Trump or Desantis, Who Wins? - The 2024 Election Outlook

This is something I wanted to talk to you about. Trump vs DeSantis in 2024. Who's the favorite? Who do you think wins? I don't know. Do you think that happens? It seems like they're positioning that. Right? Let's see. But wouldn't the ultimate be they combine? They combine forces. But if DeSantis thinks he... Never gonna do that. You don't think so? No. Trump's ego, he would never team up. He's already been shitting on him for the past like month. Yeah, but he's shit on people before and brought him into the fold. Thinking about all this shit that he said to Ted Cruz and all those other people. Yeah, but the difference is Ted Cruz cucked himself to Trump. So Ted bent the knee after a while. And what happened was that was actually really interesting story. So he went to the RNC and he said, vote your conscience, which basically was like he wasn't endorsing Trump. He was saying, do whatever you want. Like I'm not endorsing him. Then he got a phone call from his billionaire donor daddy, Robert Mercer, I think his name is. And he was like, remember who you work for. And so Ted fell in line and then he was phone banking for Trump with that weaselly face on like, yeah, vote for Donald Trump. And so he fell in line. He fell in line. And so I don't think... DeSantis is not going to do that. I mean, if he's smart, I don't think he would. Look, if you had a straight up race, just Trump versus DeSantis, I actually think DeSantis could win that. But the problem for DeSantis is this. There's already a bunch of other assholes who nobody cares about who are jumping in the race, who are going to get 2%, 3%. And that all comes out of DeSantis's numbers and not Trump's numbers. So if you have a race with 10 different Republicans, nine of them are not Donald Trump. Nine of them are splitting the non-Donald Trump vote. And there's one Trump who can win with 29% of the vote or something like that, which is likely, which is like Nikki Haley. She seems like she's going to run. She's a fucking total donor creation. Nobody gives a fuck about her. She's been told by rich people. Yeah, you're the one. Go ahead. She's going to get destroyed, right? But she runs. Mike Pompeo, he wants to run. John Bolton, he wants... Like all these people are going to run. And if you have all of them and DeSantis and Trump, you're handing it over to Trump. There are other Republicans who need to get in a room behind closed doors, talk it out and say, look, we all have egos here, but we got to put it aside. And they should dole stuff out. DeSantis could say, all right, who wants to be Secretary of State? Who wants to be vice president? Let's make a deal. So I'm the only one running against him because that's the only way they're going to take him down. Do you think that's how it goes? I don't because they don't have that level of organization. They don't. And you have a whole bunch of giant egos. So I think what's likely is they all run and Trump wins with like 30% of the vote. Because you know, it's first pass the post voting if he gets 30% and the closest to him is 21% or whatever the fuck. Right. And it's in the primary. So it's all registered Republicans. Correct. Correct. So it's an interesting situation. And Crystal and I and Sagar as well, we've been having this debate back and forth because there was a period there after the midterm loss where there were a bunch of polls showing DeSantis up comfy on Trump. It was like DeSantis by double digits, right? And we were having the debate where I was like, no, I think DeSantis is the favorite. He is the favorite. But now just recently new three or four polls came out. Trump's back up double digits. And so it could be a heavyweight slugfest. But also I don't know if he has the balls to like jump right in and take him on. You know what I mean? Because he is the heir apparent. He is like diet Donald Trump in a sense. So he might feel like if I just wait till 2028, I could probably win it. But his moment is now. Right. Because in the midterms, the candidates that were most Trumpy were the ones who lost. So Carrie Lake, she was denying the election left and right. She was one of Trump's neighbors. She lost. Doug Mastriano ran for governor in Pennsylvania. He lost and he was but he was at January 6th. He was a big time election tonight. Like all the election deniers, all the ones who really cuddled up to Trump, those are the ones who lost the more the more like old-school Republicans like Kemp in Georgia. And he's a guy who said to Trump, remember Trump said find me 11,000 votes after 2020. That's the guy who was like, no, I'm not going to do that. And that guy won his election easy in Georgia. So basically the more non-Trump Republicans did better. And so, you know, there's a real, real weakness there. And he was siloed off on truth social for a while. He wasn't like he sort of lost his normie touch a little bit. You know what I mean? He was getting too wacky. And so DeSantis was the heir apparent, but now things are changing. Do you think that Trump comes back to all those social media platforms? Like what is his I've read something about his deal with true social that it might be up soon. Oh, if that's true, that's interesting. I did read that he's planning on coming back to both Facebook and Twitter. I did read that. But to your point, yeah, my understanding was he had a deal with truth. So the whole value of the company is tied to Trump being on it. And so he pulls out of that. He's pissing off a lot of people who invested a lot of money in that company, which you know, he's done shit like that in the past. So I don't see why he wouldn't do it now. But look, he kind of needs it. He needs to be back on Twitter. He needs to be back on Facebook. Right, because if he's on Twitter, that's where people are going to go. DeSantis. So because I know you were also a fan of Bernie. Yes. And they're like polar opposites in terms of the rest of their problem. I'm a fan of him for different reasons. Right. Yeah. But I know you said that you thought he would make a good president. And there's a bunch of things about him that I think would probably change your opinion on it. Like, for example, he thinks weed should stay illegal because it smells bad. Is that really his opinion that it smells bad? He said it smells... Does he not know about edibles? Putrid. And he wants it to stay banned because of that. That's hilarious. Is that really his rationalization? Jamie, if you want, you could pull that out. Yeah, that's what it says here. But it's legal in Florida, or medically. It says marijuana should remain criminalized because of its putrid odor. Polling compiled by the University of North Florida showed that most Floridians want the adult use of marijuana to be legal in the Sunshine State. That's certainly not the case. In fact, under state law, the possession of up to 20 grams of cannabis is punished by $1,000 fine and up to a year in prison. Possession of greater amounts is a felony. So what does he said? What I don't like about it is if you go to some of these places that have done it, the stench when you're out there, I mean, it smells so putrid. I want people to be able to breathe freely. Well, that's silly. Yeah. But that's also like... Like, I want to know the context. I want to... I mean, that's a quote... The smell of marijuana. Like, DeSantis demures on marijuana legalization but can't stand the dank stank. Well, okay, you don't have to like the smell. You know, I mean, that doesn't necessarily mean that's why he wants it illegal. He just doesn't like the smell. A lot of people don't like the smell. But it's not legal there recreationally, right? No, not yet. No? No. It's not legal here either. Would he sign the bill is the question, you know? And it seems to me like he would... Because he's a social conservative by and large, you know? From a social perspective. Another one is he... They had a vote in Florida, direct vote on raising the minimum wage during the 2020 election. And so Trump won the state. But 60% of Florida voters voted for a minimum wage increase. They wanted to make it 15% and leading into that DeSantis said, don't do that. I'm against doing that. Did he have a rationalization? I mean, I didn't see if he did. But just the fact he's against it was a strike against him in my mind. But the voters voted for it and that is the law. So, because they had the direct vote and I don't know if he has any legal recourse. So it's becoming law, but he told them don't vote for it. So that was a big issue. Because I know you're a fan of legal weed. You're a fan of raising the minimum wage. He's also a big Wall Street guy. I mean, a lot of these Republicans, you don't have to look too far under the surface to find out. They're all playing the same game. He took 20 million from Wall Street. He did $5.7 billion in tax cuts and giveaways to corporations. Apparently 99% of companies in Florida pay no corporate income tax. So it's one of the states that corporations go to sort of, you know, it's a field day over there. And remember, he was feuding with Disney. Remember when he was feuding with Disney? And he was like, you know, you guys are fucking woke and this has got to stop. But he let them keep a $578 million tax break at the same time. And at that same time, he also did a $1 billion tax hike on regular Floridians with a new sales tax. Well, the amount of business that Disney must be bringing into Florida is insane. Right. I mean, they own Orlando. Which is all the reason they don't need more of a subsidy, right? Like, let them fuck it. They'll be able to swim. They're not going to sink. Like, let them be. What do you think that is? Do you think there's just some financial chicanery, some behind the scenes? I think if you're the governor of Florida and you know how big Disney is, you might talk a game every now and then of like, yeah, we don't, you know, we don't like these guys or whatever. They're too woke. But when push comes to shove, he's cut the jack. I don't remember what that was in regard to, the woke thing. I don't recall. It was a very specific instance. Yeah, I don't either. I don't remember it either. But there was a, there was, he had a big fight with them, but ultimately he gave them their tax break. And then the other thing is, so there's a big sugar cane industry in Florida and they lead to a lot of pollution because they do these things called, burn fields. It's part of like the process involved with the sugar cane. And he came in and shielded them from any legal accountability. So people can't sue them over that. From pollution? Yeah. So, and the Florida Republican Party took a $350,000 contribution from the sugar cane industry and then in turn he protected them from legal liability. And when you're saying pollution, there's particulates in the atmosphere because of the burning? Yeah, they say that because of those sugar cane burn fields, there's increased risk of cancer and red tide. Have you ever heard of red tide in Florida? That's the ocean red tide? Yeah, there's some weird ocean red tide thing. Apparently the sugar cane, burning of the sugar cane helps lead to that as well, along with, like you said, the particulate matter, which could lead to cancer. The burning of it, that's like a common agricultural approach, right? Yeah. Where they do that to sort of re-vigorize the, that's not a word, but re-invigorate the soil, right? The topsoil, is that what they're doing? Yeah, I mean there's some industrial reason why they do it, but I think there was conversation around, hey, we got to regulate this. We have to make it, you know, we got to lower the cancer rate. We got to lower the red tide. We got to figure this out. And there's a direct correlation between those burns and cancer instances? Yeah, there's a lot of health problems around those things, yeah. Yeah, so there's, there's, he's quite the opposite of Bernie. I think he's very, he's an establishment Republican who's good at PR, basically. I think he's positioned himself, so there's two parts to politics. There's politics and there's policy. On the politics front, I think he's actually plotted his way around brilliantly, where, you know, he is the heir apparent to Donald Trump, and there's a chance he could even beat Donald Trump in a Republican primary. And honestly, I think any Democrat should fear him over Trump in a general election. I think even half-dead Joe Biden can defeat Trump again, given that I do. Really? You think so? Yeah, well, the problem is Trump has siloed himself off, and he can't shut up about the 2020 election. It's rigged, it's stolen, it's, you know, and it's, he comes across as whiny. And the Republicans, under his leadership, got wiped out in the 2018 midterms. They got wiped out in the 2020 main election, and they got wiped out in the 2022 midterms. Well, people either love him or they hate him. And I don't think there's as much polarity when it comes to DeSantis. That's right. DeSantis has a much better chance of gaining back some of the moderates that kind of fled when, you know- They just want conservative economic policies. Right. Yeah. And so, I think he would be a good general election candidate. But in terms of how he governs, it would be George W. Bush, it would be George H.W. Bush, it would be Trump. It would be all the same stuff. Tax cuts for the wealthy, super-serve Wall Street. Keep the military-industrial complex going. Who do you like if Biden drops out? The only person I'm interested in at the moment is Marianne Williamson. Because there's some chatter about she might primary Joe Biden. And I would love that. Because, look, the problem with Biden- there's a lot of problems with Biden. But, like, ideologically, the problem is he has no grand vision, right? Like, there is no, here's what I'm trying to do, here's what I'm trying to get to, here's the ideal. It's very like, I call him a status quo manager. It's like, I'll do some tweaks around the edges here and there, we'll make some things a little bit better here and there. But he's also dead, right? Like, he's a zombie. And then you have Marianne Williamson, who I think she would run in the spirit of FDR. She would say, we've got to go back to- the Democratic Party used to be the workers party, it used to look out for people, and we need to get back to that. So, we need to do things like universal healthcare, we need to do things like universal education, we need to have higher wages, and that's more my politics. So, right now, she's the only one I'm interested in. There's a decent chance that she challenges Biden, and I think that'll be interesting for this reason. Polls show over 60% of Democrats are like, we're done with this. Yeah. We gotta- come on, we gotta move on from this. What do you- do you buy into this idea that that's one of the reasons why they keep finding these classified documents? Oh, see, I don't- That they're trying to push them out? I think it's incompetence, to be honest. Really? I think you have a- it's a fun theory, like, it's interesting to think about, right? But I think the Democratic establishment kind of realizes that they need him, because Kamala is worse. Yeah. Kamala, I think has- Which is wild. Wild, right? Kamala is worse. Mayor Pete is worse. Yeah. These are people who are more unpopular than Biden. Yeah. They would rather take a half-dead Joe Biden than take one of those and roll the dice. What about Newsom? Newsom- so Newsom is plotting like he wants to run, but he would never primary Biden. He's a good little Democrat, and he'll fall in line and go through the process, and he'll think 2028 is my time. That's what he'll think. But, you know, a lot of these people are secretly waiting in the wings for Biden to croak, and then he would step in. What's going to happen? Absolutely. Any second. Absolutely, it could happen. And then Newsom would run in 2024. So- but he's trying to, you know, he's starting to edge his way in there, which- and again, for him, I think he would have a better chance than a Kamala or a Mayor Pete, but I still think he's- he's got the slimy politician feel to it. There's a lot of stuff to pick apart in his record, as you accurately pointed out. I mean, there's just- look, this is the era of the outsider. It's the era of the outsider. Trump ran as an outsider. He won. Right? Biden was the return to normal guy. Like, okay, this Trump guy's getting a little crazy. Let's go back in this direction. But it's still the era of the outsider. There's- people still want something fresh, something different, something from outside of the political system to come in and bring about real change. It's not like politics used to be. Where it's like, if you're the most buttoned up, if you're the most clean, if it's your turn, then it's your turn. Now it's more like, holy shit, this is fucking crazy. All hell's breaking loose. Let's get some people with good ideas in there who are actually smart.