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's schools open and
its economy thriving while my state of California chose
two years of learning loss and lockdowns that we have yet to fully,
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>> Right, we're reallocating more server capability to be able to handle load here.
It's really going crazy.
So, yeah, I was super excited to have Governor DeSantis
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>> Elon musk seemed very excited to host Ron DeSantis on Twitter Spaces
to announce his bid for the 2024 presidential election.
Unfortunately, Twitter Spaces just crashed over and
over and over again until Musk and DeSantis just gave up.
Now the two are getting dunked on, mocked on Twitter, and rightfully so
Mehdi Hasan waited on this, saying, you can be the richest person in the world and
the person who wants to be the most powerful person in the world and
still make complete fools of yourselves online.
It's amateur hour over at both Twitter HQ and
the DeSantis campaign on their joint big night, it seems.
Lol.
Honestly, I can't wait to hear what Donald Trump has to say about all this,
because you know that he has some choice insults for DeSantis.
Looking forward to that.
Waz, what are your thoughts?
>> You know what?
It's so funny to see DeSantis choose Elon, and
I think it's illustrative of the problems with DeSantis as a political entity.
Anyway, I think when people started paying attention to DeSantis,
he started attracting a lot of tech money, and particularly, yes,
in 2020, when a lot of these libertarian tech bros were like,
the libs have ruined the state of California for
us, let's go to Florida, let's move to South Florida.
And a lot of people thought South Florida was gonna become the, quote, unquote,
next Silicon Valley.
I'm sure a bunch of you people, you guys heard that about Florida,
and then the reality of Florida sort of set in, and
I don't think there's the collective, I guess,
brain power specific to the requirements of tech that exist in South Florida.
And I think Ron DeSantis, outside of, look, I think he had a good instinct that
people would like if he opened schools and opened up bars and restaurants.
He did that, people really liked it, and he was really popular for it.
Outside of that, he has done nothing that anybody actually cares about,
it's government via troll job.
And so that he would pick Elon, the sort of king of the disgruntled tech bros,
and use his platform to announce his presidency as everybody in
the last few months has realized, this dude is a lightweight.
And I don't know why we ever thought he could actually challenge or take Trump on.
It's just beautiful.
Because Florida was supposed to be the next tech haven that clearly
absolutely never happened.
And DeSantis was supposed to be the next forebearer of the Republican Party, and
that, too, unfortunately for him, Ana, does not seem like it's going to happen.
>> No, but fortunately for us,
we get to enjoy wonderful moments like what just transpired on Twitter Spaces.
We get to enjoy the infighting among Republicans,
especially in this case with Trump constantly bashing DeSantis and
DeSantis not really knowing how to handle it.
And I love that drama.
I live for that drama because it's literally the only enjoyable thing in
the news cycle right now.
So I need some comedic relief, please give it to me, and I'm getting it right now.
But going back to the point that you're making about Florida,
I think you're absolutely right.
He did a few things in regard to his COVID response that seemed
irresponsible at the time but apparently happened to be favored by
certainly Republican voters, certainly his constituents in Florida.
But this narrative of people are leaving these blue states
to go to these red states because they love Florida so much,
it totally leaves out a material analysis of what's really happening.
California has, in fact, lost a portion of its population, but
is it because they're like, yeah, Florida, or is it because of the fact that it's so
astronomically expensive to live in California?
The housing is out of control.
There is a lack of housing, number one,
which obviously translates to astronomical housing prices.
People can't afford it, so they're leaving.
And in Florida, yes, some people moved to Florida, I'm really curious,
how many people from California decided to go there?
How many of them did it specifically for financial reasons?
But what's also interesting is since there's been an influx of
people going to places like Florida, housing has also increased.
The price of housing has increased significantly there as well.
We've got a huge problem with affordability on basic needs in this
country.
And when it comes to places where Silicon Valley thrived, notice that
housing prices are the most untenable, the most unbelievably unaffordable.
But anyway, getting back to this hilarious situation with Twitter Spaces,
Joe Biden decided to weigh in on this as well.
And I got to hand it to his team.
He has a link to his website, which he posted on Twitter, and
he's like, this link works.
That's pretty funny.
And about 30 minutes after the Space was supposed to start at 3 PM,
Pacific Time, Musk finally got it to work.
DeSantis opened with his usual talking points about his COVID policies,
ending woke culture and getting over the Republican culture of losing.
So I think that's probably the only decent way DeSantis takes jabs at Trump
by emphasizing that he won his reelection bid while Trump lost his reelection bid.
But he does it in this timid way.
If you're gonna throw jabs, you gotta be aggressive with it.
You got to throw those jabs pretty hard, and
he seems to be a little meek in doing it.
>> Yeah, I think if he would come out and be like, look, in Florida,
we don't do this minority coddling stuff, by the way, we're a very diverse state,
a lot of immigrants, lot of non-whites, and we don't coddle people.
We show a lot of love to people who wanna come here and get stuff done.
You don't have to use this woke crap.
I think people will just respect him for coming out and
saying the quiet part loud, for whatever reason he just doesn't wanna do that.
He just doesn't have that instinct.
But I think if you went out and leaned into what Republican actually is,
which is punching poor people in the face constantly and
saying mean things about minorities and immigrants and
stuff like that, remember he sent the bus of migrants to what was it?
Cape Cod or wherever the hell he sent them to.
If he just leaned into that kind of stuff in plain English,
I think he'd be cooking with something.
Instead, he has to do these weird things that he knows is
gonna get on the nerves of elite liberals.
But no actual people care about this.
Nobody wants to hear you talk about wokeness, people want to hear, yeah,
stop crying.
Yeah, I'm tired of seeing homeless people.
I'm tired of hearing about black people and brown people,
need a leg up in the society.
They don't need a bigger leg up than I do.
If he would just go out and say that stuff in plain English,
I think he'd be speaking to a very receptive crowd of Republican voters.
>> But you don't think he's doing that already?
I feel like that is his message.
I mean, to be fair,
I haven't heard him say anything about homeless people, he might.
>> But it's not though and
it's all this crap about critical race theory.
That doesn't speak to real people.
People don't know what that is.
It's like just go out and say, we're not gonna dis America.
He's always doing this sort of end around of the thing that he wants to do and say.
And that's why I think people look at him as like, he's not Trump.
Trump doesn't need to equivocate.
Trump doesn't need to talk about critical race theory.
Trump is gonna come out and say, black people, you got it messed up.
The Dems have screwed you, come mess with me.
He's just gonna come out and say the thing that he wants to say instead of,
yo, Mexicans, we're tired of you coming to America.
We're gonna build a wall.
It's not about these sort of end around fake academic legalese and
wokeness and all of this crap, nobody wants to hear that.
>> Yeah, Trump is a blunt instrument, and he doesn't care.
He just says what he wants to say.
It doesn't matter how stupid it sounds, doesn't matter how hateful it sounds,
he just says it, right?
And I think what he has working for him is he does
understand how to engage in faux economic populism.
And on multiple occasions already, Trump has attacked Ron DeSantis for
his efforts when he was in the House to cut Social Security and
raise the retirement age.
I think if Trump keeps up with that message, it's gonna be very effective.
But you're right, in addition to that, I think,
stylistically speaking, while we all know that Trump's a massive liar,
it seems as though, just based on the way he speaks stylistically,
that he's a truth teller, that he tells it like it is.
And in the context of this political world where everyone is super fake and
everyone engages in the ridiculous theater, someone like Trump stands out.
And I think that was something that I personally underestimated in 2016, and
I'm certainly not underestimating it now.
I hope the Democratic Party doesn't make that mistake again.
>> I mean and again because he did this nonsense with Elon Musk.
I would encourage everybody who's watching the show right now next time you're
out to dinner, ask the people that you're with about the woke mind virus,
they will look at you like you have five heads.
That's not a way to actually run effective politics.
It will get certain people with liberal leanings mad on the internet,
and so trolls like Elon, and, yes, Ron DeSantis is a troll,
he enjoys when liberal leaning people, left leaning people,
get upset about the crazy stuff that he's trying to do.
But that doesn't make a political messaging system.
I don't believe that.
And that's why I don't think he's serious.
Donald Trump's gonna get in a room with this dude one day and
tear him to absolute shred.
>> It's true.
It's true.
We all know it.
And I can't wait.