Speaker 1: We talked last week about Fox News starting to set up support of Ron DeSantis for
president in 2020, for support for Ron DeSantis as the Republican nominee in 2024. And an abandonment
a bailing out a an escape from support for former President Donald Trump. And we played some clips,
in fact, from Fox News that indicated that they're not saying we would we would support a Democrat
over Trump. But Fox News seems to be very clearly positioning itself to support someone other than
Trump in the primary. Donald Trump has now completely flipped out on Fox and Friends
because Fox and Friends simply acknowledged there are polls that show Ron DeSantis ahead
of Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican primary. They didn't even say, we prefer to Santos. They
didn't say Trump sucks. They didn't say, Sir, we don't want you anymore. They just said
there are polls in which DeSantis is leading and Trump raging on troth central at Fox and Friends.
So let's look first at the clip. And this is so milquetoast, this is so banal. It's just there
are polls that say the Santos is doing better. Speaker 2: You get people from all across the
country convening in Tampa. I am thinking about that is a little different than a couple of other
polls that we've seen over the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago in Florida, Blue Point,
rather, Blueprint Polling did a poll. DeSantis leads the former president in all age
groupings. Then there was a University of New Hampshire poll in June to says DeSantis actually
led Trump 39 to 37 and that New York Times Siena College poll that we'd cited quite a few times,
less than half of Republican voters backed Donald Trump as their preferred choice. So it's like the
young people who are activists at that event, right. Like the former president. But looking at
these other polls, different answer. Yeah, we look state by state. Ron DeSantis is showing tremendous
strength in New Hampshire, Michigan and Florida. Speaker 1: Tremendous strength.
Speaker 2: He's leading or tied with the former president and turning point run by
Charlie Kirk. Extremely impressive organization and they are extremely enthusiastic and active.
Speaker 1: Yeah so pretty milquetoast guys it's like Trump's doing well in. Some places, but the
Santas as well in others, and there's some poles in which the Santas is either tied or leading.
That's just what it is. These are just facts. And Donald Trump triggered on his platform truth,
social truth, essential by any suggestion that maybe someone in the Republican Party
might vote for somebody else. Trump posting almost immediately. Fox and Friends just really
botched my poll numbers, no doubt on purpose. Why would they botch it on purpose? Well, I
guess if you think that they're starting to build a campaign against you, you would think that that
show has been terrible, gone to the dark side. They quickly quote the big turning point poll
victory of almost 60 points over the number two Republican and then hammered me with
outliers. Actually, almost all polls have me leading all Republicans and Biden by a lot.
Rhino Paul Ryan, one of the weakest and worst speakers ever, must be running the place anyway.
Thank you to turning point. The crowd and love was amazing. This is exactly what we've been
hoping for. Fracture the party. Let them tear themselves apart. Destroy the party.
And an important reminder on this Fox News thing, just because Fox is setting itself up
to probably turn on Trump and support DeSantis in the Republican primary, that doesn't actually
mean Fox News number one has the power to turn the Republican Party against Donald Trump. And it also
doesn't mean that if Trump is the nominee in 24, that Fox won't get in line and support him over
whoever is the Democratic nominee. Obviously they will. Let's take those two things one at a time.
In 2016, Donald Trump won the Republican primary with Fox against him from the get go. It was a
long primary in 2016 for the Republican Party. It started in 2015, in fact, and there were
1816 candidates, some large number of candidates. Donald Trump started polling almost nothing early.
Fox News did not support Trump for the absolute longest time. Eventually, when Donald Trump had
gained a bunch of momentum by attrition as the 1 to 3%, candidates dropped out and Trump was able
to start coalescing support. And the evangelicals eventually, reluctantly came over to Trump after
he told some story about how he's against abortion. Now, Fox News eventually acquiesced,
but they were against Trump and Trump still won. So, first of all, it's not clear Fox really has
the power to torpedo the Trump Trump candidacy in the Republican primary. Secondly, Trump is
going to continue doing his rallies, finding ways to reach most of his base, even without Fox News
necessarily on his side, even without being on Twitter. So that's not going to be a problem. And
maybe the most important thing is in the end, Fox News is going to get in line and Fox News will get
in line for two reasons. One, Fox can't support a Democrat that would completely torpedo their
brand. That wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. So Fox actually really has no choice of eventually
supporting whoever is the Republican nominee. Even if the Republican nominee were eventually like an
overt white nationalist or something like that, Fox would still not support the Democrat. They
might maybe not not super aggressively support the Republican candidate. Maybe they would.
But Fox has a business model that's based on we support Republicans.
And then number two, there is going to be some point at which it will be clear who the nominee
is going to be. It's very unlikely that the nomination will be contested until the very end.
It's just not usually that way. Usually before the media calls it, we kind of in the analysis space,
reasonable people, we go, it's pretty damn clear who's going to be the nominee.
And that is going to give Fox lead time to win some credible to their audience where it might
not be credible to unite. But in some way that is sort of credible to the Republican Fox News viewer
jump ship to whoever is going to be the nominee because they can't lose out on access. That's
one of the most important things for a network like Fox News. You have to
maintain access to the Republican nominee who may eventually be the president. That's their
most important thing. That's their business model. Will have these clips on our Instagram,
which you can find at David Pakman. So we will take a quick break and be right back.