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🚨LIVE: DeSantis Running for President-w/@RudyGiuliani & Trump Advisors
Recorded: May 24, 2023 Duration: 5:43:42Space Recording
Short Summary
Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign, highlighting his stance on Bitcoin and CBDCs, reflecting trends and innovations in digital currency. The campaign also initiated fundraising efforts to support his candidacy.
Full Transcription
Guys, how are you?
Yeah, good, Mario.
Good to see you.
How are you?
Good, man.
Good.
So Desantis will be joining us in a few minutes.
Don't, don't, uh, hold your breath.
Definitely hold your breath.
And I'll let you know as soon as he joins.
And Trump will be a bit late, unfortunately.
So we'll give it another couple of minutes.
Unfortunately.
We'll let people join.
We'll wait for Trump and DeSantis to join.
And then we kick off the show.
And then for all just members, if, if, if you don't see the status of Trump joining, just remember it was a Soleimman who was responsible for getting them on.
So, just a kind of a heads up.
I mean, it is what it is.
Make do with what you have.
Instead, you've got, you've got to be optimistic.
You've got to be optimistic. You've just got us as co-host and speakers.
All right, let me send out the invites.
It's going to be another couple of minutes.
I'll kick things off.
I mean, Trach isn't doing much of a good job with this chit-chat, whatever you call it.
Well, I mean, I don't want to overspeak somebody when they're speaking, but we can do this chit-chat.
It's called respect, bro.
It's called respect.
No, do it, bro.
Mario's like, you know, he's not talking.
Take over Trush.
Yeah.
Well, so I might as well do it while we're just chit-chat.
And so I had a space this morning and people brought up to Santa's Trump, obviously.
And there's a theory going around that the reason the flag was backwards on his promo was because he was nodding at his WF buddies.
And I'm like, guys, it's a video of him walking into a rally and the flag's facing the crowd.
Like.
We need to calm down with like the conspiracy theories.
Like it's getting a good.
What was, sorry, I love the shit.
What was, what was the conspiracy?
What was the theory?
I didn't hear it.
I don't want to miss this.
So yesterday the promo video that came out and they were doing the launch with the text.
Yeah, I saw that trauma video.
Yeah.
In that video, the flag is backwards.
And so people were positing this morning that the flag was backwards to nod to his globalist buddies that the flag is backwards.
Like, no, it's him walking out to a rally.
Like, listen, you guys know who I'm voting for, but at the end of the day, like, let's also not say silly things.
Yeah.
Yeah, have you, because is this, is this going to vote for Biden again as far as I know?
You voted for him last time.
You're voting for him again.
That's what I understand.
Yeah.
based on your tone
what you've said
over the last few months
yeah
yeah I think
the furthest thing
from the Biden
and Slamen's going
for Clinton
Bill Clinton
I would never
I'm not from the United States
but I would never
ever
vote for people
who are possibly
linked to Epstein
you know
Salamon they have mail
and voting in my state
I'll send you my ballot
and you can vote
how about that
I will not
I will not form part
of this fraud
elections and
and I will not have to keep kind of fraudulent election.
Well,
against it.
This is what I mean about these lips.
They're just exposing themselves.
Do you see what I mean about these?
Well, hold on.
We agreed.
Silly, silly, silly.
We agreed.
Like, I thought I'm going to be groggy this morning
means I'm not 100% so you can't be,
you have to be unbiased and shit.
You know how it is.
I mean, before we start to say.
I'm just telling you,
I'm just analyzing Sarah's comment.
Yeah.
Before we...
I did offer election fraud up.
You are right,
Salimon.
Before we...
Before we start the space, I would like to disavow that I ever voted for Biden.
You guys know I'm going for Orange Man, Rad.
You guys already know this.
No, I think privately you are in the, you are team Biden.
All right, guys, I'm going to, I've never seen this guy back up Trump.
Like, I've never seen it.
Disavow.
I'm going to kick things off.
Suli, tell us what's on the agenda today, what's the structure of the show, what's going to be happening after less than an hour.
So I'll tell the audience, just a basic and then you can dig into it a bit further and kick off the show, but...
We're going to be covering the, obviously, the scientist is going to be announcing his presidency, his candidacy, in 45 minutes he's going to be doing it on Twitter spaces with Elon. And as far as I know, you've got a hot mic trash. As far as I know with Elon and David, David Sachs.
So they're going to be doing that on a Twitter space.
We'll be streaming that here and then continuing the discussion right after,
as we've done with previous shows.
So you can stay here, listen to the debate, listen to DeSantis,
and now see it, and then we continue the debate here.
We haven't invited DeSantis on and I haven't even invited Elon on.
Probably should have.
But I didn't, but it would be good to have.
I think we do want to get DeSantis on this space one day.
So if anyone does know him, we are keen to send him out an invite and do a space with the centers.
And, you know, my goal is maybe to get to get DeSantis and Trump peat together.
That would be pretty epic.
That would be an achievement.
But Sully, what else did I miss?
If you get DeSantis and Trump on the same space, it will be over for DeSantis.
Okay.
All right, bro.
It would be huge.
It would be huge.
I mean, the only thing is if Justin gives him some cue cards, but then if he has to go against his cue cards.
Donald Trump, we're losing you.
We're losing you.
Oh, he's gone.
Yeah.
Donald Trump, press the mute button.
Stop unmuting, Donald.
Trump, stop unmuting.
I have to kick you off, Donald.
Okay, Donald, you're out.
You're at one minute.
So until the status is done,
you bring you back up on stage, Donald.
I'm at the mute button and the bell.
The problem is, Mario, if Desantis came up as a speaker, you wouldn't even go to him because it'd be so boring.
Like, do you got to mean?
Like, if there's a boring speaker, we'd drop him anyway, so we'd have to drop.
I love the expectations are set so low.
It's great. It makes me so happy because I think you'll be very surprised.
Doesn't his wife pull the strings anyways?
Maybe we should just bring his wife up and listen to her talk, right?
That's actually an awesome idea, Sarah.
You know, the person who said that the expectations for DeSantis have been set very low,
that's actually a brilliant observation.
And this is the big mistake that Trump has made, the big political mistake that he's made,
is that he is so denigrated DeSantis that it reminds me of the rumble in the jungle
where Foreman and Ali were boxing.
And Ali was rope-a-doving for about seven rounds.
And then Foreman wore himself out, his arms dropped, his garbling down,
and Ali came out and just took him out.
I think that's what DeSantis has been doing.
He hasn't been fighting back.
He's been taking the body blows.
And I think he's going to be able to come out strong.
And for an example, I just was interviewed by the Daily Call yesterday for a big article.
And they were also talking to the Trump people.
And the Trump people were coming out and saying, hey, we're going to come after DeSantis.
He's not going to go know what hit him.
It's going to be the biggest thing ever.
So here it is today.
Trump is, or DeSantis is announcing.
And what does the Trump can't come out with?
Social Security Medicare.
It's like we've already heard that 20 times.
Where's the new stuff?
You know,
that's the problem is that Trump has shot a lot of his big guns already.
DeSantis was just in the ropes, in the ropes,
rope-ed-doping him, wearing Trump out.
And now DeSanis can come out.
And the biggest mistake Trump made was he lowered expectations for DeSanis so much
that if santa shows up and he's just even reasonably good it's going to seem like a miracle and he can become the
comeback kid and we can have a redemption art for him where people start cheering for him it's like oh he's catching up
this is how things work and i think it was a mistake on the trump's uh why the polls showing otherwise i'm
just looking at the numbers and
It just doesn't look good at all for the centers.
But look, the polls at this point.
Oh, it's irrelevant.
It's not a perfect analogy right now,
but if you look back into 2016,
at this point in the race in May of 2011,
Marco Rubio was in the lead.
And two weeks previously, Mike Huckabee was in the lead.
So just actually, let me ask you a question.
Let me ask you.
And Bill, if you don't mind muting and unmuting, just your breath is heavy.
We can hear your breath on the mic.
Justin, in the last space or the one before, I wish you were on stage.
I think I sent you an invite, but you couldn't make it.
I wanted to compare the polls today to the polls back in 2016 and the polls in 2020.
Can you give us a bit of a, I would love to, if you can remind us all,
How did the polls look like early 2016?
How did they look like early 2020?
And I want to compare how they look like today.
Well, two very different races, and it's even a very different race now.
But back then in April of 2015, Mike Huckabee took the lead.
Then you had Marco Rubio take the lead.
The lead would change another...
five times before Trump took the lead and took over from there. Now, it's definitely a very
different scenario. And of course, 2016 was a unique election where you had both candidates on
the Democrat side with Clinton and with Trump having 100% name recognition across the board.
That's why this is such a very different race this time around because I,
I think a lot of people are going to be introduced to Governor DeSantis for the first time today and over the coming weeks.
So those are big introductions and people will get to know him.
How long did it take, Justin?
How long did it take Trump?
And then we'll continue the discussion.
But I'm just curious.
How long did it take Trump to get the lead?
How many months back in 2016?
I'll have to go look.
I can't remember.
But it basically, go ahead.
I actually know that.
It took about three months or so.
It took about pretty much for Trump.
I think the better point is, so Trump is leading the polls right now.
And I think that's real, right?
Like the primary was tomorrow.
He'd win the primary tomorrow, right?
The primary is not tomorrow.
The thing is, though, DeSantis' lead back in November and December was real as well.
And we have to consider like why those two things are true.
His lead was real in November and December because, because Trump was associated with losing, a lot of losing.
He endorsed a number of very weak candidates in primaries.
Those candidates went on to lead very lackluster campaigns that couldn't raise very much money.
And despite the confident reassurances of at least one speaker in here, those candidates lost.
And that was associated with Trump.
Meanwhile, you had the contrast of Governor DeSantis winning a landslide re-election, even though
President Trump had attacked him three days before the election.
So you had a contrast of a very strong candidate who leads, passes policy, wins reelection,
compared with Trump who lost reelection and then endorsed a bunch of losing candidates in 2022.
That was top of mind.
Fast forward.
a few months, Trump gets, Trump gets indicted, right?
Trump becomes a center of attention.
And so that becomes top of mind.
And so naturally, Republicans who overwhelmingly like both men,
they rally to Donald Trump.
And so we have to remember, like, the people in this space are weird.
We have like 3,000 people in here, hyper attentive to national politics.
The vast majority people are not like that.
They see that DeSantis is associated with winning, so they rally into DeSantis.
They see that Trump is associated with being wrongly persecuted by malicious left-wing prosecutors.
They rallied to Trump.
And so those factors are going to fade, and so then we'll see going forward.
And so my prediction is, of course, that DeSantis will rise.
But Max, Ken?
Go ahead, Alex.
So Max, like and a lot of the DeSantis people like to say that the bump in the polls came from the indictment.
But if you look at all of the polling, even pre-indictment, President Trump was storming back in the polls, retaking the lead.
Not by a little bit, by a lot.
The indictment, obviously, everybody was like, what's happening to this guy is wrong.
He's clearly the only threat to the establishment.
They're trying to do everything that they can to take him out.
because he's the only person that fights for us
and everybody that was considering going a different direction
they all came back to Trump and they're not leaving because that still remains true.
DeSantis isn't a threat to the establishment.
They're not doing anything to take him out.
And each day, there's a new witch hunt.
There's a new investigation.
There's new BS.
And the people aren't going to leave President Trump's side because they know how much he has sacrificed for us.
And Max also likes to talk about 2020.
The vast majority of Republican voters...
correctly recognized that Trump didn't lose that election.
That election was rigged.
And there's a lot of measures that are being taken,
including ballot harvesting and playing by the rules that they play by in the upcoming election.
And so a lot of voters aren't concerned about
having a repeat of 2020 because we know the lessons,
we learn from the lessons of that.
And so-
And Trump won in 2020,
and he's set up to win in the same way in 2024.
Now the question is, are voters excited to have the 2020 style of win?
You know, that remains to be seen.
Now, if you can convince voters that they want to have the type of win that results in being inaugurated,
then perhaps they'll turn towards Ron DeSantis.
If they like the kind of win where you just say that you won, then they'll take Trump.
I predict that's-
And lucky for Trump, he's almost never not almost indicted.
So indictments are going to be in the news from here on out,
and maybe that plays to his favor.
I don't think so.
Well, let me, let me.
Let me throw this in real quickly.
Let me throw this in real quickly about the polls.
The polls are measuring...
the ice on the top of the pond, they're not measuring the depth of the pond.
They're not measuring the level of intensity.
We see in one poll that measured intensity.
In that poll, only 24% of GOP voters were absolutely dedicated to voting for Trump.
27% would never vote for Trump, and 49% were, I can't decide.
Now, Alex has made the premise that nobody's going to leave Trump.
They're all going to stick with him.
And I understand where he's coming from.
Trump's his guy.
I would say the same thing of Trump was my guy.
But...
I think that what we're looking at is we got 49% of the middle who if they love Trump, they would be dedicated to Trump.
They wouldn't be saying I'm on the fence.
So these are people who are winnable for DeSantis.
They don't want Trump, but Trump is the default choice.
And if Sanis can come along and convince him that he is a viable choice, I believe.
that these people will move over to the Saniside.
We'll see.
I mean, we're here.
It's happening right now.
So we're going to find out all the guests work won't matter a little while.
We're going to see what really happens.
But yeah, that's what I think.
So just before we move on to the specific agenda for today, Heather,
I know you like to smash anyone who attacks Trump, so I'll give you a chance.
Well, it's not even that I like to smash people.
I mean, it's funny.
A lot of people don't know.
I didn't even vote for Trump in 2016.
I actually voted for the libertarian candidate.
So, like, my supporting of Trump is because he genuinely earned my support.
So I have no problem defending him at this point, right?
Like, because we all go through life where we have our own walk.
Like, I grew up in Massachusetts, which is heavily blue.
So, like, you don't win elections there unless you're a rhino or a Democrat.
basically.
So I was like,
found a home with the libertarians there,
which in my opinion were like the actual like pro-freedom Americans.
But anyway,
long story short,
like I genuinely believe that Trump has earned my vote.
And when I first started going around covering Trump rallies,
like I wasn't even sold on him at that point, right?
And I actually started,
my job was to interview people at these Trump rallies and be like,
you know,
what is it that you love about President Trump?
And I didn't know a lot about him.
Like, so I didn't even grow up watching The Apprentice.
Like, so I barely knew anything about Donald Trump.
And so when I start interviewing this people and I have these real world conversations where, you know, this business owner who under Obama had to fire his employees because he couldn't afford insurance for them and like all sorts of other cuts that he had to make.
And then under Trump, like he had like.
Like, life was so much better.
And then I'd interview some veteran whose care under, you know, the previous administration was terrible.
And then because of changes made by Trump, like the VA situation, they could go out of network and they got better care.
And, like, one after another, after another, after another, I'm like, like, hearing these real world experiences about how people's lives were actually better because of Trump.
And that's when I just, I started really digging into this whole mainstream narrative that was just so toxic.
And I feel like a lot of people have had that sort of walk to their support for Trump.
And once you...
Once you see and come to these revelations that, you know, the media is not your friend,
that they're basically like, you know, a profitable business and you're basically the product
and they're trying to sell you on something.
Like it's not real honest journalism that is telling you what you should know.
It's telling you what they want you to know.
Like once you come to that realization, you can't unsee those things.
And a lot of people that support Trump,
have come to that realization that there's this whole corrupt establishment that puts profits over people
and this weaponized justice system. And when you come to that realization, you can't unsee it.
So people that realize Trump is actually one of the most authentic people we've ever had in Washington in a long time,
then you can't unsee that. And for DeSantis, right, like,
This is one, like, one of the biggest points I have of all of the hundreds of endorsements Trump's handed out.
DeSantis is the one and only one who made a campaign ad calling himself a pit bull Trump defender.
Those were DeSantis's words, right?
So if he is a man of his word, why did he not defend Trump when the FBI said,
stormed Marlago
while he was governor.
No, he didn't do anything.
He could have done his own investigation.
He could have got a special grand jury involved.
There's a number of things he could have done.
That's not how it works.
It's better law enforcement.
Let me finish.
Okay, so...
That makes no sense.
No, that makes no sense.
You and Doc, and then Doc also does this,
where Doc says that, like, Merrick Garland
had a secret meeting with Rhonda Santas beforehand,
which is, like, something from a parody website.
My point is he called himself a pit bulls.
Trump defender and he's the only one of Trump's endorsements that actually did that in a campaign ad.
And he's the only one that turned out to be a pit bull Trump backstabber basically.
Sorry.
So what did, wait.
So how did he not defend him?
Can you, can you clarify in a way that's like, that makes sense?
Because the way you said before, it doesn't make sense because he did defend him.
How did he defend him from the FBI raid on Margalago?
I don't.
What did he do as governor?
He condemned it.
Like, it's, it's federal law enforcement.
He tweeted about it.
He tweeted and said, that's so wrong.
That's what he did.
That's your, are you saying that he should like full of court sumter?
Like, be specific what you want.
A pit bull Trump defender is a tweet.
Right. So can you be specific about what he should have done to stop the FBI? Like, do you think he should have like surrounded Marlauago with state law enforcement?
Do you think it's a fair statement to say that tweeting that's bad is makes you a pit bull Trump defendant?
Right, but you can't actually give a coherent answer because there is none because of state government, unless you're saying that he should pull a Fort Sumter and start a second civil war that you actually have no answer to this question.
No letter.
You just not
because you think that he should have done something
besides everything that he could have done.
Is he not Florida's top cop, basically?
Excuse me?
Is he not Florida's top cop?
Yes, he's Florida. Well, no, he's not because FDLE commissioner is Florida's top cop. Either way, he doesn't govern the FBI. And Yoran Docs continued assistance that DeSantis is the FBI director. The actual FBI director is, of course, Christopher Ray, who President Trump appointed, defended, refused to fire, and defends to this day.
DeSantis praises and praised.
He praised him at the time, and then he called for him being fired before anyone.
Trump never fired him.
And this is just another example, along with A.B., of Trump's poor.
Yeah, and look, the thing was that we were all defending Trump in 2018 when DeSanta was tweeting out about a pit bull.
We were all defending Trump even in November 2020.
But we have to look back and we say, look, his record on COVID was abysmal.
And we had to look back at Trump's record.
Who?
Are you talking about what we had to look back at his cap?
No, we're talking about the guy who said that, who told the governors to shut down.
And then some of them were made the mistake of listening to another.
You're talking about the president who issued.
guidance, right? What did the guidance say, Heather? No, let me finish. Let me finish.
No, what did the guidance say? Let me finish. The guidance said to shut down and you just kind
to dissemble from this fact. You shut up for two seconds, Max. Like, seriously. Shut up for two
seconds. Trump issued guidance, right? Because Governor Christy Noam never shut her state down.
What did the guidance say? Ron DeSantis. It doesn't matter what it said. The matter was that
You know that?
I always talk about this.
It doesn't count.
It doesn't matter what the guy you said.
Stay open or close.
And does Stantz chose to close?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm going to let Heather finish and then you can be talking about.
Did Stantz?
Trump issued guidance based off of the health professionals that were advising him.
That guidance was never mandatory.
So which is why- Let me finish, Max.
Shut up.
What did the guidance say?
You keep saying he issued guidance.
What did the guidance say?
I mean, so, yeah.
So, yeah, go ahead, Simon.
Yeah, Heather.
I mean, I think he's asking a fair question.
If you can just specifically answer that question, that'd be brilliant.
I mean, you can look up the guidance.
What the guidance actually says is, honest to God, irrelevant because it was optional.
That's why it's called guidance.
Like, Ron DeSantis, when he signed an executive order, that is not guidance.
That is dictatorship right there.
That's saying if you do this, you're going to jail.
I mean, literally, there's a big difference between issuing guidance and issuing executive orders.
So regardless of what the guidance says, if somebody says, you know, we recommend vaccines, that's a lot of different.
different than saying you have to get one or else. I mean, like, let's be honest. So your, your defense of
President Trump is the same one that Dr. Fauci uses for himself. I didn't shut down anything, right? So it's the same
excuse that Fauci gives.
yeah that's absolutely right justin it is a defensive passion but actually that said like fouchi didn't
shut down for the people the record for health reasons randesantis is trying to run on governor
christie noem's record and that's a fact he calls florida a citadel of freedom when he shut
it down with an executive order he closed beaches he threatened to pull liquor licenses
from places that remained open.
He didn't let people go to the beaches.
He issued gatherings, right?
Like, you could only limit,
and you couldn't visit and gather in groups larger than a certain amount,
or you were breaking the law.
Yeah, that's shocking.
I mean, that is not a constitutionary,
where did that come from?
Whose ideas were those?
Well, yeah, Heather, who gave him the idea to do that?
Also, which of the two people actually regrets doing anything?
Are you saying he's influential and can't make his own decisions?
Are you saying that President Trump's word is completely meaningless?
And if so, why do you support him for president?
Like he gives speeches and you like just don't really care.
Like did you watch the daily coronavirus briefings?
I never shut down my country.
In fact, he actually made guns essential and got governors like Governor Murphy of New Jersey
to reopen gun stores and gun manufacturers at a time when they were emptying prisons out
in the name of COVID.
So Trump actually declared your Second Amendment as being essential in all like gun stores
So Heather, if the governor's responsibility, if the governor's responsible for the state shutdowns and the lockdowns, who's responsible, for example, for the biggest fraud of our generation, the PPP loans?
And who's responsible for the financial crisis we find ourselves?
And who's responsible for the CDC moratorium on evictions that to this day still hurts many landlords who have invested their entire life savings of their family into people who will not get out of homes because they still ride on that venue there?
I mean, these are legit issues.
In Florida, it's DeSantis.
DeSantis extended it in Florida.
At the same time the CDC recommended it.
Wait, hey, I have a question.
Who was in charge of the federal government when the CDC issued their recommendation?
Okay.
And does it can, and follow a question that is, does that count?
Recommendation.
Are you suggesting that real estate developer should overrule the, uh, the recommendations?
Bro, you're the one who's saying that Trump is, is, is unqualified to be president because he's a real estate development.
That's not what I'm saying.
You're the one saying it, actually, but.
Oh, he, your defense of Trump is he doesn't know what he's doing.
Let me bring Robert.
Right.
He, he, he did what he did.
Guys, just one second quickly.
Sorry, Nick, were you going to say something?
I was going to ask a question, but if you got so much to...
It's kind of about this topic a little bit.
Robert, I want to bring you in because you have worked in the federal government
in a pretty high capacity at times.
I want to know, is that...
Was there even a way for Trump to shut down the country
if he wanted to do that unilaterally as the chief executive of the United States?
Was that even a possibility or...
No, he deferred to the 10th Amendment. He left it to the states. He had a lot of pressure at the time.
And a lot of this was Monday morning quarterbacking about where things were at the time.
We didn't, you know, he got he got lambasted about shutting down the incoming from other countries.
That was actually the right thing to do. And then, and he was like trying to just do the right thing without any data.
But as soon as we have...
it's like, okay, well, leave it.
It's optional.
Asking, governors should make the calls, the state should make the calls.
He honored the Constitution.
So, and a lot of this right now, I mean, I will agree that, you know, the COVID lockdown, that's a fair game.
But a lot of this other stuff is just inconsequation.
Who shut down, for example, the national cemeteries?
Who shut down all of the federally mandated groups that had to go through the regulations?
The Defense Department.
The Defense Department did that.
Okay.
So Trump, here's the question.
Does Trump bear any responsibility for the COVID policies, any at all?
Okay.
None.
You can't be that.
You can't be that.
You know it.
CDC was out of control and you know it.
We tried to take out Walensky and it was sneaking around with like the foreclosure more to have you talked about.
That was just agency just running amok and flaunting it.
And we had judges that were backing them up.
So this is not, and by the way, you asked who responsible for PPP?
That's Congress.
They purposely put this stuff through without any garbage.
Who signs laws, Robert?
No, no, it's the, it's the, it's the, who writes the laws, Max?
Yeah, it's the rights law.
It matters.
He has no veto.
Put a, yeah, what do we put a different way?
That's that's bullshit.
Okay, there's no line item veto.
Has Trump ever apologized for supporting those policies?
Let me.
Let me tell you, this is all small ball.
Has this a small ball player?
Yes, he has.
He has multiple times.
No, he has.
He hasn't even taken accountability for what he did.
You guys denying the print and what the facts in Florida.
Let me ask just, Justin, when did he apologize and how did he apologize?
Numerous clips in which he regrets, for example.
There's an article I'm looking at right now from January 2020, where he says he wish he had gone more against the policies that President Trump and his administration recommended.
Right.
And then, of course, he opened up...
Just a, that's an apology.
All right.
You can go see multiple video clips where actually is one video clip in particular...
That's not an apology.
That's like playing the game.
No, that's fine.
But you can go back and see there's a clip, for example, I think, from the late summer of 2020,
and he almost gets choked up.
He almost gets chucked.
He almost loses it in a little bit of tier to understand that he went along with those things.
Because he was open by May, right?
And then he put him...
Is Ron DeSantis running for the TV?
I mean, Justin, have you got the link for that video?
Justin, have you got the link for that video?
Yeah, I'll find it for you.
I'm just on my phone so I can't find it right.
Yeah, Justin, just check the message on WhatsApp as well, if you don't mind.
Go ahead.
But also, guys...
Separate to that, obviously, I don't know, we are going to talk about these issues, especially after the interview,
but the interviews happening in 20 minutes.
I do want to ask something more specific about this interview.
And that question, Sarah, I'm going to go to you and you've got your hand-ups to add in whatever you want.
I mean, is it fair?
Is it fair that Ron DeSantis is essentially being given a podium with the guy, the man in charge of Twitter, essentially.
And it's almost like an endorsement.
So I'd love to hear thoughts on that.
Well, I think it is...
I'll go to say, and then I'll go to you, Alex.
Yeah, go ahead, Tara.
I think it is an endorsement.
I think that somebody tweeted today at Elon Musk asking if he would platform, you know,
somebody, another candidate, and he appeared to be agreeable to that.
I'll have to find that tweet, but he appeared to be agreeable to that.
But this, of course, I think it's an endorsement of Ron DeSantis.
It's his platform. He can do with it however he chooses.
I would like to see other candidates moving forward announcing their candidacies on Twitter.
I know we throw it around and we joke about having a debate.
I would love to see a debate in spaces.
I think that this is the future.
This is where people will come rather than the mainstream media.
And I really hope that it takes off and that people...
will, that candidates will use this platform to reach a broader audience and to reach their voters.
We are out here talking about these issues every single day.
And I think that it's a brilliant move by Ron DeSantis to use this platform to announce his candidacy
rather than any other form of media.
I mean, Alex, I'd like to come to you about the same question because if I'm right, Trump said,
him doing this, him announcing on Twitter, is almost showing that he's back.
He's behind the times.
So, Alex?
So that wasn't a Trump's, that wasn't Trump's actual statement, and that wasn't even
from the Trump campaign.
That was a statement from a super PAC, a line with Trump campaign.
But they don't coordinate.
That's not Trump saying that.
I have a little bit of a different perspective than Sarah.
Hopefully, Elon Musk remains neutral.
I think that every single person in here would have an issue if Mark Zuckerberg, for example,
used resources at Facebook to determine the outcome of an election.
I think we've seen this before.
And so I think Elon is going to remain neutral.
I saw him interacting with a great account Wall Street, Silver the other day,
where he basically said, hey, I would love to see Trump in his spaces.
And Elon said, yeah, I agree.
And so Elon said he's not endorsing DeSantis tonight.
We'll see.
But I do think it's a really unique way to announce a campaign.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was the first person to utilize spaces to announce his presidency,
or campaign for president.
And he's a sharp guy when it comes to that.
And so Radasantis once again following the lead of somebody else.
And so another thing is we're 17 minutes away from the announcement,
and I'm scrolling through my trending feed right now.
I don't see DeSantis trending.
I see Marathon,
Alan Wake 2,
Phantom Blade,
what's Love got to do with it?
Tina Turner, obviously,
but we're 17 minutes away from the big announcement
and DeSantis isn't trending.
And so I hope that Elon has the ability
to interview Donald Trump in the spaces
so he can actually showcase to the world
how unique this feature is.
Sadly,
he's announcing,
doing this one with Ron DeSantis, and there's just not much of an appetite for Ron DeSantis' campaign across Twitter or across the country.
Justin, do you agree with that?
Because, I mean, it does look like this isn't an endorsement.
And if the person in charge of here is endorsed.
Why does it look like an endorsement?
I don't get how you've made, how you've implied this.
Like if you're, if you, hold on, hold on, if we, hold on, if we, when I was co-hosting, what's his name, RFK Jr. or when we have Vivek here on spaces, does that mean we're endorsing him? Like if you run a social media platform, you'd want anyone, you want DeSantis or anyone else on the Democratic or Republican side to announce a candidate. Yeah, okay. I'll answer your question, bro. Don't worry. So if there's a scenario, what we, and what we need to know is who approached whom. So if Desantis's camp approached a
Elon Musk, then he just means
he was smarter than RFK, right?
Because RFK decided to do on Twitter space
and he thought, let me go
and actually go to Elon Musk
and get it done.
But if Elon Musk approached DeSantis
and said, look, come on Twitter spaces,
announce it there and I'll be on there.
I think that's,
unfair to, for example, RFK, why was he not given the same opportunity?
How do you know he wasn't given the same opportunity?
Well, we don't know that, Mario, but it's just logical.
We just said, yeah, but you just said it's unfair.
He didn't get the same opportunity.
You're implying he didn't get the same opportunity.
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm implying that he didn't get the same opportunity.
And just based on logic, obviously we don't know for certainty,
but the fact that RFK announced his candidacy on Twitter,
the fact that it was done on a much smaller scale.
And if you're saying that he was given the opportunity,
he said, no, I find that hard to believe.
Yeah.
Or maybe not even, I'm just saying maybe not
given the opportunity.
Like who would want to?
You've made, you've implied.
Who would want to go to less people?
Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying you've implied a lot of things.
And I just don't want to.
And you've come to a conclusion based.
You made so many implications that you've come to a conclusion.
And that is pretty, you know, pretty, it's pretty serious conclusion that
Elon is, is endorsing DeSantis.
He could be.
I mean, that's not my position.
That's not my position.
I was asking as a question.
I think it's a very powerful nod.
to Elon. I think in in in previously he had indicated that he he he would have no problem voting for desantis and if I think if he read
if you read what do you I think this is all the matter this is all this is mostly a silly meta discussion because
it's like someone appears on any platform and then you know other candidates to be like oh you're favoring that
you know we see this like every time every time mr. Trump complains that like Fox News mentions anything
positive about
anything positive about
about DeSantis or about any candidate
and says that they need to cover Trump more
and they need to get better ratings.
I mean, you could see this with any sort of,
you know, anyone interviews anyone.
It's like, oh, you're favoring that person.
So I just think this is kind of a,
it's kind of a meaningless discussion.
Like, it's a platform.
Anyone can do it.
And the real criticism would be like,
if they're like actively silencing
Trump supporters as they were doing prior to
Elon Musk taking over the platform.
And we'll have to wait and see if that happens.
But another thing that's kind of positive here is
I don't think it's an endorsement because Elon was just recently
amplifying Tim Scott.
I think Elon is going to, you know,
maybe he's hedging his bet because about a year ago he was all in
on the DeSantis train and maybe he learned more about DeSantis
and like a lot of,
A lot of other Americans, the more you learn about them, the less you like him.
And so now he's starting to hedge.
But who knows?
He's giving him a platform.
Again, it's 13 minutes away from the announcement now.
He's not even trending.
So we'll see what happens.
And then right after his interview with Elon, he's going to Fox News to do an interview with
Tray Gowdy, who is one of the biggest perpetrators of the Russia, Russia, Russia,
Russia lie in Congress, a total do-nothing hack, and a dear friend of,
Ron DeSantis. And so I just don't think that Ron DeSantis is the best candidate to do this
Twitter space is with just because nobody really likes the guy.
Okay. I mean, I mean, maybe just gave a good example of what I was talking about where
like people just kind of whine about who you're who's interviewing who. Like they're interviewing
because it's news and and like a prominent candidate is running. And of course people are going to
interview him.
Yeah, Kyle, I mean, and that's a fair argument, what Max said.
So as an example, CNN had on Donald Trump.
They've not had on any of the president for a town hall quite early on.
They've not had other presidential candidates on at this point.
So, I mean, that's a fair argument, isn't it?
Or what's your thoughts, Kyle?
A fair argument for what?
I didn't understand.
A fair argument for the fact that by having DeSantis on, it's not essentially...
Yes, exactly.
I don't get it.
He's simply giving him a forum to discuss his presidential campaign announcement.
I just wanted to kind of give my perspective on this whole debate as it unfolds.
You know, I supported President Trump mainly for his policies, not for his personality.
I...
Yeah, I think he was very successful in a lot of ways.
I'm much more into sort of rational analysis, and I don't,
connect with diehard Trump supporters being threatened by DeSanis. I don't understand like this
concept where he's supposed to DeSanis is being disloyal to Trump. But I will, if you go and analyze it,
I will say that if you look at Trump's weaknesses, perceived weaknesses in the general election
versus Biden, I think that.
First of all, where's the COVID accountability going to come from from Trump?
Like he hasn't really backtracked a lot about the policies that were recommended under the CDC and the FDA.
The vaccines, for example, we're not going to get any account.
I don't see how we're going to get any accountability out of President Trump in 2025.
So that's one.
The other thing, he didn't drain the swamp.
like he said he would.
In fact, it's swampier than ever in D.C.
So I wonder about his bureaucratic management skills,
his selection of advisors,
his inner circle,
and just the way that he ran his first presidency,
they really betrayed him.
And he was backstabed left and right.
William Barr is a great example of that.
So I really wonder about maybe DeSantis
versus him having better bureaucratic management skills.
That's something to debate.
The one thing I will say, you know, forget the general polling. Look at the swing state polling. Who did Trump? What states did Trump lose and why? Did they have better election integrity laws now like Arizona and Georgia, for example, maybe marginally? I will criticize DeSantis.
He, his abortion law, the six-suite abortion law, may have put Wisconsin and Michigan at risk for him in the general, potentially.
So I think that Donald Trump is running to the left of DeSantis on a lot of issues, which I found really interesting, the Social Security Medicare criticism.
But of course, DeSanis, you know, he supported non-binding resolutions when he was in the House.
So I just think like a sober analysis, I don't see how we stand to lose from a primary of Trump versus DeSantis.
Like debate the weaknesses, debate the strengths, highlight them.
And at the very least, Trump comes out stronger.
He understands that people need to look at him as exercising good judgment and being a stable leader versus Biden.
And he really needs to understand and not do like what came out to date from his press office just.
blasting DeSanis with a bunch of weird attacks.
Like if you go through a fact check,
all the things that the Trump suppress people are complaining about
with DeSantis, they're like half truths
and like very sort of debatable things.
Like I don't, I don't like really,
if you like dig into each complaint,
like the Social Security, Medicare stuff,
the closing of the beaches for a few months,
you know, all of these things.
Like they're not really that strong arguments.
against DeSanis from my point of view.
That doesn't mean Trump doesn't have strong arguments against the sanis.
So again, I think Trump will eventually take this primary if you just break it down.
That doesn't mean he's the best candidate for a general election versus Biden.
So let's have that to be in the primaries.
So, Benny, I'd like to, first of all, thanks.
They call it faith because in the face of...
Just a New Yorker?
So, Benny, anyway, thanks for joining us.
I appreciate it.
Yo, what's up, guys?
Yeah, yeah, thanks for coming.
So as quickly as possible.
Was that Billy Graham?
Like, what was that?
It sounded like Billy Graham.
You can see that brighter future.
A faith that our best days.
But, Ben, let me ask you real quick.
Okay.
Oh, that was that.
That was the British guy that's in the front of DeSantis's ad.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
So, Benny, what are you thinking here?
So we know.
Benny, are you been drinking?
Oh, man.
No, I'm not drinking.
I love this stuff.
I'm like, I'm really, I'm excited.
I've never been more excited for a funeral.
Because this is a funeral, right?
So the funeral tonight, whether you're Trump or a senator's reporter.
Man.
Whether you're a Trump's for a status porter.
The funeral is for the corporate press.
I think we can all, if you're a conservative or if you're even an independent,
can be thrilled that the corporate press is losing their damned minds tonight.
I mean, this is Swagger Jacket.
Benny, Benny.
The thing that they have controlled for the better part.
Careful what you wish for, Benny.
Let's not become Canada here.
We need Fox News.
Do we really, though?
We need something.
Do we really need Fox News anymore?
Yes, we do.
Justin, I go.
David.
Yeah, Betty, just two seconds.
Justin, I know, hold on, Benny.
I'm here to say, now I know.
I'm here to say that like this, I'm here to say that this is the most monumental.
This is the most monument.
I want to add two quick things to the conversation I've been listening to for the past 20 minutes.
I'll be really fast to go to know.
Everyone's going to want to listen to this, you know, in two, three minutes.
One, this is the most monumental thing to happen to presidential, to like the presidential
communication capacities since they televised Richard Nixon versus Kennedy in 1960.
So that is inarguable, right?
So third, so third, hey sweetie.
So third, or secondarily, Elon Musk's responded to my team, to ALX for my team today,
saying he would absolutely host one of these with Donald Trump and with Joe Biden.
And I would be 100% in favor of that.
Like, tell me you wouldn't want to be in trying to hear.
But that's not going to happen.
Joe Biden's not going to do that.
Okay.
Why wouldn't Trump do that?
I don't know of the debate.
Joe Biden's not going to.
Joe Biden's not going to do it because the Atlantic has already decided that this is a fascist website, right?
So come on, man.
So moving on.
So again, again, again, moving on, he should.
Yeah, but he won't.
So, I mean, this is fantasy.
The other thing is they all have conversations with Elon Musk, right?
So I just interviewed DeSantis.
I've interviewed Trump.
They both have nice things to say about Elon Musk.
They all meet in private.
They all met Zuckerberg in private.
Isn't it neat to actually listen in on these conversations?
Look, I think it's good.
I do.
I do.
I think it's all good.
I really do.
Yeah.
So like, it's not like they're not all meeting each other anyway.
It's actually remarkable to be able to listen in a little bit on the conversations.
and to be able to ask the questions ourselves.
So, so ultimately that's like, ultimately that's the,
that's the thing I think is particularly fascinating here.
The final thing I'll say as it pertains to Donald Trump
and somebody who is a Trump fan,
as somebody who has followed Donald Trump's career
who's interviewed the guy a couple times right on his plan.
Like, I got to tell you,
especially being from Iowa and knowing the Iowa caucuses,
the Iowa system of voting, man,
You should want this.
I'm telling you this.
You should want this.
Because today is like DeSantis' day.
All the DeSantis people are,
hoorah, hoorah, you know, ready to go.
The Trump people are kind of defensive.
You should want Donald Trump to have a weighty
and battle-hardened and hard-boiled primary.
It is what made Donald Trump the person
who was sharp enough to beat Hillary Clinton in 2016
and actually destroy Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Right.
The big primary and the big battles that he fought on a weekly basis against some very formidable people is what made Donald Trump Trump.
So I've been saying this publicly for a very long time, ever since this was, you know, after the 2022 election where it was obvious that these two kaiju were going to come fight each other.
Like, let them fight.
I think it will be very good for the process.
I think the Trump people should be happy about it.
It will make Trump a better candidate.
And I think the dissentist people, they should also be thrilled to, like, get, you know, get the chance to challenge the king of the jungle.
And so I'm for the fight.
Let me ask you, Ben, I, uh, uh, uh, uh,
When it comes to this polling,
Nick, Nick, before you do,
Nick,
Justin, did you want to test the stream
or you're all good...
Oh, no, we're good to start.
That was me.
I had to test a video.
Oh, cool.
Thanks, bro.
Go ahead, Nick.
So, Benny, one of the arguments that people that are in the DeSantis camp are making right now about the poll numbers, right?
We see, it seems like Trump is up, you know, significantly in all of the polls that we've seen.
I don't think any of them have really been close ever.
I mean, are you expecting a massive jump in DeSantis' poll numbers after he announces tonight?
No, I don't think so.
He's going to have to start campaigning.
But also, again, as an Iowan,
I can just speak to my own personal experience
of somebody who cut my teeth in Iowa
for my entire collegiate career
and for my entire growing up years.
I had come from a political family,
grassroots political family there in Iowa.
Listen, this stuff changes and it changes swiftly.
Now, Donald Trump is a very different political beast.
And I think he's a lot harder to beat than like, let's say, a Mitt Romney.
But Mitt Romney was the odds on guy in 2012.
And then Mike Huckabee comes from behind and wins.
Like, it's crazy what happens in these primaries and caucuses.
And so it's just going to be fascinating.
And again, as a conservative and as somebody who wants this country to be saved, I am for the battle.
I think the battle will help.
DeSantis being down is going to make the fight all the more interesting.
And so let's see where the battle goes.
However, I will say as far as polling is concerned, I don't know, man, it's really far out.
I just far out. I don't trust these polls. I don't trust a lot of polls right now, to be honest.
But I'm black-pilled on polls. They've been wrong a lot.
Yeah, Kyle, you know, the other thing is when all of the other, when the, when Mike Pence and Scott and Haley and all of these bait into the background,
the Sanis can pick up a lot of ground there. So, I mean, he can get within 15, 12 to 15 points of Trump.
So then we'll talk.
But I think right now, there's no reason to trust general election polls.
And like I said before, in my opinion, you got to go state by state, really, to do justice to what a head-to-head looks like.
You know, Trump versus DeSantis in each state.
And seeing that primary play out will give us a great litmus test.
of the political sentiment in each state that Trump, ultimately, if he wins, has to win these states, right?
So, you know, I could say Trump attacking DeSantis on abortion in a lot of these states.
And, you know, seeing the reaction to that, getting the polling on that, you know, this will be very helpful.
So, you know,
You know, I think, you know, I'm much on the same page.
But again, like, we really need to look at it state by state.
The general polling right now, yeah, you could flush it as far as I'm concerned.
I mean, California, like, you know, how are they waited?
New York, how are they waited?
Like, who cares what they think?
They're lost.
Yeah.
So just in the test, do you need a test?
I think it's full.
I think it's full as gold.
I think the general polling had Hillary Clinton up 30, 40 points on Barack Obama at this point.
It also had Joe Biden not even registering.
Joe Biden was in like the middle five or four or six right now in the Democratic primaries at this time, 2020.
Polls are just, I'm just about black-pilled on polls, right?
So...
I think it's all fools.
On a more practical level, as we're getting started,
things to watch out for.
There's a space crash.
That's number one.
Number two, are there technological malfunctions?
And number three, are they going to be sponsors?
I think I'm very interested to see how Linda,
now being part of this, changes the entire equation.
And how does the moderation work?
David Sachs is supposed to be moderating?
Is Elon going to speak?
throughout or is he only going to be there in spirit just to get people up there.
There's a lot of specifics here.
And just for the audience, so Justin, you start streaming as soon as it begins.
You can start streaming immediately.
Everyone will just mute and we can start listening to it and we'll continue the commentary
and the debate right after.
Justin is the streaming working on your end before give the mic back to Benny?
Justin, you're good?
Let me message him.
Benny, go ahead.
They started streaming, by the way, just as a heads up.
On the other side, I see them streaming right now.
They haven't actually started the discussion.
Yeah, Coliseantis is not there.
So, you know, so there's nothing going on yet.
I think it is important to note that it's important to note when you listen to this live
that David Sacks is a Ron DeSantis.
I believe he has endorsed Ron DeSantis.
David Sacks has been on my show a couple times.
He's a friend of Elon and an advisor to Elon, but David Sacks has, I believe, publicly
endorsed Ron DeSantis.
Yeah, so I want to ask you here real quick, Benny, when it comes to Desantis, what is he going to have to do?
Is he going to attack Trump on Operation Warp Speed?
Is that going to be one of the key pillars to his campaign that Trump was pushing the vaccine and such?
That's what I've heard from some people that are close to the DeSantis campaign.
I mean, is that a good move for him?
Is that actually going to work?
Or will it hurt him to be attacking Trump?
I mean, I think that you can, I think that you could absolutely run on the, sorry guys,
there's a big truck driving by my house right now, staying on my front porch.
I think you could absolutely say this is the guy who not only hired Fauci, but kept him in his
position and gave him the limelight.
I believe that Ronda Sanchez is planning on doing that, in fact.
You know, quite frankly, it's going to be very, very hard to run to the right of Ronda
Sanchez.
It's going to be very difficult.
Now, I topped on here earlier, and I heard people arguing about COVID,
You know, every time I hop on one of these faces, Mario,
it's like the GIF from the community show,
where Troy comes back with a pizza and there's, you know,
flames and everyone's screaming.
You know, I think there's going to be a,
I think there's going to be a lot of,
I think there's going to be a lot of finger pointing going around, honestly, about records.
You can already see that, right, with Donald Trump's social media posts today.
The other thing is a little birdie, the other thing is a little bird.
A little birdie tells me, and take this for what it's worth,
but a little birdie tells me that Donald Trump is coming back to Twitter.
And that this move tonight by Ron DeSantis is forcing that hand, is highly influential.
Does he start tweeting tonight?
No, from what we know, hasn't he got a contract until about June?
He's not able to come to Twitter until then.
But Benny, another question.
Would that contract still impact him from coming to a Twitter space?
Because that's what was on my mind.
Like, maybe he won't come back to Twitter for his personal account.
But if he can do a CNN town hall, wouldn't this be sort of like a Twitter town hall?
Like, could he still maybe come just to do something like that?
And then the other question, I would...
be curious to know is, you know, with some of Elon's, you know, China-backed financing,
would Trump, you know, because obviously one of Trump's, if you've seen any of his speeches,
he's very critical of China, the Wuhan Lab League and China's meddling in U.S. politics.
So is that going to be fair game in a Trump-Twitter Elon Town Hall?
Elon wants Trump back on Twitter, I think, more than anything on Earth.
I don't know Elon personally, but I can tell you, like, the guy's making memes of, like, a celibate month looking at a woman of the night and, like, trying to pray his way away from it.
Just to give it update. Sorry, Benny, one second. Just to give it update. Ron DeSantis has joined the space. They've not gone talking yet.
We'll be, yeah. As soon as I start talking, we'll start streaming immediately. Go ahead, Benny.
Yeah, yep. Go ahead, Benny. Sorry.
I would just say that Elon Musk wants Trump back.
And I'll be the first to raise my hand and be like,
I would be the first person joining the Elon Musk Trump Twitter space.
I mean, I'll tell you, my sources tell me,
my sources are pretty good,
and they tell me that Donald Trump will be coming back to Twitter.
That is a foregone conclusion.
And also this, the space being used to announce this tonight
has like changed that calculus.
That's what I'm being told.
I mean, one important thing is someone didn't mention it,
but I'd like to hear your thoughts here if you haven't already explained it.
But, yeah.
We know that we've got David Sachs as a speaker.
We've got Elon Musk as the horse.
We've got DeSantis as a speaker.
Are they going to bring up people from a variety of ideological positions to ask Descenta's a question?
Or do you think this is a plan?
Yep.
Elon, Elon, a reference this today.
Yes.
They will be having users ask questions.
No, no, but the question is, are those users going to be from diverse ideological positions, or is it going to be, you know, selected, curated questioners?
It's such a great question.
I mean, I guess they're, so the way that Elon sold this is that there would be, that there would be no screening process for the people asking questions.
I can't imagine that that's true on its face, like 100%, that they're just going to grab, like, 6283 eggplant emoji and like let them ask a question.
Right? With an avatar of some 1980s movie.
But that's what Elon said.
Elon said there's going to be no vetting of the questions for the people who get to ask questions.
And that's what's going to be interesting.
I get the argument that there won't be no vetting of questions,
but then it does depend on who's going to come up there.
And if it's going to be more towards the people who are specifically dissentous supporters,
is there going to be more specifically people from the right?
I think that's an important question.
What do you think, Marriott?
We need that gentleman that you accidentally removed from stage from Fox.
I'm curious.
I know, I feel so bad.
I literally was going to say to him, like, I was going to say, look, Fox is dead, isn't it?
What was his name?
What was his name?
I can't remember his name.
I literally, look at his profile.
And I was literally going to attack him.
Stop for a second.
Justin, is it working on your end of the stream?
Everything's good.
Justin, are you there?
Can hear me?
I think he can't speak, but he can message me.
So he's going to be.
So while Mario's messaging and just went quiet.
Essentially, I'm sorry, Justin, are you coming on?
Hey guys, can you still hear me?
I'm hearing you right now.
Yeah, yeah, we can hear you, Ben.
Sorry.
Now it's quiet.
Yeah, we're working on the,
working through some technical things here,
so sorry about that.
So I'm getting, I'm, so.
Good evening or good morning, everyone, depending on where everyone you're joining us from.
So, yeah, I mean.
So, yeah, I mean.
So, yeah, I mean.
From Twitter headquarters, it's David Sacks here.
Uh, Elon is sitting next to me.
And we want to welcome you to this historic Twitter spaces event and more broadly at first in the history of social media.
Uh, tonight I'm pleased to introduce two individuals who've done more to loosen the group.
Yeah.
So it looks like we are, uh, we're streaming the, uh, the, the, uh,
The announcement right now with Elon and Ron DeSantis, so, go ahead, Justin.
All right.
Sorry about that.
We've got so many people here that I think we are kind of melting the servers, which is a good sign.
Okay.
All right, I'd like to just introduce the folks in the room here.
So it's safe to say we wouldn't be making history without the man seeing next me.
Elon Musk, his decision to purchase this platform last year,
to restore its original mission as a beacon for free speech,
and even to expose Twitter's past complicity with a government-sensitive regime.
Right.
Might have surprised many, but not those of us who've known to work with Elon for nearly a quarter century.
His commitment to freedom and his money was put his money well in his mouth is,
upset the narrative, and pose on us by our government, elite institutions, and corporate media.
Go ahead and send a hard up if you want to say thank you, Elon.
Governor DeSantis first drew my attention and support when I saw how he responded to the COVID pandemic.
and refused to believe what we now know to be the many falsehoods that government experts and their media mouthpieces were feeding us.
He kept Florida schools open and its economy thriving while my state of California chose two years of learning loss and lockdowns that we have yet to pull.
So, guys, I just want to make clear the connection issue seems to be on the Twitter end.
It's not on our end.
So it's not, it's not our space.
Their stream keeps cutting out, which means ours.
Yeah, it's the other best.
You're right.
Oh, shit.
It's the oldest bit.
This is what I was trying to say, guys.
Ah, shit.
This is, this is no good.
By the way, Justin, the meantime, you got a bit of, hold on guys, no one speak.
Justin, you got a bit of feedback.
I don't know.
Can anyone hear that little feedback?
That buzzing sound from TV buzzing sound?
Yeah, no, I messaged him too.
Oh, okay, yeah, Justin, if you can hear us, you got a bit of a buzzing sound.
I'm messaging it, but there's a, Twitter has a bit of a glitch.
This is concerning.
Yeah, it's going to be pretty anticlimactic for Ron there.
His big announcement can't.
This is exactly what I was trying to say right before because this was my biggest worry.
Yeah, this is, uh, I can't wait for, I can't wait for Trump's tweet.
This is our tweet, exactly.
He can't run the, I really hope he starts tweeting right now, like right now.
And then you got it right now. That's going to be a sick tweet.
All he has tweeted is Ron, question mark.
No, no, the tweet will be what had this.
Trump's going to be like, oh, he can't run a Twitter space.
How can he run the Twitter space?
It looks like just going back to the Elon space right now.
It looks like because I'm trying to use it from a different account, but it's still pretty glitchy here.
It looks like David Sachs is actually no longer on stage.
And it's just Elon by himself.
So that's that's disappointing.
Yeah, and that is true.
I have now confirmed that.
Elon Musk is the only one.
That engineer is now fired.
This is insane.
This is epic.
David Sachs said that DeSantis didn't shut down to schools in California did.
That wasn't true.
Okay, hold on.
So let's see.
Yeah, this is fascinating.
I have to say the technical issue is a kind of hard.
Massive number of people online.
So Elon just mentioned the fact that the space is to keep crashing.
That's what he just said.
Does anybody know how many people were in that space?
There are currently 405,000 people in his face.
Okay.
They're about 30,000 in our space.
And what's important to note here while we kind of wait, you know, we really need, I mean, spaces are going to be a killer of Twitter, right?
This is the future of Twitter.
And so, you know, I think at some point they're going to have to dedicate more resources to spaces here.
And this might be evidence of that necessity here tonight.
But hopefully they can get this stuff fixed pretty quickly.
Hey, Nick, it looked like desktop was crashed before they even started.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Yeah, someone sent me a screenshot of the desktop portion was crashed.
So what's interesting is, ultimately, as Heather was saying, this is sort of anti-climactic.
But remember that he is going to be on Fox.
My understanding is right after this.
If you look...
How did Trump crash Elon's face?
Doc, I heard it was Russia.
That's what I've been told through the wire.
Let's open an investigation.
You guys are always about the deep state.
So I have to say, the biggest thing I think from a business perspective is how is Linda
Yacarino going to respond to this specifically with advertisers?
We're seeing Tucker come on this platform.
How does this affect this sort of fight between, you know, corporate media and the new media
if they can't even keep it up and running for such an important event?
That's what that that I have to say.
This actually is potentially a very big event for for Twitter.
And Dr. Donish, I totally agree with you because essentially mainstream media, all eyes of mainstream media on this.
We've had those two major interviews before, but maybe they didn't penetrate the mainstream media as much.
But this one.
Yeah, the MSM is going to, is going to shit on this.
Yeah, to be fair, though, I mean, when you look at Elon Musk, I mean, the guy builds rockets for a living, basically, and how many failed launches lead to a good launch, right?
So if you look at this as like one of the first test launches, I'm sure there's going to be a learning curve, but eventually everyone knows the spaces are going to become more suitable for that many viewers at once.
But obviously this is, they definitely way over publicized this. They should have done like,
maybe like a smaller test space like first and sort of work their way up to
current status seems to be hold music playing in the space
Oh, you've got to be kidding me
There's no way that's going on
Are you kidding right now?
Hold on, hono, can someone play it?
Can Justin, can you?
I don't know if you can hear me Justin?
Is it like
It was the music that, you know, when you
So when you start a space
We have this option to play music that
Oh my God
No, that's not it.
Oh no.
Justin, stop messing with us
Beth, that's me on hold with AAA, sorry.
Yeah, I've just muted you, Justin.
You've got a lot of buzzing sound.
I don't know why.
Yeah, I don't know what's going on.
Calisi, we'll be able to stream it as well.
Calisi, can you stream that hold music for us?
I'm curious to hear it.
There isn't any, there isn't any, Mario.
Oh, this is a joke.
I guess.
It was a joke.
Okay, well, that wasn't a good joke.
I actually believe.
It was the music that plays when you actually start a space up, you know, the do-do, do, do, do, do.
Yeah, that one, that's my pretty good rendition of it.
That's what was playing here about a minute and a half.
Oh, so there was, hold on, there was, there was actually a hold music, Nick.
Yeah, there was.
Not the one that Justin played, but a different one.
I can't hear it.
Well, you can't hear it anymore.
I got it on the back anymore.
Because it stopped.
It stopped.
It played for a bit earlier.
No, no.
When he was saying it, it wasn't, it was fine.
All right.
The thing that's interesting about this decision by Ron DeSantis is that I don't think that they thought through the whole problem.
Twitter spaces crashes on a regular basis.
I know it's getting better and better.
We're on here every day.
It's an incredible platform.
The ability to get questions.
I actually think it was very, very smart to get questions directly from the audience.
Show the humanity of Ron DeSantis, who I think is a great candidate personally.
But, you know...
And he hasn't had as much retail politics experience.
Maybe he can get some swing voters across, you know, to actually invest, to work in the primary for him and work this platform for him.
And honestly, if you look at the data on Elon Musk, he has the most favorable rating of any, this was under...
political but most people rating of any celebrity out there.
Guys, I'm just trying to realize how impactful this is what's happening right now.
Like this is going to be a stain, you know, Trump is going to leverage this for at least a few weeks,
for not a couple of months to make fun of DeSantis.
DeSantis is announcing running for president on Twitter.
Twitter.
with Elon and David Sachs and the whole thing is just crashing and glitching.
Obviously, I'm not happy this is happening.
We do spaces every day, morning, afternoon, nights, et cetera.
So I'm pretty, you know, to me, it's not a good thing.
To us, it's not a good thing.
But looking at it objectively, this is like a gift to mainstream media.
I mean, as a backup,
DeSantis can come here.
We'll sort out.
We never have a problem.
Oh shit.
I'm going to do...
No, no,
I'm not going to do that.
Elon won't be happy with it.
Yeah, we should probably get up.
Well, I'm kind of getting nervous
because I feel like everyone from that space is...
Yeah, we're sitting at 43, right?
Anybody,
if anybody's got Elon's number,
if anybody's got,
Sax's number or DeSantis
tell him to come to the main space on Twitter
and we will hold the space
and we will ask him the questions
and we'll help him become president.
Yeah, but him coming here,
he's not going to get,
he's not going to get the easy questions
just a heads up, he's going to get that question.
He's not, we've got Mullins here.
Mullins will smash him.
Yeah, that's a problem.
You don't want him.
I don't know.
Honestly, I'm a little offended.
I wasn't asked to ask to
ask DeSantis a few questions
in the light of transparency.
Yeah, but you're not going to have an analysis candidacy.
But another thing, guys, and just to tell you how brilliant our...
One second, one second, sorry, Heather.
Just to tell you how brilliant our Twitter spaces are,
if you want to comment on the bottom right,
we will read your comments out because our Twitter space isn't glitching.
On top of that, guys, Mario has got a subscriber.
You can subscribe to Mario.
It's only $1.
Yesterday, Nick finally subscribed because we did a bit of a fundraiser.
But for everybody else...
I subscribed.
I...
Uh, nice one.
See that, if Mullins is doing it, she ain't going to attack you as well.
She'd be on your side.
It was only because he danced with Snoop Dog, right?
Exactly, exactly.
And we're going to do exclusive Twitter spaces for subscribers.
You never know.
It's possible.
We could even have DeSantis on because the other space is flopping.
You never know.
I've actually, I've actually.
So much better.
I was just about to pitch it.
So, so much better.
But I will say, 45,000 of you subscribe to Mario.
We can probably pay DeSantis to be here.
We can't pay, it's gonna be a dollar
because I couldn't make it for free,
but we are gonna do, we will do exclusive,
we will do exclusive spaces,
like smaller spaces with key guests
for the subscribers.
So yeah, you can subscribe,
but I did invite DeSantis as you guys
were shilling the subscribe button, I appreciate it.
So let's see if he, imagine he accidentally clicks
on the join button and then we just rocks up here.
With like 30% of the panel loves them,
where's Justin, we get Justin back up.
I want to share one thought, though.
Like, I don't know if anyone else listening had this thought,
but under President Trump, when he created, like...
All right, guys, hold on, I started, so Calisi.
The space has now ended, guys.
Sorry, Mario, what you're going to say?
Did you say it's ended?
Yeah, the Elon space, unless it only happened to me, the space has ended.
Someone said they're starting.
Can I mean you understand?
Holy God.
Are they restarting?
I'm still seeing Ronda Santos as a listener in the space.
But keep in mind, I'm also on the...
So I'm trying to look at desktop and mobile,
and it actually looks different on both of them.
Khalisi is your...
Halifio, Justin, is yours one ended?
No, I'm on the web, Siraman,
because it just won't work otherwise.
And I don't want to refresh it.
At the moment, it looks like it's still going in.
Justin, what's happening on your own, Justin?
Okay, sorry. I've sort of piecing this together with taping and gum.
It does look like the space has officially crashed on both mobile and desk.
Yeah, it has.
Sorry, I can't speak at the same time I have it streaming.
And so, yeah, it looks like Elon is no longer on the spaces.
And that's really unfortunate.
But, you know, Ronda Santis just crashed Twitter.
Imagine what he's going to do to Donald Trump.
Alright, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, hold on, I'm gonna, hold on, guys, let me, let me, guys, let me come up with an interesting tweet on this.
So let me see.
Dude, if Rhonda Santas had the Twitter space on his own page, it wouldn't crash because there'd been.
All right, it looks like, well, this belies the comment earlier.
to control this situation.
Nick, actually, I got so...
Actually, I do want to share this for everybody
that the fact that the Ron DeSantis
campaign launch on Twitter crashing has now made it to
breaking news on BBC, I literally just got the alert
that BBC is breaking, that Twitter suffers
severe technical issues as Elon Musk scrambles to sort out the problem.
Nick, Nick changed the title of the space...
Something along the lines of DeSantis space crashing, something along those lines.
Now, I think we should leave it because people know that we're still doing a live discussion.
Yeah, actually leave it.
This might be the place to be.
We've already got 55,000 listeners.
Everyone's turned it up to the real place where they need to hear about possibly him come in.
Linda was on the space earlier, if I'm right.
So if she's listening, get DeSantis in here.
It won't crash and we can interview the guy.
We're back up, but we're the real place you need to come to.
Yeah.
So just to be fair to Elon, 728,000.
Whoever was speaking just dropped out.
Sorry, what happened, Kyle?
That's not our space on his own internet.
Okay, so I was just going to say, to be fair to Elon, CNN's ratings for Tuesday.
Jake Tapper was at $568,000.
That space was over $728,000 when it cracked down.
Yeah, but Elon Musk has 140 million followers that all get notified.
That's kind of like...
But, guys, let me ask you.
So, hold on.
I want someone from Fox to come on.
We did have someone earlier and Slaman kicked him off by accident.
I want someone from Fox to come on because I'm curious.
There's a few things that are going to happen.
Now, this is going to impact the Santis's announcement, you know, the...
anti-climatic nature of it is going to impact him negatively.
And then you've got the impact on Twitter space
is something that we work on.
This is going to bring a lot of attention to Twitter.
Okay.
Yeah, it's started.
Hey, Mario, just started.
Okay, okay.
Kalisi, can you stream here?
Or Justin, do you want to stream it first see if it's going to buzz or not?
I'm going to try.
Go ahead.
Would they restarted the space?
Yeah, go ahead.
Guys, everyone, please mute.
You're muted, Justin, if you can unmute.
Otherwise, we'll have Kalisa stream.
Calici, I'm going to have you stream if you don't mind.
Kalisi, do you want to stream it?
Yeah, let me just bring it up on the web.
Give you one second.
Justin, there's a lot of buzzing, Justin.
Yeah, I've removed him. I've removed him.
Yeah, but...
Calisi?
Yeah.
Yeah, that was insane.
Sorry.
We, uh, I actually doing this from, uh, David's
Twitter account, uh, because, uh, it looks like doing it from mine, basically broke
the Twitter system.
Um, right, thanks a more for joining.
Uh, we're incredibly excited to announce, uh, the, uh,
if you want to have
Governor
to have Governor
Sanis
on with us
for this
historic announcement
and I look forward
to live
Q&A from
the Orient's
yeah
with that
Yeah, I mean, so, uh,
Governor Santis, uh,
can, are you there? Can you hear us? I think you've been,
I'm here. I know. I think, I think, I think you broke the internet there. We had over
half a million people in one Twitter space.
And it was growing by like 50,000 a minute. So, uh,
And congrats on breaking the internet there.
Well, yeah, yeah.
I mean, try some, you know, new things.
You're going to, yes.
It's adventurous.
Yes.
So I think the value here is actually really high for people to hear directly from presidential candidates.
And to answer a Q&A live and you can get a sense for how a candidate really is, you know,
and where it's not just canned speeches and telepronters.
It's, you can tell by the, you know, some of the mistakes that it's real.
Yeah.
So, you know, with that, I guess I should turn it over to, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, let's see, so, yeah, Governor, there's been a lot of speculation over the last couple of months about your plans.
I understand that you may have an announcement to make.
We've got, I think, a record audience assembled here.
You know, probably the biggest room that's probably ever been assembled online.
What would you like to tell them?
Not true.
Well, I am running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback.
Look, we know our country's going in the wrong direction.
We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.
Our southern borders collapse.
Drugs are pouring into the country.
Our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime.
The federal government's making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and
to attain and maintain a middle class lifestyle.
And our president, well, he lacks vigor, flounders in the face of our nation's challenges,
and he takes his cues from the woke mob.
I don't think it has to be this way.
American decline is not inevitable.
It is a choice.
And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization.
We must restore sanity to our nation.
This means embracing fiscal and economic sanity.
Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary
borrow print and spending policies and please embrace American energy independence.
This also means replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles.
Merit must trump identity politics.
We must return normalcy to our communities.
America is a sovereign country.
Our borders must be respected.
We cannot have foreigners pouring into our country illegally by the millions.
We cannot allow drug cartels to poison our population with fentanyl.
Public deserves to be maintained in American cities.
We can't have inmates running the asylum.
We must...
and we must reject attacks on the men and women of law enforcement.
We also must reestablish integrity in our institutions.
This includes the military.
I'm proud to be a Navy veteran and Iraq veteran, and I revere our services,
but when revered institutions like those in our military are more concerned
with matters not central to the mission, whether it's global warming or gender ideology
and pronouns, morale declines, and recruiting suffers.
and you need to eliminate these distractions,
And,
and we need to get focused on the core mission.
We also cannot have true constitutional government
if the most significant issues are decided by the whims of unelected bureaucrats
rather than the people's elected representatives.
Reestablishing integrity in our institutions means
we must reinvigorate our constitutional system
by returning the government to its rightful owners,
we the people.
No social or economic...
transformation without representation. Truth needs to be our foundation. Common sense can no longer be
an uncommon virtue. And in Florida, we proved it could be done. We chose facts over fear, education
over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder. We held the line when freedom hung
hung in the balance. And we're thriving as a result. Florida is the nation's fastest growing state.
We're number one in net in migration, number one in new business formations, recently ranked number
one in education. We have a 50-year low crime rate and one of the lowest tax and debt per
capita in America. But we also understand governing is not entertainment.
It's not about building a brand or virtue signaling. It is about delivering results.
And our results in Florida have been second to none. We can and we must deliver big results for America.
I pledge to be an energetic executive that will take on the important issues. Biden's pursued
inflationary policies that are hurting working people. We will reverse those policies.
And we'll build an economy where working Americans can achieve a good standard of living.
Biden's opened the southern border and allowed massive amounts of drugs to pour into the country.
We'll shut down the border, construct the border wall, and hold the drug cartels accountable.
Biden's embraced medical authoritarianism such as unconstitutional COVID-Vax mandates.
We will ensure that those violations of liberty can never happen again.
Biden's allowed woke ideology to drive his agenda.
We will never surrender to the woke mob,
and we will leave woke ideology in the
in the dustbin of history. Biden's also politicized the military and cause recruiting to plummet.
We will eliminate ideological agendas from our military, focus the military on the core mission,
and we will reverse the poor recruiting trends. Finally, Biden's weaponized the power of the
administrative state to advance his left-wing agenda. We will reconstitutionalize the executive branch
and we'll bring the administrative state to heal. Now, you can't do any of that if you don't win.
There is no substitute for victory. We must end the culture of losing that has infected the
Republican Party in recent years. The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant
future. We must look forward, not backwards. We need to be.
We need the courage to lead, and we must have the strength to win.
And to voters who are participating in this primary process, my pledge to you is this.
If you nominate me, you can set your clock to January 20th, 2025 at high noon,
because on the west side of the U.S. Capitol, I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States.
No excuses, I will get the job done.
Now, these past few years have given me a new appreciation for the fragility of our freedoms.
I never thought I would see things in America that we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But our founding fathers were keenly aware of the fragility of freedom.
When they framed our Constitution, they came to arm with having studied the history of every republic and the history of mankind.
And they noticed that all of those experiments only had one thing in common, and it was this.
Every single one of them had failed.
And so they knew it fell to our country, the United States of America,
to determine whether people could really govern themselves.
Could we have a society based on the idea that our rights are God-given, not government-granted?
And that society functions based on the rule of law, not the rule of individual men.
And when Dr. Benjamin Franklin walked out of that convention, he was asked,
did you deliver a republic or a monarchy?
He said, a republic, if you can keep it.
They knew freedom didn't run on autopilot.
They knew each generation would have a responsibility to safeguard freedom, and it's our
responsibility to do so at this important juncture in our nation's history.
We have a lot of work to do to ensure the country gets back on track.
I ask everybody listening to please join me on this mission.
Please invest in our campaign by going to rondissanus.com and making a donation.
Thank you.
God bless, and I look forward to the discussion.
All right.
Thank you, Governor.
I appreciate that.
I guess just as a first follow-up here, thank you for putting up with these technical issues.
I think we're definitely breaking you ground here.
As far as I know, no major presidential candidate has ever announced their candidacy on social media this way,
certainly in a Twitter space.
So thank you for doing that.
What made you want to kind of take the chance of doing it this way,
as opposed to just doing it on cable news or the usual way?
Well, when COVID hit, I had to make decisions about do you go with the crowd or do you look at the data yourself and cut against the grain? And I chose to do the latter. I faced huge blowback for doing that from the bureaucracy, from elites, from the media. But my view was I had to look out for the people I represented prefer protecting their jobs over trying to safeguard my own political hide. But it was very, very lonely in a lot of those decisions. And
Part of the reason it was so lonely is because there was a concerted effort to try to stifle dissent.
There was an official narrative about lockdowns, about closing schools, about force masking, about all these different things that we had to navigate during COVID.
And it was an orthodoxy being enforced by the major tech platforms in conjunction with the federal government.
And if we can't have an honest debate in a free country about issues that affect hundreds of millions of people like lockdowns,
then what good is the First Amendment at that point?
Those are precisely the times when we needed to have debate be robust.
You should not be taking down articles that criticize those draconian policies,
and yet that's exactly what happened.
So it occurred to me that if that had continued...
I think free speech in this country was on its way out the door.
And so when Elon must stepped up to purchase Twitter, he paid a lot of money for it.
And I'm sure because he's a good businessman, Elon, I'm sure you'll end up making money off it.
But bottom line is you had to put your money where your mouth is,
because I think you recognize that you can't have a free society
unless we have the freedom to debate the most important issues
that are affecting our civilization.
That did not happen during COVID.
The truth was censored repeatedly.
And now that Twitter is in the hands of a free speech advocate,
that would not be able to happen again.
Right.
on this Twitter platform.
So I think what was done with Twitter
is really significant for the future of our country.
We cannot have a society in which government is colluding
with major tech platforms to enforce an orthodoxy.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, we're absolutely committed to freedom speech and level playing field and just a vigorous debate.
And hopefully this can be a platform that brings people of divergent political views to exchange those views.
And perhaps some minds will be changed one way or the other.
but it's just incredibly important as you as you highlight that the First Amendment is irrelevant
if all the media and all the and the government are operating in lockstep.
It makes the most important amendment, the one that was most urgently added to the Constitution
moot if you cannot have free and open debate.
So Twitter was indeed expensive, but free speech is priceless.
Awesome.
Thank you.
So, Governor, I'm going to ask some questions while we get some other kind of speakers in the queue to ask questions.
I think maybe some people knew this announcement was coming because there's no shortage of hip pieces on you in the press over the last week or two.
I want to ask you about some of these accusations that are being leveled at you.
last week, the NAACP issued a travel advisory against your state, claiming that Florida is not a safe place for minorities to visit.
What do you say to those who've been advised that somehow they aren't welcome in your state?
Claiming that Florida is unsafe is a total farce.
I mean, are you kidding me?
You look at cities around this country.
They are awash in crime.
Right.
In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low.
If you look at the top 25 cities for crime in America,
Florida does not have a single one amongst the top 25.
And if you look at cities like Baltimore and Chicago,
you've got kids more likely to get shot than to receive a first-class education.
Yet I don't see the NAACP batting an eye about all the outrage and the carnage
that's happening in those areas.
So this is a political stunt.
These left-wing groups have been doing it for many, many years.
And at the end of the day, what they're doing is colluding with legacy media to try to manufacture a narrative.
Now, the good news is, as fewer and fewer Americans are gullible enough to believe this dribble,
and platforms like Twitter are there where people can debunk these lies.
in real time.
And I would just say as an American citizen,
if you are uncritically accepting narratives spun
by legacy media and left-wing groups,
you're failing at your job of being a conscientious citizen.
And I think people just see right through it.
And oh, by the way,
Have any of these travel advisories?
Because they've been doing this for a while, all these left ring groups.
Have any of them worked?
Well, we're the number one state for net in migration and have been every year since I've been governor.
We just have the highest quarter for tourism in the history of,
of the state of Florida.
And our view is we want everybody to succeed,
regardless of their skin color.
We don't divvy up people by race.
At the same time, it is worth pointing out
that we have in Florida more black-owned businesses
than any state in the nation.
And we've also had more African-Americans
lead state agencies under my administration
than at any time in Florida history.
But with us, you know they're there because of merit,
not because we're trying to play
identity politics. And if you want to look at education, the black students in Florida perform
much higher than black students in most other states. We rank number three in fourth grade reading
and number two in fourth grade math amongst our black student population. And oh, by the way, the
The head of the NAACP lives in Florida, and a lot of their board members have put out on social media during my governorship Florida vacations where they seem to be having an awful good time.
That's great.
Well, I mean, Florida's a great state,
and I think that people realize that some of the things that are being said are just truly absurd.
I mean, I saw some headline from the Atlantic,
basically claiming that anyone who listens to this...
spaces on Twitter is basically a Nazi.
So, yeah.
And then,
Vanity Fair said that
that you were
hosting or interviewing because
David Duke wasn't available.
Oh, yes.
Although I'm not totally sure
who they were saying was David Duke.
I don't know if it was you
or Governor DeSantis.
It's a little bit unclear, but...
But I think this is a function of
these, the legacy media, these corporate journals, they're in their little bubble.
And to draw allusions to stuff like that, I mean, how crazy do you have to be?
But in their little bubble, it sounds like they're making some type of profound point.
And so part of, I think, what Twitter is standing for is,
people should be exposed to different viewpoints.
And I think the elites in our society have tried to cluster themselves to where their assumptions are never challenged.
And that's not a good way, I think, to live.
It's also not a good way to be a critical thinker because no one's ever going to question obviously wrong assumptions because everybody around you shares them.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think they've become totally hysterical because they don't like the idea that their control over the media is being, you know, disemediated.
Yeah.
Because now, you know, candidates for president can just speak directly to people through platforms like Twitter.
Yeah, I mean, the amazing thing about Twitter and things like spaces are that,
although I happen to be hosting it
I had to switch over to David hosting it
because my account was actually
too much interest
my account was breaking the system
but it's
there's really never been
a mechanism before where
someone could address the nation
or anyone who wanted to listen to them
could from anywhere in the world
the United States or anywhere
so I think this is a really
profound change. And it's also like the, it's not just whether the media reports something
an article is true or not, even more powerful is deciding what the narrative is. And so,
you know, it's just like if there's only so much you can actually fit in newspaper or a magazine.
And there's only one thing you really put on the cover of magazine. So,
whoever's deciding that is deciding that is deciding to not talk about other things
whereas with a public digital town square like we have here
it's possible for the public to choose the narrative it empowers the people
instead of a very tiny elite cabal
which I don't recognize the irony of using that phrase.
But nonetheless, it's true
and judged by the results that
this is a means for the people to decide the narrative
and for the people to decide what,
you know, which way of debate will go,
not sort of five editors and chiefs of a few newspapers, basically.
Yeah, and I think one of the really crazy things
that happened during COVID is that
that social networks really started censoring dissenting viewpoints on COVID, medical viewpoints that ended up being totally correct in lockstep with what the mainstream media was doing. So basically...
big tech platforms were undermining their main reasons for existing, which is giving people a choice.
And actually, there's somebody who I think knows more about that than any of us, which is Dr. Batesh, Jay Boticharya, who's a professor of medicine at Stanford.
I want to pull him in here. Jay, you can go ahead and unmute yourself if you can.
it'd be great to
to hear from you.
I know that during COVID,
you worked with Governor DeSantis.
It'd be great just to hear a little bit
about your interactions
and if you have a question for the governor.
Thank you, David.
Yeah, I mean, it was an absolute honor
to work with Governor DeSantis.
And I was really impressed
by his decision-making
in the face of an absolute
firestorm of criticism.
But he...
You know, Governor, you did the right thing when you opened the schools.
And my kids in California for a year and a half didn't see the inside of a classroom.
Whereas Florida kids were in school.
You can see the results in the learning loss numbers are so much better in Florida.
Okay.
I'm really curious, Governor, as you're running for president, what are your thoughts about
reforming, you know, the public health authority in the United States and the federal government,
the CDC, the FDA, the NIH? How do you see reforms we need so that the mistakes of the lockdowns
that happen during the pandemic don't happen again when there's another pandemic?
Well, first, we need an honest reckoning about what happened during COVID.
And the only honest reckoning is that all of those agencies, all of the elites, the public health establishment, they failed.
They instituted bad policies.
Obviously, it's a novel virus, but I think what happened was when the data was becoming more and more apparent that the path they were on was wrong, they doubled down and wanted to do it even more.
And I really believe had Florida not just kind of stood in the way...
I think this country would have had rolling lockdowns for probably a two-year period.
And so their impulses were authoritarian.
They were not following the data.
And I think the U.S. government needs to acknowledge the failures.
And I think all of those agencies need to be cleaned out.
What I saw just dealing with them was I saw an interest in the narrative
and in politics over evidence-based reasoning and evidence-based medicine.
And so I don't have confidence that those agencies are up to the task,
and I think you need major, major overhaul of the whole enchilada
with respect to public health in this country.
Can I so can I follow up with that?
I mean, I think the other thing that I saw during the pandemic, governor, and you was subject to it just as much as I was when we were talking about COVID, YouTube censored a video of us speaking in a roundtable that you hosted on COVID policy.
There's so much of the federal government infrastructure went into suppressing honest scientific discussion during the pandemic.
So it's not just public health agencies, but other agencies inside the federal government that worked to suppress the speech of Americans.
And I'd love to hear your question.
No question.
No question. So I'm actually, in Florida, we recognize the danger there. So I'm actually going to be signing a digital bill of rights for Florida pretty soon, which will bar all state and local government officials from colluding or working with a technology company for the purpose of censorship of speech.
because you're exactly right. You had people in the White House, you had people in all these other
agencies working with these platforms to try to take it down. And oh, by the way, what did they censor
Dr. Batacharya for? It was a roundtable discussion that I led and convened. We had Dr. Badacharya,
MD, Ph.D. from Stanford. We had Martin Caldorf from Harvard Medical School. And we had Sinatra
Gupta from Oxford, who was generally viewed as one of the best epidemiologists across the
upon until she became anti-lockdown. So these are all eminent people. And what are we discussing?
We're discussing whether there's any scientific basis to force a school child to wear a mask for
eight hours a day. They all agreed there was no basis to do it and that you should not have
school mask mandates. YouTube thought that that will quote anti-science.
and that that should be taken down.
But even at that point, we had already had enough experience in Florida, where you had some
schools that had done it before the state banned the mandates.
You had some schools that had done it, some schools didn't, and the results were no different.
And yet his video was taken down by Google, YouTube.
So it was a huge, huge problem.
And yes, I think the federal government, FBI, DHS,
any of the health agencies, it's unconstitutional for them to be delegating speech restriction to a private company.
You can't do indirectly what the Constitution would clearly forbid you to do directly.
Let me pull in. We have Congressman Thomas Massey.
if you're there, go ahead and unmute yourself.
I mean, what we're talking about here, I think, really unconstitutional actions by
federal agencies.
Congressman Massey, I know that you've been involved in this problem of, you know,
government agencies being weaponized and used against the American people in an inappropriate
way.
Do you have a comment on this?
And do you have a question?
question for Governor DeSantis. Well, first of all, let me say a big thank you to Elon Musk for
buying Twitter and exposing all of this. On our weaponization committee, we wouldn't know so much of it
if he hadn't done this, almost as a public service to the First Amendment. It's a disturbing
trend. As the governor said, the government is colluding with big corporations. We found out this week
from an FBI whistle.
whistleblower that Bank of America voluntarily gave names and information on anybody who bought a hot dog in Washington, D.C., from January 5th to January 7th and then overlaid that with gun purchases.
that they had on record anywhere in the country for any period of time.
They say they voluntarily gave that to the FBI.
So that's disturbing to me.
By the way, I've never met Elon Musk, but I'm one of your biggest fans.
I'm the first congressman to have a Tesla.
I'm on Starlink.
and I would have bought a power wall, but I'm off the grid.
You wouldn't sell me one, so I had to make one with a wrecked model S.
And it's been running our house for five years.
But just for the record, I was with Thomas, our first year in Congress.
He's got the Tesla, but his license plate is Kentucky Cole.
So he's probably one of the only people that have that in the country.
Thanks for outing me, Governor DeSantis.
So, Governor DeSantis, my question to you,
is, you know, you served here in Congress for six years with me, and why is it that Congress is so
feckless at reigning in these government agencies, and what do you think we need to do? And if you were
president, what would you urge Congress or what bills would you like to see and sign to reign
in this, you know, sort of overreach of government bureaucracy?
Yeah.
Well, first, I think there's a lot that the executive branch can do. And all I will say when it comes to these agencies, we'll go into this a little bit more as the campaign goes on, but buckle up when I get in there because the status quo is not acceptable. And we are going to make sure that we reconstitutionalize this government. And these agencies are totally out of control. There's no accountability.
and we are going to bring that in a very big way.
Now, part of the reason it's gotten so bad,
power's been consolidated and effectively a fourth branch of government
because Congress hasn't used its two main powers that it has under the Constitution.
First, the power of the purse.
If an agency is gauging in conduct that is outside the realm of what is legal or you think it's not good for the public interest, then you can remove the funding for those operations.
There's nothing that they're not entitled to get the same level of funding every year.
And yet Congress runs the government on autopilot.
either continuing resolutions or massive omnibus spending bills.
So these agencies are all bulletproof.
They know that they're going to end up getting something similar or more every single year,
and it creates an incentive for them to abuse their power.
The other thing you can do is actually legislate,
so you're not delegating to the bureaucracy,
key issues regarding how to enforce federal law.
You should define what you want.
All they should be doing is implementing.
Instead, Congress will basically give an invitation
for the bureaucracy to make really important substantive decisions
And so Congress may never vote on something, and the bureaucracy will cite a law from 20 years ago and do things that are going to transform our society or our country.
That is not the way the founding fathers drew up the Constitution.
So would you sign the Raines Act? We passed it out of judiciary today.
Oh, yeah. No, of course. Yeah, that's a no-brainer. That would, I think, be a great check.
for that. I also think that we're going to have a good chance to see some of the Chevron
deference really curtailed or maybe even eliminated based on the U.S. Supreme Court's
upcoming jurisprudence. And I think that's another reason why the bureaucracy has become so
powerful, because courts have basically been told they can pretty much do what they want and
courts are supposed to just defer. I don't think that that's actually correct. I think the courts,
they have to make a judgment about what does the law actually say? And
and you can't just defer to quote unquote experts in the bureaucracy.
Thank you.
All right, shifting gears, Governor, I want to ask you, another topic that's been in the news a lot is Disney.
They blamed you for canceling plans for a billion dollar investment in Florida, said it would, they were canceling 2,000 jobs.
I saw other reports that suggested Disney was going to make the cuts anyway, and due to a larger, you know, budget cutting initiatives.
Regardless of why they did it, why do you feel your fight with Disney remains important?
considering you already beat them on the parental rights bill that they opposed.
And what would you say to some of your opponents in this race who argue that the fight is dragged on too long?
So first of all, Florida stands for the protection of children. We believe jamming gender ideology in elementary school is wrong. Disney obviously supported injecting gender ideology in elementary school. They did oppose our parents' rights legislation. And the fact is, when they opposed it, that was a big deal because for 50 years,
anytime Disney wanted something in Florida politics, they pretty much got it.
But not this time.
I signed the bill.
We did, as you say, went on the issue.
But what happened was Disney's posturing, some of the other statements that their executives were making,
kind of the corporate culture had really been outed as trying to inject Massachusetts.
matters of sex into the programming for the youth.
And I think a lot of parents,
including me look at that and say,
that's not appropriate.
I mean,
we want our kids to be able to just be kids,
and that's kind of our mantra.
So you had this setup that Disney engineered many decades ago
where they actually had their own government
that they controlled with no accountability.
They were exempt from the laws that all their competitors had to follow,
massive tax breaks, and they even racked up municipal debt.
And Florida basically put them on a pedestal many decades ago
and joined the state with this one company at the hip.
we just didn't feel that that we were comfortable maintaining that relationship and so we ended their
self-goverting status uh so disney has to live under the same laws as everybody they got to pay the
same taxes as everybody and obviously they'll be responsible for those debts so the reason why there's a
quote, fight is just because they filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida trying to get
their special privileges reinstituted. But I don't think that that's good policy. And I think
some of these Republicans that are taking Disney side, they're basically showing themselves to be
corporatists because these are all corporate goodies. This is not the way you would run a competitive
economy. And the arrangement had really...
outlived its usefulness, but it persisted because Disney was so politically powerful.
I think the company's ethos have changed in a way that's alienated a lot of people in our legislature
and in Florida, and so there was really no justification to keep it. But make no mistake,
they're suing...
to try to get special privileges.
People are making money in Florida
hand over fist because we have a great business climate.
That's not good enough for them.
They want to be treated differently
than universal in SeaWorld,
and we don't think that that's appropriate.
So I think that they should withdraw the lawsuit,
but obviously we're going to defend our actions
because we think we have the right to do what we did.
You know, it's funny. The media used to criticize Republicans for being in the pocket of big corporations, and now they're attacking you because you're not.
Well, not only that, David, it's interesting because the media in Florida for years had hammered Disney, and they would point out like that this was not a good arrangement.
Because, you know, Disney was not accountable to anyone.
I mean, when we, when the state control board took over this district, the firefighters came to the board and they said, hey, why?
we weren't getting survivor benefits for some of these widows.
And so the state control board actually paid out some of the benefits that they were getting stiffed on.
There were a lot of people in central Florida who were really thankful that there was some accountability being brought to bear.
Because, I mean, you know it's human nature.
If there's no accountability over any individual or entity, of course they're going to behave differently than if you have normal accountability.
But the media was always very hostile to that.
but just because I happen to be involved in bringing it back to reality and making sure that they
were under the same laws, well, then all of a sudden they're running to Disney's defense. I mean,
are you kidding me? And oh, by the way, on this project, you know, they had announced this many
years ago. They had not done anything for it, but that is actually not in Reedy Creek. So that
was at a different part of Orlando. And so none of the issues that are involved in their suit would have
made, would have made a difference there. Obviously, as a
publicly traded corporation, you know, they have a fiduciary duty to do its best for their shareholders.
So I'm assuming if they were in better financial shape and they saw the project as lucrative,
they would have gone forward with it. But I think clearly they've had some problems with their
stock price and a lot of other issues. And I'd also just finally point out,
Nobody probably has made Disney more money than me because they were open during COVID and they were closed in California.
And that went on for many, many months where literally I had all the theme parks in Florida opened in 2020.
People are going. It's safe. They're having fun.
And the California parks were closed. I think they were closed for over a year out in California.
So we were, I think, a much better place to be doing business, certainly since I've been governor.
Great. Let me shift gears here to the topic of education. I want to pull Chris Rufo into conversation. I know work with you on some initiatives. I think, you know, one other thing that the mainstream media has, I think, bash on is they've kind of started promoting this narrative that you want to ban books from school libraries, you refuse to teach kids about slavery or other unpleasant realities of American history.
Right.
or pretend that gay people don't exist.
Many people, I think, in this room, we're now up to, well, over 271,000 people.
So this is, I think, totally unprecedented in terms of the numbers of people we have participating.
By the way, I think Twitter's working much better now.
I think it crashed because when you multiply half million people in a room by an account with over 100 million followers,
which is Elon's account, I think that's great.
just a scalability level that was unprecedented.
But with my meager followership, it seems to be working much better.
Yeah, no, it's, we have some scaling issues specifically related to my account.
At one point in January, if I tweeted a bit of a certain size, it would crash the service.
And then anyone else who was tweeting at the same time would lose their tweet as well.
So in any event, yeah, well, we're breaking your ground here.
We're about the scaling issues.
Yes, you know you're breaking your ground when there are bugs and scaling issues.
But in any event, back to the question I was asking,
Governor DeSantis, about education, the media has been, you know,
saying you're trying to ban books, you refuse to teach kids about slavery.
You'd want to say that gay people don't exist.
What is the truth of the matter for people who maybe have never heard from you before?
And then I want to pull Chris Rufel in on this as well.
Yeah, so the whole book ban thing is a hoax.
There's not been a single book banned in the state of Florida.
You can go buy or use whatever book you want.
What we have done is empowered parents with the ability to review the curriculum,
to know what books are being used in school,
and then to ensure that those books match state standards
and are age and developmentally appropriate.
So, for example, parents have flagged books in schools that, for example,
teach middle school kids how to use sex apps that provide graphic depictions of sex acts and sex toys
for people as young as fifth grade. And so clearly that is not appropriate to be in a middle school
classroom. And so parents object and the schools take them out. I did a press conference that we
called exposing the book band hoax. And before I had the parents come up before I spoke, I just played
the video that had the images
of the books that the parents had objected being in their kids' classroom,
and the local news had to cut the feed because they said it was too graphic.
Well, if it's too graphic for the 6 o'clock news,
how is it okay for a 6th grader or a 5th grader?
And so nothing's being banned.
They're basically ensuring that we make curation choices
that are consistent with state standards.
And on the racial history...
We eliminated critical race theory from our K-12 schools.
That was the right thing to do.
In other words, we're not going to take a kid who comes in at six years old
and say they're an oppressor or oppressed based on what they're races.
That's divisive.
That's wrong.
We're also not going to be teaching people to hate their country.
But what we are going to do is teach the accurate history.
So in the same bill that banned critical race theory, we required teaching
thoroughly about racial discrimination that occurred in American history, and Florida's history
standards require all of those subjects from slavery, reconstruction, segregation, all of that
to be taught, and will continue to do that. So I think what you see is the left and the media
colluding on this, they don't want to actually defend what it is that
that we are actually legislating or regulating, so they create these hoaxes that somehow
you don't want kids to learn that slavery existed in America, which is preposterous.
No one actually defends the offending material, and the question is, is why are there people
intent on trying to get this stuff?
into the classroom.
And I think it's part of a political agenda.
So our mantra in Florida is,
the purpose of the schools is education,
not indoctrination. Yes, I think
it's very inappropriate to have sexually
explicit material in a fifth grade
library, 100%.
But it's also the case that if you're focusing on that type of instruction, there's an opportunity cost involved.
Why shouldn't we be doing more on science or reading or math?
And so I think we're getting it right.
And I think almost invariably, and Chris Rufos had to deal with this too.
When they're trying to craft these narratives, you just peel back the onion.
You realize that this is something they're manufacturing.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, I was actually under the impression that there were some books, Ben, so this is news to me.
And actually, the one this week was that Miami-Dade County took a book that was about, like, poems from...
from, I think, like Biden's inauguration, and they moved it from elementary school library to
middle school library.
The media tried to act like somehow this is being banned, and you actually had Miami-Dade County
public schools spokesperson have to come out and say, there's nothing that's been banned or removed.
It was basically just determined that this particular book was better suited for middle school.
And so they put it in the middle school media center.
And the media tries to act like somehow that is offending something with a book ban.
But I think part of the reason that they're doing that is because, you know, there is actually a movement to ban books from like Amazon and some of these others.
California, some municipalities have banned things like to kill a mockingbird.
What they're trying to do is see if some of these books pass a woke test.
And if they don't, they are going against some of those books.
Whereas in Florida, you can buy whatever book you want.
That's a different question than what would be appropriate for a third grader or what would be appropriate for a sixth grader.
Government, by definition, has to make those choices about what type of curriculum we want to put in front of our students.
And the parents obviously have an important voice in that.
Absolutely. Well, in fact, a friend of mine, Tim Urban, who has a blog called Wape, Wape, Wine, is really one of the most reasonable people on Earth, and one of the most reasons people I've ever met, had a lot of trouble actually publishing his book, simply because it debated sort of sacred cows of work ideology.
But it's a fairly reasonable book.
So...
But that's the, that, that is the kind of de facto book banning,
de facto book suppression that I see quite a lot of,
is that publishers are unwilling to take risks.
Let me, let me shift gears here for a second,
because I know we're running out of time.
We're supposed to end, I think, around four, but,
four Pacific, but thank you for giving us a little bit of extra time here,
Governor.
Shifting gears to a major federal issue, immigration,
we see kind of, I've seen these videos,
on social media and on TV of what looks like just insanity at the border.
What is your take on what's going on there?
And how would you address that as president?
I'd reverse what Biden's doing. You need to shut the border down. You should not be entertaining these asylum claims for people crossing illegally. Now, asylum is a legitimate thing, but these are people that, when they come, I mean, they're being persecuted. These people come and overwhelmingly are economic migrants that are coming across many other different countries. They should be applying for asylum there if they were
you know, truly qualifying for that, but they're not.
They know that if they just show up at the southern border,
and these are people all over the world that are coming illegally,
they know that they will get a sheet of paper saying,
okay, come back for a court date in three years,
and they get released to the interior of our country.
It's an absolutely insane system, so we'll stop that.
We will move on day one by declaring a national emergency.
We will construct a border wall.
We will make sure we have remain in Mexico
and that we're not entertaining those claims in that way.
And we really need to hold the Mexican drug cartels accountable
because they're facilitating...
a lot of this migration. They obviously make money off of it. They treat a lot of these people very horribly as they're trafficking them through Mexico and into the United States. And of course, the cartels have been responsible for moving massive amounts of fentanyl into this country. And that's killing tens of thousands of Americans.
every year now and what they're doing is they lace the other types of drugs with the fentanyl
so you may have like a teenage kid doing something they probably shouldn't do but in prior
generations would not have been fatal and now if it's laced with fentanyl you know these kids can
overdose and die and so mothers are losing kids as
as a result of this fentanyl epidemic.
And I just don't think you could allow these criminal organizations to continue poisoning our population.
So it'll be a day one issue.
We will bring an overwhelming amount of resources to deal with it.
And we are going to stop this insanity once and for all.
There's a, I think, followed question of immigration from Steve Dase, who is a national radio personality and I think an important commentator in the great state of Iowa.
Steve, do you have a comment or question? I think you just need to unmute.
If Steve can unmute, then we'll go ahead and ask him for a question. If not, we'll keep rolling here.
All right.
Three.
Is it going, going, go.
I'm there, guys.
I'm there, guys.
Oh, there he is.
All right.
My bad.
First of all, I want to echo what Congressman Massey said to Elon.
Elon, if I put down money on January 1, 2022, that Twitter was going to be the last bastion of free speech on Earth, brother.
I'd be about as rich as you are on that bet right now.
I mean, it's incredible.
what you have done here and the restoration of a lot of accounts of people that were truth tellers
and were ran from here for telling the truth.
I saw a mean the other day that said, of course you have scientific consensus when you censor all the scientists who disagree.
So I wanted to just say first and foremost on behalf of a lot of grateful people around the country and the world, really.
Thank you very much for that and the investment you made in that cause.
Thank you.
A question is a follow-up to you, Governor, on this very issue with immigration.
We have heard a lot over the years.
Lock her up, drain the swamp, going to build a beautiful wall.
Mexico is going to pay for it.
And crowds cheered.
And everybody loved it.
And brands got built and nothing got done.
What is the bottom line assurance that you can make to the people that are listening right now, all over the world and all over the country, that you can actually do the agenda that you just articulated when others tweeted about it and talked about it, it then couldn't actually follow through?
It's a great question because I share that frustration. I think even my worst critics in Florida will acknowledge that.
When I tell people I'm going to do something, I don't make promises or say I'm going to do something lightly.
I've thought it through, and I know that I am going to follow through on what I tell people I'm going to do.
So this is one, there will be follow through.
Number two, I understand that.
the different leverage points that you would have under article two of the
Constitution. I studied that a lot of becoming governor about Florida's
Constitution, doing the same thing for the federal Constitution, and
you've got to know how to use your leverage
to advance what you're trying to accomplish.
So, for example, there's leverage that we can use vis-a-vis Mexico
that I think presidents have not been willing to do,
I think sometimes for political purposes.
But I'll look at, okay, what are all the variety of options we can do?
Which buttons can I push?
And I will do that to be able to bring...
bring this issue to a conclusion once and for all.
We had Hurricane Ian come through Southwest Florida,
category four plus storm.
September of 2022, and it did a lot of damage, but one of the things it did, it knocked out a bridge
going from the mainland to Pine Island, and it severed the Santa Belle Causeway in three different
locations, and the locals were being told it's going to take six months to get that stuff repaired,
and so they came to me, even though these were not state-owned bridges, and they said, can you help us?
And I said, okay, I'll do it. So I got my guys together. I said, listen, no bureaucracy, no red tape,
and no excuses. Get it.
Get it done. We need to open these bridges back. Pine Island Bridge reopened three days later.
Santa Bella Cosway opened two weeks after that way, way ahead of schedule.
Because we wouldn't take no for an answer, and we wanted to make sure we got it done.
So for me, it is not a campaign slogan that you get in and then forget about it.
I'm as an American citizen. If I wasn't running, this would be an issue that bothers me.
I've put a lot of my capital as Florida governor involved in combating illegal immigration.
We banned sanctuary cities my first year.
We just did a strong anti-illegal immigration bill in Florida that's working.
I put marine assets in the Florida Keys to help the Coast Guard repel boats from places like Haiti.
I had people at the southern border right now helping Texas.
and we've even been able to relocate illegal aliens to places like Martha's Vineyard.
So I don't think any governor has probably gone out of his way to do more to try to make an impact on this issue.
And I'm not going to take no for an answer.
And I think our voters are sick of the empty promises.
They want to see action.
Thank you, Governor.
Well, Governor, I saw it.
Yeah, I saw a cover of Time magazine this week, and I think they were trying to do a negative story because you were sort of scowling in this portrait they made of you.
And in the article, they called you, they compared you to The Terminator.
And I think they meant to insult, but I thought it was kind of cool.
I thought it was a good thing because I think we need a cool-headed, ruthless assassin to go in.
And they take on the woke mob, take on our out-of-control government, and take on problems like the ones at the border.
So, again, I thought it made you sound great, even though that may not have been their intention.
Yeah.
Well, look, at the end of the day, this whole business that we're in is about producing results.
I don't care about fanfare.
You know, I'm the governor like that is, I'm known, right?
And I go around the state and everything.
And people are very nice.
And so, I mean, I appreciate the well wishes.
But I don't need...
any of the fanfare. I don't need any adulation. I just know I'm in a position where I have a
chance to make a difference, and I'm either doing it or I'm not. And I remember sitting at the desk
in the state capital, my first day as governor four and a half years ago, I looked around the room
and I thought to myself, I don't know what SOB is going to succeed me in this chair, but they are
not going to have anything to do because I'm getting all the meat off the bone. I'm going to
I am going to make sure that I'm leaning into issues and making an impact.
And we have done that in the state of Florida, and I bring that exact attitude up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Governor, I'd love to jump in and follow up on that. This is Chris Rufo.
And I've had the honor of working with you in the past few years on critical race theory, gender ideology, and the DEI bureaucracy.
And what I've seen up close and personal is that while many conservative politicians, going back decades, have made headlines and got on television, playing culture war, they never actually get anything done.
And what you've done over the last few years is...
really astonishing. You've eliminated CRT from all Florida's public institutions. You've stopped
gender ideology dead in its tracks in K through 12. And just last week, you eliminated the DEI
bureaucracy in all of Florida's public universities. They'll be shut down completely. And I think what
you've done is established a blueprint for fighting back against the left's long march of the institutions,
and making sure that those institutions reflect the value of Florida voters, not left-wing activists and the partisan press.
So my question for you is, you know, D.C. is another animal.
It's quite different, the scale of the federal government.
And how are you going to deliver a result?
And what is your cultural, culture war strategy facing down the swamp in D.C.?
Well, some of it is similar in this respect.
When we're taking on things like DEI, you get blowback from legacy media and the far left.
But that's an example of an issue where they are out of step with the vast majority of Americans.
It's not just Republicans.
It's independents and a lot of Democrats.
Because you think about if you're a parent and you've got kids,
You want to know when they apply to college, they're going to be judge based on their merit.
And they're not going to be roadkill in some type of woke Olympics where they didn't fit some category.
And so they're denied opportunity.
They want to make sure that achievement matters.
And so we get a lot of quiet support for a lot of those things.
And so I think what I do just because look,
I'm a blue-collar kid.
I grew up in the Tampa Bay area,
working minimum wage to get through school.
My grandfather worked in the steel mill in western Pennsylvania.
I just know instinctively kind of what like normal people think about all this stuff,
and I have a good sense of when the legacy media and the left are outside of where
the average American is,
because people want you to be using common sense.
And things like DEI...
I mean, when I was growing up, I think things were better because people were actually told you should try to get along.
Now, they're told you need to segregate.
And it's just crazy that they're trying to do all this stuff.
So by eliminating that, there's a lot of people that were really happy about that, including people that certainly are not traditional Republicans.
And I think there's similar issues when you do in the federal level.
It's also the case that there are some tools at the federal level that we don't necessarily have at the state level.
For example...
some of the problems with the university and the ideological capture that didn't happen by accident
can trace back all the way to the accreditation cartels well guess what to become an
accreditor how do you do that you've got to get approved by the u.s department of education
so we're going to be doing alternative accreditation uh regimes where instead of saying you will
only get accredited if you do DEI you'll have an accreditor that will say
We will not accredit you if you do DEI.
We want a colorblind merit-based accreditation scheme.
And so as president controlling that agency, you can then approve other types of accreditation.
So I think part of it is just knowing where are all the pressure points.
How does it get to the point?
that we then see and that somebody like you will run a report on, like when you see some of the outrageous stuff that's generated in some sociology department at a university, that didn't just happen at a thin air.
There's a reason why we got to that point. And I think that there are some tools with the federal government where you can push back and try to get these institutions moored.
in a more foundational direction about, hey, we're pursuing truth here,
and we're not here to try to impose one niche ideology on the entire student body.
Great, shifting gears.
Dana Lash, you have a question or comment for the governor?
I do.
And thank you both so much for your time for joining us in a very new way.
I really appreciate that.
I think it's really cool.
And for your support of free speech, too.
And Elon, I have to say thank you for taking the arrows
and for unthroddling the accounts of all of us who got in trouble
for sharing a New York Coast story about a laptop.
Okay.
And, Governor, I wanted to thank you for your leadership and your unwavering support of Second Amendment rights.
And you're on my program tomorrow, and I just got to say, you got my vote in the primary.
So I appreciate it very much.
You were talking about DEI just a minute ago, and I want to ask you both about this growing threat.
against natural rights and free enterprise.
It's this threat of deep banking.
Now, I know that, you know, Elon, I've read so much about you and what you've gone through.
You've called ESG criteria, evil incarnate.
Governor DeSantis, Florida saw financially weaponized wokeery earlier this year when Wells Fargo
Bank dumped both the business and business and personal accounts of a very prominent and well-respected
gun dealer in Florida. They've been together for 25 years working with Wells Fargo, and they cited
new ESG guidelines. Now, similar to the DOJ's previous operation choke point, all
All these activists for various causes are using this regulatory guidance to debank what they consider to be politically incorrect businesses for the sake of risk management.
Now, we say that our rights should not be infringed upon by the government, but what can and should be done about activist-guided financial institutions and these payment processors who are essentially cutting off law-abiding citizens and businesses?
Right.
Well, I think it's just, it's a fundamental issue that I think not enough conservatives have been wise to.
I think more and more are.
But at the end of the day, we have certain fundamental rights.
And so maybe you're somebody that is, you know, really excited about your Second Amendment rights.
And obviously, if the government comes in and infringes that, we know you blow the whistle on that.
That's a problem.
But what if Wall Street banks are colluding...
so that somebody can't function in that space, whether it's running a store or anything involving that,
your rights are still being infringed upon in that situation.
And so I think this whole ESG movement is really trying to do through the financial sector
what they could never achieve through the ballot box.
And so they're trying to do an end run around the constitutional system.
And they're really trying to change policy.
They're trying to change society, and they're trying to change the scope of people's rights.
And so in Florida, I just signed anti-ESG legislation, which said things like no ESG criteria in our pension fund.
We got $180 billion state pension fund.
No social credit scores.
for consumers when they're going to bank.
In other words, if you apply for a loan,
that loan should be judged based on your creditworthiness,
not whether you're genuflecting to the appropriate left-wing causes.
But one thing we did do is we did provide protection
against this debanking with the woke banking.
No discrimination based on your religion and other things.
which we are, we know, is happening.
So I think it's a fundamental question, but we will not be a free society if major financial
institutions can do through the economy what people could not achieve through the ballot box.
Our rights will be restricted will be the end result, and that's not healthy for a free country.
You know, as a fall-up to that, Governor, Dana mentioned Operation Shookpoint,
and that is a term that's very familiar to crypto companies in Silicon Valley and fintech companies.
Basically, it refers to an effort by the federal government, including the SEC, to basically regulate blockchain and crypto companies out of existence.
They really feel like they're being driven out of the country.
And I'm not talking about scammy ones or the...
totally fake ones like FTX, but really high quality good companies,
including companies that are public, like Coinbase.
And these guys are basically begging the government for just a framework.
They're just like, tell us how to operate legally and we'll do it.
You know, I guess where do you come down on this?
What is your view, I guess, broadly of Bitcoin and people's right to hold Bitcoin and to transact Bitcoin?
And those coins?
You have every right to do Bitcoin.
The only reason these people in Washington don't like it is because they don't control it.
And they're central planners and they want to have control over society.
And so Bitcoin represents a threat to them.
And so, as you're saying, they're trying to regulate it out of existence.
Look, could Congress enact a statute to ban things like Bitcoin under the Constitution?
They may be able to do.
I would oppose that.
I think people should be able to do Bitcoin.
But Congress has never addressed this in this fashion.
And for the bureaucracy to just do it on their own and make it so people can't operate in that space,
that's what we mean when we say we've got to return.
the government to the people's elected representatives who are our voice to be able to make these decisions.
And so as president, we'll protect the ability to do things like Bitcoin.
I think these are people that are that are sophisticated.
They can make decisions.
There's risks involved with it.
But let them do that.
I just do not have an itch to have to control everything that people may be doing in this space.
And I think that the current regime clearly, they have it out for Bitcoin.
And if it continues for another four years, they'll probably end up killing it.
Yeah, I think you're right, and I think that is the strong feeling of people in Brooklyn Valley who are in this space, and I think will be heartened to hear your answer on that.
I mean, the weird thing is that, and there is a huge constituency of crypto Twitter.
So for people who are maybe part of political Twitter, who are wondering while we're talking about this, it really has a big audience for this topic.
Doge.2. That's one of the website.
Yeah. Yeah.
Bitcoin and Dogecoin. So shout out to all the Doge fans out there. But the weird thing is that this administration, they seem to want to ban Bitcoin, but they want to create a CBDC, which stands for a central bank digital currency. What's your take on that?
So we were the first state just last month.
We actually got the Florida legislature to pass a law that says Florida does not recognize central bank digital currency because some states were actually adding that to the uniform commercial code.
You know the federal government is studying this.
We did the opposite and say we did.
Now, the reason why we did that is because what the Federal Reserve has said is, well, you know, we're going to consult with Congress.
We'll consult with the executive branch.
We don't have a CBDC right now.
And ideally, we would get authorization for Congress.
Well, wait a minute.
it's not ideally you must get authorization from congress i don't think congress would authorize it
so they unilaterally try to do this we're trying to provide protection uh for people here in
florida i know bide did executive order they're they're studying it i can tell you uh if i'm president
we are not doing a
a central bank digital currency. I think that that would be a huge, huge imposition on people's
financial freedoms and financial privacy. And oh, by the way, what would the logical result of this
be if the central authority has oversight over this? Of course they're going to start imposing
ESG criteria. Oh, wait a minute. You filled up your gas tank three times this week. You can't do
any more. The sky's
of how they would be able to manipulate this.
So I see it as a massive transfer of power from individual consumers to a central authority.
And I don't think that that's good for a free society.
So I'm a no on central bank digital currency.
Sounds good.
Yeah.
Great.
Yeah.
Well, Governor, I want to thank you for the time.
I mean, we could go for hours here, but I know you only had an hour, and we've gone over that.
So I want to be respectful for your time.
I know there are so many people who want to ask questions, and we should do it again.
I mean, I think it was fun.
I think this is great, and we'll make sure that we come back and do it again.
This is a great platform.
I would like to see other platforms.
going in the same direction, but, you know, a healthy democratic society need the robust debate.
So I just want to thank everybody for listening in, and I'll just make that pitch again.
You know, we want you on the team. We'd love for you to go to rondasantus.com and make a donation
so that we can get this done on this nomination and win the election in November of 2024.
God bless everybody and thank you.
Well, thank you, Governor.
And, yeah, we have over 300,000 people in the room.
It's really been pretty incredible.
And, you know, we started with some technical issues because of the sheer scale and unprecedented nature of what we're doing.
But it's not how you start, it's how you finish.
And I think that's finished.
Really strong.
So, yeah, I think it's just really great for the people to hear directly from presidential candidates
and to have it in a conversational tone, which obviously results in, you know,
it's going to be imperfect because it's not scripted.
So, but it's genuine.
And I think that that really gives the people an opportunity to understand who might be their president in a way that's real.
So thank you very much for coming on and doing this.
And the invitation is open to any other candidates who might want to do this.
Absolutely.
It is important for people to hear directly from candidates.
So thank you for working on this historic event.
And yeah, looking forward to future conversations and just having a great national dialogue.
All righty, everybody.
Thanks for just...
Bye.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
The space ended we...
Wow, he's incredibly smart and incredibly boring.
He doesn't have that same energy.
I think Twitter...
But first, what do you think about the way it worked on Twitter space?
I think they saved it.
from us thinking it will never happen.
I'm sure the media will pounce on this
to actually making it work.
Mario, we had similar numbers.
Mario, got connection issues again.
Check it out.
I will.
Oh, man.
But basically, we had similar numbers to that space,
so they had 300,000.
We had almost 250,000.
So between them, too.
There was about 550,000 people listening.
But, in Adanish, what were you saying,
your initial thoughts were?
My initial thoughts were, look, if you're looking for a candidate that's smart, that knows how to execute,
he seems to be the guy on the Republican side.
The challenge, unfortunately, is he doesn't command it for me, in my opinion, and his
because he was really hard to.
Danish, you're, you're breaking up.
Danish, you're breaking up.
Sorry, Dan, you're breaking up.
So let me just, while you're sorting that out, let me go to...
Joe, go to Justin.
Let's get Justin's thoughts on this.
I've fixed my connection issue.
It happens again, and this pace crashes.
We'll just start it again, but it should be fine.
Justin, can you hear me?
Oh, yeah, I can't.
I thought it was a terrific venue.
It was a terrific way to launch his campaign.
Right.
I think what people understood is that this is a guy who knows the details.
He was able to address point all of the criticisms that the left and some even in Trump's camp will make against him.
And I think you find that he's a very relatable person.
He's someone who understands the issues distinctly.
And he's someone who has a distinct track record.
And that's the whole thing.
A lot of us saw what happened.
During COVID, I'm here in California.
It was a disaster for us here.
Almost three different times I thought to move to Florida.
And the policies that he implemented to make sure that never happens again is the number one reason I want to see him in the White House so he can make those changes as well.
Am I the only one that thinks that this was 100%?
Like this appeared so scripted.
The fact that DeSantis said this was a debate.
All sorts.
Rahim Qasam posted this five minutes in.
It's like he was reading an op-ed.
But that's the thing.
It's like I love how DeSantis says, oh, I like debate.
What debate?
Second one.
Like, what debate was there?
There was no debate.
Correct.
No debate.
This was like a political.
Literally, this sounded like a political act.
So if Elon Musk and Twitter wants to be a venue for political debate, I'm sorry.
This to me did not sound any political debate.
This sounded like literally people from DeSanta's camp.
political camp asking him questions.
Like this was ridiculous.
Can I say something?
I do want to say real quick.
I just want to let you guys know.
We do have a lot of higher profile speakers on the way here.
The problem, we're not having some glitches.
We can't.
We're struggling to bring people up.
We're really trying.
So a lot of you guys are messaging me.
I'm just letting you know.
Go ahead.
So, yeah, I mean, there were people who donated to DeSantis that didn't tell the audience about that.
There are people that DeSantis has appointed to positions.
They were asking him questions.
They didn't disclose it to the audience.
That was a safe spaces, not a debate.
I don't think it was Bill does a debate.
What are you guys talking about?
I mean, this was his launch campaign of his campaign.
It wasn't a discussion among friends.
Stop it.
Stop it.
Stop it, Justin.
It was like a fan boy fest.
Come on.
Yeah, it was all softball questions.
Isn't Thomas Massey a potential VP candidate, and he got the first question?
So what you're saying is it came across really well and you're finding excuses to lambast them now.
Every single campaign launch is a political event.
I don't know the history of any presidential campaign that a launch has been done with a debate.
The debates will come.
And when he's on that debate stage, I think, again, you guys are setting the expectations so low.
I really appreciate it because I think he's hitting out of the park.
Well, it's not that people expected a debate, but they pitched it as an open question for him, but the questions were all from people.
But they did, they did, at least did bring people up to ask questions.
That's never happened in any previous presidential announcement.
They brought up.
They weren't questions.
They were, why are you so great?
They brought up every single criticism that the left has brought against him in the last three weeks.
And I thought he answered those very aptly.
It's not like he didn't get...
There was no follow-up.
There was...
Can I...
There was no...
Okay.
Can I bring up two of those things he answered real quick?
One...
Yeah, go ahead, Grant.
One, he changed his entire rationale for Disney
from his book and from everything he's ever said,
because now that he's been sued, he has to tiptoe around it.
So that was one thing nobody challenged...
He just made up a new story about Disney.
And number two...
You know, he brought up the fact that he flew migrants under false pretenses from Texas to Massachusetts.
And that's something he's also being sued for in federal court.
And he's like, this is why I'm good at what I'm doing.
It was pretty weird.
I thought there was a lot of things that he said that departed from reality.
So I understand just in your point, right?
I don't think this was a campaign announcement and I get it.
The issue that I have, and DeSantis, of course, he has every right.
He could do whatever, however venue he wants to do it.
That's fine.
The problem that I have is how everybody else, even DeSantis when he ended it, when he ended his announcement, he said the keyword, debate.
The guy, you know, Elon Musk is said it were saying debate open, open, like,
If you're going to frame it like that, then do it as a proper way.
If you would have just said campaign announcement, only campaign announcement outnancing for president,
That is one thing, but to throw softball questions like that,
and then to give this impression that this is a free space
for freedom of thought, for free debate, to challenge, et cetera,
and that's the main criticism of them, everybody had on Twitter.
And then you create this Twitter space
for a political candidate for president with softball questions.
It's almost like this was a political action.
That's where I have issues.
I'm sorry.
Don't frame it like that.
And that's where everybody else around it was framing as this free speech political debate.
And it was no, it was 100% a campaign ad.
I'm sorry.
And then that does frustrate me.
I mean, Jen, I'd like to bring you and what's your thoughts on it?
I know you support in DeSantis.
What was your thoughts?
He did seem to cover a lot of issues.
Well, I'll correct you there. I'm actually, I haven't endorsed anyone and I'm trying to remain
objective in the sense that I have criticized DeSantis on Disney. I actually agree with Grant that
he changed his rationale in a way that I hadn't ever heard before, which I thought was interesting.
And I have been very critical of President Trump as well, of
going after DeSantis in a way that I don't think is helpful to his campaign, but I want to be clear, I haven't endorsed anybody. I'm an equal opportunity critic here. So what I have, what I observed tonight, I think that, you know, critique the forum all you want, but really do we, did we want another, like, you know, Fox News or CNN?
kind of thing in the coverage of the mainstream media. No, this was novel. It was unique. I didn't think it was presented as a debate. I did think that there was going to be an opportunity for more challenging questions. I would have liked to see that. I hope that's in future spaces. I thought it was a great forum to present his
thoughts and actually answer some of the questions and some of the attacks from some of his critics.
The one thing that I didn't think played well to his advantage at all was clearly reading in the
beginning. I think that he is such a brilliant communicator and especially as kind of the nerd
wonk in me. I loved when he talked about, you know, Chevron deference and hating that.
because constitutional attorneys and constitutionalists, including Justice Gorsuch, who President Trump appointed, also hates Chevron deference.
So, you know, things like that and his response to CBDC.
And, you know, some of these other really granular policy issues.
He was great.
great on that. And I would challenge anybody who is openly supporting President Trump to actually
articulate why they would disagree with that. I mean, I think that you have two really excellent
on policy conservative candidates in President Trump and Ron DeSantis. And I don't think that the
attacks against DeSantis of being a rhino and all this other stuff are warranted. But I do think
that he could have been better and grabbed people's attention at the beginning better if he just spoke
off the cuff.
and was more genuine like, for example, I had an opportunity to interview him on Monday.
You can find that at my Salem Media podcast at the Jenna Ellis Show.com.
And I just asked him about religious liberty, things that for me as a faith-based Christian,
were very interested in.
And he just spoke and responded, like President Trump did when I interviewed him as well.
So overall, I thought it was really well executed.
The glitches to me didn't really matter.
I think,
the Trump camp made too much of a hype of that.
And I do think that the discussion back and forth was good.
If it had been billed more as, hey, we're going to have some people who are supporters
engaging in the discussion.
Maybe that would have been better to frame it that way.
But I didn't think it was like false or misleading.
Overall, I thought he did.
But Jenna, a lot of the-
Jenna, just a quick question in terms of,
When you look at it, a lot of people are thinking this was a softball interview.
And an example of that is an issue that we all think that he's not answered or dealt with very well is the Ukraine-Russia issue.
He was not asked that question whatsoever.
What's your thoughts on that?
Well, you know, President Trump wasn't asked any questions at his announcement, and that was his forum.
I don't think that, you know, this was intended to be a comprehensive discussion of literally everything.
Were there some questions and things that didn't ask that I would love from an answer?
Sure. And, you know, we can all, you know, quibble with that.
But I don't think that I would say that President Trump or Governor DeSantis are afraid to answer questions.
And so I think that, you know, those types of critiques really aren't.
warranted because this wasn't the forum for something like that.
I just before let me ask you.
Nick, before you go, just for the, for everyone in the press,
the recording of the space, I know that David Sacks with Elon did not record it.
We did record it.
So as soon as the space ends, you'll be able to have the recording and use it as you wish,
just for everyone trying to get the recording.
So as we end the space later on, the recording will be available on the page.
Go ahead, Nick.
And let's be clear, we're not ending the space anytime soon.
Yeah, when we end the space in about 38 hours, I think it is, 38 hours will be in.
Brilliant.
So we're about to have Rudy Giuliani on as well.
He is on his way.
He should be here, honestly, within about the next two minutes or so.
Yeah.
And I know you guys have a lot of questions.
There are a lot of them that are been put down in the comment section
on the bottom right hand corner.
But now that we've heard the entire Ronda Santis announcement space there with Elon Musk,
leave us your questions.
We're going to be having some hard hitters here, some high profile.
Hello?
We're coming in and out of the space here over the next few hours.
like Rudy Giuliani, who's now on the stage.
So if you do have questions for Rudy Giuliani,
put him right there in the bottom right hand corner.
Mayor Giuliani, let me ask you.
Just give me your initial thoughts right off the bat.
What did you think about the DeSantis announcement speech here?
Well, I think there were positives and negatives,
like in almost anything else.
I thought it gave him a chance to get pretty substantive.
Yes.
And I appreciated that about what he would do.
Something like that, you can be much more issue-oriented than if you give a speech to a group that you've got to get all excited.
I thought the fact that the questions were limited, it did seem a little bit like the question, you know, you get a sort of a Biden feeling about it.
The questions were kind of kicked in advance to some extent.
There are a couple at the end where just a...
regular people were called, but those were pretty much all people who work with him, work for him.
So I think you can't really say it was like an open town hall discussion.
It was a pretty well orchestrated discussion.
Yeah, so Rudy, one of the things, and actually I kind of want to get Jenna in on this as well,
a lot of people make the argument that Ronda Santis is pretty much just Trump light, right?
Like, I mean, the same sort of policies.
It seems like they have the same sort of initiatives.
Ron DeSantis talking about the border wall.
What is the difference between the two, right?
What is the point of them even running against?
I think the difference between the two is that one has done it and the other hasn't yet.
And there's always the risk.
And I'm not saying that Ron fits into this category, but we will only know what kind of
president he is once he's there.
In the case of Trump, we know what kind of presidency is going to be.
We know that he's got the country in the best shape that's been in about 50 years.
And we know that he can withstand the pressure.
Now, Ron may be able to do all those things, but it may be able to.
Second, I think he's helping Biden.
And I don't get it.
he does, and I guess I'm very old-fashioned,
the loyalty thing really sticks in my craw.
Because I went down there and campaigned for him twice
at Trump's request or order,
and there is no doubt that Trump got him elected.
Now, if somebody got me elected,
I would feel a certain deference to that.
And so that one, that troubles me about his ambition
overcoming some basic values like loyalty.
Mayor Giuliani, you mentioned that he is helping Biden.
Can you elaborate on what you mean specifically?
Well, whenever he, like when he commented on the case, the verdict in the case,
he began with kind of a snide comment like, well, he wouldn't know about paying someone like the plaintiff in that case.
I think that's what leads to the sanctimonious part.
Come on, Ron, you know, you're a human being too.
he hurts and he does criticize uh trump now trump criticizes him so he's got every right to do it
but when he does it he has to realize that he's helping biden
A question people may have a mayor Giuliani is that when you listen to the speech,
one thing that dissentists did do was he talked about a lot of issues
that are more people in current society are concerned about, Bitcoin, CBDC.
I mean, does that make him, as well as coming on Twitter spaces,
more amiable to the younger voters?
I don't know the, I honestly don't know the answer to that.
I mean, the reality is...
We're in a situation where we've got one big issue, and that is we have got to change this administration.
And we've got to get rid of a democratic government that's become close to a fascist government.
We don't have room for error here.
So that's the main issue that I'm concerned about.
After that, I think on issues...
both of them would be fine.
I can be sure about Trump.
I can't be sure he can execute.
I mean, how do I know?
I mean, he was a good governor,
but being a good governor
doesn't make a good president.
My guess is that he would be.
But why should I guess when I know?
And second, why should I put the defeat of Biden in jeopardy
by having some kind of bitter primary?
I would think at his age, he could wait four years.
Trump can't be there more than four years.
Either he's going to win or lose.
If he loses, I'm sure he's not going to run again in four years.
Or if he wins, he's gone in four years.
And he gets a chance by being a four-year president, really, to do anything he wants.
There's a great deal of freedom when, I mean, some people say, well, you're lame duck.
Gosh almighty, Ronald Reagan accomplished more.
Ronald Reagan basically freed 20% of the world as a lame duck president.
So let me jump to Jenna of us real quick here. I want to ask you, what are the primary differences here? This is the same question I asked Mayor Giuliani. It sounds like he's pretty much, you know, he's running on the same platform as Donald Trump. So what is the difference? Why is this such a polarizing conversation among Republican voters?
Right.
Yeah, it's a great question. And to a large extent, I agree with the mayor that, you know, there is the, you know what you get with Donald Trump. And there is a question mark with Governor DeSantis because we do only have his track record as governor. But we also have a potential eight years in Governor DeSantis. It's not a real, I would disagree with.
respectfully to the mayor to say, well, you know, if Trump doesn't win, you know, okay, then he's not going to run in four years.
Well, if we have another four years of Joe Biden, I think that the country is going to be an utter, utter disaster.
We have to win this election.
And there are a lot of also...
issues that came up in President Trump's administration that, yes, you know what you get, but he is
then running on that record. And there are a lot of things genuinely that reasonable people can
criticize of President Trump and say, we like how Governor DeSantis handled the state of Florida,
his personnel, his policy, some of those things. So we're willing to move forward with someone
like him rather than take a gamble that
Trump will actually fulfill the promises that he didn't accomplish.
And everyone has their responses to that, you know, whether it's excuses or saying it's solely on President Trump or somewhere in the middle.
I'm more of a somewhere in the middle with that. I mean, you know, Paul Ryan, a speaker.
didn't help him at all, but I'm not going to say that President Trump bears absolutely no risk.
I mean, personnel is up to the leader. So I think that a reasonable debate can be had, but I also
think that for Ron DeSantis, this is his time, because if he waits for another four years, he'll have
been out of office for two years.
And I think that people who wonder if President Trump can win a general election have a reasonable question mark because I think there are so many people that independence I'm talking about and some of the demographics that didn't perform well genuinely in 2020, all the other shenanigans aside, that he would have a hard time overcoming.
I mean, he is either loved or hated largely.
Right.
And Ronda Santis, I think, can appeal to people that President Trump can't. And so we have a primary process for a reason. So I think it's great that we have a well-fought primary. And I think that both of them shouldn't personally attack each other. They should go and really talk about the issues. I would love to see them fight for who is the more conservative administrator and executive and run on that.
Let me just quickly go through the two narratives that are coming up, guys, before we continue the questions.
So we got Trump posted on truth social five minutes ago.
Wow, the DeSanctus Twitter launch is a disaster.
His whole campaign will be a disaster.
But on the other side, we've got Brian Griffin.
government press secretary for DeSantis,
he says there was so much enthusiasm for government
Desantis' vision for a great American comeback
that he literally busted up the internet.
Washington is next.
One million dollars raised online in one hour and counting.
And they've got the media.
The media's not too happy because obviously this was done
on Twitter spaces.
We've got political saying DeSantis launched
marred by horrendous tech failures.
New York Times says Twitter meltdown,
Mars DeSantis campaign announcement and Fox
New York Times, Guardian, everyone else is following suit in smashing today's space, even though I think it went pretty well. I do want to go quickly to Benny before we go back to Mr. Wolf is with us as well.
Benny, what do you think about the interview between David Sachs and DeSantis and Elon?
Yeah, hey, I think I want to speak for the hundreds of thousand people who are listening here, and there's a reason why this space has had actually more listeners than when the DeSantis, the official DeSantis space ended.
It's because Mario and Nick do such a hell of a job, and you have an incredible cast of supporting characters here, but you guys just straight up kill it.
I got to tell you, the different, broadcasting is tough and asking questions is tough.
and I'm not trying to knock Elon or David,
but I don't think it was the best format.
I was really bullish on this.
I think it was a historic moment.
Some people might say for bad or an infamous moment,
but I got to say, like, way to go, guys.
Like, really, I think everyone talking and everyone who spoke
and everyone who's listening to these just says thank you to Mario
and to Nick specifically for hosting this
and doing such a damn bang-up job,
because this is actually tough, as was just evidenced.
I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. I like getting the limelight for a minute or so.
Thanks, Benny. And what are your thoughts on Desantis' performance today?
And also shout out to Slaman, a co-host Slaman who made this happen as well.
Benny, yeah, your thoughts on the, on the on the on the on the
on the Santis's performance? People are saying it's scripted, but I'm surprised. Like what do
you expect? People expected a debate expected pushback, but that doesn't happen when, when it
didn't happen on any other presidential candidate made the announcement.
Yeah, people are saying that it's DeSantis GPT, right?
It's like a chat, he was like an AI.
And he was giving his answers like it was a question put into an AI bot.
So I'm not sure it was the right format for a scripted scripted.
speech.
I'm not sure
what else you're
supposed to do.
You shouldn't
just wing it
in these times,
in my personal opinion.
Trump didn't just
wing it when he announced
at Mara Lago.
He was obviously
reading a script.
But it is new
and it is historic
and it could have taken
a...
You know, so we, so let me take a step back because I want to break a little bit of news here.
I've been speaking with some people at Twitter.
And the reason why they believe the space crashed, what I'm being told, and this is not official,
but what I'm being told is the reason why the space crashed is because Elon's account,
which was the host, Elon has the most followed man on Twitter, Elon's account, which was the host.
The space was growing so quickly that it actually, the, the back end couldn't keep up.
Like the broadcast capacity couldn't scale inside of their network because the space was growing very quickly.
You could see it grow at about 100,000 people like every two minutes.
It went for, you know, 400, 500 to 600,000.
It topped out at 680,000 and then it completely ended.
And so they were saying that Elon's,
The success of the space, there's some truth, at least from what I'm hearing from Twitter, the success of the space was driven by the massiveness of Elon's account and the speed of the growth.
Elon did a interview with the BBC, and that had three million people listening.
So they can clearly have millions of listeners, and I believe that this would have gotten up to the millions of listeners if they had kept the original space going.
That's why they went to David Sach's account.
because David Sachs is followed by a much smaller number of people and it wouldn't scale so quickly.
So this I feel is very interesting.
The Elon BBC interview was also at midnight.
And so the audience growth grew, but grew much slower.
And so that's some inside Twitter information as to why it crashed.
If there's any reporters listening, that's what I'm being told.
As to why this crashed.
The reason I say that is one, because I think it's interesting.
Two, uh,
I think that the DeSantis team would have done well
to have maybe studied spaces a little bit more,
had listened to Mario's spaces and Nick's spaces
and heard people like Rudy Giuliani
and heard Sebastian and heard Kim.com
and heard Jenna Ellis,
heard the people who are very good at this,
like Palk and how authentic it is
and maybe crafted it to be a little less chat GPT.
Yeah, I think that's a fair criticism.
I would say I think forum was the right one.
It actually...
She broke a lot of incredible ground.
I think all of us are very proud because we stake our claims here on Twitter,
and so it's nice to have that attention here.
And I think it'll be interesting to see how it's received.
I can tell you, you guys who know me, know that I kind of have a beat on the fundraising pulse on,
you know, the lay person who's giving fundraising, and right now it is...
very much off the charts.
There is a lot of chatter behind the scenes.
Everyone's passing around copy that needs to be sent out.
And everyone's getting into it because it's a great moment
where everything is coming together.
And today, I think, is really the day that the 2024 election started.
They're going to try and write up.
Let me just go to Kim.
Kim, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
I think you could pronounce my name.
So go ahead, bro.
Yeah, I think it was a lost opportunity for Rondisantis.
He only served softball answers to softball questions talking about Disney and Florida and stuff that doesn't really matter.
You know, we have a war going on in Ukraine where the U.S. is directly involved with...
with fighting a nuclear nation.
We have de-dollarization going on in global trade.
You know, we still are waiting for the answers,
you know, what happened with the U.S. government funding U.S. scientists
to create COVID-19.
Like there's so many much bigger topics.
And I think Rondi Sandes would have done much better because he's fighting an uphill battle.
I think, you know, Donald Trump is still leading by a big margin.
And if he really wants to enter this race, he should have done it with a very, very strong, you know, opening.
And I think what we've seen today was literally just a softball match.
Khalisi, you were basically doing the...
You were basically playing the audio, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on the initial thoughts on this.
Yeah, so thanks for that, Solemagne.
Well, I was expecting it to be like a presidential launch.
and I felt it was a bit lackluster.
I felt it was more like an interview
and a bit of a fundraiser, a bit of a Q&A.
It didn't have that wow factor for me.
So I think you're right, the war wasn't really covered.
I think the hard-hitting questions just were not there.
The foreign policy aspect wasn't really dothed into.
It was all about futuristic things, maybe CBDC, what I did in Florida.
It felt scripted.
I don't know if it was or not.
I saw a lot of comments underneath the feed here,
talking about, you know, sounds very but-like.
Not very presidential.
That's all I, that's, these are my thoughts, really, to be honest.
Let me, let me get Robert.
Robert, good to have you back.
As a Biden guy, I'd love to get your thoughts on how the Santas performed today.
Kind of what he said, but also the whole setup on Twitter spaces.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're muted, Robert.
Do you hear me?
Are you in...
Are you in the first space?
Are you in the Elon space?
No, I'm in your space.
I'm joking.
The mic is yours, Robert.
Well, so, listen, I'm going to echo what a lot of you have said.
I mean, I have done debate prep for two presidential candidates.
I have interviewed...
individuals while they were candidates. I've been at, you know, people's opening announcements.
I actually think for two incredibly sharp guys like David Sachs and Elon Musk, it was an
incredibly missed opportunity. They are the last guys that should be throwing up beach balls
to be hit out of the park. This was an advertisement, which is fine. We just should have said that this is
his announcement, it's an advertisement.
We're going to give him eight layup questions
with three or four people that work for him
or already are backing him.
We're going to allow him to advertise where to give money to.
We should have just said what it was,
and it's nothing what Twitter was supposed to be,
which is fine.
If they want to announce that they're doing a sponsored ad
for Ron DeSantis for president, that's fine.
But let's be clear.
If that was a Democrat going through that, you guys would be torturing this.
Okay.
If I was interviewing a candidate and didn't ask to Kim's point, you know, when you called the Ukraine-Russia war, and I'm going to use the term war, a territorial dispute.
What do you say to that?
Or when you've spoken about privatizing Social Security and in the state of Florida, which is one of the most aging populations, what do you say about that?
When you let him get away making a comment that there are more young kids killed than those who are graduating academically, we know that's frigging false.
Okay.
That's such bullshit.
Maybe, yes, are people dying in Azir crime in the urban areas? Yes, there's also crime in Florida.
My only point is we should just say what it is and someone like Elon and David have the standing to say what they're doing.
But we should make it like they're asking questions when I'm even going to agree with Rudy, which hasn't been in a long time, where they're completely orchestrated.
I think it was a disservice to what could have been done.
But, you know, this is what DeSantis wants.
He wanted a free ad.
He got a free ad.
With respect to raising money, this guy's going to have no problems raising money.
There will be a ton of money coming at him.
You know, he's got a one in three or four chance to be the Republican candidate.
He's not going to have an issue raising money.
Yeah, so Robert, to your last point there, I mean, look, that is a tough question.
Why did the NAACP come after him so hard on Florida?
And he made a very strong defense of that.
So it's not like he wasn't asked any tough questions.
You were asked specific questions on which he has found criticism in the press.
And I thought he fielded them very well.
And he filled them in a way, I think people understand that he's a very likable guy.
He's a very relatable person.
And when he answered the questions, he didn't sound scripted at all.
I mean, which tough questions did he have?
It seemed quite clear that even the questions were loaded to basically help them out.
But anyway, give me an example.
Well, it's...
For any one of those questions on Disney, on the books, I mean, these are all criticism.
If this was a complete softball thing, they wouldn't have any even approached those questions.
There was, wait a second, there was no follow-up to his answers on any of them.
Zero.
Zip.
Yeah, was it supposed to be a, like, time out.
It wasn't a conversation.
Oh, I think so, too, but at the same thing.
It would have been cool if someone could ask a question to Trump when he was up at the pulpit speaking.
But Trump two hours last time.
I don't know.
I have no issue that they gave DeSantis questions, and for him, he hit it out of the park because it was scripted.
I don't know if his answers were good or bad because no one followed up.
I would have loved to have been on the other side of some of those questions.
I got a feeling we could have had a different thing.
But I'm not saying that's what this was.
I have no issue that he's doing his announcement and raised a lot of money.
No one has an issue with that.
We should just say what it is.
That's all.
I also found it kind of interesting how many people came up and were just, it was more of like the Elon party.
And this is what we were talking about beforehand.
You know, Elon has a very positive favorability rating compared to all these candidates.
And so it was very fascinating to see how everybody came up.
I don't hear anything.
Oh, is that me or can you get it?
Yeah, go ahead, Donish.
No, all good, Donish.
You know, people came up, and every single person, it was like the Elon party.
Didn't it?
Isn't that weird at a launch event that they're talking about Elon over Desantis?
Yeah, we had Thomas Massey come on and start talking about Elon and his Tesla.
Was that Elon's launch party or Desantis?
But if you, if you did all of these speakers.
I like to do these things, he did.
No, I understand that, but by having Elon up on stage,
remember, this is a launch party for supposedly a presidential campaign
that is going to change the world.
And all we're talking about is the other guy in the room.
He wasn't even the most important guy in his own space.
Oh, are you kidding me? That space was fantastic. And this is DeSantis, guys. You got to, like, I know DeSantis from going to his press conferences and asking him questions. He is a sturdy guy. He's not about fanfare. He's not about these practical or these one-liners and things like that. And I just, I can't believe what Rudy was saying. I mean, I agree with Rudy. We know what to get with Donald Trump. We saw one of the worst.
constitutional encroachments on our freedoms under Donald Trump's watch.
We didn't have to go along with any of that COVID nonsense.
We could have been Sweden, but we saw that happen.
And also, yeah, fidelity matters.
I hear all this stuff like, oh, this was in the past or everybody makes mistakes.
Governor DeSantis does not cheat on his wife, and he is a man of fidelity.
And that is something that's something that really matters.
And also, Giuliani's saying that we don't know what we're going to see with the president, DeSantis.
We see it happen with the victory after victory right here in Florida.
And not only is DeSantis doing things like banning a central bank digital currency,
which he said he'll do when he gets to Washington, which is huge,
going after the ESG scores, and then also going after the indoctrination in the school.
If he can't win in a softball room...
with Elon Musk, how's he going to stand on stage with Donald Trump?
He can't even win against Elon Musk.
Let's see.
He did.
He did a back toker Donald Trump in those debates.
We'll see.
Let's see.
Chris.
He treated, let me deliver it.
He's already looking past Trump, DeSantis.
And guess what?
You just saw the only poll that you need to see.
That Twitter space crashed.
You can, I can hear people say, oh, well, it's because Elon Musk shared it.
And da, da, da, da, no.
Okay, Elon Musk shared it.
Fine.
But that was the biggest, that Twitter space crashed the Internet because people around the world and in America are looking for hope.
And Ron, Chris, the BBC interview on the previous interview.
That was amusing.
They were bigger.
They were like five times bigger.
That was actually not that big.
Okay, great.
The BBC won't have big.
Because this one crashed.
I'm glad we got somebody.
I'm glad we got somebody on the spaces.
And anybody, if anybody wants to ask the answer.
Dr. Gorkan, Chris, let me just play quickly a video that.
I'm going to play a quick video by Desantis will go to Dr. Gokar to get his thoughts
because I know they won't be, they won't be pretty.
I'll play the video now.
Hi, this is Governor Ron DeSantis.
I'm running for President of the United States to lead our great American comeback.
We announced that on Twitter spaces earlier tonight, and it broke the Internet because so many people were excited about being on that Twitter space.
Now let's see if we can break win red.
Please go to Ron DeSantis.com.
Donate to the cause.
I think it'll be a night to remember.
Thank you, and God bless.
That was just posted about four minutes ago.
He's going to cross it with donations.
Is that person me?
Yeah, go ahead, Dr. Gokker.
Go ahead.
I'm impressed you've got somebody.
I don't know who this Chris, whatever his name is,
who knows who Desanacus is having sex with.
I don't know who Ronda Sanis is having sex with,
but this Chris person does.
That's impressive.
And then he lectures us about...
With his wife, that's who.
With his wife.
He says,
oh, because you know that.
You know that, right?
I know that, right?
You know who he's having sex with.
You know, you know...
You're in the room watching him have sex, are you?
Are you, Chris?
You're watching him have sex?
So, Dr. Guga, I'd love to discuss the scientist's sex life.
What are your thoughts on his performance today, what you've heard so fine?
Well, this is important.
This is important.
This is important.
Somebody just said, oh, it's loyalty.
It's loyalty.
We're talking about the man who wouldn't be governor without President Trump.
who after the indictment by Alvin Bragg couldn't give a crap about it and gave a press conference saying,
I'm going to focus on in Florida and I don't have anything to say,
despite the fact that the president is a resident of the state over which he is the governor of.
Now, tonight's performance.
completely concur with Rahim Qasam, who, you know, minutes in said he's reading an op-ed.
It was so dry.
You don't have to be an evangelical preacher.
You don't have to go to the lengths of ecstasy that Tim Scott did.
But you've got to have some energy.
You've got to get people excited.
It's not about the internet crashing on a platform that only the elite uses.
Let's be clear.
In communications terms, let's take politics out of it.
This is the dumbest decision in presidential campaign announcements.
Why?
Because what is Twitter?
We love Twitter.
We're addicts to it.
I get it.
But Twitter is irrelevant when it comes to the electorate.
It is the platform for journalists and political freaks like everyone on this call.
Facebook much, much bigger, much more important.
And then he should fire everybody in his stratcom team.
You want to have viral video of your announcement.
You go on a platform that's audio, nobody from his campaign, nobody of his followers, none of his surrogates can repost the Twitter spaces because it's audio.
And then what does he do?
You play us a video, a video that he just made.
which sounds like he's sitting in a toilet without a lavalier mic.
I mean, this is, who is advising this person?
I want to have a primary with 16, 17, 26 candidates again,
because it's super fun.
But the only guy, this, the only way this guy has a shot,
and he knows it, and somebody DM'd me this on this Twitter space,
full credit to you, you know who you are,
the only way Desantis has a snowballs chance.
is if the president doesn't run because one of the cases neutralizes him.
The guy is between 20 and 40 points.
behind President Trump.
It's absolutely irrelevant.
And the thing that he didn't do today
is differentiate himself from President Trump.
What's his campaign?
I'm not President Trump because, what, no mean tweets?
He had fanboys asking him questions,
and there was no differentiation.
One of your guys, Mario, Nick has asked me to get an official from the Trump campaign.
His attorney and his senior advisor, Boris, is available.
So if you want something, he is.
Yeah, I'm texting back and forth with him.
He is on his way.
Good, good.
But my take is I want as many people in the primary field, but this was like disastrous in terms of strategic communications.
I would like to note for all the people that are criticizing
Ron DeSantis sounding like
ChatGBT, which I, you know,
somewhat tend to agree with,
that he, you would eventually
be running against a live,
like a, like a corpse, right?
Like a lobotomized corpse in Joe Biden.
You do have to look down the road and say,
hmm,
you're going, you,
again, you're going to be running against a reanimated
monster.
Yeah, but that's not, the standards are quite low.
Now, Benny, the challenge now is to differentiate himself from the guy who's 40 points in front of him.
That's what tonight was about.
Well, see, that's that's so right.
And that's the thing, that's where you can't take away the fact that Donald Trump has been a celebrity for 50 plus years.
He was in Home Alone 2.
He was in the little rascals.
I rewatch the movies of my childhood with my kids.
I'm like, my God, there's Donald Trump.
Oh, and there's Donald Trump again.
He's so good at this.
He's so good at the platform and at the humanity and at the human, the human moments.
And that's how he kills, that's how he commits a murder, you know, murder suicide against, like, CNN and Caitlin Collins.
Because he's just so good.
He wins the audience over with those moments.
And that's hard learned.
That's what being a celebrity for 50 years has given him.
And it's a superpower, man.
It's a superpower.
And, you know, it's amazing to see him apply the same thing in East Palestine, Ohio's McDonald's.
You know, it doesn't matter.
You're on stage of CNN or you're in East Palestine.
It is.
It is without question Donald Trump's greatest weapon.
And that's a good point, Benny, because it shows where the variance is in terms of, you know,
some people are arguing that dissenters coming across a bit robotic and whereas you won't have
that with Trump and that'll clash in the primaries.
D.C. Dredo, thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. I'd love to hear your initial thoughts
about this announcement by DeSantis on Twitter Spaces.
Yeah, thank you for having me on.
I will say...
I am not worried about Ron DeSantis when in the primary after tonight.
As a Florida resident, as a diehard Republican MAGA base member, you know, I was here in 2018
when Ron DeSanis was running against a guy named Adam Putnam, who probably nobody on this
call even knows who that is. He's an agricultural commissioner. He's a ginger.
And DeSantis was tanking in the polls.
He was only saved because of Donald Trump's endorsement.
And by mimicking a Donald Trump style campaign ad, build the wall, et cetera,
we love him here as governor, but his biggest weakness has, everyone knows this.
It's always been campaigning.
We've always been.
underwhelmed by his campaign skills.
And tonight, you know, as much as I support him as governor,
I thought it was a very low energy introduction to the people.
I think Dr. Gorka is correct that not many people outside of Twitter
are even going to know this happened.
And if you're going up against one of the country's greatest entertainers
where retail politics matters, it's an uphill battle.
So I think the American people have gotten a taste of,
what he brings to the table over the last few months with his shadow campaign his poll numbers
have tanked um but after tonight i'm honestly just not even worried anymore i uh i think it'll
divide the gop but uh he's he's just not ready yet and
Kim, I'd like to come to you because I'd love to hear your thoughts because, I mean, I did ask this to somebody else,
but I think your knowledge on it will be important.
That one thing he did talk about was CBDCs and Bitcoin, and he said CBDC will not happen while he's president.
So, Kim, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
And is he doing something which, is that an example of something he's doing what Trump isn't doing?
And then anything else you want to add on, please go ahead.
I think that was a good point.
I liked him saying that, you know, CBDCs are a social credit court score system with mass surveillance.
So if you say something that the government doesn't like, they can literally freeze your funds and put you in a corner for a week.
You would absolutely not want that.
You want decentralized crypto.
You know, I'm not...
behind Bitcoin. I prefer Bitcoin cash because that's the original vision of Satoshi. I don't like
second layer technology like lightning and things like that. But, you know, he made it, he made a good
point. But the problem that I see right now in America, and we've had.
we've had this before, there's just not any viable candidates.
The only person who's really speaking the truth at the moment is Mr. Kennedy, who's just announced.
Everyone else is just playing the same game, you know, old politics, softball questions.
It's just frustrating.
Yeah.
I think, you know, we need to look at this the way it is.
If America doesn't have any viable good candidates that can deal with the truth, deal with crises, there's just no way.
the US is getting out of the problems that it currently has,
you know,
with the war going on and escalating with Russia and Ukraine,
with the aggression towards China.
Why do you think,
Kim,
a quick question,
why do you think the Ukraine war is not being talked about?
You know,
we've got...
All these different issues brought up, and I think someone mentioned that earlier.
But though, we do have special guests coming in, a lot of big names that will be joining the space shortly to give us their thoughts.
Nick will be announcing them shortly.
But Kim, my question to you is, why is the Ukraine war not part of the narrative as much as it should be?
Well, exactly. I mean, that's a great question. You know, it's the biggest crisis in the world right now that can escalate to a global war. Why is this not being talked about? How is someone launching a presidential campaign without a mention of the biggest risk to humanity right now? It just doesn't make any sense.
I agree. And Justin, your thoughts on that particular question as well. I know you've been very vocal supporting DeSantis. Is that just people don't keep people tired of the Ukraine war? Or is it an issue that's being avoided for other reasons?
No, I think it'll absolutely come up. And this is just the start of the campaign. I've got to hop off in a minute to do a radio show here in San Diego and Salem. But look, in my mind,
the criticism that we have, right?
I've always been, I knew that Donald Trump was the right
bowl in the China shop that we needed at the right time, okay?
But when I look down the road at what happened in 2020,
the decisions that were made,
there is, as someone put it, a valid criticism that we have for him
on two fronts.
One is the COVID policies and the other one is the personnel,
whether it was Fauci Burke's,
Ray, Bolton, Neuchin, Kelly, Amorosa, Scamorucci.
I mean, I wish Dr. Gorka had stuck around there.
He was one of the competent people there, but I look at, you know, Azar, Esper, Chow.
Even Carson, who I love, was pretty incompetent there, Tillerson, Zinky, Perry.
And it's just like, I want competence over flash, right?
Yeah.
And that's what I see in Governor DeSantis is competence.
Competence.
I want to jump in here real quick.
And we have Boris Epstein on stage here.
He is a senior advisor to President Trump.
And so I kind of want your feedback, Mr. Epstein.
Thank you so much for joining the panel.
What did you think about Ronda Santis' announcement tonight?
Was it hard hitting?
Do you think it moved the needle at all?
all? What do your thoughts?
First of all, thank you so much for having me, and God bless everybody here.
Great to talk to you.
What I think is that it may have moved the needle all the way down to the 6 o'clock point
where Ron de Saint-Dimonis' campaign is dead on arrival, complete failure to launch.
The coverage has been horrible.
I'm hearing that even people in his circle are reaching out to reporters and are asking,
is this fatal?
And it sure looks like it.
Yeah.
from this disastrous launch to this fake campaign
that the Florida governor has been running
for the last six, seven months,
to his pathetic overseas tour,
and let's be honest,
to his absolute inability to connect with voters,
to connect with American people,
or to do any press,
Rhonda Sanctimonis has shown himself to be totally exposed,
has shown himself to be not ready for prime time,
and has made it absolutely even further clear.
that the only leader right now that can take this country,
they could take the Republican Party,
they could take the MAGA movement to where it needs to be,
which is in control to make America great again,
which is not just a slogan, it is a mission statement,
is President Donald J. Trump.
And that's exactly what's going to happen.
A Fox News poll just coming on.
This is a Fox News poll.
We all know where Fox News stands.
President Trump up up 53 to 20 on the Florida governor, again, showing that this is not a race.
President Trump is by far in a way the dominant figure in the Republican primary and in the overall election
as he marches toward the White House to be back in the Oval Office on June 20, 2025.
Boris, one thing that people are saying on Twitter is that a dissentist seemed quite robotic and the questions were almost seemed like they were pre-planned.
If that's the case, well, I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
And the second point is, where does that take him when he comes to the primaries?
Will he be able to take on Trump if he's relying on basically pre-planned questions?
Of course not. And I appreciate the question. Of course not.
There's no way that Rob, as President Trump has been referring to him on truth social.
I urge all of you to follow the president on truth social.
There's a great clip up there now comparing President Trump's historic announcement,
which I'm honored to have been at, to this failure to launch for the Florida governor.
Again, if the Florida governor can't even get his launch right,
How can he hope to have any sort of success of this primary?
But in fact, this launch is just another,
in a long line of examples,
and a long line of facts would show that
Rhonda Sanimonious is just not ready for prime time.
That's a fact.
And yes, of course the question and answers were scripted.
There's no way, there's no two ways about it.
But here's what wasn't scripted.
The absolute disaster of the first,
about 30 minutes of that launch.
You know, American politics has been around
for a long time, retail politics has been around
for a long time, and it's pretty simple.
You get a ballroom, get some great people together, throw some flags, and have a good time.
Now, we saw the other day, Tim Scott, unfortunately, the Mike gave out as President Trump said she shouldn't pay his contractor.
But that was better than this disaster.
But again, that's all, you know, as Steve Bannon's offensive, that's all noise.
Here's the signal.
President Trump is dominating this race.
There's no two ways about it.
He's at over 60.
Rhonda Sanctimonious is effectively in the single digits.
There is no race, and it's time for the Republican Party to call us behind President Trump.
Let's go beat whoever the corrupt, crooked politician is that the Democrats put up,
and let's get back to governing our country and saving it.
One thing that I saw in the interview was he seemed to infer that Donald Trump had basically failed with building the wall and that what he would do was push the right buttons and use leverage against Mexico to do so.
What's your thoughts on that?
President Trump completed the wall. He built almost 500 miles of new wall.
And our southern border was safer than ever under President Trump.
And, you know, the Florida governor likes to talk about what he would do,
but let's look at Florida.
Gas in Florida is at four bucks a gallon.
I was just down there.
Crime is rampant in many parts of Florida.
And the people of Florida are disappointed.
They just re-elected the Florida governor last year.
And he spent every single moment since then,
either running this fake shadow campaign for president
and now running this failed campaign for president today.
So he's been a disappointment, no doubt about it.
And not only has...
the sanctimonious hurt his chances, killed his chances,
annihilated his chances for 2024,
he significantly hurt his chances for 2028.
I'm sorry to be short, I'll take one more question.
Yeah, I mean,
I have a question for you, if I may.
In the town hall, Donald Trump suggested that the debt ceiling should not be increased
because of the debt situation of the United States,
and he is not a supporter of the war in Ukraine.
Can you tell us if he is asking Marga Republicans in the Congress to try and prevent
further raise of the debt ceiling?
Is there an active campaign to defund Biden?
I don't want to get ahead of the president.
I think he's been very clear on his position that in the disaster that's happening in Ukraine,
disaster caused by the absolute inability and hopelessness and pathetic stature.
And crooked nature of Joe Biden and his crooked crime family,
President Trump said that we've got to end that conflict so the deaths and the killings can end.
He was very clear on that.
And also very clear that the Republicans have to.
to use all their leverage in this that ceiling in negotiation and that's it seems like a lot of
that is happening what two were developed so i think president trump has been very very strong
and steady on those points and he exhibited that strength throughout his four years in office and he
will do so again once he's reelected and he's back in office what i want to do is i want to thank
each and every one of you so much thanks everybody for your support thanks next so much for having me uh and
Thank you, Boris.
We'll be back with you all soon.
God bless you.
Let's have a great night.
Let's make America great again.
Thanks, Boris.
Appreciate it.
Let me mention something.
I just want to look at the numbers.
So the video that Ron posted or Mr. DeSantis posted had 5 million views.
He's had over a million dollars raised in an hour, if my memory says me, correct.
The numbers are not looking as bad as we're making it out to be.
I want to get Scott's thoughts.
Scott, what are your thoughts on the performance today and the metrics, the numbers that we're seeing?
Scott, you're going to unmute your mic, bottom left corner?
I'm sorry, yes.
Did you hear the question?
I'm sorry, Mario.
I was in another room.
Can you repeat that, please?
I'm sorry.
Oh, good.
I waited so long to get on.
I wasn't sure.
Yeah, I know you've been waiting for a couple of hours to come on.
Appreciate you coming on.
Looking at the numbers,
DeSantis had 5 million views on his video so far and counting that he tweeted about him
running, the one that says,
I'm running for president to lead our great American comeback.
He's had a million dollars raised in about an hour.
We're talking about him not trending on Twitter.
Right.
But everyone's talking about him.
The media's all covering it, and the numbers are looking pretty good.
Want to get your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think it's so new.
I mean, the whole platform as far as just the fact that he can go on like that
and just discuss these issues in such a cogent way was pretty refreshing.
And I think it's hard to judge as far as the failure to launch aspect.
It's really hard to judge that.
I mean, the Trump people were being super hard on him.
But I just don't, I don't really understand why because it's so new and it's a medium that it's groundbreaking.
So he's trying something new and I think people are going to give him credit for that and I think people are.
basically, I mean, they're reacting to it.
They're donating faster than Trump than they,
then they're, he's been arresting faster than Trump is,
and his word chest is a lot more formidable than Trump's.
Yeah, the numbers, so DC Drane,
I want to ask you the same question.
I don't have to jump off,
so I'll ask you that same question.
The numbers don't lie.
What are your thoughts on the numbers we're seeing with,
with DeSantis right now, and then I'll go to Alex right after?
There are a lot of rich people in this country that really, really hate
President Trump on both sides of the aisle.
So I, of course, I expect Ron DeSantis to pull in a bunch of money.
But just like Michael Bloomberg, money does not translate into votes.
And yes, I know he crashed this space, but, you know, being one of Governor DeSanis's
biggest supporters and helping him in his reelection, I've been to plenty of his events.
There's maybe 50 people there.
So he crashed the Twitter space, but he can't come close to a Trump rally.
And that's going to be shown.
You know, as these primaries come up, we're going to see the real numbers, the people on the ground.
But right now, what Governor DeSantis says, you know, poll numbers closer to Mike Pence than Donald Trump by 5X, you know, it's not looking good.
But I don't expect any shortage of money to come in from globalists that hate President Trump trying to knock him out.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Dr. D.C. Drano.
And we do appreciate you coming on, so just feel free to come on at any time because I do know you need to drop.
Guys, just a quick announcement.
We've got so many special guests on here.
We've got so many special guests.
about to come on.
And so if you've got any questions whatsoever,
bottom right and side in the comments section,
put your comments in,
and we will get to those questions.
We are reading those questions.
In addition to that,
look at it.
We've got major,
major guests coming on this space,
some huge guests.
And also...
If you want to be part of that, because we are going to be doing exclusive subscriber-only spaces,
subscribe to Mario, it's only a dollar, and we will be doing massive, huge subscriber-only spaces
with the big guests such as that what we've had today.
And we've got a major guest on the, even as listeners, we had Eric Trump.
Nick, Nick, who's coming next, by the way, Nick?
What guests do you have?
Confirmed and unconfirmed?
What names can you mention?
Are you listening?
Oh, he's on a call.
No, you're listening.
Nick, can you mention any names?
Do it.
Nick, you there?
All right, well, while waiting for Nick, he's on a call.
I see if he can mention some of the names that he's speaking to.
Let me go to Patrick. Patrick, your thoughts on the space with DeSantis.
How do you think he performed then?
And then we'll go to Alex and Benny as well.
Thanks, Mario.
I unfortunately, you know, Ron DeSanis is a fantastic governor for Florida.
No doubt what he's done for the state on the issues in the state.
He's...
he's been phenomenal and great for the Republican Party as well in that state.
But, you know, he really didn't...
He sounds, I don't know how to say this.
There's a lot of lawyers in Washington.
He sounds like a lawyer.
He speaks like a lawyer.
And he's very much cerebral in that sense, but no gravitas.
He didn't show any real vision for national policies,
nothing on the foreign policy front, as Kim.com had commented on.
A really underwhelming coming out.
help event for him. So, I mean, I'll support any candidate that's really on top of all those
issues, but I just don't get that feeling from Ron DeSantis that he could have took the opportunity
and, you know, just showed a vision for the country, where the country's going in the world,
considering everything that's going on. I didn't see that. He's deflated.
very robotic and his voice is kind of I don't know I don't want to sound too critical but
Elon Musk had more gravitas in his voice than Ron DeSantis did and that's a real character
issue I think that comes across and he's going to have to he has an uphill battle
there. It's very different when you're a governor and then when you're on the big stage running for president.
You have to talk, not only you have to talk to the nation, and he's a good communicator. He's a brilliant communicator,
but you have to lead the nation. And leadership is something that I'm not convinced that Ron DeSantis actually has to lead a country like the United States.
through what might be the most critical period in its modern history as we speak,
and the world in its most critical juncture in modern history.
So these are not timid times.
And I was expecting a lot more.
And, you know, Ron DeSantis is raising, he'll do well fundraising.
But people don't realize Donald Trump has 70 million voters that he doesn't need to raise any money at all to win their vote in the next election.
So Trump had a tough primary challenge from Ted Cruz, Rubio in 2016.
He got out fundraised by everybody, Jeb Bush included.
but that didn't matter
and he got
I don't know how much
Hillary Clinton raised
in 2016
maybe four or five X
what Trump raised
it didn't matter he won
so the fundraising issue
I don't think is such a big issue
so I think
It's a really critical time for the country, and people are going to be looking for leadership.
Can Ron DeSantis marshal that sort of passion and that sort of voter loyalty and people that will go to the wall for Donald Trump?
Who will go to the wall for Ron DeSantis?
Is it enough to win in the primaries?
I'm not convinced.
Beni, could we see...
So go ahead, Simon.
So, yeah, Benny, I've got a question for you.
I mean, the argument's been made, and we've heard it a few times on this space,
that the gap between President Trump and DeSantis is huge.
But then the counter-argument to that is, I mean,
Desantis is on about 20%, but that's what Donald Trump was in 2016.
And so we can expect him to basically boom and take over.
So what's your thoughts on that?
I mean, the thoughts on that is that there's no divine right to rule in this country.
This entire country was founded on destroying, literally killing the divine right to rule.
Hillary Clinton wandered into the 2016 presidential race with that aura that, how dare anyone run against me?
It's an insult for you to even try.
And look how that ended up for Hillary Clinton.
So nobody wants that for Republicans.
Right.
you always have to earn it.
You always have to fight
and you always have to run.
And it makes Trump a better candidate.
So if you are a big Trump fan
and I like Donald Trump a lot,
Donald Trump was a very different candidate
when he stood and announced his race
in 2015 from...
the golden Trump Tower with like handmade signs and he went down the golden escalator.
He gave the speech and he was a he was like a he was carved out of wood by the time he got
through the Republican primary process and then met Hillary Clinton on a debate stage.
And the dude was flaming arrows man sharp as attack and he was able to attack Hillary Clinton
effectively enough to win the greatest.
upset in American presidential history.
And so you should always want your candidates to battle and to fight and to earn it.
You shouldn't want it to be handed to them.
That's quite frankly what made, you know, Barack Obama went and kicked Hillary Clinton's ass in 2008 from behind doing with the exact same attitude.
Hillary Clinton had the same attitude in 2008.
as well that I am owed this.
That's a poisonous attitude.
That would be my, if I were to advise Donald Trump,
that would be like, or the people around him,
that would be like my advice is don't take that attitude.
I do think that Ron Sanchez has a huge amount of ground to gain here.
And of course, the previous speaker is completely right.
Donald Trump has baked in the cake 20 or 30% rock solid, hard-boiled inside of the Republican
process, inside of the Republican primary vote.
And so that's going to be tough to overcome.
So you're going to have to throw everything.
If you want to win this thing, you're going to have to get creative.
You're going to have to get strong.
You're going to have to get quick.
and swift and bring something to the table that really differentiates yourself and peels off voters from the middle to come to your side.
So it's going to be buckle up, man.
We have a lot of wood to chop.
This is going to be the most fascinating presidential cycle of my lifetime.
Benny, you just spoke about advising Trump, right?
In my point of view, this Desanti's space is a major invitation and opportunity for Trump to show how much bigger he is.
He should do his space with Elon.
Let them fix their server problems.
Do a space in a week.
There will be 5 million listeners and then take some tough questions from the audience.
Talk about Ukraine.
Talk about the financial crisis that is looming in the U.S.
You know, talk about all the stuff that Americans actually want to hear.
And boom, you know, that's the first big campaign win by Trump, if he would take that challenge.
Kim, I'm so glad that you asked that because I have some inside information on that.
I do not work for Donald Trump, but I know a lot of people who do.
I do live in Florida.
I'm very close with this team.
Donald Trump is going to do a Twitter space.
Donald Trump is coming back to Twitter.
Take it to the bank.
Now, this was...
part in parcel baked into the cake, but, but the Ron DeSantis announcement inside of the spaces, is really been an accelerant to that decision.
So Donald Trump will be coming back and we'll be doing, we'll be doing a Twitter space.
Mark my words, there's absolutely no way he's going to be one-up to.
on this. And Elon Musk, if you go back into the history books, the year was 2008 when Elon Musk was
interviewed by 60 minutes, and he was asked who's the best at Twitter, and he said, far and away,
point blank, Donald Trump.
Elon Moss said it's a war zone. Donald Trump is a fighter. He's insanely good at Twitter. That's a quote. And so Elon Mouin's nothing more than for Donald Trump to come back to Twitter. And I think you're right. There's a wide open lane for Donald Trump to come back and do this and make it bigly.
And I just want to go to a three margment.
So before you do that, Nick, can you hear me?
Yep, I can hear you right now, Mario.
Yeah, John, and now's the next guest who will be coming up.
Would you send you an invite?
Sure, sure, yeah.
We're trying to get a couple of Congress people on here from Thomas Massey, hopefully Matt Gates.
And, you know, so we're working on that right now.
you know at a minimum we'll have we've got we've got a nice line up well thanks man i appreciate
you just glitched out uh michael before you go i want to go to alix
uh Alex you were trying to jump in early i'll give you the Michael got Alex and Brandon
and just get their quick thoughts and then we'll give you the mic Michael
Well, thanks, guys.
No, I agree with Benny.
I think that a competitive primary, a strong primary with good competition,
will make everybody better, including President Trump.
But time and time again, we keep seeing that Ron DeSantis is not that strong competition.
I truly believe in my heart of hearts that Donald Trump's 2016 competition
was much more challenging than this current field.
We just watched Rod DeSantis.
do this total softball town hall or whatever you want to call it, spaces with Elon.
And all of the questions were scripted.
He knew all of the questions in advance.
Every single person that asked him a question, either participated in a DeSantis event in the last couple of months, appeared at a fundraiser,
or a different event.
Every single person that asked a question is a DeSantis ally, and he still flailed.
And he totally missed an opportunity to showcase that he is a real person that he...
Alex, sorry to be rude.
I'm going to let you carry on.
But if the space crashes, because it has been a massive space,
then we are going to restart up immediately.
So there is a possibility it may happen.
Sorry, continue, Alex.
Yeah.
Well, okay. So I, but bottom line, I agree with Benny that we should have competition, but the idea that Rod DeSantis is serious competition to Donald Trump needs to start being taken with a grain of salt. He's flailing in the polls. He's crashing in the polls. He embarrassed himself. He showed himself to be a complete robot. He's the first AI presidential candidate in American history.
And I think that Twitter spaces is actually going to do him a disservice.
300,000 people that were tuning in realized that that guy is completely programmed and he just reads off of a piece of paper.
And to Patrick's point earlier, when he was in here, he just said he doesn't think that Ronda Santhus has the it factor to lead the nation.
And that's just the truth.
He doesn't.
He's a governor.
He should remain governor.
He's a governor.
He does not have the instincts or the ability to take it to the next level.
And I think more Americans are becoming aware of that.
And I'm disappointed that Scott Morsefield left this chat because yesterday, around this time, he tweeted, quote,
tomorrow is the beginning of the end of the Trump campaign.
And all of this hype, the entire DeSantis Surrogate Network,
influencer network, they were promoting this Twitter spaces.
Oh, this is going to be huge.
DeSantis is going to knock it out of the park.
He's going to do so great.
And guess what?
He did it.
And now they're running and they're spinning
and they're trying to make excuses
to why it didn't go so well.
But that's all Ronda Santos has.
It's just online hype.
People call him Governor DeSavage or whatever it may be.
And he goes viral on social media
because of his artificial boosting by his influencer network.
But when you put him, when you take him out of the internet,
when you put him in front of real people,
people just recognize that this guy,
isn't that he isn't who who he is online he's completely different person he's he's just not the
same person and so uh i'm glad he did the twitter spaces i don't think it did him any favors as a
trump supporter i'm really happy that he did it uh and uh and yeah
Hey, can I,
can I jump in on that?
Michael,
one quick point
that I was going to make is,
you know,
all of the commentary
has been around
this,
this point that,
you know,
it was boring and,
you know,
he didn't do himself a favor.
But,
you know,
before Trump,
we didn't need to
to have these reality TV people kind of running our country,
we did have good executives.
And DeSantis has shown himself to be a good executive.
And yes, it was a softball interview.
Hang on, hang on.
Can you just unpack that?
We had good executives.
Is that why we elected a non-politician
for the first time in the Republic's history?
I think we elected a non-politician
because we had this administrative state
that was not letting executives get things done.
I mean, if you look at what happened with Obama in his second term...
We just said we had or we didn't.
No, we had good executives.
But ultimately, we looked to get people in power who were good executives.
It wasn't just about entertainment.
So, Sebastian, I wanted to agree with you briefly because I know on previous Twitter spaces you and I have locked heads, but your analysis was dead on as to the nature of this particular Desantis event. It was billed as a historic event.
upheaval of the typical model of how a candidate would announce that they're running for president.
DeSantis himself used the word debate in his remarks as though this Twitter spaces was meant to
facilitate open and robust debate, but it was one sycophant after another, some of whom
declared that they had worked for DeSantis or worked with him, were endorsing him, etc.,
heaping praise on how wonderful he is.
That's not any kind of open for him.
I mean,
it was a long time.
Well,
about Donald Trump.
He goes before hostile crowds.
Now, the thing with DeSantis is that he and his supporters will often rightly point out that media critiques of DeSantis are very frequently histrionic, specious, and ridiculous.
But then they'll use that as an excuse to never have him subjected to actual substantive questioning.
I don't know that I've ever heard an interview with DeSantis that is just not an uninterrupted stream of total ass kissing.
That's just the reality.
And so somebody wants to point out an exception to that rule, please let me know.
Because if I had an opportunity to answer to a question to Santis, I would, for one thing, point out that in his 2011 book, which he published as he was running for Congress the first time, and which he distributed as late as 2015 when he was contemplating running for the GOP nomination for the Senate in Florida, but then bowed out when Rubio Reneked on his pledge and ran himself.
Right.
DeSantis has a GOP foreign policy interventionist philosophy that was 100% in line with John McCain and Mitt Romney.
He was criticizing Barack Obama for being overly critical of the Iraq War.
Now we're told apparently DeSantis has had a revelation sometime in the past few months,
where he's no longer an ardent supporter of the Iraq war any longer,
which would mean that he has the distinction of being an even more hardcore Iraq war defender
than John McCain himself, who announced that he was revising his position on his literal deathbed.
So five years later, DeSantis finally has this epiphany, even though he's never been bashful about weighing in on foreign policy subjects while governor of Florida.
When the Ukraine war started, and before he decided to modulate his position rhetorically, he was lavishing praise on the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian fighters against Russia.
Russia, I mean, the guy has no consistent through line of a philosophy, especially in terms of foreign policy, other than adherence to whatever GOP conventional wisdom is erring on the side of interventionism.
Say what we will about Trump, but Trump bucked orthodoxy in 2016.
Right.
Desantis goes out of his way to adhere to it at every turn, and nobody has an opportunity to question on this because they use the excuse of not wanting to buckle to, admittedly, yes, unfair media criticism.
Yeah.
Let me go to Brendan.
I want to play.
We talked about Desantis' thoughts on the war in Ukraine,
and that was just asked in a Fox interview.
I've got a few clips from the Fox interview, but this one's worth playing.
I'm going to play it, and I want to get your thoughts, Brendan,
responding to what Michael said, but also responding to what DeSantis says in this Fox interview.
I'm just going to play it now.
All right, you wore the uniform. If you are elected president, you may be the first one in a while to have worn the uniform. How would you address the ongoing war in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine on day one of a Ronda Santa's presidency?
Well, first, I think what we need to do as a veteran is recognize that our military has become politicized.
You talk about gender ideology.
You talk about things like global warming that they're somehow concerned, and that's not the military that I served in.
We need to return our military to focusing on...
commitment, focusing on the core values and the core mission.
That would be something that I could take care of on day one.
There'll be a new sheriff in town as Commander-in-Chief,
and I think you'll see recruiting start to get back to where it needs to be,
because people don't want to join a woke military,
and I think it's been really, really problematic.
Look, in terms of what's going on over in Eastern Europe,
you know, I'd like to see a settlement of this.
I do not want to see a wider war.
I think it's completely unknowable what it will look like in January of 2025.
But I would not want to see the United States with our troops get amashed in a war in Russia or in Ukraine.
So not too much substance in the answer.
Very quickly.
That's the same position as Joe Biden.
Let me get Michael, Michael.
Michael.
Let me get Brandon's thoughts quickly, Michael.
I'll give you the mic back after Kyle.
Brendan, what are your thoughts?
You're muted.
Just unmute.
Yeah, I think Michael brings up a lot of good points, and I think they're fair questions.
But I think one, it's safe to say that someone is allowed to evolve in their political beliefs.
I mean, there are some really big MAGA influencers now that used to be Democrats just five years ago.
So I think people are allowed to evolve.
And I do want to hear more on the Ukraine.
I'm not sold on what exactly his position is with the Ukraine war, how he would settle it.
What does that look like?
I want more of that.
And that's why I haven't been decided.
Me personally, I haven't decided who I would vote for.
And that's one of the big issues as to why.
I want to hear more from Ron DeSantis on that.
And hopefully you would get more from that.
And look, Ron DeSantis, his first campaign back in 2018 for governor sucked.
It really was horrible.
And Donald Trump did save him to a big extent.
But again, the common theme here is evolution.
And what happened in 2022 is that he is just involved into a very conservative governor,
unlike we've seen ever before.
And,
His messaging really did work in the ground game throughout the state of Florida, and that's why you saw such a big landslide win.
So my next question is, and I'm just kind of asking this open-endedly here, is can he replicate that same campaign style that worked so successfully in Florida across the nation?
That's a very big question.
One point on that, and I'll let people speak. Thanks, Mario.
Brendan, you got to admit, that was an amazing pivot that DeSantis did when he was asked about the Ukraine War by Craig Gaudi on Fox News.
He immediately started talking about gender ideology in the military, which is, of course, low-hanging fruit for Republican voters, that everybody is going to sing how
Hallelujah, when they hear.
He didn't address the substance of the issue.
It was the same as when he gave the statement to Tucker Carlson about his position on the Ukraine war,
where it was this mealy-mouthed, non-committal position that is intended to be a signifier of maybe certain tendencies without actually committing himself to anything.
The actual substance of the position he just expressed there, which I'm hearing for the first time, is he doesn't want to commit American troops to Ukraine.
Guess what? That's the same position that Joe Biden articulates. He's not committing himself to anything on the substance, but he goes on Fox News.
But hold up, but he goes on Fox News to talk to Trey Gowdy, who's his former colleague in the House.
to have another softball question lapped at him that doesn't lead to any follow-up.
It's actually a very brilliant strategy for avoiding serious scrutiny.
He doesn't need a...
I'm not defending Donald Trump, but Donald Trump at least...
They all have BSA.
positions that's my point. Hang on, hang on, hang on. This is, I got to respond to that.
He doesn't need a position because we didn't have any dumb wars for four years. That's his position.
And I got to respond to what Justin said about, you know, President Trump had no results.
And what the good doctor said about, we voted for competent executives. Can we be clear here about results?
Let's just take politics off the table for a second.
For the president's first term, okay, the caliphate of ISIS was crushed.
We had no new wars.
China was put in the box.
Little Kim was put in a box.
Lowest unemployment since recordkeeping began and the biggest U.S. economy since
ever, and also the border was secure.
So can we stop this, you know, Ron's the guy who'll bring results?
We have a track record, as Rich Barry said on my show last week.
The only question for 2024 is do you want Biden or Trump?
That's the only question. It's going to be exactly the same as 79 Carter and Reagan. The only
question that we need to answer is, were you better off four years ago or better off today? Let's cut
this garbage about Trump didn't have any results. You're smoking crack or you're disingenuous.
Yeah, Trump had a lot of results, and I think one could argue that Ron DeSantis also has a lot of results in his own regard.
But not on a national scale.
No, not on a national scale.
He did a 180. He did a literal 180 on Ukraine in under 72 hours.
He said, we don't care about it. It's irrelevant.
You know, seal the border.
And then he said, no, no, no, this is really important.
That's not ready for prime time.
You can't do a 180 on war in Europe in 72 hours.
Listen, no campaign candidate is perfect.
So that's why I'd give him a couple more months to see how his stance has evolved.
And with Donald Trump, really, my only question for him, everyone knows my track record of my support of Donald Trump in the past.
It's I want to know how is he going.
There's so many middle ground voters in the general that are turned off from him.
Are they going to come back to him?
That is a talking point of the left.
It's like the white suburban housewives.
It's the reality, Sebastian.
No, it's not the reality.
You had the biggest...
vote for any incumbent
Can we just stop the fantasies
and the left-wing talking points?
No president, no incumbent president in history
got 74 million votes.
Don't talk to me about
he lost the middle
or he lost the suburban housewise.
74 million votes.
I'm not talking about that.
Dr. Gorker,
Dr. Gorka, did you say that
no one can reverse what's happening
in the war in 72 hours?
No, no, no, no.
I said what the Santa said.
DeSantis reversed his position on Ukraine in 72 hours.
But Sam, he didn't actually reverse his position.
He fashioned the original position in a lawyerly, mealy-mouthed way so he could wiggle his way out of it.
Whatever, it was not prime time foreign policy.
It was complete milk toast garbage.
Ultimately, a lot of Republicans are worried about the ability to win a general.
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that question.
Michael and Sebastian both agree that what DeSantis said was a mealy-mouth statement calling, he called it a border dispute, right? Between Russia and Ukraine. And even that sent establishment Republicans into a
apoplectic seizures, right?
Like the neocons were having panic attacks in the street in Washington, D.C.
over that statement.
They were so upset.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, some people were criticizing Trump's statement,
but what I remember of that statement,
Trump says we don't need regime change in Russia.
We need regime change in America, which had me laughing my app.
Well, Benny, the Republicans who freaked out over that didn't read the statement carefully because it didn't actually signify any commitment on the census part to any deviation from the Biden policy on Ukraine.
That's why he's actually a very brilliant, lawyerly political communicator because he doesn't have to commit himself to anything while communicating these tendencies in tant.
It's actually the statement that Biden managed to say that triggered the war.
I mean, that's how close it was when he said,
it depends upon the nature of the military incursion.
That's how completely disgusting his comment was.
The Joe Biden, just the tip comment?
Yeah.
So true.
Michael, by the way, we've never met,
but you did an incredible job talking about this on Tucker Carlson.
I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, I forgot to say.
Thanks, I appreciate that.
As you know, I won't have that opportunity again now.
Hold on Michael.
RIP, everyone pour out.
Pour your 40s out.
Your guys, you wanted in another official input.
He was on the call.
Hogan Gidley is also part of the Trump campaign.
Yeah.
Yeah, so let me, I want to ask Brendan a question here because you were talking about,
this is one of the things that people complain about the most.
What they liked about Trump was the fact that he was not a politician, right?
When he took a stance on something, he held the line.
Okay.
Now, what you just said was that Ron DeSantis is, you know, his policy positions are going to evolve over the campaign.
you know, because he's just now getting started.
Isn't that one of the problems that people have with politicians?
Well, I didn't say his policies are going to evolve down the campaign.
I said he's evolved over the years and his positions continue to get stronger and stronger to the rights.
I merely said, I'm not going to look at that deflection.
And Michael's right.
That was a deflection of an answer on Trey Gowdy
and hold that to him right now as it stands.
Are we talking in December?
He's still kind of deflecting and giving me wishy-washy answers?
Yeah, I think that would end up pushing me.
But Brendan, why are you tolerating wishy-washy answers
from a declared presidential candidate
who's the governor of one of the most influential states in the country?
Why are you lowering the bar of scrutiny?
It doesn't make any sense.
To be honest, if I did that, if I hold every single candidate to one bad answer every single time, I mean, I wouldn't be supporting any candidate ever. It happens.
Okay, well, I guess my perspective is that I want to hold people who are seeking the presidency to account for what they say and not lower the bar to make them more politically palatable.
If we're going to do that, then we're going to have a lot to say about Donald Trump.
Sure, let's do it.
Yeah.
Let's have a lot to say about Donald Trump and Joe Biden and RFK Jr.
And all these other people running for president.
That's all the point of running for president.
You're right, Michael.
I agree.
I mean, I think you're making salient points.
Kyle, I want to bring you in.
Sure.
And what everybody's speaking on this stage is a very important issue.
He's...
almost planned interview on Twitter.
It wasn't even mentioned.
He wasn't even asked about it.
And then on Fox,
what Mario played,
it was a deflection.
I mean,
this is going to be a major issue.
When are we going to be in a scenario
where he's able to detail
what his position is going to be
on Ukraine and Russia?
That's a good question.
I did get a chance to Q&A,
wrong with the Sanitz earlier this year.
He didn't screen my questions.
He is able to think on his feet,
but he does come across as very cold and detached and calculated.
I think we saw that in Twitter spaces tonight.
I actually tried to get in on that space as to question him. I was going to ask him what he would do to hold the weaponized DOJ and FBI accountable for the injustice they did to Donald Trump. But there was only a few questions asked. And I was really surprised at how sort of friendly all of those questions were. And then I think if DeSantis was going to stay that long, if he
could have asked a little bit more adversarial or challenging questions.
It would have made him look a little bit better.
But I do agree with what Benny said earlier.
If you're going to launch a presidential campaign, you don't want to turn it into a distraction.
You want people to focus on what your agenda is.
I did see something very interesting on Twitter.
Christopher Rufo, who was one of the people who did get a chance to question Ron DeSantis,
seems to have leaked what he asked.
Ron DeSantis almost verbatim onto Twitter before deleting it.
So I did retweet that.
So it does raise the question to me if those questions were screened.
I would like to ask the decision.
But I wouldn't be surprised if the questions today were screened.
Again, he's announcing his candidacy.
He's not debating anybody.
Yeah.
No, but that's major Mario.
No, you can't say that Mario because Musk has wrote that that wasn't the case.
He said the questions weren't screened.
He said that there was going to be a diversity of questions.
He made it seem like it was going to be very different to what we witnessed, hence why.
Yeah, but I think it's a massive, again, again, but it's a massive step forward.
Yeah.
You know, we're talking about a president.
You know, we were, we co-hosted the one with Robert.
I'm about to tell you.
So we co-hosted the one with Robert F. Kennedy when he announced his candidacy,
but he didn't even speak on Twitter spaces.
And it was very careful on who was on stage.
And he was also careful on coming up on a space afterwards.
And I'm not taking a jab at RFK.
I'm just telling you that it's a very difficult thing.
It's uncharted territory.
So for Descentes, for such a highly anticipated,
announcements, such a highly
anticipated event, to do it on Twitter spaces
and to be okay with having people come up
and ask him questions.
How is in that a step forward now?
It was hosted by a
DeSantis'
How was it any different?
He took to his credit, say he would do a follow-up.
Sorry, Michael.
How was it any different to what he was doing?
People came up,
people came up and asked questions.
They were pre-planned, bro.
How was that different?
No, no, hold on.
You're implying that we know they're pre-planned.
Kyle is saying that one of them...
Mario, hold on.
I happen to like David Sachs.
I happen to like David Sachs,
but he's a declared...
DeSantis supporter and donor who's hosted fundraising.
Yeah, but what do you expect?
You want to, okay, but what do you want?
You want to Trump?
You want to throw on on.
If it's going to be a sponsored campaign ad.
Okay, just, it's two seconds.
You got a very loud, Mike.
You expect a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter to come up and lead the conversation,
host the event, one of the most important events for for DeSantis at the moment?
Well, if it's being presented as this.
Who presented?
No, Michael, who presented Trump's one?
Who presented Biden's on?
Elon Musk and DeSantis presented it as this historic open opportunity for debate that would fly in the face of the typical model around a presidential campaign.
Did they say, did they say debate?
The Sanders himself used that word.
Yeah, he did.
So, I mean, I happen to like David Sachs, okay, but he's a declared DeSantis supporter and donor who was moderating the event.
They could have just as easily had it on some.
The moderation is fine, but if they said there's going to be a debate.
Yeah, there was no debates, and I didn't expect a debate either.
Tiffany, I want to go to Robert Wolf and Tiffany.
Robert, your thoughts on, I just mentioned now.
Is that a step forward?
Are you surprised that isn't a debate?
Would you expect a debate at such an event?
And I'll go to Tiffany right after.
I mean, one, I would not expect a debate.
I think that would be ridiculous.
It's his announcement.
I think the way they depicted it was inaccurate.
They made it like it was going to be a real Q&A.
It wasn't.
It was an announcement with, it was like a sponsored ad.
I think it's actually good that DeSantis did it,
but I don't think he was effective in it
because I think effective would have been
if he kind of went there and answered tough questions
and showed how he is different than the rest of the field
and taken the opportunity to get an audience
that's somewhat younger than most Republican voters
to really, you know, think about supporting them.
I think it was a lost opportunity.
And it was a sponsored ad.
That's what it was.
It was sponsored by Elon Musk and David Sachs,
not necessarily financially,
although maybe by Elon financially since he owns Twitter,
but it was a sponsored ad.
And I would say that this right now is a Trump-Biden race.
The Republican Party's primary is predominantly winner-takes-all, especially in early states.
The Democratic primary is mainly pro rata.
Donald Trump right now has a plurality in most states.
He will be the nominee if we're going to have a group of candidates all between 5 and 15% and 1 over 35.
The numbers don't add up.
Does Santa's talking about wokeness and Joe Biden?
Yes, as a Democrat, we've heard it all.
But that isn't who he's racing against right now.
He's race against Donald Trump and the rest of the field, and he did not show himself.
or differentiate himself from Donald Trump at all.
If anything, Donald Trump owns the airwaves.
You wake up to him, you go to sleep to him.
Whether you like him or not, okay, he's a marketing genius.
And this guy is just the opposite.
It brings up a question from what Robert is saying.
Is it a good campaign strategy for Ron DeSantis to go after Donald Trump?
Or is it a better strategy for him to constantly focus on the common enemy, which is the left?
I was just kind of open-ended question I had for you guys because that's something all the people have talked to me about.
I leave it with this, and this is much more in your guys' field.
But one thing that Barack Obama said about Hillary Clinton,
that easily could be used about Ron DeSantis is in New Hampshire when he said you're likable enough.
This guy is not likable enough.
He's not that well liked.
He's viewed as maybe a smart politician, but he's not that well liked.
And people are going to have to get to know him to like him.
They did not get to know him tonight.
This was a missed opportunity.
This is not being Democrat or Republican.
This is just a missed opportunity.
It is what it is.
Tiffany, do you think, hold on, Michael, I'll give you the mic right after, but Tiffany, do you agree with Robert?
Did this event go as you expected it to go?
And do you think it helped?
And I don't know, this will not determine the outcome and it's just getting started.
But I would just get an idea, do you think it helped DeSantis or harmed them more?
I think I was on a roller coaster with Robert.
I agreed.
I disagreed.
I agreed.
I disagreed.
So I think that's really interesting.
You know, I think that Ronda Sanchez was reaching a different audience, and he's got a lot of people talking about him tonight.
And the fact that he did this Twitter space, right now he owns Twitter.
I think the most interesting thing that no one is talking about.
And Sebastian Gorka, I'd love to hear from you about this, is the fact that Donald Trump is coming back to Twitter.
Yeah, we've heard that. Benny, you mentioned that. Sebastian, do you know much about that at all?
Can I do it?
I was going to go to you as well, Benny.
Like if you offer it, yeah, you know.
I just want to, I just want to drop.
I just want to drop in and say just two quick things.
One, while there wasn't any adversarial questions to Ron DeSantis tonight in the space,
I think I speak for everyone on this space right now to say I would have loved to hear one of the Krasenstein brothers ask them a question.
Would have killed for it.
What about?
Here.
Here.
Secondarily, I want to say that as it pertains to that, you know, yes, Donald Trump is coming back to Twitter.
I have that effectively confirmed from some of the highest levels of his campaign.
So I think you should take that.
I think you should take that to the bank.
The people who have access to Donald Trump's Twitter confirm that.
So I think you should take it to the bank.
You should expect it.
And I think you should expect a situation like this.
I think you should expect Elon post one of these with Donald Trump.
And I think Elon's going to get better at them.
And I think David Sachs will get better at them.
I have to get ready for my show in the morning.
I just want to drop one more mic, one more mic drop.
Can I get emojis up, clapping emojis up for Nick and Mario?
Because hosting these massive spaces are hard.
It's tough.
To keep the conversation going, to appease all parties, it's tough.
You saw it tonight.
Like, it's tough.
And so Nick and Mario do an incredible job.
It's a public service.
Yeah.
it's more valuable than I think
any media space
and so God bless you guys
thank you for truth social
did I call
hold on in the background on these shows
that nobody really knows about
and you know Silleman plays a huge part
in that as well and
yeah so the really appreciate
the recognition
Few things I wanted to mention.
This is a massive drop by Benny.
I've heard this as well, but I'm sure your sources are more solid.
That Donald Trump is unsurprisingly going to be coming back to Twitter
and will be doing Twitter spaces.
So, Benny, thanks a lot for this, for dropping this here.
Not sure if you've mentioned it anywhere else.
Also, thanks a lot for the shout-out.
Nick Sleiman for co-hosting the space.
Benny, thanks a lot for joining.
I appreciate it and appreciate the shout-out.
Benny...
Anyone else heard about Donald Trump coming back to Twitter?
I'm very curious if there's any other sources.
And I think a Donald Trump Twitter would be very different to what we saw today.
And I think future Twitter spaces by DeSantis will be different to what we saw today.
I don't know why everyone is saying that DeSantis cannot debate.
I think, Carl, you kind of disagreed.
You had...
questions for him
that were
you know
not unscripted
but you didn't show
you didn't share those
questions with him
they were not
vetted by the
dissantis team
which shows that he is
it you know
he's not worried
about having unscripted
questions
not unscripted
but questions
that are not prepared
Yeah.
Not screened questions.
So why is everyone saying that the sentence cannot,
is it just him not being able to be relatable
on an argument that was made back against Hillary in 2016?
He's not a retail politician.
He's not a glad handler.
Yeah, he's.
And I think the interesting thing about him being in the primary is that his appeal might be more to people who are moderates and independents and they are not Republican primary voters.
So like this reference, this is really what I was trying to allude to earlier where the strategy of Republicans is.
You know, they may be all gung-ho about Donald Trump,
but he is going to be a much different type of political candidate versus Biden than Rhonda Sanis.
The reason I say this is because
If you look at the exit polling in 2020,
a lot of those Biden voters wanted people with like strong judgment,
people who seemed, you know, calm and cool and collected.
And I think that people may not want all the Trump theatrics and drama that comes with it.
People who support Trump thinks he's a great showman.
He's very entertaining.
But I think with DeSantis, he's a foil to Ron DeSantis and the type of person who could
drain Biden voters for a different reason than Trump would.
So, you know, I think that both in the order, we need to see a debate.
That's all I got to say.
And I would like to see them debate in Twitter spaces.
Unscripted, and I know I'm sure everybody would think that Trump would eat his lunch.
All the Republicans would say that.
But the idea is the foil between the two, the contrast to the two.
What does that do?
Does that draw moderates and independence suicide?
Again, it may be moot because they don't vote in Republican primaries.
So, but we'll see what happens.
Hopefully they do do a debate.
And that would be definitely a change from where we're at now because it doesn't look like a debate is going to happen anytime soon.
Hey, Kyle, you know, if you look at the 2016 primaries, one reason why Trump was able to garner the coalition that he did to prevail was that he actually drew from the most...
ardent conservative factions of the Republican electorate, as well as the self-declared moderate factions.
So if you recall in March, I think it was in 2016, he simultaneously won the primaries in Massachusetts and Mississippi on the same night.
Whereas it's hard to really see how DeSantis is the one who is appealing to so-called moderate voters.
If anything, in the 2016 general election, Trump in polls was being depicted, was being selected as the most moderate candidate.
Now, that shifted somewhat into 2020 when he became more identified as a partisan Republican, but the initial appeal was much more cross-ideological than I think people might recall.
Yeah.
Oh, that's true. And it's like stylistics and optics would present a contrast.
But I think to go to your point, Trump is running to the left of DeSantis on Social Security.
Medicare, abortion, which I find will be really interesting to see how that plays out.
So, you know, again, the moderates and independence, they mean it actually, it sets up a good challenge because
They may be attracted to Trump because of abortion, the moderates and independence.
I think that may be the real breaking thing for DeSantis, where even his moderate tone or just direct stylistics may not be enough to peel those potential suitors away because of the abortion issue.
Let me let me go.
Kyle, I want to quickly go to Alex.
Alex, I've got two questions, three questions for you.
I'm going to hammer you with three.
It's been a while we haven't had you here.
How are you?
Yeah, good, man, good.
All right, man.
So the first question is kick it off with your thoughts on the DeSantis space.
and also this space.
I've never asked you about your thoughts on the spaces we do here
to get a bit of a snippet of you giving feedback.
Benny's been praising the hell out of us.
I'm pretty hyped up.
That's number one.
Number two is Trump joining Twitter.
I know you were, I think you were just meeting,
according to Benny, you were just meeting with the Trump team
or Trump himself earlier today.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
So I want to get your thoughts on that one.
A couple weeks ago.
a couple of weeks ago
I know about that one
yeah you've posted about it
so these are three questions
this space
the Descenta space
and Trump coming on Twitter
so these spaces are always great
I mean there's always like a wide variety
of people and I'm pretty sure you guys have the biggest
spaces on Twitter I mean
you guys always have like
big name guests and everything so you guys do a really great job and then you know getting getting a
variety of people up uh who disagree to facilitate a conversation so i think that's really great
uh as far as the Elon space um i i kind of like i think it was a risk going into it because you know
we've had problems with our spaces like much at a much smaller scale um and there are glitches and bugs so like
to have that much attention to one space and have everybody try and join at the same time.
I mean, you know, you got to roll with it, I guess.
But I mean, it was risky.
It wasn't the greatest look for him launching the campaign that way, seeing how it took 20 minutes to get off the ground.
And.
And I kind of caught the tail end, as well as, like, from Benny's comments, having someone like the Crescent scenes or like some sort of opposing views.
And I know it was a launch thing.
So it was, you know, friendlier audience and friendlier stage.
However, I did hear somebody say that, like, he did mention, oh, it was a healthy debate or something at the end of his comments, as if there were some adversarial, you know, questions, which there really weren't.
And I think bringing somebody up that wasn't, you know,
A supporter of his or somebody who's like going to endorse him would kind of give more credibility to the notion that they weren't scripted questions. I'm not saying they were, but I'm just saying from an outside perspective that's a criticism I've been seeing is that there's no guarantee that they weren't scripted.
So, so those, those are kind of like the main points.
And then of course, I gave, you know, Trump a lot of ammo to go after him.
So it was a gamble, like going on Twitter spaces where a lot could go wrong.
But I do applaud, you know, Elon and the Twitter team and, you know, him for even taking the risk and trying something new.
As far as meeting with Trump, so we're originally supposed to go to the rally in Iowa,
ended up being canceled, so I ended up spending like the whole day with him.
So we just talked basically just about Twitter and stuff and some of the things that I was showing him.
as opposed to truth social was i was telling him basically that truth social is great uh to appeal
to your base and to talk to your base but in a general election you kind of have to talk to the
middle where you're not going to be reaching the people on truth social um
And the example I gave to him was the answer he gave in the CNN town hall on the Ukraine war.
So Elon Musk liked that tweet.
He's not a Trump fan.
And it got over 5 million views.
It got, I forget how many retweets and likes, but that was just on my account.
Donald Trump has like probably the 20th most followed account on Twitter or something, and he hasn't used it since it's been reinstated.
So...
That shows like how much reach he could possibly have with say an answer like that where somebody, you know, is hearing from corporate media. Oh, Trump loves Russia. No, Trump's answer was I want to end death. I want Russians to stop dying. I want Ukrainians to stop dying. Who could be opposed to that?
Whereas there are psychos, you know, like Adam Kinzinger, who are sycophantically, no, we must win the Ukraine war.
We must win the Ukraine war at all costs.
And he doesn't give a definition of what that means.
It just means more death at this point.
Whereas Trump kind of, you know, his posture is, I want to end this war.
Let's bring the people who have the power to end the war to the table, negotiate and end the war.
I think...
anyone would be, you know, for less death in the world, no matter if you're Ukrainian or Russian.
So getting that viewpoint to Twitter rather than true social, I think would be important.
Messages like that that could appeal to the middle.
So that was basically the extent of, you know, my recommendation for him.
Obviously, there hasn't been, you know, a solid decision.
The decision is going to be, like, it's going to end up, like, in his...
plate, whether he's going to join or not.
But I have a feeling he will, especially now.
Well, there's been conversation, Alex, about the fact that, you know,
a bunch of people have said this on stage and, you know, in our comments on the bottom right,
you know, that, well, he can't join because of his deal with truth social.
So our team was reviewing all the information on the back end.
There was an S4 that was filed in May 22 that actually goes over what the restrictions are.
He really doesn't have any restrictions from coming back to Twitter.
You know, if he, the only restriction is,
that if he posts a truth on truth social,
he cannot post it to any other social network for six hours.
That is the only restriction according to that filing that he has.
So the only reason he's not coming back is exactly what you said.
It is his decision.
Yeah.
Does that expire in June?
I saw him like,
from somewhere that it says that the exclusivity
or whatever that agreement was.
But nothing stops him from joining Twitter spaces
or sending out tweets.
And by the way,
if he doesn't send a quote unquote truth out first,
He can tweet first.
It's only when he sends a truth out that he has to wait six hours to send the same information out as a tweet.
Hey, Alex, did Trump evince any awareness that truth social is obviously a far more limited audience than a Twitter would be?
Does that mean anything to him?
Yeah.
What was the take on that?
His take kind of is that he's a big fan of rallying the base.
Yeah.
which I guess we can understand because you know you see his rallies and everything he very much
loves appealing to his base which is not necessarily a bad thing but the
the other thing is that we've seen recently is he thrives in an adversarial setting like the
CNN town hall so coming to Twitter would kind of be a digital version of that I think you know back in
2015 where he used to reply to people with like 50 followers and just roast random people and it would
just be like the funniest thing ever um and
And then also he could hit back, you know,
journalists that are, you know,
giving him shit online.
He could reply directly to them,
bring the CNN Town Hall Energy to Twitter.
But yeah,
that's kind of what, you know, he said.
You know, Alex, Alex, I just got an ID.
First, I just...
I just tweeted a video.
I was listening to it and I muted myself because I couldn't stop laughing.
You don't have to like Trump, but you got to watch this video that Trump posted.
Danish, you said, I think you watched it down and she posted it in our group.
I've just pinned it at the top.
I've just tweeted it out.
We can just go to Trump's truth account and watch it.
So he's making fun of the Descanter space.
So I highly recommend everyone watch this video.
I'm probably going to watch it again after the space.
Now, other than that, I've just got an idea after watching the video.
Okay.
We should have Trump come into, instead of doing his space himself, Slaman, you like this one.
We should tell Trump, tell his team, Nick, say, hey, you know, make fun of DeSantis.
He did a space where it was well controlled, et cetera.
And others will do probably similar spaces to DeSantis.
How about you get right into the, you know,
right into the heated discussions, into debates, spaces like this, which are always, you know, balanced, try to get it 50-50, and answer the tough questions.
I think if Trump does this, it would be a, you know, I think you'll get a lot of praise for it because he's doing exactly what Desantis is, he's doing exactly what Desanthus did not do and what is being criticized for.
for. So just an idea that's worth mentioning if Trump does come on spaces. Now, I think his first space he'll be hosting himself, but it'll be a good explanation to give to the Santis and others. We've had a few candidates coming to the space here before.
RFK Jr. will be coming in. We've had Vivek coming in many times. And I think we've got another candidate that's running against Biden. Don't want to mention their name yet. And that will be coming in soon as well.
But yes, I just wanted to mention that, Alex.
I think it would be a good space and a good look for Trump.
Yeah, I tend to agree.
And like I said, I think he thrives and he gets more of a 2015-2016 vibe
when he's in adversarial settings.
So I did mention, you know, that to him,
that people like the CNN town hall.
So that's what is.
And Alex, what do you think the space that we just saw now before go to AllSource?
What do you think that means for...
For Twitter Spaces in general, do you think it's a big plus for us,
have got a lot of awareness to Twitter Spaces,
or do you think the glitches gave it a bad look?
Because we're seeing the media pounce on the opportunity to attack Twitter
and a few headlines that I was just tweeting about earlier,
just trying to shit on Twitter and unsurprisingly.
Well, and I mean, Spaces is a relatively, you know, when...
I feel like before Elon took over, it was there, but it was not.
It was very underutilized, and therefore they didn't build up the infrastructure as much.
I feel like the more Elon uses it and the more like people see the bugs, they're going to, you know, invest heavily in it and make improvements.
But, I mean, we just saw Instagram go down on Sunday worldwide.
So the notion that, you know, big tech companies are immune from bugs and glitches is hilarious when a company like meta is utterly incompetent of keeping their, you know, servers online when they're how many times bigger than Twitter.
So, yeah.
I think it just needs to be invested in more.
And I think as they do more of these things,
you know, they're going to scale it better because it's really unprecedented
to have spaces at this level of, you know, people joining all at once.
So you don't know that you don't have those capabilities unless, you know,
you test the limits, I guess.
So it happens.
So it will only get better from here, I think.
Thanks Alex, I appreciate it.
Guys, one thing I want to know is what is the thoughts of everybody?
Because obviously on this stage, what people feel is that, yeah, DeSantis was kind of robotic and he did get softball questions.
So I want to, and is that really the case?
Is that the feeling of what everybody's having?
So if you believe so, or if you don't and you think that actually it doesn't matter about his personality, what matters is his policies?
Yeah.
Drop a comment in the bottom right.
Yeah, yeah, please do drop a comment in the bottom right corner.
Tira, I've just sent you through an invite as well.
Get your thoughts on this.
Doc, sent you an invite.
But, you know, policies matter.
The way you speak doesn't matter when, you know, that's just being objective about it.
in terms of being a leader or being a president, but unfortunately, to get elected, you need to be a good speaker.
So I think that just if your question, if you're referring to to get elected, as a candidate, speaking well is really important.
As a president, you know, what you say shouldn't really matter.
I actually prefer.
And I think there's a study done where people that don't speak that well, people don't listen to them.
But in many cases, they do, even if you make the right decisions, if you're not well spoken, you don't get the support.
Even if you make the shitty decisions, if you're well spoken, you do get the support.
But I think DeSantis does need, heard a few speakers, a few panelists mention about, and also,
someone get your thoughts on this.
A few panelists mentioned about DeSantis seeming out of touch, which is a problem that
Hillary Clinton had in 2016, I think to a lot more extreme and just not being relatable
when she speaks.
Do you think that will change with DeSantis?
How big of a problem do you think that is also?
Yeah, so I think that's an interesting criticism of DeSantis, right?
And I think kind of the evolution of DeSantis political ideology, I think that's always going to be kind of the problem that he runs it.
But I think he's going, he is trying to be more of a conservative, you know, almost like, you know, social issue warrior, right?
That that's really what he's running on.
But what I would find very interesting is in the, in this kind of election cycle.
I think today was announced that CNN is hosting another town's, you know, town space primary with Nikki Haley.
I believe it was June 4, right?
It's like almost like CNN is trying to get back into the Republican politics.
They were the first ones to do it with Trump.
Now that Nick Haley, they're probably going to get Ron DeSantis as well.
So is this their kind of expansion of, you know, do at least CNN, had they made a concerted effort, hey, we need to get back into at least the Republican conservative movement?
Right.
But one of the policy aspects I think is very important that I think that we that I want to highlight because it's getting talked a lot more.
And it, Ron DeSantis touched upon it, Trump touched upon it, and it's just the Republicans in general have touched upon it since prior to the midterms in 2022.
And it's not only just the issue of the border migration, but what we're hearing a lot.
And I'll tie it into the Russian Ukraine is the cartels.
And that's kind of a plug in for me.
But like.
Like when people say, oh, we're against new wars, we're against new war, what we're seeing in the Republican candidates, it's almost as is who can be the most aggressive militarily against them.
Vivek, you know, the Republican candidate openly stated, I'm going to have the military completely committed against them, right?
And so we talk about Russia, Ukraine, like, oh, nobody wants war, nobody wants war.
Right.
But then when we talk about kind of, this kind of this isolation pacifist ideology, right?
And then we pivot to Gardnell's, and at least in the Republican side and a lot of the candidates there are openly advocating to the point of almost unilateral military action at our border.
And like nobody's analyzing the consequence that completely gets ignored.
It's almost as accepted and like, oh, that's going to be great.
and a country of over 100 million people right at our border and everything.
And so we use, oh, Russia, Ukraine, we're always for peace.
But let's just bomb our neighbor to smithereens.
No questions, no problem.
And I just think that's a little bit concerning that it doesn't get talked about as enough.
And I think that's the policy throughout.
But that's going to be talked a lot, a lot more in this election cycle, I think,
specifically the cartels and what we are historically used to.
Yeah, one thing that's kind of related that DeSantis is in a habit of chronically dissembling about is that he pretends that he's not currently running against Donald Trump for the Republican nomination.
Like, it's the most glaring elephant possible in the room, and yet he wants to make it seem like it's just him versus this abstract notion of Joe Biden.
Now, that's not an uncommon tactic in a presidential primary race.
But the fact is, it's historically anomalous for a former, very popular, incumbent president
to be running in another primary.
And the opponent that is seen as his most formidable challenger is constantly pivoting
away from even acknowledging that that's the choice within the context of a Republican
primary.
Everybody knows that Ron DeSantis has lots of criticisms of Joe Biden.
But that's not the race he's running in right now.
He's running in a primary race.
I mean, Ted Cruz and Donald had the same sort of position on Trump until it was too late.
And then they have this blowout brawl, you know, after the Iowa caucus, essentially.
And so if that's the tactic that DeSantis is going to employ,
it's just another indication of this conventional politicking sort of tendency
that people are always, you know, kissing his ass as though he's this...
as though he's some sort of breath of fresh air
and not adhering to a typical politician playbook,
but this couldn't be a more conventional political playbook to adhere to.
At least Trump is forthright in acknowledging and mocking DeFantis
because he's this...
He's his opponent in the race, whereas the census has this whole kind of conceit of, oh, I'm just going to focus on Joe Biden as though I'm not running against the incumbent Republican president that was most recently in office.
I mean, it's disingenuous to the point of coming across not only as stilted, but as like this deliberate deflection from reality.
So you've got to wonder how that relates to the wide breadth of his other positions on a whole variety of issues.
We were sold an unscripted conversation where a lot of people were asking, okay, exactly to your point, Michael, how is he going to differentiate himself from the other Republican candidate in Donald Trump? How is that being done? We saw none of that. We
We saw a scripted conversation with all supporters.
And Mario, that video you've just posted after, I didn't have a chance to watch it.
You've got to watch it.
Charles, Charles, you got to watch it.
Let me, let me, should I play, let me, let me play the audio.
It's just worth it.
So it's a video of, it's a video of a space.
Did you, who watched it on stage?
Who watched it?
Anyone?
Yeah.
I mean, I thought
I just watched this all the areas.
Carlos, Klaus Schwab, Dick Cheney,
Adolf Hitler, the devil, and the FBI
in this parody video that are up on stage.
Trump posted on truth social, by the way.
I don't know who made it, but he posted
on true social already.
Yeah, he did, he did, yeah.
I don't know who made it either.
So I'm going to play it now.
A Twitter user, I'm going to message him real quick
see if you can come on.
Oh, yeah, sure, sure.
Let me use an epic video.
Let me play it now.
I'm going to play all and put volume up.
All right.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our Ron DeSantis Twitter space.
Hello. Is my microphone working correctly?
George, can you just wait while we...
No, can you hear...
So this is George, sorry, I'm going to play it because you, but let me tell you who's on stage.
So it's Elon and is the odd you're good, Nick, before I continue?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's great.
Okay.
It's good enough.
Okay, I'm going to play it again.
So just to give you the context, you can watch a video.
It's just pinned above my profile at the top.
Klaus Schrobb, George Soros, Ron DeSantis, Dick Cheney, Otto Fittler, the devil and the FBI are all on stage.
Enjoy the show, guys.
Hi, everyone.
Welcome to our Ron DeSantis' Twitter space.
Hello?
Is my microphone working correctly?
George, can you just wait while we.
Can you hear me?
We can all hear you, George.
Can you just hold on for a second?
I don't think they can hear me.
I don't think George knows how to use Twitter.
Can you hear me now?
Can I please make my big announcement now?
Everyone just...
Hello?
Just shut up, George.
Can somebody just mute, George?
Dick, could you try not to cough on the phone?
Okay, so how are we going to take out Trump, you guys?
Guys from the FBI, this is not a private call.
This is a public Twitter space.
Everyone can listen in.
God damn it.
They just left the FBI left.
Anyway, guys, we invited everyone to this, uh, this Twitter space so Governor Ronda Santis could...
Everyone just shut the hell up so I can make my announcement, okay?
You go, girl.
So what? Everyone in this call is gay.
I happen to go every single one of the U.S.
I think of it.
I have to go in the closet.
Guys, can we please just calm down.
Okay.
So anyway, guys, I just wanted to announce that I'm...
Okay.
I can hear the governor very veal.
Shut up.
Would you please shut up already?
I'm running for fucking president, okay?
Yeah, we kind of already know about it.
Congratulations, governor.
Well, that concludes our Twitter space for today.
Thank you to all of our...
Hold your...
Hold your horses, Elon.
The real president.
So Donald Trump then joins and makes a bit of a mini speech, but I don't care if you
like Trump or not.
When I first saw the visuals of this with earlier, the devil and Dick Cheney and
Clairab and Soros with Elon and DeSantis, I didn't expect this type of video, I didn't
expect to laugh at all.
But then the segment.
If you look at the replies, though, Mario,
it seems like a lot of people are kind of pissed off about it.
I don't know.
Maybe they were on the DeSantis train before, you know,
but they're calling it.
You know, I think douchebaggery was what they're calling it.
I'm just looking at it now.
Well, at least my comments are looking,
everyone's my comments is fun at laughing,
so I'm guessing Marius is better.
But you got to, especially the part where Hitler unmutes
and just goes on a tirade.
I know the movie.
It's from a movie called The Downfall.
And he just goes on a terray.
It's just epic
It's very interesting
How is Trump's base
Maga is going to view
Elon Musk
Because of it
I think that's because I mean
I think we all kind of know that
We've had spaces of Trump DeSantis
Right
And the supporters
But he hasn't taken jabs.
Trump hasn't taken jabs against Elon.
He's taken jabs against DeSantis.
But I think it's, but Trump voters, like his base, how do they perceive this?
And I think a lot of the criticism that we've heard of DeSantis is like the softball, almost like a political action, you know, political ad, a free political ad.
But I've seen everyone, yeah, but I think no one really critic us.
People are criticized Sacks, David Sacks more than they've criticized Elon.
And you're open to criticize Elon on small things like this.
I think it's not that big of a deal.
I don't think there's any attacks on Elon.
I just don't see it to be a wise move.
It's more making fun of Descentus and him doing the Twitter space and not going his plan
and everything being scripted.
I don't see, because Elon's narrative and, you know,
fighting against the establishment and the three-letter agencies
and what he's done with Twitter and free speech.
is in line with Trump's narrative as well.
So I just don't see much conflict there.
If Elon...
If anything, Elon just did a scalability test at the expense of Ron DeSantis
to pave the way for when Trump comes on.
And listen, Elon can go on stage and throw a ball through a Tesla window and fail on stage.
But to kind of do it at the expense of a candidate,
was quite a risky move.
And that meme right there just goes to show
there's a difference between paid influencers
that are showing the narrative.
For example, what polling shows CBDC is a top priority?
I'm not sure.
I'm not 100% sure.
No one cares about it.
I think that's why I told Simon in the background.
No one really...
People should care about it, but really no one talks about it.
Well, Mario, one thing that meme shows is that Trump is not going to be bashful about making clear that his opponent in the race at present in the Republican primary is Ron DeSantis, whereas DeSantis is bending over backwards to make it seem as though he's not running against Trump.
I mean, it's an inherently untenable situation.
I mean, Alex, would you agree that that seems to be the dynamic at this point?
Sorry, I missed what question was.
No, I think it was...
Trump is making clear that he's running against Stasas, right?
Michael, that was Charles, though, speaking.
Charles, not...
Yeah, Charles, you know what did DeSantis say in that video he posted immediately after
the Great America comeback?
Is that going to be the slogan?
Is that just to...
a synonymous, is that make America great again to Santa's terms?
I mean, it's embarrassing.
It is the elephant in the room.
How have you not differentiated yourself from this candidate?
Nobody likes Joe Biden.
No Republicans like Joe Biden.
Why are you targeting Joe Biden?
You're running in a primary.
And I think a few people said that, but that's the point.
It was missing from this whole thing.
I can say, as a Trump supporter myself,
someone was asking the question,
what are Trump supporters going to think about Elon?
Yeah.
I am very thankful for Elon Musk for handing us the worst
presidential campaign announcement, all of human history.
I mean, that was just something.
And someone else asked, you know, what's the difference between Trump and DeSantis at this point?
The only difference I see, I mean, is that you have all the people that supported Mitt Romney
when he ran for president coming out and supporting DeSantis right now.
Ben Shapiro is tweeting out his support for DeSantis.
And the only policy difference I see is DeSantis just loves Israel and Ukraine more than Donald Trump.
I think it would be good.
The question that I actually meant to put the question to Alex, I know Carl was the one speaking,
but I wanted to see if Alex agreed with my interpretation of the dynamic at present,
which is that DeSantis seems to feel that it's a political prerogative to pretend as though he's not running against Donald Trump,
whereas Donald Trump is going balls to the wall to take on DeSantis'
directly. So it's just a stark discontinuity in the level of just transparency and campaign approach at
this point. I think, you know, yeah, I think it will, you know, it has worked so far because he
hadn't declared yet. But I think it's going to become an elephant in the room and it's not
going to last very long because there's only so long you can go without, you know, getting back.
And then also when the debates start,
well like he's gonna have to you know address
criticisms that are coming from Trump but
that seems to be like the vibe from you know
before he actually announced
And he's had weeks to ramp up to this moment.
Yeah.
Right?
They've been,
you certainly,
he's been practicing in the background.
You know,
we've seen the debate prep video from 2018
that Trump's tagging in to some of his,
his PR stuff right now.
He's not comfortable on his feet.
He's too scripted.
Everyone that I've been talking to from the right said he's very boring.
They're mad that he didn't talk about the border in a more extensive fashion,
that he wasn't asked about the war in Ukraine, that the conflict with China and Taiwan.
I mean, there really was nothing of substance.
The only questions he were asked, as everyone's pointed out,
softball questions that go right to his strengths,
that he's demonstrated as basically a maga governor in Florida.
disappointing.
And Benjamin,
who's a frequent guest up here in the room,
has said he's now voting for Trump after that.
Well,
and I want to speak to it.
Benjamin,
Benjamin said that?
Benjamin's always been a Trump supporter.
He knows it.
Yeah, okay, so trash and then Tiffany got trash.
Yeah, and so I want to speak to what Michael was saying.
I mean, I think you're spot on with that analysis, Michael.
And that's the problem, right?
Because Trump's base got Ron DeSantis elected and he knows it, right?
And so he cannot come after Trump so hard.
I mean, it's already dividing, but he'll never be able to recover from that.
And he can't address it because it's the elephant in the room he can't address.
And it's entirely too early.
So like he's in a really, really difficult position here.
because a lot of the bases
what got him elected
in the first place
so that's why he can't talk about it
and that's why Trump
has free reign to do whatever he wants.
Right.
And it just lends itself
to constant dissembling
and obfuscation
which is like also in a way
not a great look
at least if you're interested
in transparency
and you know,
truthful statements
coming from politicians
and stuff like that.
I mean, Robert, I think Michael's asking a fair question that at what point will
run DeSantis start specifically targeting Trump?
Because he made inferences.
He made inferences to the wall.
He made a few inferences about COVID.
He's obviously trying to make the argument that he dealt with it much better than Trump.
Do you think he'll actually be more direct as time gets closer to the primaries?
Yeah, good point, Alex.
And it's the same thing with RFK Jr.
He has the same problem over.
He can't fully...
land a real blow on Biden. So same thing that's going to happen was DeSantis here. And just a couple
comments. You know, the consultant crowd is, consultant crowd tonight is a sip in their chardonnays.
And, you know, the play by player is very interesting. But I just want to go back to one of the
comments that said DeSantis is Trump-like. There's nothing, there's nothing Trump-like about DeSantis.
You know, Donald Trump has had 40 years of, you know, negotiating deals.
You know, DeSantis was scoop and ice cream.
You know, Donald Trump had written The Art of the Deal when Ron DeSantis was still wearing his flame-rechartered car animals, frankly.
You know, who do you want to have representing the United States?
And this is obviously a campaign, but...
When you get past that, the polls will reflect it.
You want the best person to represent the United States of America.
So who do you want?
You want somebody that's trusted and tested, that frankly, you know, people had questions about that in 2016.
But now all those questions are totally resolved.
You want to adaptable dealmaker to best representing the United States.
It's going to be Donald Trump.
against the injustice system, against pharma, against the deep state,
Ron DeSantis will be easily co-opted, and he's just not even in the same league.
I'm just looking through the letters to Trump book.
You know, leaders of industry, Hollywood, world leaders, sports leaders, Arnold Palmer,
the Queen of England.
The Queen loved Donald Trump.
Prime Minister Abbey of Japan loved him.
Even Amlo and Mexico loved him.
This guy can go, you know, Donald Trump can do those deals.
Right.
Ron DeSantis would have to consult with his advisors for a week before he figured it out.
Tiffany, let me go to Tiffany and Will.
Tiffany, Will, I'm just sensing we've had a lot of speakers come on stage for the last few hours.
And it started off with a lot of pro-desantis people fired up.
And then after the space, people that are in support of Protestantists...
struggled to really back the way Descentus performed in that space and relative to expectations.
You know, the main argument being made is that Descentus broke Twitter,
which is a pretty weak argument.
Beyond that, it's not much there.
There wasn't the energy that everyone was looking for.
There wasn't the debate, and I know we can't expect a debate.
There was not much pushback.
And there went too many jabs at Trump,
and I think people were expecting to start seeing those.
Are we just judging too early and we'd love to get your thoughts?
Will, you can go first and then Tiffany.
Well, good to have you back.
That was good to be here.
So first...
Full disclosure, I am joining the DeSantis campaign in about two weeks.
So while I'm still speaking in my personal capacity, y'all should know that because, you know,
hey, that might call her how you view what I say.
So that's that's news that I'm letting out today.
Anyway, I was fine with it for, for, I think there are two big things I was fine with.
I mean, first off, I never think it's a bad thing when you're getting a lot of attention.
I think that the way that the 2016 campaign worked is
Trump just sort of dominated the airwaves and got everybody talking about him even when it was a ton of negative press because the idea was that he just he was just ever present.
And so when I see DeSantis doing things that are innovative and unique and get everybody talking about him and what he's doing, I think that's just generally a good thing to be a generally good thing.
And then I think second, I was just, I mean, I've long been impressed with his ability to speak extemporaneously on policy.
I think.
He demonstrated that really well.
I mean, yeah, did we have like a lot of adversarial debate?
No, there wasn't.
But then again, I mean, it was the first time anybody had spoken in a campaign.
It was clearly unscripted, which I think you'll never see as unscripted a campaign introduction as that.
And, I mean, you know, it's, I think it's a little bit rich for pro-Trump people.
Sorry.
Yeah.
a little bit rich for pro-Trump people to be saying that like what happened was insufficiently
adversarial when the guys talking about refusing to debate.
So it hasn't agreed to go forward to the debate.
So I think that I'm all for adversarial and this is a general rule.
I think it's really good when we get to actually see these issues clash and different
candidates have to like go out each other and respond to each other substantively.
And I hope that we see that going forward.
But Will,
I'm personally glad that,
you know,
Will identified himself as someone who's going to be a part of the DeSantis campaign.
Because,
I mean,
the only people that are advising DeSantis into this suicide mission
of a presidential campaign
are people who have their own wallets in mind
rather than,
You know, the future of our country in mind.
And to call that non-scripted is a joke, that that was the most scripted presidential announcement, the first opening monologue.
Sound like he was right, like reading off of a computer screen the whole time.
And I'm not really surprised.
I mean, this guy doesn't know what he's doing.
And he's going to lead this campaign into a massive self-destruction.
It's as simple as that.
Hey, Will, can I ask you a question that doesn't impugn your motive or try to mind me?
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
I know you as having been a fairly stalwart supporter of Trump.
Correct me if I'm wrong for several years at least.
Yeah, for at least during the campaign of presidency.
Right. So if the whole idea of what was revolutionary about Trump,
at least according to supporters of your ilk, as I recall,
was that he was bringing forth this revitalization of,
Republican kind of conventional orthodoxy.
He was challenging ory old sort of assumptions about what the Republican Party ought to stand for.
He was forging a different kind of coalition for the Republican electorate that prioritized, you know, what we're called downscale whites in these deindustrialized areas like in the Midwest and so forth.
How is DeSantis, you've got to explain to me any kind of...
continuation of what was being heralded about Trump in that regard.
I mean, if anything, DeSantis, the only throughline that you can discern in his political views
as they've evolved since he first started running for Congress in 2010-11 is that he's just an
inherited Republican orthodoxy doesn't challenge a single thing, really, about what is in the
mainstream of the party, whether it was McCain in 2008 or Romney 2012, or even in
post-2016 with Trump, DeSantis...
fiendishly accommodated himself to Trump's general philosophy so as to not give an indication
of any real gulf between him and Trump. I just don't see the same sort of challenging
of orthodoxy that was supposedly made in the renderings of
people like you, not to be dismissive or anything,
but the whole appeal of Trump, I thought,
was that he was challenging Republican orthodoxy and convention.
Where is that coming from with the sentence?
I just don't see how it's a continuation of what was being celebrated about Trump in that regard.
So sure.
I mean, the way I see that is...
I mean, the biggest through line, I think, is on the willingness to use government power against corporations that are throttling conservative voters.
And that's not just the example of Disney.
That's big tech and other things.
And I mean, I remember this as a person who was one of the big early pushers for free speech in the digital public square.
Like before this, I've worked for the Internet Accountability Project.
and also launched, I think, one of the early White House petitions to get regulations of big tech to ensure that they're forced to allow free speech.
Well, Desanis has been at the forefront of that.
And he's been fighting against a whole bunch of like establishment conservative types, people like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, who are saying like, oh, I'm a small government conservative.
who doesn't want to stop, you know, deal with corporate power when it threatens the well-being of my citizens.
Like, DeSantis isn't that guy.
And so I think that to me that's the big, that's one big shift.
And the other is foreign policy.
I think if you saw DeSantis's response to Tucker on Ukraine and of generally been paying attention to what DeSantis has been saying on foreign policy more broadly, he's not at the open.
I see him as a Jacksonian realist.
And he flip-flops.
On Ukraine. He flip-flops every other week. He's saying, oh, you know, I think we need to have peace. And now he's saying, you know, we need to get tough on Putin. He's flip-flopping every other week on Ukraine. And Donald Trump-
Of your imagination, Jackson, which seems to be great common.
So what do you call- It's not?
It's not.
Correct.
Doc is correct.
What do you call it when he literally comes out one week and says the correct thing?
And then next week he comes out and says the exact opposite.
His position on Ukraine was the exact same in the Tucker letter as it was today on Tray Gowdy,
which is he wants to see a settlement.
He doesn't want troops on the ground.
right and that orientation is very different from the remainder of the party which says that they want to ensure russia wins in any expense the settlement orientation is the exact same one president trump has trump i don't know if you see a policy difference in trump saying i will settle this on day one and disdain the saying i want to settle this but those two be functionally and meaningfully are the exact same position
Those are...
Trump tried to take us out of NATO.
Trump famously went up against the expansion of NATO,
into the east...
Right? DeSantis voted for it twice to finance the progression of the the Eastern movement of NATO toward Russia, even though Russia had said over and over again, stay away from our border.
Didn't Trump brag about the dissenters participated in the inducement of that war?
Oh, wait, yes, he did. He bragged about it routinely and said that he was super tough. And as a result of how tough he was on Russia, they never would have invaded Ukraine.
That was his entire thesis.
You don't get to go around and pretend that your guy is just this massive pacifist.
And you want to depend that DeSantis has to support the war.
So common of the critique of DeSantis and Trump supporters, which is they critique DeSantis for things that are exactly the same as Trump's positions.
It is routine and annoying.
But, well, can I ask you actually a question that's separate from, I think because I kind of want to get a little bit back at one point.
Yeah.
That I think that is that's interesting, right?
So I think what what Trump is, you know,
famous about with with Republican voters, right?
And I think what he won Republican voters,
specifically the base, right, was,
He improvises.
I mean, let's be real.
Trump doesn't do debate prep.
You know, he goes down and he says the first thing in his mind and people loved it.
Right?
Like, his base loved that, right?
You can agree or disagree.
But I think we can all agree that.
And I think when people say about DeSantis, right, it wasn't that it was, I think, I can,
I think we're being a little bit semantic in the notion of scripted.
What, I think the criticism is, is that on contrary to Trump, the Santas, obviously,
in this sense, it's not a criticism, just contrary to.
he was prepared, right?
He had his talking point.
He had his pivots, and that gave the impression he rated from his script.
Now, if you're a Democrat, like Biden, that's why people voted for Biden, right?
They're like, this is what we want.
We don't like somebody who's the president of the United States who just speaks freely,
really, really, nilly.
That is their, that's their political preference.
But with Trump, people are like, go, speak freely.
I think the criticism is that DeSantis doesn't represent that and that this Twitter space
gave the vibe of that standard politician talking points, which I believe Trump kind of shattered.
Do you have any comment or response to that?
Do you believe that's a valid criticism against DeSantis?
Or what are your opinion on that?
I mean, to the extent it's a valid criticism.
It's a valid criticism of maybe the first 10 minutes of the space where he was reading off a speech.
But then again, I mean, Trump basically read a speech back in Moro Lago.
Most politicians read speeches in that.
To kick off their campaign, I'd say as another point, I think that, you know, what DeSantis demonstrated, you know, even though it was kind of very much in the weeds on things like the rule of lenity and Chevron deference, but he demonstrated a remarkable command of a slew of issues that he's able to speak about extemporaneously.
and precisely at the same time,
it's a real talent.
And I mean,
the funny thing is,
like,
right?
I like President Trump.
I voted for him three times.
The only reason I didn't vote for him for him
for him is because I wasn't able to vote for him.
I was like,
I moved right in the middle of primary season in 2016,
so I'd ever voted him.
the primary at all.
But I think that I just,
DeSantis is an upgrade in my view.
He's just much savvier politically
in terms of policy and it's just,
you know,
his,
the way he's able to effectively run
the administration in Florida
gets so much done.
Like, I mean, for a long time,
I thought he's just the better option.
We'll definitely welcome Ron DeSantis to the race and welcome you to the great campaign ahead for the next eight months. But in about eight or nine months, it's going to be decided. Then people will figure out we're actually choosing a president, not a shiny new car for a campaign. And look at the results he's had as a governor. It was really actually...
pretty soft when you have when you have the legislatures totally on your side it's nirvana
and why didn't he go after when he gets gender gender indoctrination but only up to the third
grade come on he's doing what about every grade you know he's got even in a nirvana situation he's
got weak softball i don't interrupt you but he got that that's what happened was he got to third grade
to third grade no the third grade was before 2020 when he decided he turned a
half a point victory in 2018
into a 20 point landslide in 2022
and a super majority
and with that super majority got it through K through 12
right? That's one of the number of pieces of legislation
that was just passed
and signed by the governor in the past few weeks.
So this isn't like when you're saying he didn't do that much.
He utilized the power he had extraordinarily effectively,
even when he was dealing with a very, you know, slim margin in the legislature.
He still wielded his power very, very effectively.
And because he did that, he was rewarded with a massive landslide victory
and then was able to execute on a whole bunch of other legislation
because he went.
That's the kind of thing.
I think if you're a Republican, you want that.
coming up in 2024.
You want a guy who's not just going to eke out a victory
and hope that will flip 10,000 votes in Wisconsin or something,
but somebody who has a realistic chance of coming out and winning by 10
and putting making real meaningful.
But he's losing to Trump in Florida right now.
We welcome the ideas, but guess what?
When your choice of consequence is, who do you want to be adaptable dealmaker on the world stage?
They're going to easily go to Donald Trump.
I don't think we need a dealmaker.
I think we need somebody who's able to win.
Do you think Ron DeSantis could stand up to even one of these hoaxes or one lawsuit?
He doesn't even have net worth to withstand a one lawsuit.
Oh, yeah, I think he could do it.
The also thing you wouldn't put his foot in his mouth.
Let's go all the way back to Russiagate.
And this is something I was extraordinarily frustrated by,
because I wrote a lot about the Mueller Report.
And I spent a lot of time defending President Trump
from all that nonsense.
But President Trump didn't help himself.
I'll give you one very, very specific example.
That just like encapsulates why he struggled so much
during his term to fight off the deep state.
It goes to remember when,
he fired James Comey.
And Rod Rosenstein put out a memo that said,
we fired James Comey because he behaved inappropriately
during the Hillary Clinton episode.
He wrote a whole memo about that.
And that was what Donald Trump signed off on.
And then he went on with Lester Holt on NBC.
And what did he say?
He said, oh, I fired Comey because I wanted to get over the rush of stuff.
He contradicted his own deputy, deputy attorney general, made him look like a fool.
And as a result, the deputy attorney general upset, not knowing what to do,
authorized the Mueller investigation in the special counsel.
That was a self-inflicted wound.
Okay.
Ron DeSantis is far more professional, far more precise in his communication, and has it had nothing like that happened in Florida, doesn't have leaks.
I would expect that he's going to be way, way, way, way, way.
Not precise at all.
The Attorney General was not playing ball.
And that's just the deep state problem.
That Ron DeSantis is going to get co-opted by the deep state.
He's already starting to get co-opted by the.
He already came out and he said that he came out the first thing he said.
Trump is the guy who got snowed by them repeatedly over and over and over again.
When you constantly complain about the people you hire as not being up to it, guess what,
the only thing that all those people you hired who quote unquote backstabbed you who are so incompetent,
but the only thing they have in common is you, the person who hired him.
I want to see Trump actually take ownership of his flaws and, you know, his mistakes.
Right.
hiring, but instead it's just every, you know, it's always everybody he hires as an income
or an idiot.
Well, he did.
He's the person who hired it.
He did.
Not even, seriously.
He did take ownership of, you know, the bad people he hired.
It's called firing.
That's something he did actually a lot in his administration and got rid of the deep state
people that he regrettably appointed at the start.
But just going back to what you said...
you said that desantis is precise i mean he came out one week and said that
ukraine was a territorial dispute
then the next week he goes on to pierce morgan and says
oh no my words were mischaracterized it wasn't it it's not a territorial dispute
and if you look back at his you know time in congress in twenty fifteen
he co-sponsored a bill that claimed russia illegally occupied crimea
argued that yonnikovitch was democratically deposed rather than ousted in a coup
And his own, you know, I don't know what her position is, but Christine Pushshaw, I don't know.
Wait, wait, is your position that Russia legally occupied for you?
Well, I didn't, I didn't interrupt you.
I didn't.
Okay, maybe I did, but whatever.
So Christine Pushoff, she literally...
She literally was there on Zelensky's election night.
That's that's DeSantis's chief of staff or whatever.
And she actually was illegally working for the Zelensky of Georgia, Mikhail Jacques Feeley.
And had to illegally work for it.
Yeah, she, look it up, Washington Post.
She's working for Shackasvili.
I can't really just kind of pulling stuff out of your butt, dude.
Illegally?
No, that's in the Washington Post.
June 8th, 2022.
DeSantis spokeswoman belatedly registers as agent of foreign power.
So Jackson, can I ask you a question, though?
So, Jackson, I do want to ask you a question, though, because I think this is something that,
and this is the funny part that I believe Michael was kind of getting at, where like DeSantis is not trying to run,
saying he's running against Trump, but he throws jabs at Trump.
And one of the things, and I said this in the previous Trump dissent to space we had,
and DeSant said it again with the Elon Musk space, right, in the Twitter space.
He said clearly, and this was a shot against Trump, is that he wins.
Right?
He wins.
Florida, Florida became, let's be real.
Florida was a purple state for all intents of purposes.
I think we all agree it's a red state.
So he says, DeSantis said, I won Florida.
I made a conservative as a governor.
And that was a jab against Trump because he also implied that under Trump, Republicans lost in 2018, 2020, 2020.
So what would Jackson be your response to DeSantis kind of?
And I think this talking point that DeSantis wins, but Trump since 2016 has basically lost consecutive elections.
What's your response to that DeSantis talking point?
Well, saying Trump has just lost elections as bogus, but the dialectic in a presidential race that is representing all of America is not who can be the most conservative.
The dialectic is...
Who can fight for America? Who can stand up to the deep state? And Trump understands that. DeSantis right now isn't even talking about it. I mean, I didn't really even hear him talk about Ukraine on his Twitter.
But DeSantis counters that the only way you can do that is by winning, right? You have to win elections to do that. And he's won in Florida, but Trump hasn't. That's his, that's what he was saying in this state. So let's have response to that.
So my response to that is you have to represent all of America.
You have to be willing and able to say that you're actually going to fight for America
rather than stay silent on the issues that matter most.
While DeSantis is going out and doing trips to Israel and speeches for AIPAC,
and he's hiring people who illegally worked for Shakasvili in Georgia
and who are at the presidential, you know, candidacy election party for Zelensky.
You have Donald Trump who's critiquing all these people, critiquing George Soros, critiquing Klaus Schwab, critiquing Zelensky and saying that we need to have peace.
So that's my answer.
He's actually willing to fight and stand up to the deep state and fight for peace.
So, Will, I want your point, and then I guess we'll go to some of the hands.
But do you agree with DeSantis that point that you think that DeSantis can win
and that the main issue with Trump is that he hasn't won elections?
Or what is your opinion on that?
Does Santos, okay, my simple answer to this is,
is that that Twitter space today was like,
it was like a conference call that you're begging to get off of.
You can't wait to get off of.
That was the Twitter space today.
He has no charisma.
He doesn't understand the issues that matter most to Americans.
And Donald Trump does.
And your question of, do you think Donald Trump can win or not?
I mean, look at the scoreboard.
Look at the polls.
It's quite clear that Donald Trump is going to win.
Even if they put him in prison, he's still going to win.
I looked at the scoreboard.
Joe Biden is president because Donald Trump didn't get it done in 2020.
That's why we're here.
Because they stole the election.
Oh, they stole the whole election.
Dude, I was the guy on the ground in Philadelphia filming the poll watcher getting kicked out of the polling.
They still stole the election.
I was there.
I understand exactly what you guys are talking about.
Shenanigans.
that might have happened probably don't explain
why he lost four states.
He is way behind.
And it's not just that in 2022,
in the same states that he needs to win
if he's gonna come back in 2024,
places like Georgia, places like Arizona,
we lost again with his handpicked candidates.
I'm tired of losing and I'm tired of excuses for losing.
We need to put somebody up there whose pitch is not, I'm going to eke out 10,000 more votes with a better doubt part of the operation.
Well, my answer to that, my answer to that is also quite simple.
It's not 2020.
It's 2024.
We're on the edge of World War III at this very moment.
And Donald Trump is the only one who's really rising to the occasion.
You know, DeSantis won't even talk about this in his presidential announcement speech.
It's pathetic and it's honestly shameful to our country.
Well, and so real quick if I came.
Nothing about the border either.
Well, and real quick, if I can.
So I didn't hear him today, and he's going to have to address this moving forward.
I'll just put this out there.
I'm a Trump voter.
I'm reasonable, though.
I'm still listening for a candidate.
I am a Trump voter.
With that being said, there's two things that really aggravated.
I mean, I know it aggravated you, Will, because I've heard you speak on Timcast and other places about this,
where they would not let the Dominion stuff die.
They would not stop talking about how it wasn't.
how it was illegally stolen versus legally,
and I can break down and make the case
that it was legally stolen through various different changes.
But as a Trump voter myself,
a deep state administrative state
and a constitutionalist like myself,
I have a serious problem with that.
And the only thing he really brought up tonight
was the Chevron deference reference,
which most people don't even know what that is.
But I think that was only addressing of it.
And my biggest concern, as a Trump voter,
that can be swayed, I can be,
it's when he gets inside the beltway what's you going to do with it and that's my biggest
concern is that and foreign policy i don't know about really what he's got i know what trump's
foreign policy looks like and it looks pretty good but i don't know what he's going to do once
he gets inside that beltway and if if he's not really going to address this and if it's going
to be more business as usual that's one of our main concerns at least mine as a trump voter so i just
wanted to put that out there because i don't hear a lot about it he says it but
There's nothing much behind it.
So I think, I mean, one of the things he talked about today was the need to reconstitutionalize the administrative state.
So that's what he's talking about when he says that.
He means reasserting White House control over the administrative agencies, namely the deep state.
And there's another speech.
I don't think you talk about this specific point today, but he's talked about it in the last month or so.
which is the idea that we need to completely abolish the notion that the DOJ should be independent.
It's a meme and it's BS.
It doesn't actually fit in our constitutional system because DOJ has used this mirage of like,
oh, we're an independent agency.
You can't intervene to do stuff like the Mueller investigation and Russiagate and all this nonsense.
So DeSantis understands like,
The goal here is to reimpose White House control over DOJ,
fire anybody who doesn't agree,
and make sure that DOJ obeys the White House
and it doesn't go rogue and doesn't start messing around
with an elected government.
Now, and the reason that he'll be able to be more effective
in this regard,
than Donald Trump is because Rhonda Sanis is a lawyer.
And boy, do we need a lawyer to be in charge?
Because in a different period of American history,
maybe in the 1950s, a deal maker is what you needed
because deals were still there to be made with the Democrats.
But this isn't that time.
We're not here to make deals with Democrats.
We're here to use the power that we are hopefully able to win.
It's move the ball forward with that power,
assuming that they won't help us one lick.
And the way that we do that is with somebody who walks, like,
it's like, do you want a novice pile in the 747 or an expert?
And sorry, guess what, guys, Donald Trump, he was a novice.
That's why he got snowed for four years.
That's why so little got done on the issues we care about.
And that's why Ron Dissan has got so many.
Find me, find me one American.
Find me one American who's ever said,
that we need a lawyer as president of the United States.
And I'll give you that point.
But the fact of the matter is Donald Trump was successful.
I mean, look at Afghanistan.
Joe Biden fumbled the bag hard, but like he got us out of Afghanistan.
He wanted to pull the troops out of Syria.
Wait, Jackson, just a quick question.
What is your position on what president?
Should President Trump have withdrawn us from Afghanistan or not?
Withdraw from Afghanistan, no war with China, no war with Russia, none of that, get their troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, all of the above.
And that's what he was working on doing.
DeSantis wants war with China.
DeSantis wants war with Russia.
What are you talking about?
He wants to give all our taxes to Israel.
He wants to take little trips to Israel and give all of our taxes to Israel.
Do you not like Jews, Jackson?
Like, what's your problem, dude?
Yeah.
Oh, come on.
Like, what the hell, Will?
No, no, we're not going to go down that road.
But, you know, what I will ask you is sort of on that topic a little bit.
Jackson, maybe you can speak on this.
Maybe Will can jump in as well.
And actually, maybe even all sorts.
So when it comes to Russia, I know the Russia-Ukraine situation, Trump has said publicly that he would end the conflict within 24 hours.
Is that something that would even be possible, Jackson, in your opinion?
I know you cover this pretty closely.
I don't think so. I mean, at this point, it's too little too late, and Russia is going to achieve
their goals, and they're moving slowly and steadily, and they have a lot more land to take. They
want to landlock Ukraine. So I think if Trump says you get all of Nikolai of Odessa, Harkov,
Hirsan, which is a lot of territory, and you get it without fighting, then he can end the war. But otherwise,
I don't think so. But it's...
If there's anyone who has the mindset and the understanding of why that should happen,
it would be Donald Trump.
DeSantis is going to say, give all of the Dombas, give Donyetz, Lagans, Zaporosia,
Harkov, Hirsan, give Crimea back to Ukraine and get all your troops out of the country.
I mean, this guy was the guy who literally said that Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia.
This guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Ron DeSantis is living in 2008.
And, uh...
You know, that's why he's going to fail because he's backed by the deep state.
I mean, I just think that this idea, again, I'll just push back.
The reason why there's a war is because both sides want to fight.
Like, let's like, there's literally nothing, like this idea that the U.S. has some sort of secret power to stop.
Both Ukraine and Russia want to fight.
They're going to fight until they're both.
Everybody says, oh, neither Russians and Ukrainians are dying.
They both want to fight.
Like, let's just get this idea that peace is achievable
because one person can come into the room,
get the people together, sit down.
That's not going to happen.
The Ukrainians are not going to give up Odessa,
which is never threatened in the invasion in the first place.
So let's just cut this idea.
This has gotten to become a very complicated conversation
about foreign relations,
which I think is a really valid point for Governor DeSantis,
who obviously doesn't have the foreign...
international relation experience as President Trump.
And now he's entered the race.
And so yes, I think there are questions to be asked of him
about foreign relations, what happens in Ukraine.
But what I heard Ron DeSantis say today when he was speaking
was that if he goes through the primary,
if he can win the primary, he guaranteed he would win 2025.
And I really think if anything happens out of this space, you know, I run an organization.
We've got moms who love DeSantis, who like Trump, who like Tim Scott, not so much for Nikki Haley.
Some really like the fake.
But there are a lot of RFK, a lot of moms, very concerned about vaccines.
And so I think it's just time to have an honest conversation about what Americans really care about.
And you've heard Byron Donald's talk about it.
Tim Scott talked about it a lot.
I think Ron DeSantis talked about it today.
I think Donald Trump has talked about it as well.
Americans are concerned about the border, about inflation, about crime, about what's happening in education.
Right.
These are the things that Americans are concerned about.
And you can have high-level conversations about what Twitter spaces should be.
I think Ron DeSantis' Twitter space today for an announcement was not smart.
I think he should have done it like the next day and he could have had a real debate and ask questions.
But, you know, he made a choice and I think it was interesting and it definitely generated a lot of news, which was good.
So that's my piece.
I've waited a long time to speak, but...
You know, you've got to think about the average voter.
We've got to get somebody into the presidential race that's going to, you know, represent a lot of people's ways.
Do you think today's space was a success?
Also, so I'll let you continue leading.
But do you think today's space was a success in your opinion?
I think it generated a lot of news.
And P.T. Barnum said as long as you're spelling my name, right?
So, you know, a lot of people are talking about it.
It was interesting.
Donald Trump is coming back to Twitter.
I think that's like the biggest news ever.
I can't wait, Mario.
Are you going to host that space?
Is Sebastian Gork is going to host that space?
I can't wait to hear Donald Trump on Twitter
because I think the American people want to hear
honest conversation with the people that want to lead our country.
And I think Vivek is modeling that well.
I think he moves the window on conversations
about what Americans care about a lot,
which is making the conversation more serious.
And I think that's what American parents want.
So, Tiffany, actually, can I ask you a question?
And I wanted to go earlier to you, and I appreciate you jumping in,
Based because of what, you know, Moms for Liberty and that organization, obviously that is an important organization.
I think DeSantis really heavily relied upon a lot of the issues and the concerns that your organization that you're a part of it represents, kind of like is concerned about, right?
And so my question for you is based, and you brought up a great point that within the group that you're with, there's a lot of differences of some are more pro-Trump, more DeSantis.
Do you believe that the DeSantis model and what they, what he pursued in Florida was,
Is the most effective way to achieve your goals?
Or do you believe a, you know, a Trump presidency would be more effective in that, in those social issues?
I think Donald Trump has a lot of ground to gain when it comes to American moms and dads.
I think he was hit with a very hard situation halfway through a presidential term,
and he tried to do his best.
But I think American parents were not always happy with the decisions that he made the CDC.
He had far too much control.
Unlelected bureaucrats had far too much control.
I served in Schobert at the time, and I saw it very directly, even in my own county.
It was very similar at every level.
And, you know,
You know, I think Ron DeSantis, I mean, I'll be honest with you, I live in Florida.
I watched him.
He just, he listened to the people.
Our moms were out on the street.
They had handmade signs.
Please protect parental rights.
And,
And man, Ron DeSantis delivered.
We got a parents bill of rights on in 2021, and we built upon it for education reform.
And, you know, I don't know what to say, except we've got to start moving this country forward in a lot of different ways.
And we need somebody that can do that.
And I think President Trump could do it with the right people with him.
I think Ron DeSantis can do it with the right people with him.
But Ron DeSantis has demonstrated in a state that he can do it in other states are following.
And so I just feel like good leaders.
Right.
always recognize other good leaders.
And I think Americans are ready for people who are leaders who say,
oh, wow, that guy is doing a really good job.
Like that's really good.
Tira, and basically because like Tira,
I want to ask you this question because I think it's kind of tied into that.
This whole legal concern, you know, the DeSantis Disney,
the DeSantis Disney.
And I think if you're Trump,
and I think a lot of the speakers here that would favor more Trump,
what they would always argue is Trump fights the deep state
DeSantis can't even beat Mickey Mouse or Disney, right?
And so, and you heard, we'll say, we need a lawyer in, in the office, but,
what is your impression if if desantis is having a hard time beating disney and he's a lawyer
don't you think that you know he's he's picking a fight that appears that he can't even win what
is your opinion as an attorney and i know you had your hand up so you probably have a million
i don't talk about honestly i don't think it's that he can't i think it's how he went about
things truthfully that has bothered most people you know he
more or less said, I'm doing this as retribution. That's never a good look, I think, from a
political or from a standpoint of doing legislation. He was dumb. He actually said it over and over.
The Republican state Senate and House said it over and over. So he'll probably lose this fight
because he didn't approach it properly.
politically, is what I'm saying, because if you look at the Disney papers, they have a really strong case about its retribution against their First Amendment speech rights.
And also, I do tend to think, and you know, I'm not a Republican, but I think that the fundamental position against Disney is really sort of anti-capitalist.
you know, why are you doing this? It really wasn't, just because they criticized a law,
isn't enough of a reason to basically sort of threaten a company that is an economic driver for your state.
Right? Now, I'm not saying Disney would have built whatever it was that they just said they weren't going to even weren't going to build. But what I am saying is it has tons of jobs, tons of tourism. It attracts everything. And what-
Tira, everyone in Florida knows that that was a complete joke. Like everyone in Florida is like, oh, how many things like, oh, Disney stub their toe and now they're going to blame it on Ronda Santas. It's a complete joke.
Well, Tiffany...
what I'm saying, I just said, I didn't think they were actually going to build it,
but I do think that there are many people, maybe not primary voters as much,
but many Republicans who find this somewhat anti-capitalist as a position, right?
Because it really isn't in the best interest economically of the state.
So that's number one. As a legal matter, I just don't...
I don't know. It seems like a lot of people are moving here. I mean, we're like the biggest state people are moving here.
Tiffany, the question is whether it's helpful to him. And my view...
What do you care? What is helpful? I mean, it seems like it's doing very well for the state.
I was asked a question about what I think about it. I'm answering the question. I don't know what you're...
suggesting here. What I'm saying is I don't think it was a smart move from a standpoint of a general
election, certainly. It might help him a little bit in the primaries, but I don't see it as a smart move.
And also, if you're going to do something like this, you better not leave so many footprints.
Don't leave your fingerprints all over it.
Okay, because he...
And what I would say to you would be, I know, but, Tira, listen, we have 285 chapters in 44 states.
What I'm telling you is during COVID, I heard from moms every day who are like,
oh my gosh, I wish Rhonda Sanchez was my president was our governor from Oregon,
from California, from Michigan, from Illinois, from New York, from New Jersey,
all these lockdown states, San Francisco, kids locked out of schools for 18 months.
You know what they said?
I wish Ron DeSantis was my governor because on July 6th, he said we were going to be open schools and I was a school board member in Florida.
And you know what, Tira, we did.
And that is a great point.
And that was a beacon of life for the country.
So listen, I love President Trump.
He did great work.
I just want to say this, Tira, because you talk a lot on these faces and I don't get up a lot.
So I'm just going to say, you interrupted me.
That's fine, but just be clear.
He did a great job.
But I think Ron DeSantis is a leader in Florida.
has been a beacon of light.
And I think it's good for America to like recognize
that there were some really great things
that came from him and we shouldn't just denigrate
the advances we made during COVID
that he was able to lead with.
That doesn't take anything away from President Trump,
to be honest.
So you just said something that's really interesting.
You said he was a great governor.
And I think he's been a very strong governor.
But will he be, does that mean he's gonna be a great presidential candidate?
I don't have an answer.
And also, let me just say, I was going to say something else.
Nick, I think you really want to ask me to speak.
I didn't hear most of what he said because I was out.
But I have been looking at headlines, et cetera.
And basically what's happened here is the story has become the glitches.
And Rhonda Santos, it was sort of a bust as an announcement.
That's never a good look, especially when you're running against someone as formidable as President Trump.
So it seems to me that this is not going to be helpful to him.
It's also, however, let's acknowledge super difficult to run against Donald Trump.
You never know how to handle him, right?
No one has succeeded.
People have ignored him.
It hasn't worked.
People have tried to make net, you know, other nicknames like he does.
It never works.
It's really hard to run against Donald Trump.
He's very good at running.
He's very good at somehow coming up with just the right thing
to denigrate his opponents and then make it like a joke.
He's really good at this and no one, no one, no 17 of them, you know, in 2016,
not Hillary Clinton.
No one has figured out what to do.
So I think Ronda Santis has a little bit of a problem.
in terms of how to approach this.
And you're right, Tira, and the only people,
the only times I heard any insults in this space,
and I will give a lot of credit to Mario
and the other moderators,
because you do a very nice job.
The only time that I heard insults about anyone
was against Governor DeFantis from people
that were representing Donald Trump.
And I just think that's a bad book.
So, Tira and Tiffany,
I think you both bring up,
I think Tira and Tiffany both bring up good points.
And to Tiffany's point that, you know, we should be focusing on the issues that matter to Americans, these social issues.
I fully agree.
And I think DeSantis has done a great job as governor on these social issues.
But I don't think that we should lose sight of...
The moment we're in with Russia and China on the edge of World War III, with Russia and China, in addition to that, I think it's also worth noting that we've had plenty of conservative presidents that have come across the White House and the Oval Office.
who have been conservative, but have a lasting legacy of some of the most evil people in the face of the planet.
George Bush, people like under him, of course, Dick Cheney, you have all these people who are just completely evil.
We know, and they have horrible legacies.
I think DeSantis, the reason why he's not talking about these foreign policy issues is because if you look at his congressional record, he's in lockstep with George Bush.
He's in lockstep with the neocons of this era who are in Congress today.
Although he's not talking about these issues, it's because he's a governor.
And he simply doesn't have to and shouldn't be because he's got...
you know,
local issues to focus on.
I think that this should be a big focus for him.
And I think it's important not to lose sight
of the era,
the moment that we're in.
I think another...
Yeah, I want to speak to you, Doctor, but but just doctor, just before you talk, I did want to highlight, I think something very important when we're having conversations.
I'll push it to you and do you, Dr. Benjamin, is that when we're talking about migration between states right inflows and outflows, the irony.
And so the last data, this is from the Texas A&M, I pulled it up.
So the states in 2020 that led with the most residents moving in were Florida, Texas, and California.
Yeah.
And then so in that order was the largest inflows and the largest outflows was California, New York, and then Florida and Texas short behind as well.
And I think that just highlights a lot of these, you know, they all, this biggest states generally had the biggest arrivals and departures because probably most people leave because of economic reasons.
But Dr. Benjamin, please go ahead.
Sorry for cutting you off.
Yeah, I was just going to say I was surprised to see because his strength relative to Trump really has been handling of COVID and the vaccines.
I can't say it was perfect because he was, you know, he was out pushing them doing TV appearances, you know, in people's homes with the nurses, putting the needle in their arm, all that sort of thing.
But, you know, to his credit...
He appointed a great surgeon general in Florida who pushed back on a lot of the big pharma nonsense, trying to push this one, kids and young people.
And, uh,
the side effects and sudden deaths and all this sort of thing.
And I think that's a real strength of his.
And that's something that a lot of, I think Trump has just not been able to offer so far a decent explanation on Operation Warp Speed and on Mark Meadows calling the hit of the FDA after the election and telling him to either approve the Pfizer-E-WA or resign.
But he's kind of just seated that ground.
And now RFK has totally taken up that issue.
And so if you have a problem with Trump's handling of COVID,
RFK is your guy.
And he can speak very intelligently about these things without...
getting into personal politics, all of that.
I mean, he goes out of his way to be gentlemanly to all of his opponents
and, you know, just say, look, I have a different approach,
a different view, but very intelligent guy.
And so it's hard to see, like, where Desantis is really going to capitalize
off of his management of COVID.
And, you know, going beyond that,
We didn't hear anything about health care.
We have the sickest population in the industrialized world, one of the most over-medicated
populations in the entire world.
Six and ten Americans have some form of chronic disease.
Four in ten have two or more.
We have the highest childhood obesity rate.
It's getting to the point where we won't be able to recruit our next generation of soldiers
because they can't pass physical fitness exams.
We have the military.
We have the military.
He talks about the woke military stuff, but we have a crisis here where we can't find people who can pass the basic physical test to get in.
And so we're revising the standards downward.
And, you know, we have a poison food supply.
We have, you know, Biden's EPA has...
stopped filing cases against polluters relative to the Trump administration,
which was pro-business, but Biden administrations filing maybe two-thirds of what they were closing actions on polluters.
And, you know, that's another thing.
He came in as governor.
He's got a good environmental record.
You know, he, one of his big campaigns when he first ran was on, you know, the Everglades and fixing the problem with red tide and all of that.
And, you know, he did.
good work on that front early in his administration,
and then he just kind of seemed like he'd lost interest in it.
And now Florida is dealing with these environmental issues,
red tide causing people in the coastal communities
to have respiratory problems.
And it's like, where's the state out on this?
Right? We haven't seen any big, bold action.
You know, we haven't seen the uplift of the middle class.
I mean, I think the big story here is the economy, right?
Over the past two years, we've gotten to the situation where inflation has gotten so out of control, housing prices has gotten so out of control that young people can't settle down, can't start families, homeownership is out of reach.
And that's led to a mass demoralization of the country that's causing us.
But Benjamin, if I want to ask you a question, Benjamin, and actually, Alex, to you as well, because I know Alex, you track this law for Twitter, but I'll go for you first, Benjamin, I'll push it to Alex. But.
Can we really discount, though, in DeSantis announcements, right?
And if any speaker also wants to jump in, the issue of the glitch, right?
I mean, I think, I mean, let's be real.
I mean, if you're Trump, I mean, Biden even announced, you know, he tweeted out when the, when the space crashed, like, this link works.
works, right? I think Trump is going to run all over DeSantis on the issue that you can't even announce your presidential campaign, rightfully. It's not a dig at Twitter or anything like that, and I'm not trying to make it. But that is a terrible way to start a campaign. And it can kind of frame it. And you can see a lot of the news organization framing it. And it's not a, and it's, you know, hey, you made this decision, right? Your decision was to announce it on Twitter, right?
And it glit, and you had to restart it, and it started late.
And the media is picking up on it.
It's going to frame his campaign as that.
So Benjamin Alex, you know, do you believe that that's going to be, you know, an issue, a wrong, a false start, a wrong start for DeSantis into denouncing his presidential campaign?
Definitely. And even if there hadn't been a glitch, I think just doing audio only was a disaster. You have one chance to make a first impression on national stage. He has a good-looking family, adorable children. There is no reason why you can't just do a simulcast where you're appearing before a large audience. You get the energy from a live crowd being there and also stream simultaneously on Twitter, which is what RFK did in his announcement.
Right.
but instead they chose to do this audio-only format so you get none of the visuals, which is jarring.
I mean, it feels like being on a Zoom call in the early months of COVID, to be honest with you.
I'm like, you know, Ron, that's over.
Like, we can get out and take off our mask and stop socially distancing now, right?
We don't have to do all this stuff online.
But, yeah.
you know, going beyond that, like with the, with the glitch, that that's definitely
become the big story here. And it's going to be,
it's hard for me to see him having a chance to do like a solid reset and capturing the optics.
And that's what you can complain about it, not being policy focused, but politics is 80% about image.
And to your point, what trended a lot on Twitter during the space, ironically, was the hashtag.
disaster, right, to highlight kind of the problems.
And we even kind of acknowledged it here in the Twitter space that this is not looking good
for distances in the way that the space.
But that was the number one hashtag.
Tiffany, I saw your hand up if you wanted to comment on that.
I don't think it was a disaster.
I just think it would have been better as like a second day event.
I think the energy of an announcement would have been great.
Yeah.
He has a lot of people that are really passionate about the work that he's done.
And I think like a hometown announcement like Tim Scott did was really powerful.
And so if I was, you know, working with Randolphinth Sanchez, I would think, I would just say that
authenticity is important right now.
American people want to see that you're a real person, right?
That you care about the issues they care about.
And so that type of the energy around an announcement is important.
I also think that the challenge.
The Twitter spaces, like I've listened to people talk about what they expected.
You know, we have, we go in Twitter spaces all the time and debate each other on this stuff, and that's great.
But that's not what a presidential announcement is.
So I just think it was weird because Elon's not great at but moderating a conversation.
I mean, he's a great person, but, you know, he's...
smart and funny, but I don't know how comfortable he was, right? And David Sacks, I thought he did a
pretty good job, and I felt the questions were definitely moderated beforehand. I think that,
you know, I requested to ask a question, and I wasn't brought on. So, you know, I think it was
orchestrated, but I don't think we could expect anything different from a presidential
announcement. And I think it was brave. He did it on Twitter, I guess, but I think it was like
a second day thing.
Robert, just from the kind of the more than the choice, the irony is, because I wanted to look it up, when we're going to look up Ron DeSantis, right, Governor DeSantis running for president, it's going to say he announced it on a Twitter space, right? That's the headline.
When Trump announced that he was running for president, he announced it in Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
Right?
It's like the framing of it, the governor of Florida basically did not, and this is, we're being a little bit semantic, but these are going to be the headlines is that Ron DeSantis announced it on Twitter, but Trump announced it on Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
And it just feels like, wouldn't, wouldn't you believe that DeSantis as the governor of Florida probably wanted more of that stage atmosphere somewhere in Florida to kind of give them that push?
And it looks like this push is just the Twitter glitch is going to be dominating the news tomorrow.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
Look, Elon won this one.
Well, it's embarrassing to him.
But, you know, just like his rocket launches, he's going to learn from this.
You know, Tucker Carlson was a big winner from this because he's now seeing if he can scale up to, you know, several million on the platform.
Donald Trump's a winner.
He's going to come when he comes back on this on the platform.
Elon Musk will have all that figured out.
No, I think the optics are a really problem for Desantis.
You're right.
Jim, I know you joined, you just joined us and you haven't had to attempt to speak.
What was your opinion of the Twitter space and Ron DeSantis' announcement?
And what do you believe, do you believe that Ron DeSantis is going to be a serious contender for the front run for the, for being the Republican nominee for president?
Or do you think it's right now a slam dunk for Trump?
Yeah.
Well, I think Trump is still in the driver's seat.
I tweeted out earlier.
I was looking at trends on Twitter, and I don't see DeSantis trending.
I do see Trump trending.
Like that was kind of, I wouldn't have even expected that.
I'd have thought maybe, you know, similar.
And I think it was an unfortunate miss for him.
The way I would have, and by the way, momentum is everything in politics.
You've got to constantly be in the momentum of,
position. One of the things that people hate about Donald Trump
you know, or will lampoon him about is he's always looking at Fox News and he's always looking
at, you know, all the news channels and see what they're saying. And, you know, some of that can be
excessive and I agree with that. But the reality is what he's doing is trying to keep his eye
on what's happening so that he can figure out what steps he needs to take next. Republicans in
particular, and some Democrats, but usually Republicans are really just,
just don't seem to care about all that.
So I say that to set this up.
Ron DeSantis, what he needed to do was he needed to have his announcement in Dunedin, Florida.
By the way, RFK Jr. and Tim Scott had great announcements.
They were energetic.
People reacted.
They told their stories.
They didn't talk about policy, maybe a little bit, but not entirely.
That wasn't the focus.
And had Ron gone to Dunedin, Florida and just focused on getting a few thousand people there,
with a cheering crowd and telling about his story and telling the story about Florida,
not the policy,
not focusing solely on Disney,
which he spent a whole lot of time on on this,
but really just talking about what his vision for Florida was and why that's the vision for America
without pulling out all the Florida-centric stuff other than how he dealt with COVID,
then, um,
then you would have seen a good momentum for him.
But as it was, the Twitter space glitch was real unfortunate for him.
But they did get back up and he talked.
No, but they did, Jim, Jim, they did create a story.
They did create a story that, hey, we glitched because we crashed Twitter,
which I think is a nice way to play it.
That was their narrative, not sure what people think.
I did, but just in terms of the numbers, Jim,
sorry to interrupt, but I was just doing a tweet,
you know, just chatting to David Sachs about tweeting the numbers.
Because I don't think people understand
how many people were actually listening to this.
David Sachs, I think his space peaked at about,
so I've pinned the tweet above, has all the numbers.
I want everyone to check it out,
and there's a reason for that.
David Sachs' numbers were about 5%.
three, four hundred k, I think 300 and something thousand,
but a lot of people couldn't join it anymore because it was just overflown.
Elon's one had even much more people.
I had, you know, getting close to a million relatively quickly.
But then that crashed.
David Sachs hit about 300 and something thousand,
but then people couldn't enter it.
And we were live streaming it.
So we hit 257,000 at peak.
point something.
So in total, there was half a million concurrent live listeners.
And now when you add on people that were listening pre-announcement
and people that are on now and they've been listening post-announcement,
I would expect the total excluding replays to be about,
based on my knowledge, two, three million listeners, about two million listeners.
And then if you add the replays, I wouldn't be surprised if that hits three, four, five million listeners.
I don't know if anyone can give me the numbers for mainstream media.
Now, the reason I told everyone to...
Rachel Maddow is probably, you know, a million and a half total.
And 25 to 54, she's probably like four or five hundred thousand.
So this is blue.
She's the lead right now because of Tucker's gone.
It blew her away.
That's actually a really good point.
I should have included that in the tweet.
I should have fucking included that in tweet.
It's a really good point.
But yeah, so these numbers...
destroy mainstream media.
And I think, obviously,
mainstream media will not mention this.
They'll just say, hey, Twitter crash,
it was an embarrassment, blah, blah, blah.
I've seen the headlines.
But the numbers speak for themselves.
And I want everyone to put in the tweet I put above.
I want you to put in the comments,
which president you'd want to see next.
And I'm sure most of you would write Trump.
Some of you probably put RFK.
I'd like to get, you know,
Biden and Trump debating on here as well.
I think it's really tough.
We've had the closest we got to Joe Biden is Hunter Biden.
Imagine a Biden dissenters debate.
It'd be so boring.
Yeah, we're pretty boring.
But yeah, so the numbers are pretty insane.
I would consider this a success,
and I'm not sure why David and Elon are not gloating with the numbers.
I think the glitch just kind of.
Well, on the numbers, I think the right comparison is CNN's town hall with Trump.
Right, because a weeknight with Maddow is not really the same thing as the president.
What were the numbers? Yeah, what were the numbers with that, Doctor?
About three million, I thought, right?
Yeah, north of three million, but between three and four.
Yeah, well, there you go. I'm saying that the, and that's excluding replays, I'm guessing.
This is live listeners on CNN, correct?
Doctor, is that live listeners?
Yes.
Those were the Nielsen ratings.
I don't know how what their methodology is.
Yeah, that would be live listeners.
Live listeners.
Yeah, so I would say, I would say live, is that live concurrent or total live tier?
I'm curious.
Concurrent.
So if that's live concurrent listeners, then yeah, CNN would be that town hall.
But then again, Trump, this is Trump we're talking about.
I think if Elon's space worked would have hit similar numbers, we're heading to a million
relatively quickly.
But getting to half a million listeners on Twitter spaces, which crashes.
I remember when I had Elon on the space and it crashed at 100,000, not only...
Our space, that's the second time we had him.
Our space crashed.
All other spaces crashed for like 30 minutes.
And pre-Elon, it was crashing a lot quicker.
So for the fact that we had half a million concurrent live listeners,
it's pretty impressive.
So, and for a new feature on this platform, relatively new.
The question I have, Ben, from the News and Reading,
but the News and Reading, but the News and Rating only...
you know, is the U.S. correct?
Because the Twitter space is, though, I mean, that's an international global phenomenon.
So people around the world can listen.
I mean, I'm assuming most people were from the United States.
But I think we do have to acknowledge that, that at least on Twitter,
it is a little bit easier for people to listen into major political events inside the United States
when probably most people don't have access to CNN anywhere around the world,
especially CNN in America.
So I think that's the benefit for Twitter, the international reach in that aspect of
So, but the thing is, listen, it's not inconsequential what happened. And by the way, I mean, David Sacks was excellent in it. I thought he did. And I love David Sacks. I think he's a good guy.
But Ron, the scripted announcement and then the policy centricity of the space was not a great look. I've had so many people privately...
message me or text me about this.
And that was not all that good.
You've got to have momentum.
So it's not inconsequential.
It's not like he's done.
But he's got another lift to do.
He should have done the Twitter space after the announcement.
That's really what I'm saying if he wanted to get that.
I think that would have been a good idea, yeah, I think that would have been a good idea considering the glitches and all that.
It's just too risky.
Preston, I appreciate you joining as well.
I want to get your initial thoughts on what we heard earlier today.
Do you think, first, do you think Spaces was the right platform for this, was it the right move, despite the glitch?
And more importantly, what do you think of the announcement in general?
Preston, can you hear you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, this is another letdown from the DeSantis campaign.
I mean, I posted today on Twitter.
How many nails in the coffin do you have to have until you have a dead campaign?
I mean, with Ron, it's been decomposing for a long time.
And now you have this.
I mean, it's been a fiasco all day.
And people who...
you know,
respected Ron and didn't have really a problem with him,
we're even pointing out how funny this was.
I mean,
there was a total fiasco to do it this way from the beginning,
but then to have it crash and burn like this was only,
you know,
insult to injury.
I think, again, you know, Trump gets to really sit back and watch everything happen.
He doesn't really have to even intervene.
I mean, Desantis does it all on his own and, you know, continues to pummel himself.
So all the Trump supporters, all the MAGA folks are just sitting back and joining the show.
I would just like to say, once again, the only insults that ever come on this space
come from people that are like supporting President Trump.
Why are we insulting people all the time?
All the time.
How did it?
Because it's politics.
Because it's politics.
And that's how it works.
And because this guy wants to send this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, because because
this guy wants to send U.S. troops to Ukraine, he wants to send U.S. troops in Taiwan.
We don't want none of that.
I'm an American.
I'm not fighting for DeSantis's wars.
I'm standing with Trump.
I'm not with the deep state Israel, Ukraine's shield.
Preston, where do you live?
Do you live in Florida?
I'm from Georgia.
Who's speaking right now?
Who is about that speaking?
I can't hear anything.
I think who was speaking just,
someone was speaking just after,
who was responding to Tiffany?
I wasn't looking at,
is that you, Robert?
No, that wasn't me.
No, no.
That was Jackson, I think.
That was Jackson, Tiffany.
Oh, Jackson.
Hi, Jackson.
How are you?
I'm very frustrated with this DeSantis fellow.
Why?
Which DeSantis fellow?
Which one do you mean?
The clown that's running for president. I mean, let's yeah, let's be real here. I mean, this guy he
I mean like why should I have any you know my my family came over on the Mayflower they fought in the
American Revolution they fought in the Civil War why should I have an ounce of respect for a guy who wants to take us to war against you know my brothers
He served our country in China and Russia.
Oh, brother. Give me a break.
I mean, I would think you have an ounce of respect for that.
He was an advisor. I'm in the military as well.
No, no, no, no, no. I can, I can respond to me.
Guys, look at, look, guys, two sex.
I want to.
That's actually, it brings up a very good point.
It brings up a very good point.
Because DeSantis did serve our country in the military, and he did so at Guantanamo Bay when he was torturing innocent people or held at Guantanamo Bay.
So, yes, he did serve in the military, and you can actually find testimonies of individuals who were tortured by Ron DeSantis, interviewed by...
It was Abby Martin's husband.
Jackson, can I ask you a question, though?
Jackson, I'd like to ask you a question.
I mean, do you have no response to the fact that he was torturing people at Guantanamo Bay?
I think that that's a very heavy accusation.
I think if you're going to bring accusations like that, you should bring some very real evidence.
And I think...
My evidence...
Yeah, my evidence, my evidence...
Jackson, just wait, I have a question.
May I ask a question of you?
Well, you said I have no evidence.
My evidence are the test...
My evidence are the testimonies of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay
who came out and did interviews saying that...
DeSantis was the one who was torturing them.
So I don't know what more evidence you could possibly need.
Well, I have to be honest with you.
I don't have a lot of information about that.
So I don't think I'm going to be willing to have a conversation.
No, I can laugh if you'd like.
Well, but I was going to ask of Jackson and, okay, fine.
You're right.
I am going to pivot because I don't think I should weigh into something that I don't have a lot of information on.
And I said earlier in this space.
that I think Governor DeSantis has a lot of things to prove in a national conversation.
And I think Donald Trump has served as president and has certainly shown his ability to be able to handle himself when it comes to foreign policy and international relations.
And so I just think that there are issues that the American people care about.
And I think that the idea of having a Twitter space and having a presidential campaign or a candidate accessible to people is really great.
Yeah, but we're not, we're not voting.
We're not, we're not, we're not voting people.
I understand, but this is an elevated conversation.
This is what I believe here is.
Yeah, it's an elevated conversation.
It's an elevated conversation, but you don't want to have a conversation about foreign policy,
which is the most elevated, most important for all.
And because, because, because, because, because, because, because of voters.
No, but Jackson, what I'm bringing forward is a perspective from.
you know, 120,000 members across 45 states.
That's why I'm doing the space to be able to give a voice.
Wait, they care about what's happening in their backyard.
Crime is crazy.
Inflation is crazy.
They're scared about what's happening in these schools in this country.
And what I'm saying to you is this.
There are lots of different ways to reach voters.
I don't know that the DeSantis face tonight was the smartest way to launch a campaign.
But, you know, people are trying different things, and I think it's great that we have...
Elon Musk is able to give us a space to be able to have this conversation.
So I just think, Mario, thank you for having me tonight.
I'm going to sign on.
Well, you can't even hear some a little bit of opposition before you got.
Yeah, let me say my last bit here.
Let me save my last bit here because I think it's, you know, I respect the fact that, you know, you do a lot of great work and you represent a lot of mothers and families across the country.
Thank you.
I'm working really hard, Jacks, and thank you for that.
And, you know, I know you probably have a lot of different, you know, voices that you work with and represent that different thoughts about Trump, DeSantis, whatever.
Yes.
At the end of the day, if these mothers are so concerned with the crime, and there is a lot of crime, there's a lot of, you know, the gender, woke, all this stuff, the crime as well.
Right.
If they're concerned with that, wait until they have President DeSantis sending their sons and their daughters to war against China and Russia.
I mean, oh my God, wait until that happens.
Then they're going to be begging for Donald Trump to come back.
And that's why we have to have these talks about these issues, because frankly, you said Donald Trump did, I think you said he did all right on foreign policy.
He governed well in foreign policy.
He was wonderful.
I think it was wonderful.
I think we had a wonderful time of peace.
And very real America first policy where America is very strong.
I agree.
But the thing is we do have, you know,
Governor DeSantis, who not only was a governor, he was a congressman for several years.
And he was leading the charge against Russia.
He was basically like, you know, the equivalent of Dick Cheney to Iraq against, you know,
he was the equivalent of Dick Cheney to Iraq to China and Russia.
This guy wants war with China.
He wants war with Russia.
And these issues, these woke issues, these crime issues, are going to look minuscule in comparison to World War III, which he's going to take us into at the behest of his don't.
Okay. And so my answer to you, Jackson, is tonight he made a commitment to Elon Musk that he would do in additional space.
And people tonight have said that he didn't take enough questions from opposition.
So I think you should reach out to Elon Musk.
and David Sacks and should tell them that you've got questions and you'd like to be able to come on the next space that Ron DeSantis has.
And I hope every person that is running for president does Twitter spaces and, and,
ask and just has their voice heard, at least on positions and policy.
And I think that more information is good.
Well, Tiffany, I just want to say real quick because I, you know, whatever you do on the ground, that's great.
But you come on this space and you try to make yourself out like Switzerland.
You're like, you're this neutral entity.
You're not on either side, really.
And then you come after me for just stating the fact that, you know, people got a kick out of what happened today.
His space crashed.
He said, he's not.
He did a presidential announcement on his face.
Yeah, I'm sorry, that was funny.
You come after people like me.
You tell people you're not a lackey for...
Hold on, Tiffany.
Hold on.
You say you're not a lackey for the DeSantis team.
But then you don't call the same people out like Jenna Ellis,
who goes after every single Trump...
you know, any Trump supporter ever. You got Matt Walky, who came after me, basically threatened me after I filmed something in a DeSantis rally.
He said, you know, like, you need to watch yourself or something like that. That's his comms director threatening me.
So where are you at with the criticisms of their side when you're trying to make yourself out like this neutral power?
I'm so, I'm so happy, no, I'm so happy you ask me this question.
So in 2016, I ran for school board because my kids had rats in their cafeteria and I thought
it really sucked that no one was paying attention to public education.
And then I got involved and I realized there were a lot of crummy people that were controlling public education because I won school board.
And then, you know, we had COVID and I watched Governor DeSantis reopened schools.
And schools across America reopened because Governor DeSantis said we were going to reopen schools in Florida.
And I got death threats.
I had poops into my house.
The devil sends me a letter, sir, wait.
The devil sends me a letter every week.
My children have death threats on them.
I have death threats on me.
But we are leading as far as parental rights are concerned because of family and parental rights are under attack in America.
So here's what I say to you in closing.
I want a president.
We want a president that is going to respect fundamental parental rights.
Right.
that the government does not give you the right as a parent to direct the education, the morality, the religion, the health care of your child, and they cannot take it away easily.
Yeah.
And that is what we're fighting for.
And if it's Governor DeSanchez or President Trump or what have you.
That is what we want.
And so thank you for having me on the space, Mario.
It was a pleasure.
You're always a very nice place.
That's a tremendous way to pivot.
Don't get me wrong.
I think that was a beautiful,
beautiful pivot.
However,
you didn't address what I said.
You came after me for supporting Trump
and just making a light joke about the Sanchez,
but you don't go after the people
who attack Trump supporters every single day,
which makes you a hypocrite.
So in terms of Robert,
just coming back to the Twitter space on what,
Well, I have a question for you about that.
Have you heard anything about Tweet Elon's acquisition of Periscope and the video capability?
Are they going to have some fits and starts in integrating video capability for shows?
Yeah, they work.
Yes, there's things progressing there. I think Elon's also trying to keep it
Keep everything under wrap and just announce this everyone knows about it at the same time
But there's a lot of things in the works otherwise Tucker Carson wouldn't be moving to Twitter
I think I wouldn't be surprised if we saw if we see the first presidential debate on Twitter
And very soon so I just want to mention that it doesn't ask you a question but
But, yeah, video, video is going to need a lot more.
I mean, just the bandwidth to do that, it's going to be a lot harder to do just audio on a million people.
If you go video on three million, it's going to need a lot of scale, don't you think?
Yeah, yeah, sorry, I'm just messaging.
I'm trying to get some numbers.
I want Elon to tweet about this.
I really, sorry to be distracted, but I really want him to gloat about the numbers.
I just don't think I think the glitch is moving away from the real achievement here.
And while you're doing that, Preston, you know, Tiffany's entity is a C3,
and they can't be political, they can't take sides because they're afraid of their tax status.
But the interesting thing about her is like she wants civility.
She doesn't want insults.
So that in this political day and age with all the you know the the the weaponization of government, these, you know, people put in the leg irons, you know, it's a contact sport now, isn't it? And even going to civilly protest about your school boards, you know, I think this is the moms are, these mama bears are, um,
You know, if they're going to be growling, are they supposed to do it, you know, civilly, or are they going to be getting more aggressive?
Yeah, but I mean, come on, that's not even what I was talking about.
She couldn't acknowledge the fact that she's calling me out, but she doesn't call any of the other just pro-disangist people out.
My problem is people like her, these moms, these suburban moms, because God, God forbid, any politician won't say it.
Any candidate won't say it because they're scared of not getting votes.
But these moms are the same suburban women who are too moderate to vote for real conservative candidates.
So, yeah, maybe they're doing some stuff in the school board.
Good for them.
They're fighting against the woke curriculum and whatnot.
But they're really not doing anything when it comes to voting for quality candidates.
The polls show that.
So guys, I do want to end this space for one simple reason.
I think we can go on for a while, but I want to end it because a lot of people want to hear the recording.
But I think David Sachs, for anyone, David Sachs, even though he forgot to record it,
their Twitter's team managed to get the recording and post it there.
So anyone that wants to listen to it, you don't have to wait for this one to end.
But I want to end it to see the numbers, the total numbers of listeners.
So it looks good.
1.6 million is what they're at right now.
1.6 million.
How do you know?
You need somebody where you get it from the dashboard.
Oh, you need to send me the link.
That's sick.
Yeah, cool.
Nick Slime, man, you guys get more credit than me.
Final words on how the space went on the DeSantis thing.
Keep it short so it can wrap up.
No, I think it went great.
I think it was something.
We brought so many different speakers to the table here.
You know, panelists that we haven't had before.
We had senior Trump advisors.
We had people that are working very closely with the DeSantis campaign,
and that will be joining the DeSantis campaign here.
I know we had congressmen joining, but they couldn't make it, almost made it two of them.
So close.
So close.
Next time.
See, the problem is when you do spaces like this, a lot of times stuff is on the fly.
Yeah.
and so,
we're talking about hosting the first presidential debate.
We should do it here,
man,
because I think we,
no one does it like us in Twitter spaces.
keeps it balance and gets it heated.
You know,
that right touch of spiciness.
but we'll keep it civil.
Exactly.
We'll ask the question.
Well,
it won't be civil,
but we'll ask the questions that need to be asked.
Well,
you know,
it won't be like those standard mundane,
presidential debates.
Sometimes you need to ask the specific questions.
A good example is today.
Like,
You never had a scenario where specific questions were asked about specific issues and people need that now.
You're in Twitter. People are more educated about a lot of the issues.
They need to know the specifics and it's important.
And that's my issue with dissenters.
He needs to specify his policies on a lot of these issues, including what his position is on, for example, foreign policy.
My final thoughts is this is, to me, this is more about Twitter Spaces than DeSantis.
I think it's an incredible step forward to Twitter Spaces.
Elon did talk about the amount of people that opened an account just spiked massively as the announcement kicked off.
And for me, that excites me even more.
Because, you know, the whole presidential debate thing.
I mean, this announcement is very, it's not as important as we make it out to be.
I think the debates will be a lot more important in determining the next candidate.
and the next president.
But for me, this is pretty exciting for Twitter Spaces.
And this is a balsy move by Elon.
He knows that Space is not perfect.
He knows that it glitches.
He knows that it keeps crashing.
Freaking crashed in his last one with the BBC.
It crashed in two of the...
He's done a few with us.
Two of them crashed.
So it's a bit too early and he still did it.
So yeah, congratulations to him.
Congratulations to David Sachs.
And it should be exciting.
Let's get that first presidential debate.
Thank you for all the speakers.
Thank you for the panel.
And we'll see you all tomorrow, same time as usual.
Make sure you subscribe.
Go on my account to subscribe.
If you want those smaller Twitter spaces
with a small group,
me and Slymen will do them.
Maybe Nick, you could join us as well,
other moderators.
Just to do small Twitter spaces
with a handful of people.
We'll try to get some special guests there.
Trying to make the most of Elon's
subscribe feature and try to support him
as much as we can.
Thanks, everyone.
How do I end this?
