S3: DeSanctimonious Deep Dive (with Tara Palmeri) 43:17

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we're doing a deep dive on Ron, the meatball DeSantis. Now, you might ask, hey, Nikki Haley just got into the race this week. Why not do an episode about her? That's fair. But when we ask voters who they'd vote for, if not Donald Trump, the answer is never Nikki Haley. It's almost always Ron DeSantis.

And polling regularly bears this out. In fact, the poll we did a few weeks ago with GOP pollster Whit Ayers had DeSantis beating Trump both head-to-head and in a three-way ballot with somebody else. And our poll isn't an outlier in this regard. Lots of reputable polls now have Ron DeSantis beating Trump in head-to-head matchups.

And while some have speculated that Ron DeSantis may be the Scott Walker of this cycle, meaning someone with lots of hype that he ultimately can't live up to, Nate Cohn of the New York Times points out in his column this week, Mr. DeSantis is no Scott Walker. He would start the campaign in a very different and far stronger position, even if there's still no way to know whether he has what it takes to succeed against former President Donald J. Trump. So I basically agree with that.

Does Ron DeSantis have what it takes to beat Trump in a GOP primary? Will he live up to the hype?

My guest today is someone who is well-sourced in the simmering war between Trump and DeSantis, Tara Palmieri, senior political correspondent at Puck News. Tara, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, Sarah. Okay, so you're like the person who knows all this stuff. You're deep, deep reporting on both the Trump camp and the DeSantis camp. Just to level set, can you give us the 10,000-foot view of

DeSantis? Like, who is he? Does he have good political instincts? Is he as cranky as he always looks on TV? Just like, tell us your big picture on him. I think there's just so many unknowns about DeSantis. I think that

that Republican voters who don't want Trump anymore, I think Republican leaders, consultants, et cetera, they're kind of projecting a lot of their hopes and dreams on Ron DeSantis and what he can do. Right now, he's a governor with a good track record. We've seen that before. But I think the big question mark is about whether he will be good on the debate stage and whether he'll be a good retail politician.

All indications so far show that those are his weaknesses. And so it's kind of a moment where he's being dragged into the debate by Trump, who wants him in the ring. Trump is lonely out there as the front runner, and Trump is best when he's fighting. It's not clear that Ron DeSantis is really best when he's fighting. I watched some old DeSantis videos and

from debates. And he's not really the strongest on the stage, even up against Andrew Gillum when he was running for governor the first time around, Charlie Crist. And Trump plays below the belt

We can only imagine it'll be petty and childish, like the meatball, right? Kind of dumb, like DeSantis demonious. And then just like sleazy, like the groomer innuendo. And, you know, I'm told that they'll keep going until they can really get him in the race. And I've been told that they're already looking at DeSantis' wife, Casey, who he's very close with.

as the person and the topic that will eventually pull Ron in. Because if you don't defend your wife, it doesn't look very good on you either, right? I mean, if that's anything we've learned from the Ted Cruz, Heidi Cruz attacks, that he was punished by voters for not defending his wife enough against Donald Trump's attacks. So Trump wants DeSantis in the ring because his gut matches the fears of the Republican Party that DeSantis perhaps is more a reflection of the hopes of the party rather than what is actually there.

And he might not be able to stand up to Trump because he also needs Trump's voters. And Trump knows that as well. Yeah. I mean, this is just not as straightforward as people seem to think it is. So I agreed with Nate Cohn's piece in The Tilt this week that DeSantis isn't really Scott Walker in the sense that a lot of Republican voters want him to be the president.

And I can't tell you, you know, I've been doing these focus groups now for years. And when we started getting into the question of do you want Trump to run again in 2024, that has evolved. It's just been diminishing over time in terms of people's enthusiasm for Trump running again. But the biggest differentiator, the biggest thing that changed was that they had somewhere to go, somebody that they liked. And that person has been around DeSantis now really consistently. People have been sort of growing in their enthusiasm. It's reflected in the polls.

but their relationship to him is also a little shallow. They have seen him on a bunch of YouTube clips and on Fox News. They see him at the podium yelling at the media in Florida. They see him yelling at teenagers in masks. They know he took on Disney. They like how he handled COVID. So they have these things that they like about him. But there's also, as you note, the question of his political talent. There's also a question that I've had, which is like,

What does he believe about a whole bunch of other stuff, like national issues that are going to come up once he's on the national stage? So just for one example, where do we think he is on Ukraine? This is a huge dividing line within the Republican Party. And so the one thing I would give him I've seen as a political instinct has been his strategic silence, like his ability to not engage and not get pulled in. But at some point, he's got to answer

would you keep supporting Ukraine if you were the president of the United States? And that will be a thing that may very well turn off some of the populist base. Do you have any sense of where he stands on some of these big national issues? Ukraine, Social Security, Medicare. There are a lot of things that DeSantis is not wading into, and he really can kind of hide behind the I'm a governor of Florida position for now because he hasn't fully

announced. And I mean, he's dealing with the Florida press. He hasn't actually faced the national press corps when I think you're going to get those answers or you're going to get a lot of defensiveness. And that might not be enough for voters based on the fact that, you know, he was a member of the House Freedom Caucus and a lot of them are against aid to Ukraine. I would assume that that would be his position, but he might be poll testing it. He might be against aid to Ukraine when he's in the primary. And then when he gets into the general, he may soften on that. Right.

Right now, he feels comfort in culture war issues, as you can tell, and he's leaning into that. He sees himself as like an anti-vaccine warrior in some ways. Of course, Trump's team says we've got clips of times when he supported the vaccine. They also say they've got clips of when he called for Medicare and Social Security reform, or when he was a House Freedom Caucus member. Obviously, when you're

member of Congress to governor, your positions change. But you're right. There's just like a lot we don't know about it. We don't know how he's going to weigh on the issues. I have a feeling that he's going to change his positions based on what he thinks is going to win him a Republican primary versus a general election. You know, it's interesting. It's like I was talking to my dad. He was a fan of Trump.

didn't like him as a person, which I think you hear a lot from voters, but appreciated his policies and would probably vote for him again. Although the attacks on DeSantis just aren't like sitting well with him. And I've actually never really heard him bring up DeSantis before until he mentioned that Trump attacked DeSantis and he didn't think that was right.

that he didn't think that he should be attacking another Republican. And I just wonder if you're right, like maybe Republican voters have just so much

hope in DeSantis that they don't want to see him getting destroyed by Trump. It was like kind of a group of people built on grievances, but now perhaps that they're out of power, they're building their dreams on hope that somebody can help them. You know what I mean? I do know what you mean. And I think it's 100% true. And I actually think you just landed on what I think is kind of an essential question that I have, which is we're all assuming that Trump

DeSantis has to be super careful about attacking Trump because he needs his voters. But like the reverse can also be true that Trump attacking DeSantis is the kind of thing that causes voters to sour on him because they're

I will tell you from the focus groups, electability has become the coin of the realm in the way a big swath, not everybody, but there's this big middle of the party that they voted twice for Trump. They like Trump. They're not breaking with Trump, but they want to win. And they think Ron DeSantis is the more electable choice and seeing Trump tear him down could actually rally people to DeSantis as opposed to causing people to flee from DeSantis. I just don't think we know that dynamic yet. So,

I want to play some clips on this, but I do want to start, I'm actually going to start with Nikki Haley, because one of the reasons I'm bearish on Haley and more bullish on DeSantis, besides all the polls and indicators, is because I've listened to voters talk about Haley like this. She's just going to be a return to what everything was before 2016, you know, status quo politician, basically.

I don't think she's anything different than, you know, Republicans that we've seen in the past. I think she'd just be, you know, more of the same cookie cutter conservative views. She would just be right back to the Paul Ryan, John Boehner kind of a thing. Yeah, that's a no go for me.

So Nikki Haley has a lot of attributes that would make her sort of a fresh, new, forward-looking kind of candidate. She's young, early 50s, so relatively young to all the other people in elected office right now. You know, she's a minority. She's a woman. She'll likely be the only woman that's in the Republican primary. Great foreign policy chops. So why does everybody think that she's a throwback?

And the reason is, is that there's like a dividing line, like a before Trump and after Trump. But she is a pre-Trump politician and people basically write her off as establishment. They like her. Okay. They don't hate her.

Like they do often, you'll hear some real hate for Mike Pence or Liz Cheney. They like her fine, but they're not that interested in voting for her. And so I'm trying to puzzle through, like, what is Nikki's play here? And I guess I wonder, and I want to know what you think about this. If she places a respectable but somewhat distant third in Iowa and or New Hampshire, New Hampshire is probably a better fit for her.

Could she have leverage over either Trump or DeSantis? Like, let's say they're both in the high 20s, low 30s. They're kind of slugging it out. And you're headed into South Carolina, her home state, where she was a two-time governor. Is that a place where she can cut a deal for a VP slot with one of the two frontrunners? Or is the party so far gone that Nikki Haley's actually a drag on a ticket like somebody like DeSantis? What do you think?

Yeah, I don't see what Nikki Haley offers, even in South Carolina. A lot of the polling shows her behind DeSantis and Trump in South Carolina, where she's from. Not to mention that we're pretty sure that Tim Scott is going to jump into the race, right? That's true. I don't know exactly. She might help Trump in terms of winning over suburban women who he's lost. Maybe that's the VP play, but I think the animosity between them is just so palpable. Between Nikki and Trump? Yeah. I mean, from what I know...

He talks more about Tim Scott being a possible VP. I think he dreams that he can win back African-American voters. That's super interesting to me. I guess he has been beating her up a little bit, but I guess for Trump, I guess I felt like it's kind of a light touch on her. And I feel like strategically, and you can tell me whether or not they think this way,

Somebody like her, she doesn't cut into Trump, but she could cut into some of the normies who like DeSantis, right? And so to the extent that Trump benefits ultimately from a larger field, it's not that I think she could win South Carolina. It's that I think maybe she's getting a gentle womanly 12% and the two front runners are locked in tight and they want

that. They want that 12% to come out of South Carolina to bounce into Super Tuesday because Super Tuesday for the Republicans is such a massive delegate grab that you kind of got to go in with some momentum. I don't know. I mean, I could see her thinking like that. I don't really know. What about the idea that she would eat into Ron DeSantis versus Trump? Like, does Trump want her in the field?

Yeah, I think he does. She does eat into Ron DeSantis. I think everybody does. And Trump wants to encourage others to get into the race with him, right? If he attacks Trump,

Nikki Haley too viciously. You think Mike Pompeo wants to jump in? Right. Do you think Mike Pence wants to get in the race? You think Tim Scott? Everybody's already thinking about getting in late anyway, right? To sort of play it out. And it's only an advantage for Trump to have as many people in the ring as possible, right? I think he's actually being strategic about this and just kind of like letting her exist.

And as a way to invite others to get in. You know, you make such a good point, though, about the timing of people getting in. This is the one thing I kind of give her props for is she got in early because she knows she's got to define herself. She's got to build her profile. But everybody else is kind of going to wait. But what do you make of the timeline? Like, when do you think is an optimal time for Rhonda Santus or even others to start getting in?

You sort of want to get in early enough that you get some news cycles to yourself and not become an also-ran. But you also kind of want to wait to see if Trump, I don't know, gets indicted, just dies on the vine. And I don't mean that literally. I meant that figuratively as in terms of waning with voters. But anything is possible. Anything is possible. So what do you think the sequence is, the optimal sequence is for people getting in?

Okay. So I think the only person who really has pressure to get in by late May, early June is DeSantis. Because I think that if he doesn't get in, there are going to be more questions about why he's not in yet. There are going to be stories about, is he dithering? Does he really want to do this or not? There might be lack of confidence in him, just like from voters, donors. He's already presumed to be in the race. So if he pushes it past that

late May, early June, I think it's just not a good look for him. So he needs to get in. He's the only one I think needs to get in then. Others are just going to be anxious to build their profile and see a news vacuum. I bet you Mike Pence gets in April or something, you know what I mean? Or Mike Pompeo, they get in April. And Tim Scott probably could wait a little later.

I mean, there's a whole other group, the third rung, I would say, that are sort of like, let Trump and DeSantis...

kill each other, duke it out, bloody, perhaps suicide, murder mission. Maybe only one goes down, but the one that survives is weakened, right? People are turned off by the whole thing. The other few, they can't even make any noise because they're so overshadowed by the fight, the slugfest that's going on. So, you know, they become really non-factors if their campaigns even last until the fall, right? Yeah.

So you're saying people, they get bloodied up and Chris Sununu is just like, and now come August, people just are going to want some Sununu. Exactly. Like suddenly that's what they're going to want. That's the thinking? Yes, exactly. Like great stuff. I'm hearing this from Chris Christie land. Okay. From Rick Scott world, you know, he's got the money and he's using all his time building his profile. He could jump in, get on the ballot. It's a lot about money to get on the ballot, you know, at that point. And yeah, there's a feeling of like,

can you be the Rick Perry late entrant and jump in and surge? And sure, you missed the debate, but it doesn't matter because everybody's lying on the floor dead. This is a thinking right now. I can see that. Rick Perry never became president. Exactly. None of these people ever became president. But at the same time, every cycle is different. And I think there's a feeling that

Does it make sense to jump into the pen? You're probably not even going to be heard if you get in there. I really agree with you on this idea that there's going to be like heats, like there's going to be this like early heat and there's going to be this like meh middle tier, your Pompeos, your Pence's, maybe Christie's.

they don't have anything else that they're doing except books and whatnot. And then there's going to be like the governor's heat. Like everybody gets done with their legislative session. I'm interested in this idea that you actually think there's like a tail heat of people who are like, oh, are you all running it? Nobody can break 25%. I'll get in and be the last man. That's interesting. If you're rich enough, you can pull it off, I think.

Sure, sure. I don't know if Republican primary voters are clamoring for that Rick Scott campaign. No, no, I don't think so. But if there was an opportunity for anyone, it does seem like the wealthier candidates get in later. Remember Bloomberg got in later. Again, they never win. Totally. They never win, but you have that luxury of sort of feeling out the field. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. All right. So listen, I want to dive in to how our groups talk about DeSantis. So your colleague and a previous guest on this show, Peter Hamby, reported recently that two people in DeSantis' orbit are starting a super PAC.

one of the most concrete signs yet that he's looking seriously at running, which I guess, as you keep saying, we all presume that he is. So we're going to hear from some maybe Trump voters we talked to over the last couple months. So these are Trump 2016 and 2020 voters that are considering a move away from Trump. And if you've listened to any of the previous episodes of this show, a lot of the themes here will sound really familiar. Let's listen.

DeSantis right now has a lot of momentum. And ideally, I'd love for Trump to get it now. We have eight years of DeSantis after. But we need a person who has the momentum now if we really want to go for a win. And the fact that he can't, with his endorsements, can't even get Congress people elected, that doesn't do well for us. We need somebody who can get not only presidential, but also get House and Senate seats elected.

I'm not going to pretend to be that versed in his policies, but to what Michael said, I think he handled COVID and the pandemic just in a stellar way. I think he appeals to sort of that all-American family. You know, he's got a strong core. His family unit's intact, all of that. That's something that appeals to me in addition to, you know, his political viewpoint.

So I think what DeSantis has managed to do is to say things in a more polite stance and has managed to not offend as many people as Trump has. So I think if he were to get in the race, I think he would definitely have the stronger card. I think about...

What about if there were a Trump-DeSantis ticket? And I think it would be a good idea because I think, you know, one thing of why we don't want anything to happen to Biden is we know what's behind him. And Lord knows if we don't want Biden, we sure don't want the next one in office either. I'm a little hesitant, but yeah, I would vote for DeSantis and Harvey.

I'd like to see Ron DeSantis jump into it. I think he has a lot of the same ideologies and views as Trump and relates to people in that way, even though he is like a career politician, he doesn't come across that way. And I just think he's a lot more polished and relatable to people who like Trump, but not how he sends his message. Trump doesn't bother me at all. I mean, sometimes he does. Sometimes I feel like he's being like a child, but

As long as he's saying something that is worth saying, I'm okay with it. But 95% of the people I talk to don't feel that way. They just, they're done with them. And I feel like DeSantis wouldn't have as much riff. Like the Democrats wouldn't always be trying to catch him in something. I mean, they will, but they won't as badly as they're still doing with Trump.

We just grabbed a random five. They always say the same thing, like this is Trump without the baggage. He's more electable. Ron DeSantis is still a fighter. It's all there. So Tara, you and your colleagues, when you talk to DeSantis World,

How does DeSantis run against Trump? Is he going to like gold watch him to death? Like Trump was the greatest president of our time, but you need somebody electable because you can hear how receptive the voters are to the electability message. Or does he need to take him on hard? You know, I'm watching Nikki Haley do this weird strategy where she never criticizes Trump. He's great, but we just need generational change. And I really am talking about Joe Biden, but obviously I'm also kind of talking about Trump. So how does DeSantis take him on?

Yeah, I think electability is huge. When you're out of power, electability becomes a bigger issue. Republicans are out of power and they're coming off like a very bruising election that I'm actually surprised to hear from the focus group that they attribute that to Trump. I wasn't sure if voters truly understood that he was picking candidates and endorsing the wrong type of candidates, but it seems like it has. And so that's a huge asset for Ron DeSantis.

That is going to be DeSantis' strong suit. Like just calling Trump a two-time loser, which, you know, you hear Democrats say it, but like Republicans have suffered because of it electorally. So I think it has a bit more of a punch now.

So you think he'll take him on directly? Like, you think you'll say, look, this guy is losing things for us? Because Nikki Haley is saying, hey, we've lost seven out of the eight last popular votes. But she's not saying because of Trump. Like, do you think DeSantis has the gumption to say, look, Trump's been costing us elections. We can't keep going down this path. Or do you think he'll elide it kind of the same way I expect a lot of these other candidates to do it?

I think the rubber is going to have to hit the road at some point. And I don't think it's going to happen now. But I think eventually, Sarah, like when they're in the debate stage, like he saves that for that moment. You know what I mean? So I agree with this sort of except for the idea of being sure Trump's going to debate. Like I guess he does if he thinks that DeSantis is crappy at it. Yeah, that's Trump's like strength. It would be like ridiculous if he didn't get on the debate stage. What is he doing this for? Right.

I think you say bad ammo for when you're on the debate stage. You know, it's already out there. You can have other people say it. Like, it's just so obvious. But then you actually, like, nail him with it when he's going after your wife and, like, God knows what. Electability is huge. Yeah.

It's way more important when you're out of power. I agree with this. And I agree with it mainly because I've listened to voters say it over and over again for like the last six months. They think, look, not everybody, but there's a big chunk of voters, the ones that watch a lot of Fox News, where they have heard other Republicans, other people on the right talking about like, man, we can't keep losing. We've lost three elections in a row. And they are internalizing that. They are frustrated by it.

And especially the way that the right sort of catastrophizes around Biden. Biden's an existential threat. If you think Biden's an existential threat, then you want to win. And so I think that DeSantis' electability argument is his best one. It really comes through with the voters. But I will say I also hear like the beginnings in the groups of what I think DeSantis' vulnerabilities are.

So Donald Trump came up with the nickname Ron DeSanctimonious, which is not his best work, as these nicknames go.

Although is Meatball, I don't know, is that racist? Is it an Italian slur? Oh, is he Italian, DeSantis? I don't know. I should know this as a fellow Italian-American, right? I think it's more of a, meant to be a physical slight, but you know. He's always kind of made fun of Ron secretly for being like overweight. It's funny to hear Trump mock someone for being overweight, but he does it anyway, right? And he's always kind of thought that Ron was not that tall, which is another hit on Ron. So I'm not surprised Meatball kind of makes it, makes it.

Makes sense. I'm sure he's just testing it. You know, he has the luxury of that. You know, I think that meatball tends to be sort of closer to the mark in general. But I did think de sanctimonious, that's a big word for Trump to pull. And honestly, I think it's pretty on the nose. Like, listen to Ron DeSantis' ad that he put out that felt like kind of like a beginning of a presidential campaign ad. And on the eighth day...

God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a protector." So God made a fighter. God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve the people, to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness." So God made a fighter. God said, "I need someone to be strong.

Advocate truth in the midst of hysteria. Someone who challenges conventional wisdom and isn't afraid to defend what he knows to be right and just. So God made a fighter.

Oh, God. Oh, God is right. Sorry. I thought that was a spoof. Honestly, Sarah, it took me a minute to actually think that was real. Have you not seen that ad? I think I got a whiff of it, but had not listened to it like that. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. You know how sometimes when you're in this business, you read about things, but you never actually watch it or listen to it? I do. I do. And then when you actually take it in as if I was a target of that message-

I have a different emotion. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is the cringiest thing I have ever heard. And it's one of the things, I've got a few little markers that I've laid down over time that have made me really question Ron DeSantis' political instincts. There's a lot in the column of these are good political instincts, like he's doing this correctly. But like every now and then, like he drops an ad like this and I'm like, who goes for this? But you know,

I always say, you know, I found Trump completely repellent and lots of people find him charming and charismatic. So I don't always have the right nose for this in terms of these voters. But you alluded to this earlier and your colleague, Tina Wynn, wrote last summer about how Ron's wife, Casey, is a top advisor of his and a driver of his political career. I think in the piece she said, helping to package far-right outrage over masks, vaccine mandates, and critical race theory for a MAGA-lite audience.

It also sounds from that ad like the DeSantis' can be a bit high on their own supply. So from the newsletter you published this week, it looks like Trump may be attacking Casey soon, and you alluded to that earlier. You also wrote, if there's one thing everyone in DeSantis' world knows, you never cross Casey. So can you just tease that out? Tell us more about that. Okay. So...

I mean, there's already like a whisper campaign going on right now about perceived scandals around Casey DeSantis, which I don't really want to go into because some of them go pretty low and I don't think are worth airing, although I'm sure eventually they will make it onto the debate stage knowing Trump. Right. But I think they see her as a target and someone that Ron can't step away from the momentarily.

the most obvious. She's a puppet master. She's the one who created him. Ron doesn't do anything without Casey. And there might be a little bit of truth to that. Maybe not the puppet master thing, but that it's a package deal more so probably than most presidential candidates and their spouses. Then there's just like the kind of stuff that they're spreading around. But I think there's a real feeling that

Casey is a way to ignite Ron and to goad him and to get him into the ring with Trump, which is what he really wants right now. He wants to fight with Ron DeSantis. And so they've sort of targeted that. I think it's a strategy. It hasn't happened yet, but it will. They will eventually go after her. They are already putting out info on her now.

I have a question on this idea that Trump wants to go DeSantis into the race. Let's say, hypothetically, DeSantis didn't get in the race. Isn't that better for Trump? Like, DeSantis is the only one mounting any opposition. And I got to tell you, we're going to get into some of the group's criticisms of DeSantis, but...

One of the things I wonder a lot about is, let's say DeSantis doesn't live up to the hype. Do those votes go to Nikki Haley? Do they go to Tim Scott? I don't think so. Right now, I think they go back to Trump. And so why would Trump want to goad him into the race? Like, explain that thinking.

Okay, so I think it's pretty clear that he is running. So I don't think it's an option of not getting in. I think the earlier he gets him in, the earlier he can sort of take him out. I think Trump doesn't think that Ron can really take him on. Trump like needs an enemy. He thinks that Ron is not as strong as he is. I think his instinct is to get him in the ring.

He knows he's going to run anyway. So I think that's his feeling is get him in now, not on his time, not on his schedule. Do it now and do it early. That's super interesting. I mean, I guess I could see that, right? If you are Trump and you look at DeSantis and you think, I made this guy, this guy's whole career is built on an imitation of me. The second he gets in, I'm going to reduce him to rubble.

What you want is to make that happen as quickly as possible, as opposed to what's happening right now where Ron DeSantis is not running and climbing in the polls and being seen as the best alternative to you. That makes sense to me as a theory, I guess, if it's obvious he's going to get in. So with that in mind, Trump's attack on DeSantis, I got to say, we did a group this week that was a weird group.

Because it was these two-time Trump voters. And anytime we just do a straight screen for two-time Trump voters, they, for months now, have been basically saying the same thing. Don't really want Trump to run in 2024. Think it should be DeSantis. Trump has too much baggage. DeSantis is Trump without the baggage. And we really like him.

But this group was kind of down on DeSantis. And I wondered if like it's starting to get in the water, some of the attacks on DeSantis. Cause listen to how this group was talking about him. As they started to learn more about Ron DeSantis and where he really is on the political spectrum and how he's voted in the past,

Now, yeah, I'm not sure I would vote for the man. I like the way he interacts with the press. I like the way he handled the COVID thing in Florida. But yeah, not so sure. He was one of the number one advocates for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have absolutely completely destroyed our country. If that's his philosophy, he seems more like an open borders, globalist, Paul Ryan kind of a guy. Yeah, he had a lot more research before I would ever vote for DeSantis.

I'm a little concerned from a perspective because he's still an establishment and the media gives him extra credit when it's against Trump, which kind of gives me kind of the sneaky suspicion that they know how to play him or something. I don't believe he handled the COVID situation in Florida. You know, if you wanted to get COVID, you went to Florida kind of thing. But

I also liked his little bit of aggressiveness, if you will, by sending flights to other states with people on board, including here in Massachusetts, because you share the wealth. If the borders are open and there are cities that can take them, send them off.

Big points for the Martha's Vineyard play, by the way, typically for Ron DeSantis across focus groups. But this group was like kind of down on DeSantis. And it was weird because they were calling him establishment, which is not a thing I've heard a lot of. And I wondered if Trump's.

Machine on the right has started to seed this or whether this was just an outlier group that happens sometimes or whether like this is the beginning like Rhonda Santis has faced no actual attacks and they're starting to come and.

Both Trump and DeSantis are going to try to outflank each other on the right. DeSantis is trying to do it to Trump on vaccines and things like that. And Trump's doing it by saying, no, no, no, this guy's a rhino globalist cuck, which Donald Trump loves to run against those. Is that where Trump's going with the attacks? Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. And I think, can you be more Trump than Trump? You know what I mean? He always wins on that. He can pinpoint someone as an establishment rhino. That's his thing, right? Although DeSantis is subtly doing it. And I think there's just like a lot of whisper campaigns going on with influencers. Oh, DeSantis kind of planted the idea. Some people were vaccinated like Trump or push the vaccine, you know, et cetera. So I think the thing is that Trump cannot really afford to sit on his hands right now and let

Ron DeSantis soak up the glory and rise in the polls and not try to chip at his veneer. Planting those seeds right now, that's what he's doing. Sowing doubt about DeSantis because you don't hear a lot of doubt about him besides in political circles about his ability to be a retail politician, to raise money, you know, et cetera, his charisma, his ability on the debate stage. I don't think voters think so much about that, but if you start like planting seeds about personality flaws, issues, who is the real DeSantis, that's what Trump should be doing, I guess.

If you see him as a real Bible challenger. And I think in the meantime, encourage the Nikki Haley's, the Mike Pence's and the Mike Pompeo's of the world to get in the race. Do you think that Ron and Don hate each other? Like when did the relationship go south? Because I remember the moment that I started to dislike Ron DeSantis intensely. And it was when I saw the commercial where it's this whole thing is just a testament to Trump. He's with his wife.

toddler daughter building a wall out of blocks saying, build the wall. He's reading The Art of the Deal to his baby in a Trump onesie. Like, it's very gross. Casey's in it. And Trump endorsed him. And like, when did the relationship start to sour? And like, how sour is it now? How good? Oh, it's so sour. It's

It's really bad. I mean, also think about this. The person running Trump's campaign is Susie Wiles, who DeSantis like had an epic falling out with, and she has no love for him either. So it's like even at like- What's the deal with the Susie Wiles thing, actually? Do you have any goss on that? What do you mean? Like her status in the campaign or- Do you know what the falling out was about or why she went to Trump or how that's manifesting? He accused her of leaking something back in the day when she was working for him.

He tried to also get her fired from Trump's campaign. I think temporarily did so, but then he brought her back. He was like on a real mission against Susie. He doesn't like consultants. He was on a war path against Susie Wiles, essentially. So it's a strong thing when you've got someone on your team at the highest level who also has very little use for your opponent and also works for him.

You know what I'm saying? That's a thing a lot of former Ron DeSantis people work for Trump now. That is so strange. You'd think it would go the other way. No, because Ron burned a lot of people. I mean, I wrote about this for Politico a while back that there was like a support group for scarred Ron DeSantis staffers.

He just has very little use for staff. He treats them terribly and he burns them out. And they all have like ridiculous stories about what a jerk he can be. And Casey's always been his person anyway, right? That's Casey has been his general consultant and he's dismissive. He's a bit arrogant. He's kind of what you see, but to your own staff. So yeah, you've got a lot of former Ron DeSantis people floating out there. How does that work? How do you staff a presidential campaign that's serious enough

You can't do it with your wife. Like, that's not enough. She can certainly help, but like, you need a whole apparatus at that point. Is he capable of having that or? Yeah, yeah. People will come to him because he's like a front runner and he has a ton of money. So.

But having a consultant is not the same thing as having people that have been with you through thick and thin for a long time. You know what I mean? Yes, that's true. I think he lacks loyalists is what I would say. So yeah, I mean, Ron's prickly. There's a reason why that's out there. Trump, I know you said you find him detestable. Most people do, even people who vote for him. But there's the showmanship. People think he's funny. There's...

There's something to watch. I mean, there's a lot of questions about whether Ron can also perform. You know, he didn't have his own show like The Apprentice. He's not a natural performer the way that Trump is. But we'll see. I mean, this is all stuff we have to see. And I think Trump's gut is that Ron is a lightweight.

Yep. He did endorse him. He barely won the governorship the first time around. Sure, he won by 20 points or 18 points his last time. But yeah, Trump's like, I made you. I know what you're made of and I can crush you. So-

Let's talk. You know what I mean? But Ron also still has to be governor. He just got elected. That's why the baiting of Ron DeSantis to get in earlier, like, he just sort of can't until May. It's not even like you have to get in earlier. You want to just, like, encourage the dialogue and the fight and get things out. And I think...

Trump wants to sow doubt about Ron, not just to supporters, but to donors. He wants to get rid of the appearance of electability and show him like, I can own this guy. So don't think he's a better version of me. Don't think he's more electable than me. Do you think Ron DeSantis has always hated Trump or did he start hating him once Trump started attacking him? Probably when like Trump took on Susie, I bet. Uh-huh. Got it. You know, and that was right after the January 6th, after the election. Yeah.

And Ron was still going to fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago as of this time last year. And there was a lot of tension and friction there. And now they're not doing things together, I bet. No, not at all. But it was starting to get to the point where they were like, okay, Ron, enough's enough. Stop coming to Mar-a-Lago. I think the more the talk was about Ron running, him partnering up with Phil Cox, all this stuff, it just started to get to the point where Trump was like, no, you don't get to hang around with me if you're going to run against me. Yeah.

Uh, well, obviously I know they're not hanging out together because if you're online the way some of us are, you know, that recently Trump had this like real doozy of an unprovoked attack on DeSantis where he truthed a photo of DeSantis when he was a high school teacher drinking a beer with two possibly underage girls. Our group largely shrugged it off. Let's listen. I feel like if it's true, take accountability and say, sorry, like,

You know, honestly, like, I don't know. I mean, you never know. Cause like, I feel like a lot of these politicians are rich people have blackmail and stuff on each other. And so, you know, everyone does some stupid things. And I feel like, especially around, um,

politics and election time they bring all this out and it really just depends on how you respond to that i mean it's not like trump probably doesn't do anything inappropriate either i don't know i mean everyone does bad things i guess especially when it comes to that he's done it all yeah he's been attacked on every level and he's still there

They hadn't really heard about this attack on DeSantis because you really have to be on Twitter to have, I think, picked it up. But when they did, they were kind of like, oh, yeah, this is the way that people are going to smear each other. No big deal. What is the deal with this Ron DeSantis picture, though? And can I just say before we go on that this is what you call a groomerang?

which is when you're somebody who constantly accuses people of being groomers, as Ron DeSantis does, and then somebody accuses you of being a groomer. I'm going to call that a groomerang. That's a great line, Sarah. Yeah, it's amazing that Trump would go there like...

especially with his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, his former friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. The groomerang affects everyone. It's very low hanging fruit innuendo. I'm not surprised. I think he's going to go lower than that. I think this is just the first taste of what's to come. I think this is an escalation or a downward decline. It's like a very sharp slope as to what we're going to get from Trump. But

You know, it's interesting that the focus group said, why not deny it? And I kind of felt the same way. Like, why wouldn't you address the issue? Why not deny it or address it? Maybe I've got bad political instincts on that, but I think that was sort of what I was expecting. Well, do you know what the story is? I guess, like, are they underage? Like, was he a 24-year-old teacher drinking with underage students? Well, that was what the New York Times sort of wrote in their piece. Did you see that long piece they wrote? Okay, it's all coming from a Times story, which I'm sure...

someone in the Trump universe planted, you know, you should look into Ron's time as a teacher. Part of it was that he was known for drinking with underage kids around the school. That was what they kind of allege, or at least like soft imply as the times does. And so I'm sure Trump team was holding onto that picture, ready to go. Yeah.

Is that you, Ron? You know, who knows? It's pretty early to run with that piece of oppo. I mean, I guess if it's already out there, he's just going to dig at him with it. But this was a good example of Ron DeSantis not... What did he say? His response was just like...

oh, I don't attack other Republicans. Yeah, exactly. He just tried to take the high road. But I don't know how long he can do that. Well, exactly. And I think it goes back to this idea that, like you said, and which I really hadn't thought about, how much do Trump's attacks on Ron hurt him with his base? And how much do they hurt Ron? And that's where I think this whole idea of a suicide mission comes in.

you know, a murder-suicide mission in which they kill each other and the base is turned off by both of them. Yeah, you're right. You know, talking to you, I think one of the things that strikes me is how important it is to know that the dynamics are not baked. You know, sometimes you can look at this polling and you can think, I don't know, Trump's pretty weak. DeSantis is surging. DeSantis is to lose. And like, that can still be true and there can still be a lot of other dynamics that are left to play out as this thing really heats up.

Tara Palmieri, thank you so much for joining us today on the Focus Group podcast. And thanks to all of you for listening to the show. Go give it a rating on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen. And we will catch you guys next week. Thanks, Sarah. This was great. I'm so happy to be on. Thank you.