On today's show, we discuss the latest in the DeSantis vs. Trump primary battle, and why we should be worried about what we know about it. Plus, we take a deep dive into the psychology of the campaign.
00:00:00.000And DeSantis clearly cannot punch back. And that is one of the things about Trump. He was a counterpuncher, but then he's also a preemptive puncher. He'll kind of sense which way the wind's blowing and then start punching in that direction to mix a metaphor here.
00:00:18.220But DeSantis has just failed to do it. His only response is, I'm just focusing on Florida and we're trying to bring people together here and so on. But that strikes me as someone who's going to have a difficult time counterpunching to anyone.
00:00:35.260And, you know, in terms of the 2028 thing, I get that that, you know, makes sense in theory. But I don't think that quite makes sense in practice. Because you've got to, you know, like with a football team or any sports team, you kind of need to peak at the right time.
00:00:59.520And there's all these teams that peak almost in the preseason. And they and then they kind of fall apart or they peak in October and then they kind of hit the skids going into the playoffs and then they lose out.
00:01:15.360And it's a it's a it's a it's those teams that are kind of just like getting, you know, firing on all cylinders as they're going into the playoffs that are the ones that make these runs.
00:01:27.640And I think it's the same thing with politics. I mean, I don't if I were advising him.
00:01:33.760Of course, if I were advising him, I would advise him to go jump off a bridge. But if I were advising him in a way to win, I mean, the assumption that he's going to still be this hot in four years is a big if.
00:01:52.920It's a big assumption. And I'm not sure I definitely I necessarily buy it. I mean, we have these people who kind of peaked in the 2008 2010 era, maybe 2012, like Chris Christie, I remember Marco Rubio was really hot.
00:02:10.580I don't think that. I don't think that Ted Cruz will be able to run for president again after barely beating Beto or work and just, you know, the Cancun adventure and so on.
00:02:26.660You've got to strike while the iron's hot. I also I think I'm getting a little bit closer to understanding DeSantis as a person.
00:02:36.040And I do think he's an incredibly ambitious person, an insanely ambitious person. And I don't think he's going to leave that. I don't think he's going to sit this one out.
00:02:50.460The other thing is that there's so much being projected upon DeSantis.
00:02:56.580So the whole Claremont Institute fellows, all those people are all behind him. They're they're much like in 2015. They're meaning him into existence, talking big.
00:03:09.980The Jeb Bush establishment Republican side has effectively endorsed him. I mean, Jeb said, I mean, it was the kiss of death, in my opinion. But Jeb said, you know, this is this is this time.
00:03:22.580And so and everyone's doing it for different reasons. I think he's a screen that people project their fantasies upon.
00:03:32.380But, you know, that doesn't mean that it's not the time to do this.
00:03:38.060And I do think it is. And I do think it will run. And I don't think he'll be able to pull out the Republican nomination, barring Trump being sent to jail because of this factor.
00:03:51.620He just doesn't have that pugnacious ability to target an enemy and slam him.
00:04:00.220And Trump obviously does. I mean, DeSantis has been thinking in the polls of late.
00:04:05.520I mean, these are very early polls about, you know, where are you in New Hampshire and Iowa and straw polls or something like that.
00:04:13.180So we should we shouldn't put too much stock in them. But, you know, there's a decided trend in that direction.
00:04:19.520Because of this fact. But I did want to talk about the psychology of DeSantis, because it's I actually I'm running a bit on empty right now.
00:04:33.960I think I'll be fine for this conversation. But I got about two hours of sleep total last night because I got called out to L.A. to do this crazy thing, which I can talk about.
00:04:44.000But one of the reasons why I was able to stay up is that I hopped on this kind of crazy all night Twitter space and that Charles is hosting.
00:05:01.840And I, you know, it kept me awake there in the LAX airport to get on a 5 a.m.
00:05:08.880So I was happy to do it for you, Richard. Happy to do it.
00:05:12.600Yes. Kept me going. I was about to turn into a zombie length state, which will sometimes be done when you when you stay up all night and you're in an airport, which is this synthetic environment.
00:05:25.060You kind of forget if it's morning or night and or if it's day or what day it is or who you are.
00:05:45.380Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist type of person.
00:05:53.840He is. And I think I used this metaphor before on maybe a space or maybe on on one of these podcasts or members only when I said, you know,
00:06:04.720Mitt Romney is the type of football player that if he threw three interceptions in the game.
00:06:13.720He would go up to the coach himself and say, you've got to take me out and give someone else a shot.
00:06:20.260I ultimately want to win and I'm going to put my ego aside for this one.
00:06:25.240Donald Trump would never say that he would poison the Gatorade of his backup quarterback if that happened.
00:06:34.720If the team decided to go without him, he would slash the tires of the team bus so they could not make the game.
00:06:43.320He would rather the whole thing to go down than for him to be left behind and to be absent of that fuel that people like him thrive on.
00:06:58.720The cheers, the jeers from his enemies, the dynamic of it all, the fight, the endless fight that is basically a political campaign at this point.
00:07:13.640Two years of just people obsessing about you.
00:07:17.440It's very hard to like leave the public's imagination.
00:07:21.680So I think there might even be a little bit of that Norma Desmond thing going on.
00:07:29.000Another grand pathological narcissist who is almost metaphorical in her qualities.
00:08:29.740And I just, I can't see him giving it up.
00:08:32.140And so there's a kind of benign quality to his narcissism on some level.
00:08:38.660I mean, he doesn't want to actually govern or he couldn't govern if he wanted to.
00:08:45.020And he wants to stare at his television, yell at it and tweet out mean things about people and brag and do a little victimization now and again and all that kind of stuff that we're used to with Trump.
00:08:59.740And I think DeSantis is an entirely different human being altogether.
00:16:00.660He's going to ask who needs to kill for the job.
00:16:02.760So I think he is a, the more I think about him, the more I find him to be a dangerous person.
00:16:16.100And the more I want to kind of think about some of these odd aspects of his career.
00:16:22.660And I would, you know, I'm glad Charles is here because he can go into some of these things as well.
00:16:28.840But let me just, let me not delve into any kind of speculation or conspiracy theory or something.
00:16:36.500Let me just talk about what we know about him and then think about what that says about him as a psyche, as a, what it says about his inner life.
00:16:47.880So he, after law school and after being a teacher for a year, it was actually the same track.
00:16:59.100We're the same age, interestingly, and I also was a teacher for a year after college.
00:17:04.140Anyway, at a prep school, boarding school, actually, kind of weird to some degree.
00:17:10.340But he was a lawyer overseeing Guantanamo Bay in the war on terror.
00:17:19.940I mean, he was quite literally overseeing all of this sadistic stuff that became a shame to the nation, you know, in the tail end of George W. Bush's first term.
00:17:37.940This is a guy who's involved in that kind of stuff, not just about finding the terrorist or stopping whatever.
00:17:47.380It's about forcing them into degrading sexual acts, building a little, you know, human pyramid, who knows, pissing on them, flushing the Quran down the toilet, whatever.
00:18:00.100And I think there's, you know, maybe you could kind of dismiss that and say it was just a job, but I think it kind of defines how he views politics, which is in an extremely personal and petty and sadistic, but also from our standpoint, or from the standpoint of any serious person, a useless manner.
00:18:27.100So, let's look at just a few things that he's doing.
00:18:33.320He, the shipment of migrants to Martha's Vineyard.
00:18:37.720I mean, I actually did a bit of a talk on this, and we discussed this when it happened back over the summer.
00:18:44.920He picks up, he picks up on something going on in the base.
00:18:49.660He knows that they're obsessed with immigration, that Trump ran on immigration in 2016.
00:18:57.420He sees that that's a way to elicit a response from the herd.
00:19:03.680And he does this extremely personal and sadistic on all levels act of taking migrants who are probably here to mow lawns, to be honest, but who knows, might actually be dangerous.
00:19:19.540At the very least, they're undocumented, they're poor, you know, it's the type of person who would probably engage in crime.
00:19:26.680And he ships them to his political enemies, he ships them to WASP-y areas, the not-in-my-backyard type areas in Martha's Vineyard, just out of pure sadism.
00:19:38.500I mean, there's nothing, there's no possible way that that leads to, like, policy or changes anyone's mind.
00:19:47.900It's just viewed as an inhumane and disgusting act.
00:19:52.780And that's how he makes his fortune, or his fortune in politics, that is.
00:19:59.840And he deals with some fairly unsavory figures, and he goes out of his way to find these people, many of whom were not coming from Florida.
00:20:09.020Similar situation when he perceived, as someone, again, who doesn't have an emotional life or, you know, what some people might call a soul, he perceives that he can elicit a response from the crowd when he does something about voter integrity, so-called.
00:20:34.080And obviously, I mean, I've made myself abundantly clear here, all of that Stop the Steal stuff was a complete con job.
00:20:42.940And, you know, whatever kernels of truth might have been there, it was a bizarre, it was a big lie.
00:20:50.140It's a big, you know, with the MSNBC tagline, I don't care, it's true.
00:21:21.800But he wants to do something for those people because he realizes it elicits a response.
00:21:27.200And so he goes after a bunch of average Floridians who might have had felony records and voted illegally, even after he kind of entrapped them into doing it, but voted illegally, but voted in good faith.
00:21:47.660Now, I would suggest that a prosecutor might not prosecute this kind of thing, might just throw the votes out, might give them a warning, might give them a little education pamphlet.
00:22:01.060No, Ron DeSantis throws them into prison and gets the whole thing on videotape so everyone can see this.
00:22:14.600It is a meaningless act from the standpoint of voter integrity.
00:22:18.540Yet he does it to elicit a response to manipulate people in the crowd.
00:22:24.980And he does it out of his own just soulless, sadistic attitude towards the world of, wouldn't it be kind of fun to throw that black lady in jail?
00:23:44.060I think it would really be like someone who picks up on some Trump memes.
00:23:50.580And we have this just useless but absolute statist in the White House.
00:23:57.080And I generally think that would be a bad thing.
00:24:02.660And, you know, I don't know what to say.
00:24:06.280It's kind of a 99% of a chance it's not going to happen.
00:24:11.780But I don't think it would be good for someone like that to be in power when people like myself and us are criticizing him or even demeaning him.
00:24:27.280Just today, he has proposed a bill or signed a bill.
00:24:35.000In which all bloggers that discuss an elected official in Florida have to register and report to the state what they have blogged about.
00:24:46.400Now, that kind of seems like a, I don't know.
00:24:49.500I don't know if it's technically a First Amendment violation.
00:24:52.260I mean, it's obviously they're not at least ostensibly suppressing anyone's speech or things like that.
00:24:58.740But they will fine you if you aren't registered.
00:25:02.200And that does create a kind of chilling effect.
00:25:06.840So there is a very strong, I mean, it's pretty unprecedented from what I can tell.
00:25:13.560Obviously, you know, to interview the White House press secretary, you've got to, you know, have an in and be with a legit institution, etc.
00:25:22.940But this notion of if you're going to write about politics that you have to register with the state of Florida, that is use your own name and social security number and address.
00:25:34.080I mean, this kind of stuff, again, you can say it's fascist or whatever.
00:25:39.500Well, fascists actually had an ideology and a vision and an aesthetic and so on.
00:25:45.160Although, granted, they probably would do some tactics like this.
00:25:49.860But it's almost like fascism without the fascism.
00:25:52.420It's just pure, sadistic authoritarianism and authoritarianism for no reason outside of someone who desperately seeks power.
00:26:05.660So anyway, these are my initial thoughts on DeSantis.
00:26:10.860We can talk about some other things, but I think it is worth talking about DeSantis.
00:26:15.660But, you know, just to sum up, I definitely think he's running.
00:26:21.540I don't think he can win, but he definitely has the ruthless will to win.
00:26:27.360And I think having someone like that in any place of authority is really horrible.
00:26:38.520Just as a little aside here, I mean, we were joking about this last night.
00:26:42.580I mean, what in the hell has happened to us where Florida has become this model state for conservatives?
00:26:51.000It's like free state Florida in Tucker Carlson's mind and things like that.
00:26:55.920Florida is leaning red because there are these, you know, tens or hundreds of thousands of billions, perhaps, retirees who are going down there.
00:28:34.500He's like, this is kind of the thing that like you and I would have talked about and laughed about, but he actually like went ahead and did it.
00:28:42.000And I think there's a level of like audacity to him.
00:28:47.860He human trafficked Venezuelans, basically.
00:29:03.880So let me put it like a little, you know, kind of further back.
00:29:07.540So I first met him through a guy named Mike McClellan and Mike McClellan was involved with the Republican Party politics, you know, is involved in Orange County, California.
00:29:21.820He's a sort of attorney type and he very, very sharp, you know, guy.
00:29:27.080He he had me over for his home for Thanksgiving one time, you know, so we were sort of we're sort of friends, if you will.
00:29:33.260And he has he was DeSantis, his roommate at Yale.
00:29:41.320You know, first introduced to DeSantis from this kind of like, you know, Yaley, you know, he's sort of, you know, big talking lawyer type was like, oh, what was he like as a roommate?
00:29:55.960And he's like, extremely dedicated, extremely focused, just a total grind at all times, just like he will do the work, you give him the orders, but he is not creative.
00:30:14.940You know, he was engaged in all these like weird Jewish things.
00:30:18.120Like he'd go to like the David Horowitz Center.
00:30:20.600He was sort of very close with Ike Perlmutter, the Israeli intelligence officer ultimately helped, you know, take over.
00:30:29.480He basically stole Marvel from Stan Lee and then sold it to Disney.
00:30:33.300And one of the things that I've kind of come away with on the on the Disney kind of front is that, like, this is proper fascism, like make no mistake about it.
00:30:45.160Like he's trying to shake down a company to get it to change.
00:31:20.400You know, the one old friend that he has.
00:31:22.560The one and only friend that he has is, you know, was this guy, Kent Sturman, who shot himself in the head back in December after he was having an affair with his babysitter, tried to shake him down.
00:31:36.180And Kent Sturman is, you know, he was himself kind of like somebody who moved around soldiers.
00:32:07.220Ultimately, it didn't come to anything.
00:32:10.000Because DeSantis had won the governorship of Florida.
00:32:13.500Matt Gaetz and I were heavily involved in staffing his administration.
00:32:19.100Gaetz was the head of the, that was involved in, as the chair of that whole operation.
00:32:26.220You know, sort of the, and I was involved as well, because we all kind of knew that DeSantis was running for president, that he has always been running for president.
00:32:33.880And he is a sort of, the way I would describe him is he's kind of the mob son, done well.
00:32:44.040You know, so the question is, with DeSantis, is the big question, the one I have not figured out the answer to, is, is he just the puppet of all these rich people?
00:32:56.440Or is he so, you know, sociopathic that he basically is using them, too, to achieve his objective?
00:33:21.180He never, you know, he never, you know, he is, the only person he's very close to is his wife, who essentially tells him what to do on most, most occasions.
00:33:35.320I've been, I've been around them when they're together.
00:33:39.880And he's like, you know, he's very autistic in kind of how he behaves.
00:33:45.040Like, she'll say, do this, Ron, and he'll do it.
00:33:47.760Like, it's like she's talking to one of their children.
00:35:52.040I think the quote about Tom's right to mention this, when I met him, I met him through, again, I'd met him on numerous occasions, but he seems to forget very selectively.
00:36:04.320He wanted my help with Teal, and he gave Matt, you know, had Matt Gates give him his, give me his State of the Union seat on the guise that might help him raise money from Teal.
00:36:20.480And he told me, at one point, when I met him at the Trump Hotel, that it was, you know, better, better, basically, if the Jews run everything.
00:37:25.400And somebody took me aside and was like, no, he was raised Roman Catholic, but basically he goes to all these, you know, basically these weird evangelical churches.
00:37:35.620And even on his Wikipedia, it says that he's Roman Catholic, you know, it's clearly, like, not true.
00:37:43.160Like, if he's Roman Catholic, he's, like, no Roman Catholic that I've ever encountered.
00:37:50.020You know, his, there are all kinds of rumors about how he met his wife.
00:37:55.540It has a sort of, like, assigned wife, you know, feel to it.
00:37:59.380He was something of a womanizer way back when, you know, which kind of is actually, I think, one of his more endearing qualities.
00:38:09.800But the women that we sort of have, you know, that we know that he was sort of dated or whatever, they do not regard him as fondly as the ones who dated Trump.
00:38:20.060There's a sort of, like, fear around him, which, again, fits your sociopath kind of thing.
00:38:26.720There's the sister, the sister died under very suspicious circumstances, sort of more that could be said there, I think, at some point.
00:38:38.160And, yeah, her, he's, basically, he joins, he becomes a JAG officer, and he marries Jill Casey Black, who's from Troy, Ohio.
00:38:49.920And she is, you know, it's basically Miami, Ohio, you know, kind of area.