Congressman Byron Donalds joins Dave Rubin to analyze the impending GOP civil war between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump, predicting a rough primary driven by "tough elbows" yet united by national stakes. Donalds champions Senator Tim Scott's challenge against Mitch McConnell, arguing competence outweighs tenure, while contrasting Florida's meritocratic success with D.C.'s petty backstabbing culture. He praises DeSantis's hurricane recovery leadership despite two-year beach reconstruction needs and confirms his own refusal to run for higher office, emphasizing genuine diplomacy over establishment politics. Ultimately, the discussion suggests that authentic leadership, not party loyalty, must define the future of American conservatism. [Automatically generated summary]
Because I think sometimes up here on Capitol Hill, people are like, oh, well, you just got here.
Or, oh, you're really young.
You know, the Bible always says don't despise a man because of his youth.
So I think it's really about competence and ability and execution.
It's good that Mitch is getting challenged.
I know that people tend to be like, oh, well, how could you?
Well, how could I what?
Every Republican or every Democrat for that matter, that's up here.
It's because your people sent you.
They chose to elect you.
So if people, if we have to go through that process and battle for votes at home and earn the support every time from voters, then we come up here and we think it's all for acclimation?
I think that's wrong.
And that's one of the reasons why leadership, frankly, in both parties has caused issues for the people of America.
To take a step back, people need to understand, in Florida, a couple things.
One, we have term limits in our legislature.
So you don't have a situation where you have members who have just been around for a long, long time and then their own power structure becomes the navigation point of your state.
Our legislative seats roll over all the time.
That's number one.
Number two, everybody knows Ron DeSantis.
Let's talk Rick Scott for a moment.
Rick Scott, before he became Governor Rick Scott, challenger to Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott, he was a donor.
And he was a businessman.
Completely upset the apple cart in the Republican Party going back, what, 2010?
2010, 2012 was the time when he came in?
I think it was 2010.
He completely upset the apple cart.
The Republican establishment did not want Rick Scott.
Do you think other red state governors have the cojones, basically, to do it?
I mean, he picks the right fights, he's bringing in the right people.
I always tell people, you know, from the staff I meet, it's like, these are good people, but other governors, they kinda, they still want the media to like them.
You know, he bans mainstream media from events.
Like, he's fighting in a completely different way.
I always tell people back home, we have a lot of electeds, we don't have a lot of leaders.
That's just the truth of the matter.
Yeah.
Carrie Lake, it's unfortunate she didn't get across the line, but she was in that mold where she was just going to be like, this is what we're doing.
You either like it or you don't, but it is what needs to happen for the state of Arizona.
And I think that Arizona, in my view, is going to suffer because they're not going to have that type of leadership, which is critical in that state, and frankly, in all states.
But are other people capable of Ron DeSantis-type leadership or Donald Trump-type leadership?
Yeah.
I think so.
But you have to have an ability to not be concerned about what the pundit class is going to think.
You have to be willing to go against the grain sometimes, because you have to look at the facts, look at the data, and then present the best option for people, regardless of what the apparatus is going to say, regardless of what the press is going to say.
It seems like everyone's just itching for this fight.
Trump's thrown out a couple lines on this thing.
I keep telling my audience, look, I feel like I win either way, because if DeSantis doesn't run, he's our governor, and that's freaking great, and then I'll support Trump.
If they both run, they'll battle it out, and hopefully it doesn't get too nasty, and we get a better candidate out of it.
But what do you think?
For people, because I think a lot of people like them both, partly for the same reasons, partly for different reasons.
Where does that put you and what do you think they need to do?
Say what you want, but whether it's Mitt Romney, John McCain, God rest his soul, George W. Bush, we had seen the line of, let's just try to do the things that are possible, be leery of the press because they have more ink in their pen than you have words in your mouth and all that kind of other stuff.
And Donald Trump broke that mold and said, no, forget all that.
Those people don't even know what they're talking about.
Do the job and then let the people see the results and they'll reward you.
And so he is the catalyst for the new wave of Republican.
But if you're going to ask me what I think needs to happen, Donald Trump's speech announcing
for the presidency was exactly where he needs to be.
I mean, look, I would hope they would have a sit down and figure this thing out, whether that's Mar-a-Lago or the Governor's Mansion, whatever that place is.
They might want to do it in Orlando, somewhere neutral site or whatever, I don't know.
But I would hope that they would work it out.
Now, the reality of politics is sometimes that's not what happens.
So I'm not going to sit here and tell you what I would hope to see.
I'm going to tell you what I think I will see.
It's going to be rough.
I'm just going to tell you.
It's going to be rough.
Governor DeSantis has accorded himself very, very well.
He's led the state of Florida.
Biggest win in modern Florida history.
Nobody thought we would see election victories like this in Florida.
He's the tip of the spear of that.
You got to give the man credit for what he has accomplished.
Donald Trump is looking at this whole thing like I'm the one that's shown everybody how to do it.
There's an OJZ line.
I'll show you how to do this, son.
And that's Donald Trump.
And so I think that there's going to be some tough elbows in that race.
Let's just be very clear.
It's going to get rough.
It's going to be tough.
But I think at the end of the day, both gentlemen understand that the country is on the line.
Who comes out of that?
Man, Joe Biden might as well go ahead and pack his bags.
As much as the pundit class is throwing it out there and they keep asking the questions because it's clickbait and that's what people want to watch and see, I would rather the media actually focus on this FTX debacle, because there's some real stuff going on that has to be uncovered.
But I digress.
He has not made a decision.
Maybe he's made it in his mind, but nothing's really coming out, like, signaling this, here we go, here we go, here we go.
I think we gotta, like, pump the brakes.
Donald Trump has now come out, he's announced.
Let Ron DeSantis take the time, whatever that time might be, to decide what he's going to do.
And then we're going to have plenty of time for the fireworks, trust me.
Like, just to be straight with you, man, Like, it's still surreal that I'm here, that I'm doing this.
I told my colleagues, you know, after this conference chair thing, they were like, man, you know, it didn't work out.
How do you feel?
And I'm like, are you kidding me?
If you look at my life, going up from Brooklyn, New York, all the struggles I've been through, to being in a room doing this, man, I'm playing with house money, man.
So that part is static for me.
um now just keeping it real because this is what i do the petty backstabbing stuff in dc man i don't like that kind of stuff yeah like i'm a man if you feel a certain way say it yeah i will respect you if you do I don't do all the backtalk, backstabbing stuff.
Two guys born in Brooklyn fighting in the free state of Florida, pretty cool.
I got, all right, two more for you and then we'll let you go.
So just talk to me real quick about what's going on with the hurricane recovery, because as I told people, you are the congressman for, I mean, you got hit.
That's what's gonna take two years, in my opinion, to rebuild.
Now I wanna caution everybody.
Most of Southwest Florida is back up and running.
You know, our restaurants are open, our businesses are open, hotels, Airbnbs, you know, I think some of the boat rentals and stuff, you can still probably get your boats and get out to certain places.
Some of the places are still going to have to be repaired.
But Southwest Florida is open.
People are flying in and out right now as we speak.
But our barrier islands, our beaches, they're going to take some time to recover.
In Fort Myers Beach specifically, in Sanibel, in Bonita Beach.
The beach in Naples, you know, we're going to redo some stuff,
but we'll be back on track.
It's going to be fine.
It's just going to take time and some patience.
Now, I think we have the leadership to get that done.
Obviously, Governor DeSantis at the head of that has been phenomenal.
Our local leadership has done a tremendous job.
FEMA, SBA, we've been working in concert with them.
Everybody's pulling forward.
pulling forward, it's just going to take time to get it back.
The reality is, that storm, and I remember, I was at the National Hurricane Center because I was here in D.C.
when the storm made landfall.
And the modelers were telling me directly, it was tough to predict the track on this storm because it kept, they call it jogging, like it kept moving from here to there to here to there.
And it just kept jogging.
I think it was Tuesday.
late Monday into Tuesday before that storm hit.
We have people who evacuated from Tampa Bay into Fort Myers.
And they were shocked when they basically were in the epicenter of the storm
because all the modeling had showed Tampa Bay, Sarasota County.
And so that's kind of what happened.
It was tough, but I think in terms of response, in terms of preparedness and response, top-notch.