I said, you can't win, can you, honey, can you win?
Sir, if you endorse me, I'll win.
Please, please sir, endorse me.
>> Trump continued his attacks against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who has yet
to announce that he's gonna run for president, but
that hasn't stopped Trump from going after him pretty viciously.
Now, as we go to the next video, just pay close attention to not just what Trump is
saying, more importantly, how the crowd is reacting to it.
Because you would assume they'd be far more fired up, but seems a little muted.
Let's watch.
>> When a man comes to me, tears in his eyes.
He's at almost nothing in the polls and he's fighting somebody that's at 42 and
he's got almost $30 million in the bank.
He's at almost nothing, he's got no cash.
And I said, I can't give you an endorsement, there's no way you can win.
You're dead.
Sir, if you endorse me, I'll win, please.
Please, sir, endorse me.
I said, let's give it a shot, Ron.
And I endorsed him and he became like a rocket ship.
Within one day, the race was over.
He got the nomination.
Florida was tremendously successful under Rick Scott.
Look, whether you like him or not Charlie Cristy, was very successful.
He was a Republican at the time.
But Florida has been successful for decades.
In fact, probably as or more successful than it is now.
He wins the election because of you.
Two years later, the fake news is up there saying,
will you run against the president?
Will you run?
And he says, I have no comment.
I say, that's not supposed to happen.
>> He's just going on and on, rambling like a mad man, and
there's no real reaction from the crowd, which was surprising to me.
Because I don't want that to fool anyone.
Trump is still beating Ron DeSantis in polling considerably, and
we'll get to those numbers if you'd like, but
the crowd wasn't really buying what he was selling there.
>> Yeah, so the media is 100% against Donald Trump, okay.
So we're against him on substantive grounds, but we never play with the facts.
And I'm now seeing both mainstream media and right wing media take something he's
said that the right wing media would have loved before, mainstream media would
have covered seriously before, and go, how pathetic, ridiculous.
We're not gonna cover it, loser, right?
I'm like, I swear I saw you guys cover that completely differently just a couple
of years ago, right?
So I don't trust the media's coverage of Trump anymore.
So I watched the tape.
And in this case, yeah, shockingly they were right.
There was no reaction.
And I watched longer to see if the crowd reacted to other things and they did.
>> They did, yeah.
>> It was an active crowd whenever he had Gilim and called him a crack head,
he didn't do crack, anyway.
And they're like, right.
And that's the former Democratic candidate that DeSantis ran against the first time.
Whenever he hit someone else, they reacted very positively,
when he was hitting the DeSantis, they didn't react.
>> So, this is actually a really interesting case study that's playing out
in real time, Cenk.
Because your argument has always been media propaganda is so
incredibly powerful that it'll crush anyone,
including someone who is incredibly popular with the electorate,
someone who has the, in the voters' minds, the right policies.
But if the media is against you, they'll crush you and
they'll turn people against you.
And who knows?
Maybe that'll happen.
We'll see.
But it was just shocking to see how muted that reaction was to Trump's rant
against DeSantis.
>> Well, see, that's partly because right wing media is doing nothing but
100% positive coverage of DeSantis.
>> That's right.
>> So everyone at that rally has probably seen some incredibly positive piece about
DeSantis, right or wrong, right?
They've seen it.
So they're like, they're probably a little surprised.
Wait, I thought we were on the same team.
No, there, there's no one on Trump's team other than Donald J Trump, okay?
So, but to Ana's point, guys, Trump is the best case scenario for
someone against the media, why?
What does that mean?
Because he already has escape velocity.
He's a former president.
He's running for president and leading.
You almost have to cover him, right?
The press could have killed Trump's candidacy easily back in 2015, 2016.
All they had to do was say, he's a clown, reality shows,
we're not covering him, right?
By the way, like Marianne Williamson, not a clown, very substantive person,
has a lot of good policies.
Those policies are very popular with the American people, but
that's how they treat her.
They treat her with disdain.
They go, Marianne Williamson, no way, no way, no credibility, right?
And then she has almost no chance.
If they had done that to Trump, he'd have been dead in the water, right?
But instead they brought him up and fluffed him up and fluffed him up.
Now he has escape velocity.
Now, it's very hard to beat him, right?
But if right wing media and mainstream media together beat Donald Trump this
time around, then I'm not sure there's any force on Earth that could beat
a united corporate media that decides who wins and who loses.
>> And that's a pretty depressing finding.
>> Yeah. >> It really is.
>> And by the way that puts us in a horrible no win situation,
cuz if Trump wins, Trump might destroy democracy, right, might end democracy.
If Trump loses under this fact pattern,
it's almost definitely because media took him out.
He has a huge lead, and
the only thing that could take him out is right wing media.
>> I think what would help the Progressives and the left wing in this
environment is to crush any left wing media that is doing well.
>> [LAUGH] >> Over small disagreements.
>> Yeah. >> That's what we should focus on.
Anyway, but just getting back to the polling here.
So Trump is beating DeSantis in recent polling.
So Monmouth University did a poll that showed that Trump
did in fact improve his numbers, 41% to DeSantis' 27%.
But we'll see how that plays out in the future.
That was a notable gain by the way from the university's February
poll which had him tied with DeSantis at 33%.
>> And other polls have Trump up bigger, 20, 30 points.
>> Right.
>> And all now legitimate polls.
There was a bunch of fake polls in the beginning by Republican donors who wanted
to make it appear that De Santis had already caught Trump a day after
the midterms.
It was total nonsense, and
reported by all the mainstream press as if it was credible, right?
These are real polls, Trump's back up in significant lead but
also gaining ground, cuz what is he doing?
He's pounding DeSantis every day and DeSantis has no answer.
James Carville was right, right?
Carville said on TV, and this is a rare time I'm agreeing with James Carville,
he said, look, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the mouth.
>> We have that video, why don't we go to that?
>> Let's watch it.
>> DeSantis proves the wisdom of Mike Tyson, everybody got a plan,
you hit him in the mouth.
That guy, he doesn't know whether to wind his rear or scratch his watch.
And he tried to play in a league that he can't play in, and that's pretty evident.
I mean, he's a confused guy, and Trump hit him in the mouth and he lost his plan.
He just went totally off-key.
So my hat's off to Iron Mike.
>> So I think what Carville is saying there is correct.
Donald Trump has been attacking DeSantis, DeSantis flails when he tries to hit back.
There is a lifetime between now and the Republican primaries.
So I'm gonna wait and see what actually happens on the debate stage because Trump
is really good at crushing his Republican opponents on a debate stage.
So it's way too early to predict what is likely to happen.
But I do agree with Carville in terms of Trump being the kind of attack dog
that most Republican politicians, in fact,
every Republican politician we've noticed fails to respond to effectively.
>> Yeah, last thing on this, right now if you're scoring early,
Trump won right wing media, zero.
Because right wing media keeps saying about everything Trump says,
it's a little out of control.
Sometimes he'll say pathetic,
etc, everything DeSantis they say, that is brilliant.
What a brilliant retort by DeSantis, a real statesman.
Still Trump's lead grows, does not shrink, so, so far Trump's winning.