We focus
the election on the
past or on other side issues.
Then I think the Democrats
are going to beat us again.
Welcome back to State of the Union.
That was Florida Governor
Ron DeSantis in Iowa yesterday
making his pitch
to 20, 24 Republican primary voters.
My panel joins me now.
Nice to see everybody Scott Jennings,
he not only was out in Iowa,
he also Ron
DeSantis seems to be reacting to
and changing a bit as it as it goes
with his critics
saying he's not engaging enough, he's
not glad-handing
he's not looking people in the eye
the way that Iowa voters,
New Hampshire voters
have an expectation of their candidates.
Yeah.
And he did a great job
with it
yesterday in Iowa,
rolled out
a bunch of endorsements, had a good day.
Donald Trump canceled his event.
Some people say
it was because of the weather.
Other people say it was because he
wasn't able to draw a big crowd.
I don't know what the truth is,
but there's some evidence
for that theory.
I thought DeSantis had a nice right.
By the way, he's
not even a candidate yet.
But to me, the most important thing
he did
was make an argument about
what is the purpose of a political party?
The purpose of a party is to beat
the Democrats.
The Republican Party, in this case,
and we don't Trump
doesn't have a plan to beat
the Democrats.
He has a plan to dominate
the Republican Party.
DeSantis wants the party
to be an electoral function,
and Trump wants the party
to be a bludgeoning tool
against the people that Republicans hate,
whether that CNN or the media or whoever
one of their institutions,
DeSantis wants it to win elections
and I thought that was the best message
he could have had yesterday.
Listen, I think Trump world would have
had you believe that the town hall
this past week was a huge victory
and a win for them.
But I think the reality is a lot of
Republican observers were watching
and saying that man didn't
win a single additional vote.
And I think it emboldened challengers
like Iran.
DeSantis, who,
of course, isn't announced yet
to go out and make a different case.
Remind them,
you don't want the drama,
you don't want the noise,
you don't want your blood pressure
growing up.
It was a good day for him.
My one critique of DeSantis
at this juncture would be
you have two jobs in a primary, raise
your name ID
and take out the competition.
And there is someone
who's polling in double digits
ahead of him,
and he's not directly going
after Trump enough.
His PAC
is, to be honest,
the Never Back Down
PAC is a really good
candidate itself right now.
But DeSantis has kind of waffled
on actually challenging Trump,
which is something he's going to.
I wonder
I wonder if he will change that
when he actually does run.
I want to get to
but I want to
first you mentioned
the CNN town hall
and the fact that part of the strategy
there was to get Donald Trump
to expand beyond his base.
The content of what he said
might have posed some challenges.
Let's listen to some of that.
Will you pardon the January six
rioters who were convicted
of federal offenses?
I am inclined to pardon many of them.
Getting rid of Roe v Wade
was an incredible thing
and I was very honored to do it.
Do you want Ukraine to win this war?
I don't think in
terms of winning and losing.
I think in terms of getting it settled.
So we stop killing all these people.
Michael LaRosa, first of all,
welcome to the State of the Union panel.
You worked for the Bidens for
for a while.
You worked in the Biden administration.
What's your view
of how Democrats can or will use
comments like this?
Well,
I think you just provided
a lot of material,
but that material was already there
anyway.
I don't think he
I don't think he added much.
I think you saw a preview,
thanks to CNN,
a preview to what the
next campaign is going to look like
from the
candidates, but also
from from the audience at home.
This is what we're going to be watching
for the next year and a half again.
I think that when it comes to Trump,
I look, of course,
the Biden campaign
would love to run against Donald Trump
because we know
we know there's hard data on Trump.
Right.
We know that independents
have now run away from him
three times three elections in a row.
And that's something that you feel safe
with.
You know what you're running against
with anybody else.
That's it's
it's going to be a challenge
for President Biden
because nothing you fear more in
politics is an X factor.
We don't know how
how Ron
DeSantis tests across the country.
Well, I mean, I think
right now there's Republican infighting,
which I'm fine with.
But I will say that.
Okay.
Nobody wants to go back to the past
of relitigating the 2020 election
Donald Trump laws.
But when you hear Ron DeSantis in Iowa
saying what country do we want for it?
A lot of Americans
don't want the country
that Ron DeSantis is painting
either with culture wars
with a six week abortion ban.
Those issues
with not really wanting to stop
are gun reform.
When we have you know,
we're on the anniversary of the mass
killing in Buffalo.
That's not the future
most Americans want either.
So
DeSantis isn't X factor in terms
of how he pulls nationally.
But I don't think the future that he's
painting is ways
that really play outside of Florida.
I don't know.
I think that
what DeSantis gives
you is the generational
comparison.
I mean,
you're going to have
a very old incumbent president
and a very young up and coming governor.
And in some ways,
I think it pushes the issues aside
and just ask the American people to say,
you know,
what is the future of our country
look like?
Does it look like someone who will be 86
at the end of a term,
or does it
look like Ron DeSantis
and what he's done in Florida?
I don't disagree with you
that some of these policy debates
could make the race interesting,
but I have no doubt
what you said is true.
Independents do not like Donald Trump.
They've never liked him,
and he has no plan to win them.
But I could see them
warming up to a younger
Republican candidate
who brings far less drama.
I do think, though,
this is when, like the coalition
you look at
when you're thinking about
who can win a race, you're like,
what coalitions can we build?
I think that maybe independents split
between Biden and DeSantis,
but young voters really
don't like Ron DeSantis.
He is come after them.
I remember like him
standing behind him,
young voters overwhelmingly
despite Joe
Biden's age, showed up in record numbers
and continue
to poll really well with him.
So it will be interesting to see
how it all plays out.
But to Michael's point about the X Factor
with the Sanders,
I could see him actually
having the great general election
pivot that we always were like,
this is coming with Donald Trump.
And of course her does.
I knew him in the House.
He was
pretty much a mainstream Republican
strong on national defense, somebody who
he will walk back
that position on Ukraine time
and time over, I think.
So I could see him
being somebody who realizes, listen,
this may be my approach on
some of these more culture war issues,
but it's not a winning strategy.
Let's talk
about what the president said yesterday
because he's starting to
put the arguments that he's
making for his reelection
into sharper focus.
He talked about sinister forces
in America. Let's listen
or those who
demonize
and pit people against one another.
And there are those
who do anything and everything
No matter how desperate or immoral
to hold on to power.
But I know this.
The oldest, most sinister forces
may believe they'll
determine America's future,
but they are wrong.
Yeah, I think he was referring to
the sinister forces out there
that are embracing right.
Nationalism
or the sinister forces out there
that are rooting for Russia and Putin
or that are xenophobic.
And,
you know, trying to take the rights away
from women
to do what they can with their bodies.
And this is particularly
interesting argument
given you talked about the coalition,
the fact that enthusiasm
for President Biden among black
Democratic voters right
now, polls show, is pretty low.
Yeah.
And I think what he did was go to them
to have a conversation with them.
The best thing you can do as a politician
would understand
is getting criticized
that he's not talking to human beings.
Well, Joe Biden says
I'm going to go
to a historically black college
and lay out
why for this new generation of people
who are voting
and their parents who go back to all over
places around the country
and saying
this is why I am running for office.
This is the real threat.
I see you
I understand that you have
your lived experience bills
directly as a black person.
Living in this country,
what white nationalism
does in the country.
And I think that it was a strong point.
I will I also think, depending on who
the opponent for Joe Biden is,
those enthusiasm numbers
will continue to tick up.
But he has work to do.
And I think it's good
that he went to the base.
I think hearing Joe
Biden complaining
about pitting people against one
another is one of the funniest jokes
I heard this week, because he
he has consistently
tried to pit Americans
against each other.
He has consistently been dishonest
on a number of issues.
And he has consistently,
I think, done
exactly the opposite of what
he said he was going to do,
which is restore
the norms and institutions
of our government.
And I think we have a war
on institutions in this country,
and I think Trump is part of it.
But increasingly,
I think Biden is part of it.
And for him to make that argument,
I think is very disingenuous.
I would respectfully disagree.
I think he's campaign.
He campaigned in 2020
to restore
institutions
to restore respect for government
enter into restore decency.
And I think that if you elections
are about
two people
it's about a choice between two people.
When people look at those
that choice
they're going to say
who reflects my values more is
am I do I am I am I more do
identify myself
with a man like Joe Biden or do
identify with a man like Donald Trump.
It goes back to George W Bush
when all those people
6% unemployment in Ohio in 2004.
There was no way you were going to vote
for George W Bush.
But people
people vote for people
they identify with.
And he's a man of integrity.
And that's what people respect
about Joe Biden.
Joe Biden's remarks yesterday
underscored that he's dying
to run against Donald Trump
because he can run a message like that.
It's fear mongering.
If he runs against any other candidate,
he has a much harder uphill battle.
His campaign ad was directed
specifically at Donald Trump,
and Republicans should listen to that.
If they want to win, don't run the person
Joe Biden's dying to run against.
Thank you so much. Great discussion.