Speaker 1: The Ron DeSantis for president campaign has fired about a dozen different staffers. Now,
as is always the case, when campaigns do this, they say, no, no, no, no, no. It's not that we
fired them because we're shrinking the campaign, because we're failing and we're not raising money
and we have no path to the nomination, All of which are true, by the way. They love to say we're
reorganizing, we're redeploying resources, we're focusing in a different way. All right. Well,
needless to say, NBC News reports Ron DeSantis fires roughly a dozen staffers in a campaign
shakeup. The Florida governor has struggled to break into Trump's lead. His campaign has been
burning through money. A source familiar with the firings described those who were let go as
mid-level staffers across several departments whose departures were related to cutting costs.
The exits come after the departures of David Abrams and Tucker Oban. Shane,
veterans of DeSantis political orbit, first reported by Politico. Sources involved with
the DeSantis campaign, say there is an internal assessment among some that they hired too many
staffers too early, despite having brought in 20 million in the first six weeks. They need to bring
costs down. Some in Desantis's political orbit lay the early blame at the feet of the campaign.
Manager Ginevra Peck, who led Desantis's 2022 midterm reelection bid. A DeSantis donor said she
should be she should be the one who is in the hot seat at this point in time, a donor said. DeSantis
stock isn't rising 20% isn't what people signed up for. We then go to the next element of this,
which is that it is not just a couple of donors, but it is a number of DeSantis,
his biggest donors who are now kind of saying, what is going on? DeSantis It was at 30,
he announced Trump got arrested and DeSantis went down in support from 30 to 20. That is a loss of
a third of your support in the Republican primary. And we're donating that money to this to this guy.
And indeed, we have another NBC News report. Confidential DeSantis Campaign Memo Looks to
Reassure Donors Amid Stumbles in the strategy memo obtained by NBC News. DeSantis campaign
says it will stay focused on the early states and not yet make investments in Super Tuesday
battlegrounds. Remember that for our new viewers and listeners who are not yet veterans of the
way these primaries go, there's this thing called Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday is a Tuesday in March
on which there are a whole bunch of primaries. Large numbers of delegates are available. But
there's always this strategy question, do I go for Super Tuesday so that I can get a bunch of
delegates on that day? Or do I focus on the early states like Iowa and New Hampshire and I believe
South Carolina, although now I don't remember. South Carolina is only early for Democrats. I know
it's the first for Democrats this time around. In any case, at some point when campaigns start not
doing well, they come out and they say we're going to focus on the early states. So, sure,
we might be getting crushed in New Hampshire and Connecticut and Massachusetts and California.
You know, all the states that are part of Super Tuesday, I'm going by memory. I don't
know if those are we're not going to worry about that. We're just going to worry about how are we
doing in the early states. And so, for example, DeSantis can say, hey, we're in second place in
New Hampshire and we potentially could be poised to tie Trump or something along those lines.
I don't know. It's usually a sign that things. Aren't going particularly well and indeed things
aren't going particularly well for Ron DeSantis. So we'll continue to follow those numbers.