell you an instructive thing was turning point USA, the the new sort of ascendant political operation, which in some respects almost challenges the conservative political action conference CPAC — Yeah. — for kind of the heart of where the Republican conservative movement is. They had their event earlier in August in Tampa. And DeSantis was there.
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Trump was there. All of the gear, all of the energy, all of the buzz was about Trump. It wasn’t about a scientist. And these were kind of young actors.
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Yeah. That’s like the Charlie Kirk operation. Yeah.
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Correct. Like, that’s sort of instructive as well. I still think that Trump Trump’s, he is still the sort of singular cultural icon in the Republican Party. It is a cult of personality. He is the personality.
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You had more than two hundred Republicans from down the ballot all the way up the ballot to senate in multiple states, groveling before Donald Trump throws endorsement. Totally. I mean, prostrating themselves for it. So I think that those kind of intangibles also say something about some of the staying power that the the polling might not rate. Not saying he’s a perfect candidate or any of that, but a lot of the DeSantis Boomlet is buzz that he rightfully earned for the way which he handled COVID and the media’s own goal, if I may, as a Florida based national reporter.
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I’ve witnessed the way so many different outlets, especially national ones, trundled along and made Florida sound as if we were just gonna be this shuttle ground of dead bodies stacked like cord wood here from COVID and it didn’t happen. Don’t get me wrong. We eventually got ours, and the wave hit here too. But on balance, when you step back, Florida’s death and infection rate, the death rate is kind of the big one. When it’s age adjusted, it does not reflect the disproportionate amount of coverage that Florida got, and that redounded to DeSantis’ credit, whether for better or for worse.
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So he earns that. But beyond that, I’m not sure how much staying power he has a national conservative Republican mind if he squares up against Trump. So I
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wanna talk
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a little bit about another issue that got to Santos national attention, drew national ire, which is the so called don’t say gay bill. And so you may remember, you certainly do. This is the build that bands instruction on sexuality, sexual orientation in the classroom. It’s watered down from when it. Ban discussion on those things, but in my opinion, it would still have some unintended consequences.
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Like, parents being able to sue a school because of teachers.
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Unintended consequences. Sorry. Unintended consequences. Yeah.
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Yeah. Like, you know, a kid asked a question about his two moms or, you know, whatever. I wrote a Washington Post piece about this back in March. So, like, I think that it was a vaguely written bill that the intended consequences are sort of a witch hunt y way of of demonizing gay and trans people, but also playing into what is I think a culture war around wokism and also what’s sort of going on in schools. And this has been, you know, it was popular in Florida.
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About sixty percent supported this and our group certainly found this bill reasonable they were for it. Let’s listen to what they had to
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say. The don’t
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say gay bill is about the state stepping in and saying, we don’t want you to teach certain things about sex, sexuality, gender, trans, whatever, we don’t want you to teach that to our children that are in third grade or younger. Because there were schools that were introducing things about choosing your gender or pronouns or whatever to kids under ten. And if he doesn’t, put a stop to that, now it’s just gonna get out of control and it’s gonna get worse and it’s gonna get younger. And it’s gonna be sexualizing our children even more. But we should not be talking about those things with children I
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this has
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been a topic. Both of those topics to Disney and the don’t say gay. Because they do have a lot of gay and lesbian friends. And I’m trying to understand their point of views also. However, you know what?
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If I recall and I’m forty eight years old, I wasn’t taught, sex ed, or any of that stuff till I was in high school. And that’s just how I grew up, and that’s just how I feel I don’t have children. But if I did, I feel that no, that should not be being discussed in school. And nowhere in it, it doesn’t say gay anywhere.
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So
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that don’t say gay, Bill, I think was named that for media purposes to, like, create this ridiculous you know, sensation of, oh, he’s so bad. He’s so mean, honestly, if you read the bill for yourself at seven pages. I think you can clearly see that they’re just trying to not bring in this sexual orientation and sexual information to young kids. It’s very confusing as a child to start talking about these things. And that is not a teacher’s job.
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It’s science, not history, and language arts. Like, why are we talking about sex and schools? It’s ridiculous. I have my kids in a private Christian school because I can’t even touch public school anymore. I’m scared and I’m a product of public school.
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I mean, it sounds to me like he really won the argument on how this was framed. Like — Right.
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— I mean, remember, by and large, this is a pretty conservative group. What’s interesting here is actually how well informed they are. The opponents of the legislation won the branding battle they lost the broader
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war.
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As you point out, it’s really not don’t say gay. It’s don’t teach gay, but don’t say gay sounds much more threatening and terrible. Right? And so that’s what stuck. Well, congratulations.
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You guys have branded it this way, but as people actually looked under the hood, they realized it wasn’t the case. This is a real difficult thing for reporter to cover and especially to talk about because of the fraught cultural issues. The the reality is is that you know, so many people who are gay, lesbian, trans, bisexual. They they felt targeted by this, and I can understand why. At the same time, some of those organizations that brand of this don’t say gay, helped elevate this as a more threatening issue than otherwise it might have been.
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So what do I mean by that? As the husband of a public school teacher and the father of public school students, and the friend of parents who have public school students. And
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as a
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reporter in the state, I can say with pretty much certainty that the overwhelming number of teachers are not doing anything remotely resembling teaching sexual orientation or gender identity in grades k through three. It’s not happening. So given that disclaimer, the legislature, and that’s originally where this originated by the way. The legislature went up to solve or stop a problem that essentially did not exist. And the opponents of the legislation that solved a problem that didn’t exist, created an alternative problem that didn’t exist by claiming, oh, if you do this, it’s gonna be all of this anti gay bigotry.
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So you wound up in this perfectly toxic situation. Where two sort of imagined realities were clashing with each other in the legislature and it became a matter of raw votes and, well, the Republicans, and the conservatives want. I’m not saying that parents have no right to be concerned that their kids are being taught things such as this. And I’m not saying that LGBTQ people have no right to feel targeted by it. But
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when
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you step back and try to look at it more objectively, is kinda difficult to do. The legislation didn’t match the reality. The reaction to it didn’t match the reality. And now we’re in this era of dysfunctional politics where everyone goes to their corners and fundraises over
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it. I have
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this formulation where I I try to explain to reporters about it’s not that DeSantis hates all the right people. It’s that all the right people hate DeSantis. And when, you know, people go at him constantly, that’s what gets Republicans to be like, this guy must be good. Everyone’s mad at him. Like, eight people are mad at him, the lids are mad at him, the media is mad at him.
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He
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sound great. Yes. It’s a negative partisanship. Also, this wasn’t his legislation original. Right.
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They started in the Florida House. Right. And what happened though is that as it developed into something, that’s when DeSantis stepped in when he realized he was kind of perfect. Because the reality is is that when you break down these component parts of the legislation in and of itself. Do you believe children in k through three should be taught sexual orientation and gender identity lessons, most people say no.
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Right? That’s a majority popular opinion. Right? And when the opponents come and say, How dare you do that?
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By
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definition, once people are informed about the text of the legislation, those opponents lose the argument. And
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time
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and again, DeSantis has laid and Republicans have laid those sorts of traps that Democrats have stepped in. I had quoted Sean Shaw, a former attorney general candidate, a Democrat, who had pointed out this me quoting him. He said, look, I’m black. I believe in critical race theory. I
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think that,
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you know, its element should be taught. But, of course, when it’s brought up, I’m gonna react to it. However, he faulted his own party for overreacting to the way critical race theory was targeted by DeSantis in the same way that don’t say gay was targeted by DeSantis. Is it is it led Democrats almost naturally into adopting a position that wound up putting them opposite of where majority of pain it is. Just to clarify, Florida’s stop locact doesn’t say you’re not allowed to teach about race and schools.
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Of course, if you go on Twitter and you look at certain very progressive resistance handles, that they’ll have you think that Florida is not allowed to teach about slavery. I’m not joking. It’s a total misrepresentation of the legislation here. And I have a very personal stake in this. My wife, as I said, is a public school teacher.
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She is maybe she’s unfortunate enough to have me as well. She’s fortunate enough to at least have a reporter as a husband who understands how legislation is written in what it says. And we looked at the legislation. She’s like, perfect. She doesn’t teach in her class that white kids should feel bad about being white because they’re a presser.
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That’s essentially what the legislation says you can’t do. Well, she’s not doing that. No one’s doing that. And again, she’s not teaching these other issues about sexual orientation and gender identity. That she’s a fourth grade teacher.
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But that’s just part of the tactical prowess that DeSantis has been able to exploit and it’s so far been to his benefit. Yeah. And
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that’s where
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I think people see as much as they might dislike it, a certain talent that he has for understanding which culture wars are gonna play. And he, like, leans into that
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— Yes. — he’s got a
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just like Trump. Like, he does have that, like, instinct for grabbing on to the ones that are kinda cultural winners.
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What’s interesting is is a guy, one of the top consultants in pollsters, Intel Hasi, Ryan Tyson’s name. I wrote the first story in February of twenty twenty one before the polling showed it that DeSantis was gonna be a national figure because of the COVID war. Since I called them. And Ryan had a great quote in that story, which is that he flies by instinct and not by instrument. Like, DeSantis is not a big polling guy.
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He just has an instinctive feel for it. That said, you know, if you were a woman candidate, I would be accused of sexism for saying this. I’m gonna greet him on his voice and his appearance. Mhmm. One of the big problems that DeSantis has is he’s kind of funky looking.
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And he’s got a very shrill voice, tie pitched. And it it doesn’t carry the same sort of gravitas or weight that Trump does or that Carrie Lake does. Speaking of turning point USA, if you had seen the rally that happened, like, Carrie Lake, I think more than DeSantis might be the standard bearer or the succession of Trump — Yikes. — in in the Republican Party. Like, she’s really something to watch the way she’s able to move a crowd.
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Like Trump, she is a creature of TV. She is just very kind of naturally there, and she’s just a really dynamic speaker. So if, like, if you were to ask me to lay money, like who might be a running mate for Donald Trump in twenty twenty four if he decides to run for president, I would say Kerry Lake over to Santos. And that that’s putting aside the whole geographic issue in the constitution, which we won’t go into. That’s
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funny that you think he’s grumpy. He strikes me as kind of like a young handsome Oh, you know, I should say he just wears these ill
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fitting suits. Yeah. They are a little big on him, I guess. Yeah. They it’s just like, dude, hire a tailor.
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You have a hundred and forty million dollars. Again, that’s one four zero million dollars in your political
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committee.
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Okay. Speaking of Kerry Lake though, I did think DeSantis made an interesting move. He recently endorsed and is stomping for Kerry Lake and Doug Mastriano two of the most insane election deniers that are up this cycle. And so I thought it was interesting that DeSantis really leaned into that. Did you read anything into that?
-
What I read
-
it into it is this is that he had to do
-
it. One
-
of the interesting things is that the original story written about DeSantis doing the turning point rallies for Lake, for Mastriano, was written by Fox. Fox News Digital. And the headline was something along the lines of, like, how DeSantis was gonna be the messenger for Trumpism or something like that. It made sure to mention DeSantis and Trump, and it put DeSantis in a subservient position to Trump. And there had been so much national media attention and so much sturm and drawn over to Santa’s challenging Trump.
-
And DeSantis has repeatedly tried to tamp down that public discussion. For instance, he wasn’t going and doing national events. He hasn’t really set foot in many early states in part because he didn’t want that kind of headache of talking about him clashing with Trump. So turning point kind of filled the gap and bridged the gap with these two in that way. So Yeah.
-
Again, he’s positioning himself to maximize his strengths and minimize his weaknesses. Like, a good chess player who’s not a great chess player. Mhmm. He’s not a grand master, but he knows how to move the knight, how not to move the bishop. And so he’s just moving these pieces in just a very thoughtful, strong, organized way so that if Donald Trump moves his queen wrong or something to continue the metaphor.
-
Suddenly, DeSantis can be in a position to do some
-
check meeting. Yeah. My colleague,
-
Amanda Carpenter, has referred to DeSantis Moore as Trump’s under study than a potential challenger, like the guy waiting for the when Trump’s got food poisoning. He can jump in and — Yeah. — kind of like
-
the way Stalin, like, allegedly delivered that bowl of soup to Lenin. That’s right. Just that. That’s right. I need to be clear.
-
I’m not comparing Ron DeSantis to Stalin in case that gets out there. I wanna I wanna make that clear. I was just eating a metaphor. It’s okay. So
-
this is a very high end audience. For this podcast. They will they will understand the metaphor. Oh, trust me.
-
Once he gets on social media, then the morons take over. So one of
-
my favorite parts of this focus group discussion, though, was you know, we’re asking people about Disney. Right? Because the don’t say gay male led Disney to put out a statement opposing it, and then desantis, like, went after them, repealed Disney’s special taxing district, saying taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize their activism. And I thought that the way that this group reacted to that was pretty interesting because they were more on the Santa’s side than Disney. Right.
-
It was funny to listen to because there was almost like a Disney like, universal, like but there’s, like, a theme park wars going on in the inner walk
-
through or land. I’m technically an employee of NBCUniversal. So Maybe I should be careful here. Yeah. Well, let’s listen
-
let’s listen to what these voters said about Disney.
-
I think that
-
Disney was way out of their lane I think they have been way out of their lane. I think allowing their what are the castmates to show their tattoos and their crazy piercings and not use things like ladies and gentlemen anymore. Like, I think it was just kinda starting to build and then those tapes of the Disney execs came out. Talking about how they are on purpose targeting young children to sexualize them with different ideas and the toy story that just came out was light year or whatever. They had a gender neutral, maybe person, and that did not do very well for Pixar.
-
I’m really disappointed at Disney. They have huge influence,
-
especially on on, you know, our huge And, you know, and I feel like for that same reason, I don’t think they should have an agenda. Disney is not for adults. You
-
know what I mean? Like, Okay, if you wanna create a whole other Disney just for adults to be gay and happy and pride, by all means, go do that. You have the money. Do it. But don’t do that to our kids, especially at parents that are traditional.
-
I think it’s so unfair because Disney for the longest was one way. And now all of a sudden they’re forcing it down our throats. To be another way for our
-
kids. That matter for forcing
-
it down my throat. Like, it’s it’s always so evocative. If I
-
remember it was used for Obamacare way back when it’s just always so kind of violent. Well, this is something you hear from Republicans all the time in terms of the
-
way that they talk about the leftist idea really, like, shoving their way of living. But this strikes me as just another one where, look, I think there was a lot of early analysis around this fight with Disney that, like, was gonna backfire onto DeSantis because it’s such a big employer in the stage. I didn’t think so. But yeah. But it looks
-
like this is another
-
one that DeSantis won.
-
Right. In the end, as we talked about earlier, what people liked about to Sanders’ toughness, the reality is is he’s growing into his role as the executive, and the exercise of power to include punishing enemies. Donald Trump’s top adviser is a woman named Susie Wiles who helped mastermind or was the campaign manager for Rhonda Sanson’s comeback win in twenty eighteen. She had also helped Donald Trump and managed his campaign in Florida in twenty sixteen. And before that, Rick Scott in what everyone thought was a loss campaign in twenty ten.
-
When you fast forward a twenty nineteen after to Santos wins and some people who didn’t like the fact that Susie had so much power, a lobbyist mainly. They sort of engineered a way in which to persuade the scientists that Susie was being disloyal. And he just kind of suddenly and metaphorically executed her and just got very brutal way, just ostracized her got Trump’s then campaign. Again, it’s twenty nineteen. Got Trump’s campaign to cut her off.
-
He later rehired her, by the way, and then won Florida. But he showed right down there early on in his administration to Santos that if anyone crossed him, he would have them dragged out into the town square and shot. And he’s continued to do that in a way that I’ve never seen out of a Florida governor in my more than twenty years of covering Florida government. So other examples, the Florida legislature wanted to do redistricting. And it was going to keep a Florida State Supreme Court drawn black majority or plurality seat.
-
That is what’s called a minority access seat. Held by an African American member of congress, Al Lawson, and he was gonna keep the seat, which was sort of racially gerrymandered, which is I know kind of a loaded term It was a seat that was just created to make sure that black voters in North Florida could have a black representative in the US House. No one would dare touch this, and the legislature is like, we’re not gonna deal with this because their maps had been thrown out in, like, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, thereabouts because it didn’t have the seat. DeSantis came in and demanded it be drawn. Now governors normally do not get involved in the drawing of new congressional seats for reapportionment.
-
He not only inserted himself in the process, but he took the unprecedented step, at least in Florida, of vetoing a Republican legislature’s maps because they were drawing a black district that the state supreme court had mandated. It was a total exercise of power. The legislature was pissed off, but they folded. And part of the reason the scientist did that is to kind of a new supreme court. He’s he’s now point in the majority of its members.
-
So that’s a good example of its power play. The legislature had loads of money, thanks, in part to Democratic Congress and Democratic president Joe Biden’s legislation which has just said billions to various states including Florida. Does Santos made sure to veto local projects of any lawmaker who remotely crossed him or displeased him. Then you have Disney. Disney was a sacred cow here, sacred rat or whatever you wanna call it.
-
Mhmm. No one ever thought that a Republican legislature would eliminate the really creek improvement district that was set up in the fifties to turn Central Florida into a theme park heaven. And he did it. Now the question is to what degree is it really gonna have an effect? Who knows?
-
But the fact that he even went there just sent a message. So the kind of total exercise of raw power politics, oh, I’m sorry, I forgot the most recent one. Like, two weeks ago, he removed from office the democratically elected state attorney, that is the prosecutor of Hillsborough County, that’s the county where Tampa is.
-
Because the
-
guy had signed a letter saying he wouldn’t enforce Florida’s abortion law. Now that suspended state attorney did so in part because a court had held that Florida’s new abortion restriction that that DeSantis had signed had run a file of Florida’s constitution, which has a privacy amendment in there, which has been defined by prior courts to apply to abortion. DeSantis didn’t care. He said, this guy’s negligent because he’s not gonna enforce the law. And he thinks he’s governor.
-
And so therefore, I’m gonna remove him from office. He said he’s not gonna follow the law. You know, fuck him. We’re gonna get
-
rid of him.
-
Well, it’s remarkable. You must be looking at my notes because that’s a perfect transition because I wanna talk about abortion because I thought one of the most interesting parts of this group was when they talked about this newish fifteen week abortion ban. And the only exceptions are to save the life of the mother or if the baby is a fatal abnormality, but there’s none for rape or incest. And I thought it was interesting because we’ve seen this in a bunch of groups that are pretty trumpy, but they’re still heavily pro choice. Let’s listen.
-
So we go to Texas where
-
you just can’t do it at all. Or you go to some other states where you can do it days after maybe some born. So they’re on extremes. So which extremes we go for? Or would you just give them a little bit of an option?
-
Do you still have to feed him to do it? So I don’t see how that’s him putting a stamp on it. It’s over three months if you don’t know that you’re pregnant by that. I I don’t know. I wouldn’t know, obviously.
-
But if you don’t know that you’re pregnant by then, you can put it up for adoption. There is options after that as
-
well. I lived under dictation. I’m
-
not a woman. I don’t think you know. I mean, she would tell a woman what she can’t can’t do with her body. So I’m just totally pro choice, Harry.
-
My biggest
-
issue and I’ve had this conversation with family because most of my family’s pro life. I’m pro life, but I’m also portrayed when there are certain circumstances. For instance, rape and incest is an issue, especially with somebody under eighteen. I mean, that’s a child. Like, having it, like, no.
-
I’m
-
a survivor myself. So no. Like, I shouldn’t be forced to have something that was forced on me. That’s not okay. So if that exception is not there, it’s an issue.
-
For me? I
-
feel like I go both ways. You know, I’m Irish Catholic, you know, and abortion’s not a thing, but I think it’s almost like a case by case type issue. Because, frankly, I think that those states that are completely banning it, I don’t think that’s a great idea because now where are those people gonna go? Are you gonna go down a alleyway? Yeah.
-
I think that’s what they did in Connecticut in the nineteen fifties, which is where my mother is from, and my mother was forced to have a child that she was not She was not ready to have. She was sixteen years old. And so I’m torn. I’m really torn. I don’t want somebody
-
telling me
-
what I shouldn’t shouldn’t do with my own body. You
-
can hear
-
how people feel conflicted. They are more pro choice even when they sort of kind of identify as pro life, which by the way I hear all the times in the groups where they’re like, I’m pro life, but I think people should have a choice. But they feel pretty comfortable with where this bill landed Sounds like a places that are banning it entirely. It’s a fifteen week ban. So it’s after the first trimester.
-
There are still exceptions for the life of the mother. Voters seem to be comfortable with that. We frequently have
-
seen in the state where voters have divided their loyalties between certain issues and politicians who oppose those issues whom they never less support. It will be interesting to see in Florida if this actually makes the ballot here. Mhmm. And how it’ll fare. But so far, this hasn’t affected his standing in the state.
-
I do wonder if the old Florida we thought existed which was more of a swing state, more of a place where the center still mattered and there was more of a fulcrum if DeSantis’ increasing kind of conservative tendencies will cost him. But I’m sorry. I I think I’m just I’m trying to argue
-
something different. Slightly, which is that the fifteen week ban is actually palatable. Yeah. Like for a lot of these voters who are sort of more pro choice and they don’t see it as super extreme. Like, that’s what I felt like I was hearing from them.
-
Well, you’re right, but I
-
I think
-
in part because, like,
-
a
-
lot of people and this just me is a male. Right? You think of pregnancy as nine months, you don’t think in terms of week. So what really is fifteen weeks? You know what I
-
mean? Well, it’s a place where most people support Right? Like, the polling is like fifteen, twenty week bands, people tend to be like, that’s fine because I think that there should be this window where it is accepted early on, but I don’t like it later. I mean, you seem to be saying that DeSantis is,
-
like, popular
-
sort of in spite of this kind of more conservative position on abortion. I guess, I’m trying to say that I I actually see this more as compromised position on abortion. That that, like, oh, Republicans would be in a much better place if they were acting more like DeSantis and junket and they were looking at fifteen or twenty
-
week bands with the exceptions, you know, afterward. We don’t have an exception for rape or incest here. That’s why it seems kind of kind of conservative to meet here in Florida.
-
Yeah. But I’ve always not really understood well abortion politics in part because we’ve never actually had to test it at the ballot as we’re starting to see now. Like Kansas was a good example of an eye opener. I’ll confess here. I don’t really know how voters think about abortion.
-
I’m not sure voters really know what Roe v Wade is and what it means. You know, most men especially have no clue what a woman pregnant fifteen weeks looks like. And maybe lots of women don’t either, who haven’t been the big families who haven’t had kids of their own. Yeah. I
-
don’t
-
know. I literally don’t. Well, that’s okay. Hey,
-
we don’t all know what, we can’t all know everything. But but we can leave that one there. I wanna talk about the the senate race because if this race were happening in twenty eighteen and not twenty twenty two, it might be a lot more competitive.
-
WELL, DEMINGS
-
IS THE KIND OF CANDIDATE THAT I THINK DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE RUNNING NOWadays. RIGHT? SHE’S A FORMER ORLANDO POLICE OFFICER WHO RIES A MOTOR Cycle She’s explicitly running against defunding the police, but Marco Rubio is still solid favorite in this race. This group didn’t have any time for val dummings. Let’s listen.
-
I
-
would for sure go
-
Ruby over dummings. I don’t trust dummings at
-
all. I
-
think there’s, like, a two base factor going on there. I just don’t judge her. But Rubio, again, I’m catching up with politics here because I was gone for thirteen years, but I’ve always liked Rubio. I’ve always liked to stand on things and the way he runs things. So I would totally go with Rubio.
-
I
-
specifically remember the defund the police thing. And because she had a history of, you know, being a top dog on the police force, which is fantastic. But when all the BLM stuff was going on and all that, she She was very supportive of those protesting efforts. And to the
-
point, we’re
-
buying the most joser for his VP. So no way Jose. I don’t trust her as far as I could throw her. I just can’t handle even listening
-
to Demag. I can’t handle her. Her campaign ads right now, and I walk out of the room. And I like Marco Rubio. I’m good with him.
-
I think there
-
was some maybe national sense that Rubio would be vulnerable because as we noted earlier, he’s like, sort of been made to look like a shell of himself. Right. But he seems like very safe in this election despite, I think, democrats early enthusiasm for Demicks. What’s your read on the senate
-
race there? I think
-
a lot of national Democrats thought that, yeah, in part because they make the mistake of reading a lot of Washington
-
coverage. Mhmm.
-
But, you know, kind of a code to finish the second half of our discussion about Rubio from earlier, yes, Donald Trump humiliated him in the Republican primary law sixty six to sixty seven counties. But then when you fast forward to Rubio’s decision to run for reelection that year in twenty sixteen, he beat Patrick Murphy, his opponent by, you know, seven or eight points. I mean, he beat him like a drum. So that was an indication, like, oh, radio is pretty solid. Earlier this year Actually, it would have been the last year when I saw a political about that Rubio is really a a tough candidate to beat in the state because of our demographics.
-
Just real quick, sixty two percent of the registered voters are white, white non Hispanic. Seventeen percent are Hispanic. Fourteen percent are black. And then the others are kind of unknown mixed race and the like. But in those three big buckets, white, black and Hispanic.
-
In those three big buckets, what Republicans like to do is they like to get sixty percent of the white vote and they like to get about forty percent at least of the Hispanic vote, and then that’s it. That’s lights out. Democrats can have a hundred percent of a black vote still loose. What Rubio is able to do though is he’s over fifty percent with Latinos, and he’s over fifty percent currently with whites in some of the polling I’ve seen both public and otherwise. Well, right now that he’s got a winning set of numbers.
-
If he gets to where most winning Republicans are to sixty percent white, that is completely lights out. Yeah.
-
I wanna turn now Mark Caputo of NBC. To a big Florida story that has been unraveling over the
-
past few days.
-
The FBI rated I guess, we’re going with rated Mar a Lago on August eight. I think it’s
-
a raid. Okay.
-
And we did this Florida group the very next day before the warrant was unsealed. We also did another group from Pennsylvania of Trump to not Trump voters. So they were Trump voters in twenty sixteen, but refused to vote for him in twenty twenty. And in both groups, since they were both after this rate happened, so we asked about it. They were very skeptical of the FBI.
-
They thought that the raid was only going to help Trump. You might be shocked, but I wasn’t. I suspect you weren’t too. Nope. That this Florida group did not think the raid was legitimate.
-
Let’s listen.
-
I mean, why haven’t the Clinton’s
-
had an FBI rate? Are you kidding me? Like, really? Like, I
-
don’t
-
that doesn’t it doesn’t make
-
any sense. Like, I think it’s completely politically driven. Absolutely. Twitter buying a smoking
-
crack with prostitutes on video. It was my current president. I don’t wanna get in trouble. Hunter’s not the current president, but no. But he’s
-
dead. I think
-
he probably did take documents, but at the same time, it’s not being fully accurate. I’m at that point where
-
I don’t know
-
who to trust because everything is so deeply corrupt for so long. I was surprised there was no independent council.
-
So that was the Florida group. Now let’s
-
listen to
-
the Pennsylvania group, which was people who voted for Trump in twenty sixteen, but then fused to vote for him in twenty twenty, and so not a huge MAGA group. And yet they too were pretty skeptical of the FBI and seemed to think that this raid was actually gonna help Trump.
-
If it’s simply because, oh, he may have taken some stuff from the White House, of, like, the National Presidential Records Act, and that’s all it is, then it’s gonna blow up in their face. It’ll basically prove that everything trusted it’s saying right now that they’re going after me, they’re going after you, they’re gone after their enemies. You know, if it’s simply all about, you know, he took a few documents, it’ll just make everything that Trump said true. It would show that, you know, Democrats are illegitimate and that they only care about going after their enemies and that they’re gonna use the FBI to go after their enemies. Trump
-
actually has, you know, the warrant. So he knows what his about, but he’s not releasing it. So that’s just jumping, you know, because he sees everybody else rallying behind him.
-
They just
-
wanna find a reason to prevent him to run. I have a serious distrust in any authority. It’s just I don’t know. I know inherently, probably most of the boots on the ground, FBI people are outstanding citizens who took notes and, like, wanted to be FBI agents since they were kids. Just like police officers.
-
But I have a hard time believing it when it comes to something like this. There’s other
-
ways. There’s subpoenas. There’s
-
other ways to get it. I mean, a raid If that’s what it’s about, it’s over the top. From what I understand, all
-
of Obama’s
-
boxes and all of his documents are sitting in an abandoned restaurant warehouse. In Chicago. Why isn’t that being great? Like, why aren’t they going to get all those presidential? Like, it’s supposed to go into the presidential library
-
So let me ask you, what
-
do you think this FBI rate of And there’s still a lot we don’t know. But this is everybody’s wondering, does this help Trump? And everyone’s calling me to be like, Well, what are your focus groups saying? But this group in Florida they were really down on the FBI. I thought it was politically motivated.
-
You know, a lot of what about is, let me hear the Hunter Biden stuff. Do you think that it’s gonna
-
help Trump?
-
Well,
-
certainly, in the short term, it consolidates his standing in the Republican Party. I was gonna mention this in my discussion of DeSantis. And for me, it’s the coup de Gaulle on my previous analysis as to why he’s not gonna run against him, is that there is now a rallying around the chief effect. It’s just difficult to see any Republican challenging him at this point. I mean, maybe Pence will.
-
So, yeah, I think in the short term, there’s that. Now, of course, things could change. Who knows? Maybe the documents could come out. Evidence could come out showing any number of really terrible crimes from the president.
-
I’m not gonna speculate on what they are, but there’s a lot of ranked speculation out there on Twitter, you know, if that turns out to be well founded and irrefutable, then yeah, sure. I see that hurting him. Long term, Donald Trump’s biggest problem in twenty twenty is that he is chaotic and exhausting. And Joe Biden’s biggest asset was that he was boring and normal. And so people in twenty twenty chose boring and normal over chaotic and exhausting.
-
Now, there has been certainly a hit to Biden’s favorability ratings because another thing he ran on is being competent and all of these various problems came up, you know, from Afghanistan to inflation. We can debate later who’s to blame for that or how he should have handled or messaged it. So he certainly took a hit. But, you know, it’s twenty twenty two. It’s basically two years after the presidential election.
-
And we are still just completely consumed by Trump. And so I wonder about the degree to which that kind of here we go again exhaustion factor is gonna surround Trump in a general election going forward. Now, We got two more years to go. Who knows? So I don’t see this being helpful to him in the long run.
-
But, you know, there
-
are just so many unknowns as to how this happens. Does he get charged? If he gets charged, does he get convicted? It’s hard for me to see him get convicted just because of a panicking jury, but I don’t know all the evidence. Right?
-
I mean, if there’s just clear and beyond the shadow of that evidence, then, yeah, all of that stuff changes. But just to put a kind of finer point on it. Short term, big benefit to Trump. His poll numbers are up in the Republican Party. His fundraising went gangbusters.
-
Everyone’s talking about him. That’s what he likes. Long term, I don’t see how this really helps
-
him. So I agree with
-
this. I think this is the correct analysis based on what we know right now. Right. The idea that he’s gonna be successfully prosecuted, I think, is probably a little far fetched. But the idea that he’s established as a national security threat you know, pretty good.
-
But these voters, even the ones who maybe have been drifting away from them, it is causing a kind of rally around Trump effect. And that includes DeSantis. It includes elites in the party who I think would love to see Trump locked up. DeSantis says the under study, like, they don’t have any room to maneuver the way that they’d like in terms of their own national profiles as long as he’s the one crowding the stage. But they’re certainly gonna vociferously defend him because again, they’re not trying to challenge him, they’re trying to be his under study.
-
And so it does have this short term benefit. What do you make though of the thinking such as it is about when he gets in the race? Like, do you think it makes him move earlier? It may. The
-
problem here is trying to predict the mind of Trump in such a dynamic environment. Right? I think if he hopped in now, he would look a little too nervous. And so he wouldn’t want to look weak. But it certainly encourages him to announce sooner than later.
-
The question is is, does he do it before or after the midterms? I still think it’s likely or the not he announces after the midterms. I think, like, does does this affect the justice department’s calculations on when to charge if they plan to charge? Do they wanna charge a former president who is an announced candidate for president and is the likely nominee for his party. So I I also wondered at what degree Merrick Garland is looking at this.
-
Like, people will say, well, no, he’s not. He’s an institutionalist and the like. And because he’s an institution was the attorney general, I imagine he’s gonna be giving us a lot of thought. And as a result of him giving us a lot of thought, it gives Trump a little more time to decide when do it out? Howard Bauchner: Yeah,
-
so my time store analysis on this is that I thought that Trump might jump in early because I assumed that they’re running focus groups themselves, lots of polling and that he was seeing the same thing that I was seeing. In a lot of the work that I was doing, which is that people are starting to look around for other people. They were worried Trump had too much baggage. Right. And, like, his reason for jumping in had more to do with less trying to avoid legal trouble and more to do with, like, no.
-
No. No. No. Me. Me.
-
Me. Everybody look at me. And this sort of gives him that opportunity for everybody to look at him. And for the party to rally around him without him having to get
-
in. And
-
so I think I think I didn’t think of that. I think you’re a hundred percent right.
-
Yeah. It does give him, like you said, sort of, that more time to maneuver. And obviously the party is not eager to have him jump in prior to the midterms because they don’t wanna make it about him. But this allows you to get all that benefit of the anger that people feel And this is the number one takeaway. I think from all the focus group work I’ve done is the total collapse of faith in institutions.
-
Right? Like, nobody trusts the FBI, and that includes people who, like, didn’t really like Trump and, like, didn’t vote for him again in twenty twenty, but they don’t trust the FBI. They think things are politically motivated. That’s something that’s different, like, with Nixon or just different times where people are, like, oh, well, if the FBI is gonna prosecute you, like, he must’ve done something really bad. And now it’s much more like who can trust the FBI?
-
Like, it doesn’t matter to them that Ray, the FBI director was appointed by Trump. Like, none of that matters. Right? Right.
-
You know, I’m fond these days of quoting William Butler Yates’s poem the second coming where the phrase things fall apart comes from. And he says the center cannot hold the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of a passionate intensity. I think that centrifugal force of our politics where things have eroded in the center and spun out of control and are gyring around, really speaks to the political moment that we’re
-
in.
-
I
-
remember in twenty fourteen, I remember hearing Hillary Clinton give a speech in Miami about the disintegration of trust in institutions. And it was a really good speech actually. It was one of the more interesting political speeches I had heard and it’s true in spades now. The other question is kind of like a court watcher is You’re normally a search warrant in a federal investigation that’s done as a means to an end. The means being the search warrant at the end being a conviction or an indictment.
-
The question here is, does that search warrant actually function as an end in and of itself where the federal government was in this tussle in this dispute with Donald Trump. And finally, it was like, we’re just going to go there at the point of a gun, and we’re going to take back these documents. We’ve got the documents now. Yeah. We’ve crossed that Rubicon, but we’re gonna call it a deck.
-
Mhmm. I don’t know. I don’t know either, but
-
I always like giving William butler Yates, the last word. So
-
Mark Caputo. We’ll just lead up in the squad next time. Mark Caputo, thank
-
you for being such an interesting guest. I really appreciate you being here to help break all of this down. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of The Focus Group. We will be back next week, and we will do this over again.
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