He promised to drain the swamp, it got worse.
He did not drain the swamp.
He promised to bill have Mexico pay for a border wall,
they did like 50 miles of wall.
There's massive expansive still there.
>> Looks like Florida governor and
Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is finally getting a little more
comfortable taking jabs at Trump after noticing his campaign is on life support.
Let's watch more of what he has to say because he doesn't hold any.
>> He said he was gonna eliminate the national debt.
They added almost $8 trillion to the debt in four years.
And of course, in 2020, he turned the country over to Dr Fauci and
those lockdowns and the borrowing and printing really sent us on a bad course.
>> So that was DeSantis speaking to Howard Kurtz on Fox News.
And what's interesting about the statements he was making there is he was
obviously taking jabs at Trump.
Calling him out by name he didn't hold back.
And it's different from the previous attempted jabs at Trump that were a lot
less, let's say candid, a lot less transparent about the failures of
the Trump administration, at least in the eyes of Ron DeSantis.
Now there is a notable change because he is doing worse in the polls, and
more importantly, campaign donations are starting to dry up.
So he has now made decisions about essentially cutting his staff in order to
cut costs.
Thanks to less campaign donations coming into his presidential campaign.
Fewer than ten staffers were fired Thursday of last week,
each of them involved in event planning.
The campaign confirmed, there has been reporting that more terminations
are expected amid concerns that the campaign is spending money too quickly.
DeSantis is trimming his campaign staff after burning through nearly $8 million,
or 8 million of his 20 million second quarter fundraising hall in
the first few weeks of the campaign.
So the donations have started to slow down a little bit.
He has been outraised by Trump and
what's also really interesting about this story is the difference between the kinds
of donors who are funding DeSantis versus Donald Trump,
which gives you a sense of where the Republican electorate is at the moment.
And in fact, Trump has outraised DeSantis by a lot, and
he's relying on small dollar donors to do it.
Let's watch.
>> President Biden and the Democratic National Committee blew the Republican
field out of the water, raising $72 million in the quarter that ran from April
to June, far surpassing the GOP field.
Former President Donald Trump brought in $35 million.
And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who trails Trump in the polls
by double digits, also trails in fundraising, he raised about $20 million.
That's a good haul, but there are signs of trouble for the DeSantis campaign.
>> So clearly from that video, you can see that Joe Biden comes out ahead.
in terms of fundraising, he has raised $72 million, whereas Trump has raised
35 million and the lowest fundraiser here is Ron DeSantis at 20 million, Cenk.
>> Yeah, so it's a little bit deceptive because Ron DeSantis has $130 million
sitting in his super PAC, so
he's not gonna run out of money anytime soon, that's not the issue.
The issue here is he's starting to flail.
So he's getting less new donors,
his small donor base is very small compared to Trump and compared to Biden.
So he's relying on big donors, and big donors are starting to lose hope in him,
including Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News.
We'll get to that in a minute.
So he's in trouble, and he's now trailing Trump by 32 points,
32, that is not a small disadvantage.
He's in a world of hurt.
Now the things that you saw in the beginning are true, and
he should have been saying that all along.
And I'm glad some republicans are saying it because it has a prayer of breaking
through to a couple of percentage points of Republicans that Trump didn't actually
do any of the things he said he was gonna do.
He built 50 miles a wall, kind of Mexico certainly didn't pay for
it, and he left $8 trillion in debt, 8 trillion.
He was a disaster.
And it's important to have Republicans saying that.
But at this rate,
DeSantis is not a skillful enough politician to be able to catch Trump.
As I've been saying now for the last week or so,
I think Trump at this point is the only person who could beat Trump.
The other guys it doesn't look like are gonna catch him.
>> Yeah, it's a really great, I think a lot of the excitement around DeSantis had
to do with his handling of the coronavirus, although clearly there were
significant flaws in how he handled the coronavirus pandemic.
But his unwillingness to shut down the state for a longer period of time ended
up playing well for him, which is why he handily won his reelection campaign.
But with that said, just going to the polls,
Trump currently leads DeSantis by a whopping 32 percentage points in the real
clear politics average of national GOP presidential primary polls.
And Trump is absolutely loving this.
In fact, over the weekend, while speaking at a turning points USA
event in West Palm Beach, he used the opportunity to mock DeSantis.
Let's take a look at that.
>> In the brand new Florida Atlantic poll, good poll, Atlantic university.
We are totally dominating DeSantis right here in the state of Florida.
So we want him to get home and
take care of insurance because you have the highest insurance in the nation.
And the bill that they passed made it very good for the insurance company.
All the money that he's using, which now is stopped because all of the people that
were supporting him, they're saying, hey, wait a minute, you're down by 57 points.
They may like him or they may not, but they don't want somebody that's down
57 points and they're not stupid people, they're smart people.
In fact, all of a sudden I'm getting calls from people, they're saying, you know,
sir, I just called to say hello.
I said, I thought you were a Desensitist follower.
Goes, no, not at all, that was a false report.
>> [LAUGH] >> It was never that close, by the way.
It was never that close, but it was at 21, 22 points,
that's a lot different than 50 and 60 points.
But running for a hopeless cause is election.
It should be used to support the party winning against crooked Joe Biden in
November 2024.
We got to fight together, we have to all get together and we have to fight.
>> Now one of the previous DeSantis supporters who certainly did not give
Donald Trump a call is Rupert Murdoch, because according to the New York Times,
Murdoch continues to sour on Trump and is actually now desperately looking for
a replacement to support in lieu of Ron DeSantis.
According to The Times, Murdoch has privately told people that he
would still like to see Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia enter the race,
according to a person with knowledge of the remarks.
And he has made clear in private discussions over the last two years that
he thinks Trump, despite his popularity with Fox News viewers,
is unhealthy for the Republican Party.
So he's looking for anyone else, anyone else to support and
prop up so Trump doesn't win the Republican primary.
But I don't even think a media mogul like Rupert Murdoch has the ability to do that.
>> No, they've actually lost that ability and they don't realize it.
So guys like Murdoch are the ones that pushed DeSantis into the race in the first
place because Murdoch had soured on Trump a long time ago.
Because what does Murdoch and the other donors want?
They want multinational corporations to get everything,
they want lower taxes, more immigrants let in so they could pay them lower wages.
I agree with letting more immigrants in, but not for their reasons.
>> Yeah, not to exploit them.
>> Not to exploit them, but to actually treat them decently, etc.
But there's all these different things that they're in favor of, and
Trump has given them a lot of it.
And that's why in the beginning, they held with him until he passed that giant tax
cut for the wealthy and for corporations, and they love that.
Then when Trump started to accumulate more power for himself and
not share it with the donors, then they started getting very upset.
So they then give DeSantis a ton of money to run against Trump, and they think,
well, we've done this a hundred times before.
We give the money to DeSantis, and then all of our media says DeSantis and
not Trump.
And we saw it and we showed it to you guys so you can see it with your own eyes.
All the Fox News hosts all of a sudden softball said DeSantis.
DeSantis is great, DeSantis is great.
Trump, we're a little problematic, we're a little worried about Trump, etc.
And Murdoch thought basically through media and money,
I could buy the election like I always do, right?
And me and my buddies in the Republican donor class, well, they miscalculated.
Now, the media, including right wing media, including Fox News,
is not as strong as it used to be because now there's so
many other forms of media that a guy like Trump, who already had the spotlight and
who was already president, has escaped velocity.
They cannot rein him back in.
He already has too much followers and
too much other alternative media that cover him.
So no matter how much they attack him in traditional corporate media,
which is mainstream and right wing media combined, they still can't beat him,
and he's got a 32 point lead.
So when Murdoch and that quote said to me, my God, Murdoch's lost it.
He used to be the best in the business in buying politicians,
manipulating elections, etc.
He doesn't get it, you think Youngkin is gonna come in from Virginia do any better?
He's not gonna do any better, he's gonna do worse.
>> Well, okay, so let's actually talk about Youngkin for one second, right?
Because I see Youngkin as someone who maybe personality wise, is a little
different from Ron DeSantis, but certainly politics wise is very similar
to Ron DeSantis, and it goes beyond the two of them both being Republicans.
Remember, Ron DeSantis has decided to center his platform on anti woke stuff,
right.
How did Glenn Youngkin win the Virginia gubernatorial race?
By focusing his campaign on anti woke rhetoric.
So what exactly would differentiate Glenn Youngkin from Ron DeSantis in
the Republican primary should he decide to enter?
And is Glenn Youngkin able to overcome the entertaining
charisma that Donald Trump provides for his supporters?
>> No.
>> Exactly. >> No chance.
>> Yeah, so [CROSSTALK] laughable option.
>> Yeah, the fact that Murdoch doesn't understand that shows you, wow,
this is a hell of a moment.
The owner of Fox News and the Republican donor class have totally lost touch
with how politics works in this day and age.
So remember, everybody's got different bubbles.
And in the Republican donor bubble, they're like, what do you mean?
We just get a standard fake corporate politician.
They give us everything we want, but they give the masses some red meat, but
some of which they halfway do, but
as long as it's not too harmful and half of which they're not gonna do.
But the bottom line is it's like a good looking guy and he says the pro
corporate stuff and we feed him with money and we get the Fox News guys and
secretly Joe Scarborough and the MSNBC guys go legitimate, super credible.
We're really worried about him.
He's, my God, he's probably better than Trump, right?
And then we win, those days are gone.
So sorry, that kind of stuff isn't gonna work.
Now, guys, don't say we're in favor of Trump.
I want Trump to lose that primary super badly.
And a lot of people disagree, and they say, DeSantis is worse.
No, trump is definitely worse.
He almost ended our democracy.
He might end it next time, but
you have to report things as they are, not as you wish they were.
Objective reality matters, and objective reality is he has increased his lead and
has an overwhelming lead, that's reality.
>> And to your point, Cenk, about the threat of Donald Trump should he win
the Republican primary and beat assuming Joe Biden is really running for
re election, if he beats Joe Biden, right.
During that very same speech at a Turning Point USA event over the weekend, he
talked about how he plans to consolidate even more power in the executive branch by
doing away with the independence of other government agencies.
And he detailed it and was very,
very clear about how he wants to solidify executive power should he get reelected.
So he already has his eye on dismantling our system of checks and
balances just based on what he said in that speech alone.
So just something to keep in mind as we move forward with this election,
we're just giving you the details of what's transpiring in the GOP primary.
Doesn't mean that since Trump's doing really well, that we support Trump.
It's just how things are playing out.
>> In fact, quite the opposite.
Look, you know me, I'm confident, and many people would say overly confident.
I think I know how to beat Trump, but these guys ain't it.
And do you see any Democrats trying to beat Trump?
They're not even trying.
They're like let the republicans try.
>> It's amazing because they're underestimating him again.
>> How could you underestimate him again, are you insane?
Look, one of the Democratic nominees should nominate me,
Trump Czar, and let me go to work, okay?
Taking this guy down because these rookies don't know how to do it, but
that's not gonna happen.
So they're all gonna flail around, and it looks like both the Republican side and
the Democratic side are going to make the same exact mistakes they made in 2016.
I remember it being 2015 right around now, but
they had already done a couple of debates, so maybe a month from now or so in 2015.
And I said, my God, this guy's gonna win.
And everybody was like, [LAUGH] Trump's not gonna win.
I'm like, guys, he has, like, a 20, 30 point lead and
he's killing him in the debates.
They're like, no, don't believe your lying eyes.
No one in cocktail party circuit likes Trump.
Okay, and here we are making the same exact mistakes.