TREASON??? DeSantis Schemes With Billionaires To OVERTHROW Trump | America First Ep. 1061TREASON??? DeSantis Schemes With Billionaires To OVERTHROW Trump | America First Ep. 1061
Ron DeSantis has a plan to overthrow Donald Trump in the Republican primary in 2024, and he's got a good chance to do so even if Trump decides not to run for re-election. But if he does, who will defeat him? And how will the rest of the country react to the outcome of the primary fight? and we'll also talk about the new war in the Caucasus, and why we should be worried about it. America First is hosted by Nicholas J. Fuentes, who covers politics and culture, and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, and other media outlets. He's also the host of the podcast America First: A Reporter's Notebook, a weekly political podcast produced in response to the news and culture of the moment, and host of America First, a show that focuses on current events in American culture and politics, and examines what s going on in the world around them. Subscribe to America First to get immediate access to all the latest breaking news and analysis, and stay up to date with the latest in politics and current events. Today's episode features: 1. The latest on the Iran/Russia conflict in Ukraine, and 2. The Iran/Armenia situation in the Caspian region of the Caucasus 3. The new war brewing in the Black Sea, and 4. We'll also be covering the Iran-Armenian conflict in the Middle East, and much more. 5. What's up to come in the coming weeks in the future of the Iran and the Ukraine. 6. What are you waiting for? 7. What do you want to know? 8. What s going to happen in 2020? 9. 10. What will happen in 2024? 11. What is the worst thing you can do in the next election? 12. What would you like to see? 13. How do you think about it? 14. Is it possible? 15. What does it all happen next year? 16. What should you think of it in the near future? 17. Who are you looking forward to in 2020 and what are you're going to do in 2024 and beyond? And so much more? Can you see it in 2024 And what s your answer? 18. What can we expect? 19. Is there a better way to win in 2020, and will it be better?
Transcript
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00:02:04.000To overthrow our rightful President Trump in the 2024 Republican primary.
00:02:11.000And we touched on this a little bit last night.
00:02:13.000We talked about the DOJ probe into Donald Trump's Save America PAC.
00:02:21.000That's the $100 million slush fund that Trump has been building since 2020 to use in the next election.
00:02:29.000And we touched on this a little bit talking about the dynamic and how that's going to play out with Ron DeSantis, who alternatively has a war chest bigger than Donald Trump's.
00:02:42.000Donald Trump's pack has $100 million and Ron DeSantis has $175 million.
00:03:53.000Such as, as an example, that the Department of Justice may preclude him from running by charging him, convicting him, and sentencing him for some ridiculous thing like with regard to the National Archives.
00:04:08.000So it's shaping up to be a very complicated picture next year, although it looks to be very familiar.
00:04:14.000It's the same story in 2016, it's the same story in 2020, and it looks like it'll be the same story in 2024, and that is that the establishment, which controls both sides, will once again work together to screw over Donald Trump.
00:04:31.000Although, in the past eight years, the establishment has gotten a lot more sophisticated.
00:04:37.000And so eight years ago they tried to knock him out by rigging the debates and rigging the primary and so on and that didn't work.
00:04:44.000And in 2020 they rigged the entire election with mail-in ballots and they got him out and the Republicans, I think, made a compromise with the incoming Biden administration to stand down and not help Trump overturn the election results.
00:05:01.000Well here we are heading into 2024 and there's really not any good reason why Trump shouldn't win.
00:05:07.000He's the most popular politician in the country.
00:05:11.000Inflation is 8% in case you missed that.
00:05:15.000Gas prices on average are $4-$5 a gallon variously throughout the year.
00:05:21.000And there's no other Republican in America who even comes close to Donald Trump's name ID and favorability.
00:05:31.000So all those things taken together, there's a very good chance, not just an average chance, but a better than average chance that Donald Trump becomes the president.
00:05:41.000There's almost a certainty that he should be the nominee, and there's a very good chance, then a likely chance, that he'll be the president.
00:05:48.000But just like over the past eight years and the last two elections, it looks like other forces will intervene.
00:05:56.000And that comes in the form of the full force of the federal government headed by the political partisan opposition, Joe Biden, as well as an effort on the right to capitalize on that.
00:06:07.000And for all of Trump's opponents in the party, Mitch McConnell, Ronna McDaniel, and others,
00:06:15.000Just like they did in 2020, accede to the Biden administration's weaponization of the Justice Department against Trump and capitalize on that by giving us the safe alternative.
00:06:27.000The safe, reasonable, not offensive alternative to Donald Trump, which would come in the form of DeSantis.
00:07:29.000And they have been at war with each other for a long time, going back to the 1980s over border disputes, particularly a region called Nagorno-Karabakh, which is a mountainous region governed by ethnic Armenians, but controlled and technically under the jurisdiction of the Azeris.
00:07:46.000And so once again, there's border disputes, although, and I pointed this out yesterday, it raises some questions about why exactly now are tensions flaring up.
00:07:56.000There was a recent conflict two years ago between Azerbaijan and Armenia and it was decisively won by Azerbaijan because of the use of drones which they purchased from Turkey.
00:08:07.000But now all of a sudden, conveniently, they're once again engaged in hostilities.
00:08:14.000It looks like Azerbaijan is preparing to mount an invasion of Armenia based on their censorship of social media this week.
00:08:21.000And this, of course, would have drastic implications for Russia, which sits to the north.
00:08:28.000And Russia is obligated by a treaty very similar to NATO to defend Armenia in the event that they are attacked.
00:08:39.000And I say the timing is convenient because just when
00:08:42.000It appears that Ukraine has been able to launch a successful counter-offensive with additional help from the US intelligence agencies.
00:08:52.000And just when the European Union and the European community are working out a way that they're going to demand Russia increase the supply of natural gas to Europe before the winter hits,
00:09:07.000In other words, just as it appears that the Ukraine war has gone on a little bit too long for the West and it's getting inconvenient economically, now all of a sudden it appears that another front has broken out in the war on Russia's southern border.
00:09:24.000And they've already...they have exhausted...Russia and the Russian state has exhausted what they can do without fully mobilizing their population and economy for a war.
00:09:35.000They've got a couple hundred thousand troops in Ukraine.
00:09:38.000They have not implemented a draft or anything like that.
00:09:41.000They have not fully mobilized the country for a war, which is, some people argue, what would be necessary to win.
00:09:49.000Well, they certainly are at capacity already.
00:10:03.000Before it's actually a very slow time, but you know we're finding things to talk about it's actually a very slow time And I'm hoping that things will pick up soon.
00:10:14.000I mean the midterms are in like what six weeks
00:10:22.000The midterms were totally boring in 2018 as well.
00:10:26.000I thought the midterms were going to be so hot in 2018.
00:10:28.000I had a whole podcast called 2018 Election Headquarters.
00:10:34.000And I had a podcast and we went over all the swing states.
00:10:37.000And I actually remember a lot of them very well because I went over week over week and I covered all the races.
00:10:45.000And I remember thinking like my show is gonna blow the F up I cuz I thought you know I missed the initial wave in 2016 My show launched after the inauguration in 2017 so I missed that whole wave when all these Creators got really popular in 2016 because of the election because all eyes were on the election really for like a year and a half from the time the primary started in the middle of 15 until
00:11:13.000The inauguration in 17 and so I thought okay this is what I was made for 2018 going all out my show is gonna blow the freak up like you've never seen and nobody cared nobody cared nobody listened to that show the 2018 election headquarters and it was a boring
00:14:29.000You know, I'm like, lately I've been trying to convince myself that it is in fact healthy to eat McDonald's all the time because I've never eaten as much McDonald's as I've been eating lately.
00:14:41.000And you know, you can read whatever you want to read into that fact or admission, okay?
00:14:47.000You can read into that whatever you'd like, whatever floats your boat.
00:14:51.000But I've been eating a lot of McDonald's lately.
00:16:57.000I got banned from my old bank and I can't tell you... I mean, maybe you understand
00:17:05.000But it is such a freaking hassle to get banned from a bank because I've had to do this now like five or six times because I'm getting banned from banks for my personal as well as my several business checking accounts.
00:17:19.000So I've had to actually do this more than the few times I've talked about just with my personal checking.
00:17:26.000This is the second time a personal account has been closed, I believe.
00:17:47.000I've lost track really, but... Because for business, we were banned from U.S.
00:17:51.000Bank, we were banned from Chase Bank, and I want to say we were banned from one other.
00:17:56.000In any case, I've been through this so many times, and it is just such a...
00:18:02.000Because you know what it is you have to reset all your automatic payments all my bills are on my account and so then you have to go in and you got to go and enter in a hundred different passwords and enter in your account number a hundred different times and some of them it's manual so you got to do a manual verification where it's not enough to just put the info in and they verify it they have to send you test transactions and you and that takes a few days you got to order new checks
00:18:30.000And you gotta get a new debit card and you gotta reset up all the apps and... So I've just been dealing with a lot of that kind of stuff.
00:18:55.000Our first story is about this Azeri-Armenian War.
00:18:59.000And like I said, if you're not familiar, the details are really not very important.
00:19:05.000There are these two countries in the Caucasus in Asia, which is a region south of Russia, north of Iran, so right in the middle there, east of Turkey, east of the Black Sea, west of Central Asia, west of Kazakhstan and all of that.
00:19:23.000It's this land bridge between, and I believe I said it right before, the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.
00:19:29.000And they've had these border skirmishes for 40 years.
00:19:33.000And if you don't know, it's actually somewhat interesting.
00:19:39.000Armenia has a Christian community there, which I believe is 2,000 years old.
00:19:44.000Azerbaijan is actually a new creation.
00:19:47.000The reason that we have Azerbaijan is because during World War II, the Soviet Union actually invaded Iran.
00:19:55.000And there was a portion of Iran that they never left in the north, and that was Azerbaijan.
00:20:01.000And so over time, Azerbaijan was cut off from Iran.
00:20:06.000Azerbaijan was its own, I believe, communist republic under the Soviet Union.
00:20:11.000And so when the Soviet Union dissolved, Azerbaijan became its own sovereign country.
00:20:16.000But really, like all the other countries in the Middle East, it's really an invention of the period of World War in the first half of the 20th century.
00:20:25.000Just like Syria, just like Iraq, all these modern nation-states are the product in various ways of colonialism or the war.
00:20:36.000So it's not even really like a real country, but they've had these border disputes now going back 30-40 years particularly over this one region in the mountains where it's inhabited by Armenians.
00:20:49.000The people that are running it provincially are Armenians, but it is part of Azerbaijan.
00:21:05.000And I believe Israel is on the side of Azerbaijan, if I'm not mistaken, which I said it's a little bit complicated because the way that the various regional powers support
00:21:20.000I don't even, I'm not even, I don't even perfectly understand the geopolitics of it because I'm not brushed up on that.
00:21:47.000But in any case, like I said, the details are less important than the significance for the region.
00:21:53.000So they had this big war two years ago on the border, and the war was decisively finished because of the use of drones by Azerbaijan.
00:22:05.000I think Turkey supports Azerbaijan because Azerbaijan bought these drones from Turkey and these drones are a game changer.
00:22:13.000A big catalyst for the war in Ukraine is the purchase of Turkish drones by Ukraine.
00:22:20.000And so two years ago, Azerbaijan bought the drones from Turkey and they have used the drones, devastating effect against Armenia, ended the conflict, and that served as a proving ground for the technology.
00:22:33.000And so Ukraine, the government in Kiev, began buying, they're called Bayraktar drones from Turkey,
00:22:39.000And it was because of these purchases that that was one of the reasons, one of the precipitating causes, why Russia was so alarmed.
00:22:47.000There had been a military buildup in Ukraine and particularly fortified along the border with Donbass, where Kiev was perpetually engaged in hostilities with the independent republics Luhansk and Donetsk.
00:23:01.000And they have been militarizing and fortifying their border, again, perpetually engaged in conflict.
00:23:07.000And it was the purchase of those drones, which were used so decisively in the Azeri-Armenian War in 2020, which is one of the reasons why Russia decided to take action, because they saw the writing on the wall.
00:23:22.000They see the drones, they see the NATO missiles coming in, and Zelensky talking about a nuclear capability, and the writing was on the wall that Ukraine was preparing a major offensive to take back probably Crimea as well as Donbass, the two independent republics in Donbass.
00:23:43.000And anyway, that's less important, but it is interesting how it all relates in that region.
00:24:07.000It says, quote, more than 100 Armenian soldiers have been killed in border clashes with Azerbaijan since Monday, according to the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
00:24:22.000Azerbaijan says 50 of its own troops have been killed in the fighting, which both sides blame on the other.
00:24:29.000It is the latest in a series of long-running conflicts fought between the two former Soviet republics over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
00:24:37.000Russia and the United States have each called for peace between the two countries.
00:24:41.000Speaking to his country's parliament, the Prime Minister said 105 Armenian servicemen have been killed since Monday night in attacks he blamed on Azerbaijan.
00:24:50.000He also accused Azeri troops of occupying 10 square kilometers of Armenian territory this week and said he has now turned to Russia for military assistance and Russia is a longtime ally of Armenia.
00:25:03.000Azerbaijan denies the Armenian account of the week's events, including reports that it fired upon vehicles belonging to Russia's FSB security services stationed inside Armenia.
00:25:14.000Instead, Azerbaijan claims its neighbors started the conflict by shelling military targets within its own district of Kalbukhar.
00:25:22.000As part of that diplomatic effort, the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, is sending a peace mission to Armenia that the Kremlin said would arrive, quote, imminently.
00:25:33.000And so we'll see what the outcome of all this is.
00:25:36.000There's also a lot going on within these countries and it's developing very rapidly.
00:25:42.000There are massive protests going on right now inside the Armenian capital of Yerevan and there are thousands of protesters outside of the parliament building where they're demanding the immediate resignation of the Prime Minister and a military coup.
00:25:58.000The Prime Minister wants to sign a peace treaty and effectively give the parts of Armenia that are currently occupied by the Azeris to Azerbaijan.
00:26:08.000So the people are calling for him to step down, they're calling for the military to intervene, and within Azerbaijan they have banned TikTok in the country, presumably because they don't want people filming tanks and armored vehicles and troops being moved to the border,
00:26:28.000So, there's a lot going on within Azerbaijan, there's a lot happening within Armenia, and there's a lot happening between them, and there's casualties on both sides, and both sides blaming the start of the conflict on the other.
00:26:41.000But to me, the big significance of it is what we've been talking about lately, which is the Ukraine War.
00:26:48.000And I think you can't look at what's going on here without recognizing its significance to the broader conflict.
00:26:56.000And I'll note again that Israel is a close ally of the Azeris and the United States is allied with Azerbaijan.
00:27:05.000And I look at the situation going on in Ukraine, which we talked about last week.
00:27:09.000The major developments are pertaining to this big counteroffensive, which was launched by Kiev last week, as well as how Putin is now fully weaponizing energy against the Western European countries.
00:27:38.000And the Russians retreated, they withdrew, they did not suffer any casualties.
00:27:43.000But the Ukrainians came in and recaptured a number of towns in the north, the northeast of the country, and the Russians pulled back.
00:27:51.000And it is said that the Ukrainians were able to launch this counteroffensive because of increased assistance from American intelligence.
00:28:00.000That American intelligence is now working much more closely with Kiev, and it was because U.S.
00:28:05.000intelligence was giving them information about Russian targets and other forms of support that Ukraine was able to have, and logistical support too, that Ukraine was able to successfully launch these countermeasures, even if only one of them was successful.
00:28:21.000So you've got that going on, and in light of that, that has changed the entire conversation.
00:28:27.000Now, Western media in the United States and in Europe are saying that Ukraine can win this thing.
00:29:18.000And then at the same time, the European Union is getting together and panicking because of surging energy prices.
00:29:24.000Russia has effectively cut off 80% of the natural gas it exports to the European Union.
00:29:30.000And as we talked about last week, many European countries rely heavily on Russian natural gas in their energy mix to power their power grid.
00:29:40.000And this is going to become a major problem heading into the winter because all these European countries will be plunged into cold weather and they quite literally will not have enough natural gas.
00:29:52.000They will not have the energy they need to heat their homes.
00:30:03.000And we'll have to tell people you can't turn on your boilers or your furnaces for so many days and you have to turn them down and things like that.
00:30:14.000They're going to have to regulate the consumption of energy.
00:30:18.000And it's going to cost them a lot of money.
00:30:31.000The timing of this border conflict is very, very interesting because right now it would appear that the conflict in Ukraine was headed in one direction where, and people have pointed this out, Russia was not making massive progress in taking territory, but Russia is shredding the Ukrainian armed forces, destroying their military, destroying their military equipment, and when I say their military, I mean just killing everyone in there, killing all their personnel.
00:31:00.000And it was looking like for a time that Russia was going to wipe out the fortified line in Donbass and then they would be in Odessa or in Kiev by the end of the year.
00:31:12.000And some had said it was going to be protracted, this would be a war that would go on for years.
00:31:19.000And it appeared in the summer as though that was not going to be the case, that the Russians were going to be making a lot of progress once they finished off the Ukrainian armed forces.
00:31:28.000Well now for the first time since maybe April, it looks like the momentum is flipped once again with these countermeasures which were backed by the United States and also because of how energy policy is changing the leverage and the leverage situation for Western Europe.
00:31:49.000Now, conveniently, when all of this is going on, on Russia's southern border, another war breaks out.
00:31:57.000And it just so happens that, as I read off in the article, Armenia is in the CSTO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which is the analog in the post-Soviet world for NATO.
00:33:18.000They're saying we're drafting everybody and nobody can leave.
00:33:21.000So that means we're either going to win the war or we're all going to... or literally we're all going to die because you can't run.
00:33:26.000And then, as we've been following at the same time, simultaneously, the United States will just keep writing checks throughout the year.
00:33:37.000Another check is going out now to Ukraine.
00:33:39.000More money has been greenlit for further military assistance just this past week.
00:33:44.000Whereas Russia has deployed a relatively small army of 200,000 soldiers.
00:33:50.000And Russia has not mobilized its economy, and Russia does not have countries giving it supplies.
00:33:58.000And we've been into the strategy before, that's not the purpose of the show, but the point is, the real challenge, as is always the case in warfare, is a question of industrial capacity.
00:34:11.000And Russia arguably does not have the capacity to fight this war without fully mobilizing its economy to build equipment and fully mobilizing its population to send in soldiers.
00:34:24.000The United States defeated Saddam Hussein in Iraq with 200,000 soldiers, but that was the United States against Iraq.
00:34:32.000This is Russia against the largest army in Europe fully furnished by the United States and NATO.
00:34:40.000So, arguably they can't even win this war, or rather, I'm not going to say they can't win the war, they can, but arguably it is going to be very difficult for Russia logistically to overcome the resistance they're getting without full mobilization.
00:34:56.000Now the situation is changing yet again because another front has opened up in the south.
00:35:02.000And Russia will not have the resources to divert to defend Armenia.
00:35:30.000I think that that's a clear and obvious play, probably by Israel, as well as the United States and NATO, to force Russia to fight then on two fronts.
00:35:40.000Or at the minimum, to divert their resources.
00:35:45.000And there's not too much more to say about it other than that.
00:35:48.000But that's what's going on, and it could be the case.
00:35:51.000Again, I haven't done a huge deep dive because you really, when these conflicts break out initially, you really have to dig in to see what information is legit and not.
00:36:01.000You remember when the war started in Ukraine.
00:36:04.000There was all this stuff about chemical weapons and nuclear power plants being attacked and maternity wards being bombed to smithereens.
00:36:11.000You know, you don't hear about that stuff anymore.
00:36:20.000The details are a little bit murky and it's, right now, perhaps unclear exactly what the motivation is, but I fail to see how the two are not connected.
00:36:32.000And so, it's very much, hey, credit to Washington.
00:36:35.000They're not going down without a fight.
00:38:20.000Washington's the big winner here, but not any human beings in the world, just the devil worshippers in Washington.
00:38:28.000So that is that, but we'll keep an eye on the Armenian-Azeri conflict as it develops.
00:38:35.000But to me, when I look at these things going on, I think the world is at war in Ukraine right now.
00:38:42.000I think that that explains the COVID shutdowns in China.
00:38:45.000I think that explains the Azeri-Armenian war.
00:38:48.000It explains so much of what is going on is that this is really, as I said earlier in the year, everybody involved knows how high the stakes are here.
00:39:04.000And the outcome is going to have a ripple effect that will shock the world, whatever it is.
00:39:10.000Either Russia is going to be put down,
00:39:12.000You know, we're doing these major demonstrations of force in Taiwan, and we're bitching out China, and we force Russia to submit, and it turns out that this is still Washington's century, at least maybe until 2050.
00:39:27.000Or it shows that the unipolar moment is over and Russia and China will create a parallel system and they're carving out their own half of the world.
00:39:35.000So the effects of the conflict are going to be very drastic and it's going to matter tremendously.
00:39:42.000That's why we're really pulling out all the stops to make sure that Russia doesn't get the advantage here.
00:39:47.000So I don't put it past them that they start another war just to pull some Russians out of Donbass.
00:43:04.000And the DOJ has opened a probe into the fundraising practices of Trump's slush fund for 24.
00:43:10.000And apparently, allegedly, they have raided the homes of 35 Trump allies connected to the Trump PAC, including Mike Lindell, whose phone was seized yesterday in a drive-thru at a fast food restaurant.
00:43:28.000At the same time, Ron DeSantis is building up the largest war chest of any governor in America.
00:43:37.000He has raised almost 200 million dollars in this cycle and is now on track, he is out fundraising the former president and he's doing it almost entirely with billionaire money.
00:43:53.000And I posted the figures on my telegram the other day.
00:43:55.000It is a tiny fraction of the $200 million that DeSantis has raised which he earned from small dollar donors.
00:44:06.000The vast majority of that $200 million is coming from new billionaire allies who are leaving Trump and now throwing their weight behind DeSantis.
00:44:16.000I think there's like six or seven billionaires that flipped and a lot of other rich people that are now behind DeSantis and they're all big contributions.
00:44:24.000We're talking tens of millions, millions, hundreds of thousands.
00:44:31.000Five-figure sums, not small-dollar donations.
00:44:34.000That's in stark contrast to Donald Trump where more than half of his donations come from small-dollar donors.
00:44:40.000$100 million and half of it is from small-dollar donors versus $200 million and it's almost all from billionaires who flipped.
00:44:52.000And I see what's going on with all these other investigations about January 6th and the National Archives, and go figure.
00:44:59.000Ron DeSantis, when Donald Trump was being raided, his personal residence being raided in the state of Florida, Ron DeSantis didn't say anything about it.
00:45:11.000He came out and gave a quick statement without even mentioning Trump once.
00:45:27.000It says, quote, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has cemented himself as the face of GOP opposition to COVID mandates, a position that is winning over not just rank-and-file voters ahead of the 2024 presidential primaries, but also some of the Republican Party's wealthiest donors.
00:45:44.000How the race shapes up will first and foremost be determined by whether former President Trump decides to run,
00:45:51.000But many donors are already investing early in potential candidates like DeSantis, whom polling shows to be the leading Trump alternative in the prospective field.
00:46:02.000Campaign finance records covering the first seven months of this year showed that prominent contributors, including many beyond Florida, are investing in DeSantis' 2024 re-election campaign, which could further solidify his prospects.
00:46:17.000All told, according to Open Secrets, DeSantis has raised a hefty $172 million as of August 19.
00:46:28.000Though DeSantis has not announced plans to run for president yet, he has emerged as the principal challenger to Trump, who has heavily teased a potential 2024 bid.
00:46:38.000A fresh national poll shows that in a hypothetical head-to-head primary, Donald Trump could struggle to get 50% against Ron DeSantis.
00:46:47.000A Yahoo News and YouGov poll conducted from September 2nd through September 6th shows former President Trump with 48% support among Republicans and DeSantis with 34%.
00:47:05.000Among registered voters, Trump again fails to get a clear majority with 49% support against 37% support for DeSantis.
00:47:15.000Interestingly, independent voters who can vote in Republican primaries in some states prefer DeSantis to Trump outright, with DeSantis drawing 42% support and Trump just 36%.
00:47:28.000DeSantis also holds his own among voters from what the survey calls purple states, swing states.
00:47:34.000The Florida governor and the former president are tied, each garnering 39% support.
00:48:01.000And because of the weaponization of the DOJ against Trump, Trump garners so much support from the donors and so much support from the voters
00:48:10.000That the GOP has to rally behind him and maybe DeSantis doesn't even bother.
00:48:17.000Trump is just so popular with the money and with the people that the party has to throw their support behind him and defend him from an investigation and Trump sails to the nomination and then maybe becomes president.
00:48:29.000That's one scenario that I see playing out.
00:48:42.000Throw the primary and Biden will indict Trump and prevent him from running.
00:48:48.000And by throwing the primary McConnell can divert resources from Trump and Peter Thiel into failing senators who will not win.
00:48:56.000And then DeSantis emerges out of all of this as a guy who's not under investigation, a guy with more money, and has all the necessary alliances in the party.
00:49:07.000And when the DOJ charges Trump, and when they blow up his slush fund, DeSantis will be the natural guy, even if Trump says he's gonna run, DeSantis will be the guy waiting in the wings saying, hey, I'm the guy that's not under investigation.
00:49:22.000I'm the guy that there's no ambiguity as to whether or not I will be able to run.
00:49:26.000I'm the guy who has social media and I'm the guy with 200 million dollars still intact.
00:49:33.000It seems to me that it's the wrong question to ask.
00:49:44.000I don't think that is the interesting question.
00:49:47.000The right question is, is DeSantis going to run regardless?
00:49:52.000He's either going to run or he's not, but he's not waiting to make his decision based on whether or not Trump wins.
00:49:58.000Or rather, whether or not Trump announces that he's running.
00:50:02.000DeSantis is waiting to see how viable it will be once Trump announces.
00:50:07.000He's not waiting to see if Trump announces, he's waiting to see if the DOJ is going to charge him, and if that's going to prevent Trump from running, and he's waiting to see what the voter, donor, and party reaction will be.
00:50:21.000But by all appearances it looks like you don't build a $200 million war chest running against a Democrat who's raised $15 million to win your reelection for governor.
00:50:58.000And the danger, of course, is that all the old Never Trumpers like this guy too.
00:51:02.000It's all the pundits, it's all the donors, it's the establishment.
00:51:06.000It also happens to be all the Never Trumpers for 2016 falling in line behind DeSantis.
00:51:12.000Straight from National Review, who's an obvious one, all the way through to people like Ben Shapiro, and even people that I'm a little bit surprised at, like Mike Cernovich, are throwing their support behind DeSantis, or Ann Coulter for that matter.
00:51:29.000So this is what it's shaping up to look like.
00:51:30.000And I'll remind you, DeSantis, I'm not going to vote for him.
00:51:43.000DeSantis is mobbed up with billionaires, mobbed up with the Mossad, and with Israel in ways that we don't even know.
00:51:50.000And by the way, he's not even that good.
00:51:52.000He's a good governor, but so much of what he pushes, which everybody gives him credit for, it dies in the federal courts.
00:51:59.000So much of it isn't even that good to begin with.
00:52:02.000You know, he was a vaccine salesman just like Trump.
00:52:05.000And he went to fly to Israel the week after he got inaugurated to sign a bill banning BDS in his country.
00:52:11.000He was also out there shilling against Ben and Jerry's because they sold ice cream in the West Bank or something.
00:52:17.000Because they sold ice cream in the disputed civilian settlements in the West Bank in Israel.
00:52:25.000So, and we've gone through this before, we've gone through it many times, but it's for reasons like this that if DeSantis is bad, or rather if Trump is bad, DeSantis is worse for the same reasons.
00:52:38.000Some people are skeptical about Trump.
00:52:40.000I would say that if Trump is bad, DeSantis has all the negatives, but worse.
00:52:45.000If you say that Trump is an Israel shill, DeSantis is more of an Israel shill.
00:52:50.000If you say that Trump is a cuck, DeSantis is more of a cuck.
00:52:54.000If you say that Trump is a sellout puppet, DeSantis is more so.
00:53:24.000But that they'll have Trump arrested at any cost, and they don't want him to run, and they don't want him to be the party, and Ben Shapiro's out there saying that Trump is... Trump is tanking the party, and he's going to ruin our chances in 24.
00:53:42.000In other words, not they would know that Trump is going to tank.
00:53:44.000They would know that Trump is their ideological and political adversary, just like we are.
00:53:51.000For those like Shapiro and Crystal and others.
00:53:56.000So to me, I take all that together, it's the money, it's the polling, it's the establishment, and I see them stabbing Trump to elevate DeSantis and he gets the nomination and then he probably becomes president without my vote.
00:54:12.000Unfortunately, though, Trump seems to still have the support of the party.
00:54:15.000He's got, it was reported in BBC, his endorsements have a 92% win rate.
00:54:22.00092% of the people that he endorsed in this cycle have won their election.
00:54:31.000So, I'm not trying to black pill you here tonight.
00:54:34.000I'm trying to tell you that it's going to be a fight.
00:54:37.000Whatever the case may be, Trump will announce and it's still going to be a fight.
00:54:43.000And it's not just going to be a fight against Biden like it was in 20 against Joe Biden.
00:54:49.000Or rather, it's not going to be a fight in this cycle against whoever the Democratic nominee is, I should say.
00:54:55.000It's not just going to be a fight against the Fed, Gov, and the Democrat nominee in 24.
00:55:01.000It's also going to be a fight against the Republican Party.
00:55:05.000Even though we're presuming he announces it's still going to be a fight against DeSantis, the money, and all of them.
00:55:12.000So again, that's not to say that we're going to get a bad outcome necessarily, but it is to say that
00:55:19.000It's going to be tough and it's going to be coming at us from all angles and just as unlikely as it was eight years ago when this all started.
00:56:33.000It's honestly sad, because this should have been the cycle that we had a lot of America First, Trump-type people, and almost everybody just... Almost everybody just...
00:56:53.000Between, and I don't want to name any names, but it's not even, because people look at our record, and we had a pretty good record.
00:57:00.000Almost everybody that we endorsed won, with the exception of, you know, Joe Kent won, and Laura Loomer lost, although I think both of those were long shots.
00:57:10.000You know, Laura Loomer didn't come very close in the last cycle.
00:57:13.000She did very well this year, but I wasn't extremely surprised, just because it's rigged, one.
00:57:20.000And two, Webster's been going around for 30 years.
00:57:23.000And also in Washington, you had Teal, Bannon, Trump, everybody campaigning for Kent, and he barely won.
00:57:30.000But we got Gosar in, and we got Wendy Rogers won, and Carrie Lake, and Blake Masters.
00:57:38.000And John Gibbs won in Michigan, and Kobach won in Kansas, and there were some other people I didn't want to mention who are a little bit more low-key, who are on track to win office at the state and federal level as well.
00:57:52.000So it was mostly good, but there were a lot of candidates that we backed initially that just totally shit the bed.
00:57:59.000Like people that just dropped out for stupid reasons, and I was like, just disappointed.
00:58:03.000So I'm probably going to sit this one out in 22, mostly because we don't really have anything going on in Illinois, but also because I'm not happy with the party.
00:58:11.000And I think that's going to be the only way in 24 is, look, if you don't fix the elections, if you don't get election integrity, if you can't guarantee it's a secure election, and if it's not Trump, I will not vote.
00:58:22.000And I almost want to make that like a project.