Ron DeSantis announces his campaign for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination, and Elon Musk and David Sachs join him on stage to discuss their support and why they think he s a good match for Donald Trump. I give my thoughts on what I saw at the event, and why I think Trump is a better candidate than most. I also discuss why the media should be paying more attention to the logistics and the practical matter of running a campaign, rather than just the spectacle. I also talk about why I don t think the media is paying enough attention to what's going on behind the scenes of a presidential campaign and why it's a mistake to focus on the spectacle rather than the ideas and the strategy behind it. Finally, I discuss why Trump is better than most presidential candidates and why he's a better choice than most people think he is, even if he's not running for President in 2020. America First, hosted by Nicholas J. Fuentes and Alex Blumberg, is a show that focuses on the importance of Americanism, not globalism, in the 21st century. And it's run-up and down-to-the-decade politics, and the role of the American people in shaping the future of the country we live in today's politics and our future in the next election. It's a show about what matters, not about what s going to happen, and what we should be focusing on, not what we're going to be told, and how to do, and not what to think about, and who we should do and what to do about it and why we should care about in 2020 and 2020 and beyond. - America First! - by Nicholas and Alex, America First is a great show, by Alex, by the people who care about the future, not the things we should come first and what they care about, not how we should think about and what it's going to have the most important thing we should we care about and the things that matter the most, and everything we need to do to get the most of in 2020, not less than that, not more than we should focus on, and more, and we should have the best of it, not enough of it and more of that, right and less of that in the rest of the truth, and so much more, by more information about it, by someone who cares about that matters more than anything else, by not less, and they should be more than enough, and much more.
Transcript
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00:05:53.000It was boring, it was low energy, and although it was innovative and interesting, it didn't work.
00:06:00.000Not every idea which is innovative and different is always an improvement.
00:06:08.000And I'll get more into detail on this later.
00:06:11.000Specifically, I want to get into the structure of it and judging what we saw this evening, it gives us a really good idea of what this campaign is going to be about and how Ron DeSantis will be a foil for Trump and what he's going to be saying out there on the campaign trail when he starts to stump later this week in Iowa and New Hampshire in the early battleground states.
00:06:39.000But, specifically this last night, the reason why it's a winner is because, comparatively, he got way more views, way more eyeballs than he would if he just gave a speech.
00:06:49.000But it almost doesn't even matter because a speech would have been better.
00:06:54.000So, fewer people would have seen it, I think, ultimately.
00:06:59.000But what they did see here was not good.
00:07:03.000It was first of all on a technical level, which I've talked about a lot before, which is to say that Donald Trump being a, not an architect, but being a real estate developer, being a Hollywood celebrity, being involved in all kinds of projects, he has a sense for presentation.
00:07:54.000He's thinking about, and he said this in his first announcement speech in 2016, he's thinking about the crowd size, he's thinking about the temperature of the room, he's thinking about the presentation, the backdrop.
00:08:06.000He used to say in 2016 that the media wouldn't show his crowds,
00:08:12.000No other politician would think of it like that, but he would say, why doesn't the media zoom in on the logistics and the practical matter of running the campaign?
00:08:22.000The visual, the venue, the atmosphere, the experience.
00:08:55.000How can you accomplish what you set out to accomplish?
00:09:00.000Now, Trump wouldn't be so, so critical, but I'm sure there are a lot of young people on the DeSantis team who are very ambitious and very fast-paced, and they're very interested in the next thing, the newest technology.
00:09:15.000And they said, what if we did a space with Elon Musk?
00:09:30.000All the reasons why it was a technical disaster.
00:09:33.000Like, for example, they didn't start on time, and then the servers were overwhelmed because they didn't control the servers, and the people that did didn't anticipate the traffic, and it wasn't under their control, and it had never been done before, and they were unable to test it.
00:09:47.000Like, there's all these things, because he's a policy wonk.
00:10:45.000But you're not actually delivering anything.
00:10:49.000And that's where, honestly, Donald Trump has a real edge in government.
00:10:55.000DeSantis would probably have the edge in government because he's been a legislator, he's been a governor, he understands the procedural rules, he understands the law, but that doesn't give him any advantage in planning an event, visuals, salesmanship, that sort of thing, which Trump excels at.
00:11:17.000I've been thinking about it all day today, and it's so emblematic of the difference between Trump and everybody else.
00:11:23.000DeSantis and his team, I'm sure they thought this was the best idea ever, and optically it was a disaster.
00:11:31.000All anybody's going to think about is that for 30 minutes, it didn't work.
00:11:36.000And a lot of people would say, well hey, cut him some slack, technical difficulties, because of a very sloppy technical breakdown.
00:11:43.000That's something that a guy like Trump would never allow.
00:11:47.000When Trump announced the first time, he did it at his skyscraper, on his home turf.
00:12:23.000Because DeSantis, in this raid party, such a high approval rating, and being the ex-president, the leader of this unprecedented movement, everybody understands that this is gonna be a real uphill battle for DeSantis.
00:12:40.000And it doesn't signal anything good when his introduction on the national stage, his first outing, on a technical level is so bad.
00:13:28.000This is supposed to be... You're going up against a movement.
00:13:31.000You're going up against a guy that summoned 500,000 people to the Capitol at the election, that they were literally hanging from the rooftop with Trump flags, and the guy that's gonna beat him, he's in a three-way call with a bunch of Asperger's tech guys, and they're having some gay conversation about education policy and Chevron deference.
00:14:10.000If I thought DeSantis had a great launch, I would say that.
00:14:14.000I thought Trump, I think it was a competent production, but I didn't like it at all.
00:14:20.000This was, and we'll get into the entire thing because there's a lot of
00:14:25.000clues about where this race is going to go.
00:14:28.000But before we get into the news, I want to remind you to smash the follow button here on Cozy to get a push notification whenever I go live.
00:14:55.000I talked a lot earlier today about the slogans, because we heard some of the slogans for the first time, but I really want to get into this discussion that he had with Musk and this David Sachs.
00:15:07.000This is from Associated on Wednesday with firm words.
00:15:11.000But a disastrous Twitter announcement that did little to counter criticism that the 44-year-old Republican may not be ready to take on former President Trump.
00:15:21.000While he tried to project confidence, DeSantis' unusual decision to announce his campaign in an online conversation with Elon Musk ultimately backfired.
00:15:33.000He said on the glitchy stream racing through his conservative accomplishments, quote,
00:15:56.000Those critics in both parties delighted in the rocky start.
00:15:59.000DeSantis' announcement marks a new chapter in his extraordinary rise from little-known congressman to two-term governor to a leading figure in the nation's bitter fights over race, gender, abortion, and other divisive issues.
00:16:14.000DeSantis' path to the Republican nomination will not be easy.
00:16:17.000He enters the race looking up at Trump in early polls while facing serious questions about his far-right policy system.
00:16:24.000He has generated significant interest among GOP primary voters by casting himself as a younger and more electable version of the 76-year-old former president.
00:16:35.000He did not mention Trump even once in the discussion but said he was ready to fight.
00:16:39.000He said, buckle up when I get in there because the status quo is not acceptable.
00:16:45.000So, like I said, isn't it a good idea to have this audio-only conversation?
00:17:13.000And Trump has one of these older guys who's like a handyman or it's like any movie you watch.
00:17:20.000You know my favorite movies, my favorite movie genre is like an old white guy who could just do anything.
00:17:29.000You know like when I watch Breaking Bad and you have Mike and he's just got an answer for everything because he's been around, he's done it all.
00:18:37.000Like when he goes out there at a rally, he'll turn his back to the cameras and he'll gesture towards the people that are seated behind him.
00:18:51.000He showed up to the rally that they see his face.
00:18:56.000He's thinking about all the ticket holders, or all the attendees that drove out, or flew out, or waited in line, and he's thinking about the people that are seated, even though he can't see them, he's thinking about the fact that there's people seated behind them.
00:19:11.000And he's cognizant and conscientious of the fact that they can't...
00:19:16.000That he'll point, gesture, that they might catch his gaze, that they could take a picture.
00:19:22.000He gets that, and he does that for them.
00:19:25.000And that's a little detail, that's a little thing, that says so much about who this man is.
00:19:32.000And I'm not trying to sound like a cultist or something.
00:19:36.000What I'm saying is, that is something that you'd love situational awareness
00:19:42.000That you can only develop over decades of experience doing things.
00:19:48.000When I say it means a lot, I mean that it represents his character as a person.
00:22:34.000When you're doing a voice-only stream you can't look good because they can't see you and therefore there's no presence.
00:22:41.000And if you're a bad public speech reduction in front of
00:22:45.000800,000 people was he was 30 minutes late, it was sloppy, technical difficulties, and then he gave a 90-minute boring-as-fuck panel presentation.
00:27:22.000That's my brain because when Trump first ran in 2016, these are the things that I analyzed.
00:27:28.000Like when I tried to understand the Trump movement in 2016,
00:27:34.000And this effect that he had, which was this imperviousness, his facial expressions, his rhetoric, his approach when he went into a hostile interview, his dress, his everything.
00:27:51.000And I came away realizing that he just brought a whole new level.
00:27:57.000Of negotiating skill and production competence and laughing and cavorting with the common people in jeans.
00:28:08.000And Trump came out there with a completely stoic expression in the suit.
00:30:34.000So there was that, and that was, it was literally him reading from a script.
00:30:38.000Painfully obvious he was reading it, which is bad.
00:30:42.000Then, instead of having a conversational flow, which following conversation like a podcast, they brought up about four or five pre-screened people to ask questions, and they're all people that DeSantis knows.
00:31:00.000They're all people that have worked for DeSantis.
00:31:01.000They're all people that already support DeSantis.
00:31:06.000So it's very robotic, very boring, very mundane.
00:31:11.000And like I said, even with this format, which is bad, you can't see them, you can't see a crowd, you can't hear a crowd, there's no flags, there's no visual, like, really, really, really, really bad stuff.
00:31:22.000Even still, it was even worse than it could have otherwise been.
00:31:25.000Because instead of even playing into the strength of them, it was all scripted.
00:31:30.000So you basically have like some, like a scripted voice memo.
00:32:22.000I don't like anything that says great if it's not talking about greatness.
00:32:27.000When Trump says, Make America Great Again, in this context, when you call a country great, what that's referring to is greatness or excellence.
00:32:39.000It's a constant striving for perfection.
00:34:36.000What's great about Make America Great Again is that it alludes to American greatness and the superiority and the exceptionalism of our civilization, and it also is action-oriented.
00:36:11.000And so at the very end, Ray Kroc goes up to the guy, the McDonald brother, and he goes, uh, he's, the McDonald guy says, you know, why didn't you start your own restaurant?
00:36:22.000Why'd you have to take our restaurant?
00:36:23.000Why'd you have to, what is it about McDonald's?
00:36:25.000And Ray Kroc didn't even understand that.
00:44:24.000I will lead the charge against the elite.
00:44:28.000And even if it was a lost cause, people were like, fuck yeah, let's go.
00:44:33.000Well, America First presupposes that there are other nations, and that there's a prioritization that's happening, and that America is not being put first over the interests of, say, other nations by its own government.
00:44:58.000And so there's this conscientiousness in that slogan about how the country's been infiltrated, about how it's corrupt, about how the government is serving the interest of other nations because it's compromised by them.
00:45:12.000And so it's anti-corruption, it's nationalist.
00:45:14.000So, Trump is telling us what his campaign is about with these slogans.
00:45:19.000It's not about our nation, or the people in it, or the people in the movement, or the leader that will lead the movement in his competence.
00:46:11.000Again, what does that even really mean?
00:46:14.000When Trump comes forward and says, we will crush our enemies, we will have victory, we will beat our enemies, our people will be taken care of by our government, this resonates with the real problems going on, because those are the real problems.
00:46:31.000Our country... I would say five or six big categories, and they were the border, crime, the economy, the military, social issues, and the administrative state.
00:46:42.000Those are the big categories that he talked about.
00:46:46.000On the border, he talked about drug cartels.
00:46:51.000He talked a little bit about sovereignty and immigration.
00:46:54.000He didn't say anything about demographics, didn't say anything about immigration.
00:46:59.000He said that we have to have a border and they're bringing drugs in.
00:47:30.000But when you wrap it up in a border issue, what you're really doing is making the border issue a crime issue rather than a demographics issue.
00:47:38.000The reason we need to secure our border, yes, it's a matter of law enforcement.
00:47:42.000Fentanyl and the drugs, you know, they may come across the border in a variety of ways.
00:47:48.000But the chief problem we're having is that we need to construct a physical barrier that prevents human beings from crossing.
00:47:55.000Because that's what is happening hundreds of thousands of times every single day.
00:48:02.000So when he says, well, we need a border to have an aid, he doesn't talk about the volume of immigration, he doesn't talk about, he doesn't even say the word immigration.
00:49:37.000So when DeSantis comes out and says, well, forever, the difference is that Trump came in and said, we were going to deport millions of people.
00:49:45.000All these other politicians, they say like, well, we have to shut down the border and then we'll figure out what to do afterward.
00:51:13.000We're talking about... When he goes out there and says this vague stuff about law and order, law and order, I mean, what does that really mean?
00:52:02.000They say that the real problem is that people don't respect our country and as a consequence now they're not volunteering for the military.
00:52:11.000Which it's like the military is working for Israel.
00:52:15.000The military is spreading gay marriage and feminism.
00:52:18.000You're telling me that the problem with the country is that people are not signing up for the military enough?
00:52:25.000The problem with them realizing the entire government is corrupt?
00:54:15.000And he talked about wokeism, but dingelized, but not like what they're being sexualized about, which is trannyism.
00:54:24.000And then lastly, he talked about the executive branch and he said we need to reinvigorate our constitutional system and reconstitutionalize the executive branch.
00:54:46.000Those are the things that we heard about.
00:54:48.000Border security, law and order, fiscal conservatism, increasing recruitment for the military, merit over identity politics, and reconstitutionalizing the executive branch.
00:57:46.000He's not going to turn out the white working class.
00:57:47.000He's not going to turn out people that had never voted or people that voted for Obama.
00:57:51.000He's not going to turn out blacks and Hispanics.
00:57:54.000He's going to turn out Republican loyalists.
00:57:56.000He's going to turn out the same people that vote in every election that lost in 22, that didn't win in 08,
00:58:05.000That's what he's gonna turn out, is the reliable 25% of conservatives.
00:58:11.00025% of the American electorate, which is politically conservative.
00:58:17.000And we've been there, we've done that, we've lost many times with that kind of mentality.
00:58:22.000The only way to win an election, it's not to play it safe, it's not for enthusiastic and excited about, something that makes sense and resonates and is compelling, something that answers where people are,
00:58:35.000And is competent, and gets buzz, and earned media, and then all those good things that Trump knows how to do.
01:04:25.000I don't know why they suddenly flipped on that.
01:04:27.000But do you remember Matt Walsh years ago was the... I mean, I call... In 2019, when the El Paso shooting happened, he was like, this white piece of shit needs to get the electric chair.
01:06:00.000He'll have a lot of opportunities to play politics in jail.
01:06:03.000You know, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of inmates that he can play house of cards with, so it sounds like he'll be as happy as a fucking clown.
01:06:10.000Really big super chat, big shout out, I appreciate that, thank you so much.
01:06:14.000I don't know what those guys were thinking, what a stupid decision.