Speaker 1: I've been telling you for a while Ron DeSantis is dangerous.
And part of what makes him dangerous is that he has a lot of the same terrible authoritarian
instincts of Donald Trump, but he is more able to potentially get things done and less
cartoonishly unhinged.
Piers Morgan interviewed Ron DeSantis, and remember that Ron DeSantis is experiencing
significant shrinkage in the polls.
He hasn't actually announced that he's running yet.
So this is all very speculative and very hypothetical.
But one of the interesting questions that was asked by Piers Morgan during this interview
was what are the actual differences between you and Trump?
Other Republican candidates and potential candidates have said there really are no differences
other than identity.
Nikki Haley said, well, I'm younger and a woman and Indian.
Tim Scott said, I don't know that I have any policy differences, but here is Ron DeSantis.
His answer to that question is.
Speaker 2: What do you think of the differences?
Well, I mean, I think there's a few things.
I mean, obviously, you know, the approach to COVID was different.
I mean, you know, I would have fired somebody like Fauci.
I think that he got way too big for his britches and I think he did a lot of damage.
I also think just in terms of my approach to leadership, you know, I get personnel in
the government who have the agenda of the people and share our agenda.
If you bring your own agenda in, you're gone.
We're just not going to have that.
So the way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama.
Focus on the big picture and put points on the board.
And I think that that's something that's very important.
Speaker 1: So DeSantis is essentially saying the differences are style, and I would have
fired Fauci.
Not exactly a big gap between him and Donald Trump.
Interestingly enough, Piers Morgan did ask Ron DeSantis his views on the nicknames that
Trump has come up for him.
Speaker 2: Is your favorite nickname that Trump has given you so far?
Is it Ron, Ronda, sanctimonious or meatball?
Right.
Well, I can't even.
He went off Meatball, right?
I can't I don't know how to spell the sanctimonious.
I don't really know what it means.
But, you know, I kind of like it's long.
It's got a lot of vowels.
I mean, so we go with that.
That's fine.
You know?
Speaker 1: Isn't this fun, guys?
Speaker 2: You call me, you call me whatever you want.
I mean, just as long as you, you know, also call me a winner.
Speaker 1: Right, Right.
DeSantis is the winner.
Asked whether he believes if he were to run.
Oh, sorry.
No, I want to do Putin next.
The topic of Vladimir Putin came up and this is very interesting.
Speaker 2: What's your view of Putin?
Look, I think he's got grand ambitions.
I think he's hostile to the United States.
But I think the thing that we've seen is he doesn't have the conventional capability to
realize his ambitions.
And so he's basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons.
And so for us, one of the things we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy
resources in the United States.
We could be permitting natural gas pipelines from Marcellus doing a lot in in Alaska.
That's where he gets all his power.
And obviously, he's influenced Europe by by having so much energy.
So the way to hit Putin is to hit him with energy.
But I do think you look back at all the defense analysts and me in the past, we overestimated
his conventional capability.
This has been a huge blunder for him, huge costs.
And, you know, we'll see what ends up happening with his longevity in power.
But but this has been a this has been a loss for them.
There is a move now to hold him accountable for war crimes, bombing, maternity hospitals
and genocidal activity in parts of Ukraine, wiping out whole cities, Mariupol and others.
Would you support that?
I mean, I think he is a war criminal.
This ICC, we have not done that in the United States because we're concerned about our soldiers
or people being brought under it.
But I do think that that he should be held accountable.
Speaker 1: So up sort of sounds like tough talk, but a lot of the same caveats that many
of the soft Putin defenders will kind of reflexively go to, including he's not nearly as dangerous
as some claim him to be.
So sort of interesting, not incredibly notable then A Piers Morgan does ask DeSantis if you
did run, do you think you can beat Trump?
Speaker 2: I think it could be, but I think so.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Do you think you can beat Biden if you did run?
Speaker 2: I think he could be, but I think so.
So you're running?
No, I didn't say that.
I just said I think I could.
I mean, I think that that's I mean, if you look at Florida, it will be harder to beat
Biden or Donald Trump work out.
I don't know.
Those are two.
Speaker 1: Okay.
So that is very interesting because if you really do believe that in an election against
the sitting president of the United States, you would win.
It seems very difficult to imagine getting away from getting involved in that race no
matter what the primary polling says.
So that's going to remain remain to be seen.
Piers Morgan did ask Ron DeSantis about allegations that he backed the force feeding of prisoners
while serving at Guantanamo Bay.
DeSantis says it's not true, but he gets a little mushy mouth about it.
Speaker 2: One of the things they said was that you authorize the use of force feeding.
That's some of the yeah, that's not true.
Any of the stuff just to finish it and force feeding the detainees who were on hunger strike.
Was that true?
So I was I was a junior officer.
I didn't have authority to authorize anything.
There may have been a commander that would have done feeding if someone was going to
die, but that was not something that I would have even had authority to do.
So that's that's wrong.
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: Okay.
And by the way, DeSantis is saying it's it's a raw it's wrong to claim he did it.
Not that it's wrong to do the force feeding.
And then lastly, asked about tick Tock, and I'll just play this one for you here.
Speaker 2: Would you ban tick tock?
I would.
I think so.
Would you?
I think so.
I mean, I think from everybody in America.
I think I think it's a security risk.
I think they are harvesting so much data on our citizens.
There's a whole bunch of other apps and stuff that are out there.
And honestly, Piers, I've got young kids.
I don't want our kids on some of this stuff.
Okay.
Speaker 1: So he would indeed ban tick tock.
Listen, the danger with DeSantis is he although he's incredibly low energy and low charisma,
he very casually will present ideas as though.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so you always sort of come away like, well, he doesn't seem very ideological because,
like, it sounds like he's sort of like softly in this camp, but he could easily be pulled
over here.
This is really the trick of DeSantis, where then when you look at his actual record, it's
this wacky anti-woke delusion fighting the culture wars and extraordinarily authoritarian
as we've covered before.
So a very interesting interview because it shows us the DeSantis that he would present
to the world if he were to run.
And it's this very down to earth.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm a reasonable guy.
Yeah.
Yeah, I would do that.
I probably would.
So.
Makes sense.
Sure.
Yeah.
Now, Putin's bad, but yeah, you know, he's not really that bad and he doesn't really
have that much that much power.
And then the actions with the Santos are really the scary thing.
So a very interesting interview to see.
I'm sure there will be more