New details of the Ron DeSantis
for president launch the timing.
CNN is told
the official paperwork
will be filed next week.
That is a necessary
legal step for fundraising
and other campaign nuts and bolts.
The battle
plan, though, is much more interesting.
A plan, CNN reports,
to run to the right of Trump
on abortion, on guns
and more time frames it this way.
What Ron DeSantis means for America.
Yes, this is very, very much about him
and whether the Florida governor
can rebound from recent struggles
and seriously challenge Donald
Trump's grip on today's GOP.
But it is also about much more,
including the fault
lines of America's culture wars
and the fault lines
of our political polarization.
And if what it takes
to win the Republican nomination
will make the winner, then
a tough sell, maybe an impossible sell
in the places
that settle presidential elections.
With me in studio
to share their reporting
and their insights,
Jackie Kucinich of The Boston Globe,
Simon Kim, The Associated Press,
to Mitchell
of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
and Amy
Walter of the Cook Political Report,
Finally here, we knew it was coming.
He was waiting for the legislature
to end.
Whether that was the right decision
or the wrong decision,
the voters will tell us
seven, eight months from now.
But here's the Ron
DeSantis push
at the end of that legislative session.
And our reporters
are told the foundation of his campaign,
a six week ban on abortion,
ending concealed weapon permits,
banning gender affirming
care for transgender
youth, restricting drag shows, expanding
the don't say gay law in Florida,
blocking the AP Advanced Placement
African-American Studies
Program prohibiting vaccine mandates.
This is Ron DeSantis, plan to what?
Tell Republican voters
I'm Trumpy with results.
I get things done without the drama.
What is right?
Well,
he laid that out
in Iowa last weekend, where
basically what he said is
you can be successful and a conservative.
You don't just have to go.
I think he said something about
just posturing on social media.
Or sort of turning yourself into a brand.
You can actually bring results.
Now, you're right.
Do these results
also help him in a primary but hurt him
with swing voters?
We have yet to see.
I mean, what we know with swing voters is
some of those issues
are going to be unpopular,
especially on the abortion issue.
But so much of why
the swing voters
moved off of Donald Trump
or stuck with Democrats in
these past few years
are about things like January 6th
were a feeling that
Donald Trump himself, just that the style
and the way he conducted himself
was chaotic.
Was unpredictable.
Versus
if we're going to have a fight
over policy
that feels like
a very different conversation
than we're having a fight
over the personal
like we did
for so much of 20, 16, 20, 20 and
everything in between.
And so that's his challenge,
first with Republican voters
who have a great affinity for Trump
But so I want to listen to a little bit
of how Ron DeSantis face,
because what you just said is important.
Ron DeSantis says
maybe you disagree with me
on some of these issues,
but look at Florida. It works.
And he uses the term normal
What we've said in Florida is
we are going to remain a refuge of sanity
and a citadel of normalcy.
And kids should have an upbringing that
that reflects that
Some of this you look at going
young guns
victory in the Virginia governor's race.
There are certainly
a lot of parental concerns
about what's happening in schools.
I guess the question is,
when will we know?
How do we know
if some of these Republicans
it's not just Florida.
You see the trans policies in Texas
and other states as well.
Are they going so far to the right
that that,
you know,
that suburban voters
think this is a solution
in search of a problem?
Right.
Well, I think on that specific issue,
it hasn't been really tested
on a national level
in terms of its impact on the elections.
But certainly one of the platform,
one of the planks
and in the list
that you laid out from DeSantis
during his term as governor
this year has certainly been tested
in national elections,
and that's abortion.
I think that the six week
ban, Democrats feel
that is a massive
political gift for them.
But right now, in
terms of that, DeSantis
is certainly looking at the primary
and seeing that
as an advantage
over former President Donald Trump,
who has been very mushy
on what he would do
if he becomes president again
on a potential national ban.
So I think we can definitively
not definitively sorry
I think we can say that abortion
will certainly have
a major national impact.
Democrats feel very energized
by that issue still.
But in terms of the other culture
war issues,
I think many Republicans feel
that at least on the primary level,
that is certainly something
that they have to engage.
To that point,
let's show the map of since Dobbs
replaced Roe.
You have had abortion laws.
New restrictions take effect
in a number of states.
Some of them are already on the books
just waiting for Roe to be taken off.
In others, if you look at that map,
red are the most restrictive bans.
If you look, you see North Carolina,
you see Arizona, you see Georgia.
There are few states there
that come into play in
who picks a president.
If you think of the traditional red
blue map.
And I guess that is the challenge.
Will 20, 24 be like 20, 22
in the midterms?
Are the Democrats right about that
that if you have a Ron
DeSantis and Donald Trump
and the other Republicans
fighting for the next six,
seven, eight,
nine months over who's more restrictive
on abortion?
Do the Democrats say
thank you very much
and pick up the swing states again?
I think the Democrats are hoping
that'll be the case.
What DeSantis team are looking at
are the polling
by Amy
and others that say,
when you match me up against Biden,
I do better than Trump.
And so that's part of DeSantis
change pitch to Republicans
But again, that comes with this.
That is really untested.
He sticks to friendly audiences.
He is very scripted
in his public appearances
as we've seen with the bill signings
this week.
What happens
if he enters the race
and has to actually face Trump
in a debate or face questions in town?
Halls and in other forums
that right now he avoids?
And you also put on the table
a very important question.
Joe Biden is the incumbent president.
Now, he's
not running against Donald Trump.
In the middle of a pandemic with bleach
and everything else on the table.
And the other things that were questions
about the other questions about Trump.
There are legitimate questions about him,
how people feel about his age,
how people feel about the economy,
how people feel about his policies.
So the question is, you know,
a Democratic playbook
that worked in the midterms.
Does it work
when you're the incumbent president
not challenging
somebody who made those policies?
But I do think that you can't rule out
who Biden could be running against.
I think the challenger really does
matter here.
And the set of issues that they emerge
from the primary and pushing
from the primary matters
because as you were talking about
in your right, abortion
was on the ballot
in a lot of places in 20, 22.
It's going to be
likely on the ballot
in several other states coming forward.
And I'm not saying
that's the end all, be all,
but we're talking
about some swing states.
And so I.
Will they run the same playbook?
They might try.
But I do think
the who was on the other side of that
equation really will matter.
And so let let's just look at the latest.
Let's start with DeSantis Trump again.
And then I want to finish
a bigger conversation.
But if you look at the choice,
the Republican nominee, DeSantis
position has eroded
over the last several months.
Some of that is because there's
a rally around Trump movement.
But some of the charges,
some of that is Trump
and his super PAC
have dumped a ton of money on Ron
DeSantis, his head with critical ads.
I'm going to say this now.
That's a national poll.
We're pretty close to the point where
I'll start saying
ignore the national polls
because you go state by state
and you know, you can have a surprise.
In Iowa,
surprising New Hampshire Republicans
are sticking to the traditional calendar.
I guess that is the test.
When Ron DeSantis goes
into one of these states
where Trump has redefined in some ways
repopulated the Republican Party
to say I'm better than him,
that's a hard sell.
Issues aside that,
I think that's absolutely true.
And how that message
resonates with people
is going to be important.
The one thing that's
interesting about those polls, though,
is that
even as his numbers have gone
down, DeSantis,
his numbers have gone down.
It's not that his negatives have gone up.
So I think it is reflective of where
the media attention is
at the end of 20, 22.
What were you all talking about?
What a terrible midterm
that Republicans had.
What was a big reason for that?
Candidates that Trump endorsed flopped.
We're not talking about that now.
We are rally that.
We're seeing Republicans
rallying around an embattled
friend of theirs who's Donald Trump,
who is getting picked on
by the media, getting picked on.
They see by prosecutors.
What we don't know is
will that rally around continue
once we hear from Fulton County,
Fulton County?
Let's see what happens there.
Once we hear
from some of the other investigators,
once you get that engagement,
one more thing
I want to quickly put on the table is
Kentucky's not a swing state,
but will we get a test of this
incumbent versus
challenger on these messages?
You have Andy
Beshear, the Democratic governor,
running for reelection
in a tough state for Republicans.
Yet he has managed to be successful
against a protege of Mitch McConnell,
who has Trump's endorsement,
who will wage the culture wars
The left
is trying to hijack women's sports
and our schools are on the verge
of becoming breeding grounds for liberal
and progressive ideas.
A governor
who will not speak out on these issues
and who will not stand up for
your interests
has abdicated
his responsibility to the commonwealth
and is not fit to lead it any longer.
So we will get a 20, 23 test again.
It's not a perfect state to test them in,
but it's a good state
to test them out of these issues.
Can I just jump on one thing?
On the one person
I think who really wants to
see if this works or not
are the red state
senators who need to win
by being a different kind of candidate
than the national.
So Governor Beshear,
very popular in his state.
He's able to outrun
a unpopular president.
If he's not able to do that, if he loses
I think if you say Jon Tester
and Joe Manchin
and those guys will be watching closely
and I was just going to point out,
Governor Beshears in my home
state of Kentucky is popular
because he has responses to those issues
and those natural disasters
have really endeared him
to Kentucky residents
in ways that kind of
have nothing to do with politics.
We're talking
about showing up at flood zones,
tornado zones,
and recently a mass shooting.
So a great test of sort
of national issues
versus day to day in
your local environment.