Clay Travis and Buck Sexton dissect the Bud Light CEO's ineffective statement and argue that transgender leadership in sports creates unfair advantages for biological women. They condemn the collapse of neutral political discourse, noting how Democrats only shift tactics after electoral defeats like losing New York. The trio analyzes Ron DeSantis as a viable 2024 nominee who must navigate Trump's authenticity while facing ruthless Democratic strategies regarding Biden's age. Ultimately, the conversation suggests that ideological ossification and cancel culture have destroyed civil debate, leaving only performative politics where consequences for errors remain minimal. [Automatically generated summary]
It is the most, we acknowledge that we have screwed up on an epic level, but we're just gonna try to put every buzzword we can think of into a statement on Friday afternoon to try to put this thing to bed.
And I don't think it's gonna work.
Because I'm curious on your... Buck and I have been talking about this, but there are... By the way, thank you.
But, so, the Bud Light thing, we've been talking about it certainly all week.
To me, what has kind of opened a lot of people's eyes is there are a ton of men who identify as women that are famous.
Right?
In the trans community.
There is virtually no one who is a woman who identifies as a man.
And so what I think a lot of people have started to ask the question of is, why is that?
And how did it become so commonplace and acceptable for, for instance, a man who identifies as a woman to be in charge of selling Nike sports bras, which really is insulting to women in many respects.
And yet, if Clay and I were hired to sell lingerie, for example, you know, people would say like, oh, maybe work out more, get a tan or something, and it's like, excuse me, how about some body positivity for the radio hosts out here?
Do you guys find, because you're doing a daily thing like me, and every morning I'm going through the stories, and it's just more of this trans BS, and I don't care, I truly, as an adult, live however you want to live, wear whatever you want to wear.
We need The View to say something historically, you know, illiterate or absurd.
But, you know, the left, they're passing these laws.
We talked about one today.
They're passing laws at the state level that are going to shield, shield is what they're calling it, but effectively prevent kids from having their parents notified if they run away from home, say they are transgender and want to have transgender affirmation.
In Washington now, they're about to sign it.
So if your 16-year-old, your 14-year-old runs away from home, obviously having mental health issues and problems to begin with, and says that he or she is trans, the state doesn't notify the parents.
So I can say without equivocation, that's absolutely psychotic.
Florida is now passing this thing that if you are a doctor that does this to underage kids, You're going to lose your medical license.
I'm completely fine with that.
A hundred percent.
I get that thing.
I get that thing.
Like, I mean it on a personal note.
If you're over 18 and you want to wear whatever you want to wear, and I suppose over 18, look, you want to do whatever you want to do with your body, like, go ahead.
What I would hear for a long time, because I saw this coming, right?
Do you remember, and we've talked about this on the show this week, but do you remember when John McEnroe got crushed for saying that Serena Williams would be like the 700th best men's tennis player?
So they started arguing, that was the beginning of this, that there's not really very much difference between men and women when it comes to athletic performance, which is laughably absurd.
And then they started saying, well it's not going to be a very big deal.
Why do you care if a man identifies as a woman?
And I think the Leah Thomas situation And we were actually talking about this in the car.
When Leah Thomas, Will Thomas, decides to become Leah Thomas, and wins an NCAA championship, and Riley Gaines swam against the Leah Thomas, and you see them standing side by side, and you've got like a 5'8 woman, which is a tall woman, next to a 6'3 man, biologically, with monster hands, monster feet, like these are not similar sized athletes.
I'm disappointed in myself because sometimes you know like you're driving in a car and you're like you know celebrates by twirling his penis like a like a helicopter and I was like ah you know I'll delete this just because I don't want to create a huge stir if I'm about to go to dinner.
I'm like, it's Friday, I'm going to go to dinner.
Maybe they'll clip this and it'll be a huge stir.
But if you have a penis and you're in the women's locker room, for almost all of recorded human history, you would be arrested.
And now it's supposed to be celebrated.
And so I think to the point here, we've moved from, let's be tolerant, to we're now going to exclude women from actually being able to be involved in women's athletics.
So I was visiting my now wife, then fiance, actually no it wasn't my fiance yet, but I was visiting her in Asheville, North Carolina, which I'd never been to before.
They had all the clerks in all the stores, all the employees, N95 masks.
Every single one of them.
It is 80 degrees outside, the summer of 2022, and they're all wearing N95.
And a lot of them are double masks.
Anyway, so, so don't, don't, it's like, don't drink and drive.
Don't tweet and vacation, because you never know when something's going to, whenever you do something you think is just sort of, you can chill out, is when actually everyone comes after you.
I think we're in a world now where, and Trump The whole Trump era made this much more apparent.
You never are punished for the wildest exaggeration as long as it got clicks and served your team, right?
So there's nothing you can say that is too crazy as long as it is within the ideology that you support, meaning people on the left, this anti-Trump stuff.
I mean, take examples of this.
There are people who are not only gainfully employed, but after all the Russia stuff, they are more famous.
And you've had guys who have come out and said that the January 6th Riot was worse than 9-11, worse than Pearl Harbor.
That's the kind of thing that in a sane world, people would be like, that person should never be on my show, TV, no one should listen to him, I think we should do a wellness check on him.
And instead, they're like, oh, we need to make this guy a contributor.
Because you guys are doing a similar thing on a daily basis as me, and I'm playing the clips from The View, and the stupid shit on MSNBC, and the liars on CNN.
And yes, we do it all, every week I can do it.
You know, they lied about this, they lied about that.
I think it's such a good question.
And my theory is the news cycle moves so fast that there's no reckoning.
And COVID is a perfect example.
and they end up working at the White House and everything like,
Cuomo lost his job for grabbing some woman across the belly or the tummy like years ago, but shoving elderly people by fiat into nursing homes full of COVID and calling for a million ventilators gets a $5 million book advance.
I mean, in some ways that's actually the most perfect encapsulation of what we're seeing.
You know, there's the stuff where, like, we make fun of The View and it's great fun and they deserve it and, you know, The View, those ladies are all making millions of dollars to be idiots and they think they're great and they go to the cocktail parties in the Upper West Side and, you know, that's all fair.
And then there are the things we talk about sometimes where there's just a bit of shock and there's sadness at how this is going to play out, right?
And what just happened in Chicago, for example, I mean, you know, you grew up in New York City, too, right?
You were there in the 90s.
If you... I was told as a kid growing up in New York City by my school, my little Catholic school, to take off my jacket and my tie every day so that it was less likely that I would be beaten and mugged.
They would send that letter.
That's how common it was.
And this is a real thing in New York City.
We'd have a security guard on the block where I went to school because so many kids had knives pulled out and put up to their throat and their wallets were being taken.
We see these things that sometimes happen, and one of the things that I think we've lost in this, and you used to have some of this on your show in the earlier days, when I feel like the left would actually come on and throw down.
I got into this business, I was a CNN contributor for a little while, and I was like, We're gonna fight, right?
With ideas.
We're gonna fight with ideas.
Never happens anymore.
There's no debates anymore.
Why am I talking about this?
One, I think it just makes the media less interesting.
But two, Chicago, the mayor's race, what just happened there.
The highest crime, most violent parts of the city voted the most overwhelmingly for the guy who is going to make the city probably even less safe than it was under Lori Lightfoot, has all of the wrong ideas, all of the wrong inclinations.
I just wish there was someone who could try to represent that side.
I would actually like to have a real discussion with them.
I'd like to have a real, like, please God, make me understand how you don't see that more people are going to be shot in your city, in your neighborhood, because of this decision that is so obviously bad.
Well, we got into Trump-DeSantis stuff, which I want to talk to you guys about, but he said that, talking about the crime in New York City, he said someone came up to me the other day and said, he said, what does it feel like to have your life's work ruined?
And the guy was almost crying as he said it, and then Rudy said something to the effect of, I started tearing up.
Because his life's work of cleaning up that city that you grew up in, that I remember, I grew up in Long Island, but going into the city where my grandparents lived before Rudy, when it was Dinkins those years, and the end of Koch, it was a freaking disaster and disgusting.
Which I grew up, we talk about this as a show because, you know, I mean, Clay is a different generation, and so I like asking him about what it was like.
But you had this sense that LA, and it really was, and what's so interesting is now people say, oh, but all this, well, if liberal governance is so bad, It became this powerhouse when it was a Republican stronghold, really.
And then, increasingly, with a lot of illegal immigration and a lot of just demographic and other changes in the state of California, it became more and more left-wing.
And it takes a while.
This is the thing about New York.
It takes a while.
When you take over a place, whether it's a company, A home, you know, a car.
When you take control, take possession of something that's really nice and fine-tuned and working really, really well, it can sometimes take a while to actually destroy it, right?
To show that you're not doing, you're not a good caretaker of this.
And that's what I feel like with California now, this notion of that as like the promised land and, you know, all of our TV shows, Beverly Hills 90210, you know.
And now you think of California and you think of, like, communist teachers unions, Gavin Newsom being a psychopath, and, you know, disorder and decay in the streets and tons of traffic.
But the problem is, and I think this is what Rudy Giuliani is such a good example of, And Buck's right about Brandon Johnson in Chicago.
Until people realize that their choices are destroying their communities, nothing is going to change.
And I actually think it's more difficult because he left New York City.
You left L.A.
So you're going to make Florida redder.
You're, and Tennessee's getting redder, and Texas is getting redder, and what you're going to have is such a massive cultural conflict, right, between blue bluer and red redder.
And at some point, I think that is going to, really, if you could set up a perfect Red vs. Blue battle.
It should be DeSantis vs. Gavin Newsom.
And we should have it out.
Is California better than Florida?
Was the response of Gavin Newsom better during COVID than the response of Florida?
Because this is a great stat.
DeSantis won Florida.
By a higher percentage than Newsom won California.
So I think the nation needs to have that battle for there to be a true reckoning.
My biggest fear is just there have to be consequences for wrong decisions in a political process.
And right now it seems like we're in a consequence-free environment where, to Buck's point, it really doesn't matter.
It's harder now, I think, also for people to be cancelled than it was, because I do think attention spans have shifted so rapidly now that if there's a silver lining to it, I think it's that you have to do something really crazy for people to tend to drop into all those things, whereas there was a time You know, people forget, like Brendan Eich, remember that guy who gave like 50 bucks to Prop 8 in California?
Same time that Barack Obama's running as a traditional marriage candidate, and then years later they're like, yeah, you're toast.
You're out.
You're gone.
I mean, that sort of stuff I actually think was happening a little more a few years ago, not because the left hasn't gotten Less crazy.
I think they're more crazy.
But I do think that their ability to both... to Alinsky, right?
Freeze the target, focus on the target, isolate the target.
That's a lot harder for them.
And also people realize, on the right, there's no apology tour, there's no bend the knee, there's no, hey, can you guys just, like, let me off this one time.
It's extend, Clay Travis style, double birds to the camera, and say, you know, this is how we roll.
For people who do not know, this is like five years ago, I went on talking about Jemele Hill at ESPN, and I was defending her free speech rights, and I was saying ESPN shouldn't be firing people for tweets or anything else that's going on, right?
And then I went on CNN and I said, and I've been saying this on my radio show for years, I only believe in two things completely, the First Amendment and boobs, because a heterosexual man, neither have ever let me down, right?
And it's better than saying what I had found, I'm a First Amendment absolutist, because people get hung up on what does that even mean?
And this is a little bit more funny way, a funnier way of saying that.
And she just lost her mind and wanted me to apologize.
And I just doubled down.
There's another guy on, and we were talking about this yesterday.
It's gone viral on TikTok now, right?
Like new generations of kids are finding it.
Because the apology thing of, oh, she immediately tried to get me to apologize.
And then it was the number one trending subject in America.
Are we circling back the trans thing for a second?
Because there's one thing that I've been saying to Clay since we started the show, and you know I have in a couple of different, you know I started, people don't remember this now, I think it's kind of funny, I started the show rising Which later became, it was with Crystal Ball, who was at MSNBC, and Crystal and I always had a very, now I sound like Trump, we had a beautiful relationship, we disagreed on everything, beautiful relationship, but no, we always got along, and she's actually, for her point of view, I think she's talented, but she's very left-wing, I don't know if you know her at all.
And now she does that show with Sager, and then later on I actually did a podcast with Mark Lamont Hill, who again, great guy, do you know Mark at all?
He's like a super fun guy to hang out with, you know, really, you know, he's witty, he's amusing and everything, but also super left-wing politics.
But from, you know, spending time with them and just sort of hearing also conversations around them with some of their colleagues and other people, you get a sense of what the true left position, because they'll actually get heat on the left from people that think that they're not hardcore enough, right?
Or they're not going hard.
So I've learned from years of doing that with other hosts, What the real, like, the maximalist position is.
So, for example, on defund police, it's actually not defund police, as I'm sure you know, it's abolish.
Right.
Abolish police, abolish prisons.
That's like the pure, pure... And they refer to it as an abolition movement, not, without obvious connection to, you know, the righteousness of the abolition movement of slavery.
So that's what the hardcore left wants there.
The hardcore left, the true position of the left on transgender issues is not You know, be nice to people, like, don't, you know, let people live their life, like the stuff you're saying, right?
Like, let people be who they are and do their thing.
The true position is that these are a transgender man who becomes a woman, right, whatever, is a woman in every sense, indistinguishable in how she should be not only treated legally, but socially, in athletics, professionally, everything else.
It is a woman 100% the same, to the point where, and I've actually posed this to, like, leftists before, true leftists, So, is a heterosexual male supposed to be attracted to a trans female or else they're transphobic?
They would say yes.
They would say that's transphobia.
It is a woman indistinguishable from, you know, the mothers that gave us life.
A woman 100%.
That is the definition of crazy, which is why it's so important to just not, not only not cede this ground, but to look at the whole argument and where this came from and how this happened.
I'm trying with him so hard, but I know at the end, even if it's DeSantis, and even if Kali goes back into lockdowns, he will still support the Democrat.
It's just how it is.
You know, I think there's something to be said if you're a 67-year-old worth $100 million, you can have a set of luxury beliefs where it's because it's not your kids.
Clay told me this early on, we teamed up, and I'll let him go into the sports things more, but just it was so funny because he told me, I was like, dude, how woke is... because I come from the news commentary background and all that stuff straight up, and he comes from the sports background, and I was like, how woke is sports media?
He's not a huge sports guy, but you know, but for OutKick, there is no one out there that would say, in all, think about how crazy this is, in all of sports media, that would say men should compete against men and women should compete against women.
And think about it, on ESPN, They have moved from, okay, we only focus on sports, to they ran during, I think women's celebration month is now March or whatever, I can't keep up with all the different months, but they ran a Leah Thomas is a women's sports champion one minute advertisement basically from ESPN.
And so I look at this and There is no one on the air on ESPN that would go on and say, this is wrong.
And so to your point, to me this is emblematic of where we are, that even things that are biological realities, there's hardly anyone that would even make this fight.
And I look at it and I say, there's a knife fight for the 25% of woke sports media, and then there's outkick.
And we win.
Because it's like, you're fighting on something that is an objective farce.
But I wonder, I think Buck's right.
I think in three years, if you don't want to bang a chick with a dick, you're going to be considered transphobic.
Here's the problem, though, and the reason, and then I know you want to trump your standards.
By the way, PBD So it's hard, because there's the Presidential Daily Brief, which I used to work for, which is the PBD, and then there's the P-B-B-D, which is Patrick Bet-David, right?
So I get these switched up.
By the way, Clay threw me under the bus yesterday with a little old-school reference to my prom date on the PBD show.
We were all trying to watch Game 6, so kids, we were all running down to the bar, but they wouldn't let us stay at the bar, but then suddenly the TV's all switched over.
We had a woman, I'm gonna guess she, based on both her name and the fact that her email was definitely an AOL email, who was one of our esteemed readers, who I think is of the older generation.
When I did local sports radio in Nashville, it wasn't even just me.
We would have callers come in.
And just go off, right?
Which is great radio.
And you're supposed to hit the dump button.
And sometimes you're like, you forget or you punch the wrong button or whatever.
So back in the day when I did local sports talk radio, I mean there were people like, we definitely violated some FCC rules over like what could be said.
But I've never as a solo host, I don't believe I have ever, ever cursed.
I mean, you asked a question earlier about, and I said this the other day, because we talked to a lot of people in their 20s and 30s, and they're like, hey, how do you move into media?
And I bet you would agree with this.
I would have been far more nervous being 100% honest if I didn't own Outkick.
Oh yeah, of course.
Because I knew that ultimately I controlled my own fate.
And even if you're trying to be completely honest, in the back of your mind, if somebody else controls your job, it's hard to say exactly what you think.
Right, because it used to, I mean, people were like, you worked at CNN, I'm like, yeah, I was there, Kayleigh was there, Dana Lash worked at CNN, like, you go down, like, there's all these people who are right-wing, who used to be CNN contributors, and would, you know, present a conservative point of view.
In the Trump era, it just, the place changed.
I mean, when I say, and I mean in 2016, it went from, and even like the producers, like, people were kind of, you were, you were like, like, unclean, like, you were a bad, If you came on air to say good things.
So the funny thing is they actually tried to extend me, but I've told Clay, it's because I used to do a lot of counterterrorism analysis for them because of CIA, CTC.
No big deal.
And so they would have me do their, you know, panels on terrorism, stuff like that.
But I said I wasn't going to keep the, I had no job.
So my contract ended at the 2016 election I was done.
So when Trump won, It's like, do you want to stay here and see how this is?
And the answer was no, but even just the institutionally, the whole place got more and more hostile.
And I mean, I remember this, like I, so I grew up cause you know, you, you were like a moderate and you were like a communist who's come over, which is, which is exciting.
Left-wing, I know, but it used to be basically the best fights between talking heads on TV, so it was actually a really fun site because it was like, you know, people throw down.
Where does that even happen anymore?
What forum is there?
Bill Marshall, they've got, you know, they've had you on, me on.
And they've promised me many, many times and canceled me many times, and I just don't want to voice it.
At this point, I would be like, I feel like I did what I had to do with Bill, and it would almost be ridiculous to have me on.
Actually, I don't think I've even said this on air, but I went there a couple weeks ago, because I was in L.A.
for something else, and I went to the show, and for years, for literally 20 years, I've been trying to get on Politically Incorrect, even before that.
So I've been trying to sit down with this guy forever.
I went, I'm backstage, and I've been backstage many times, and met all the producers, EPs, blah, blah, blah, and was always selling me.
I was trying to sell myself, like, let me on.
Bill doesn't get the left, what's really happening?
For the first time ever, I could not, I swear to you, I don't mean this patting myself on the back, I was just like, I don't give a shit, and all of the producers were coming up to me and being like, oh, we don't know what you've been on.
I can tell you from single guy life back in the day, I mean you were single I think for a long time too, but the moment you don't care is when they all start to care, right?
The moment you're like, yeah, I don't know if I'm going to call you, whatever, they're just like, what do you mean?
I swear to you, if I got a text as we were sitting here like, you want to do it this Friday, I would view it in a way as more of a headache than anything else.
Like, I don't feel like I have anything to prove in that way anymore.
Right, but so my point is just that there's really no forum left.
I mean, think about it.
If they were to take, you know, one of us, three of us, whatever, and put us there with some people who have, you know, the thing is, it has to be, it's almost like a boxing match.
You have to have people of relatively equal weight, right?
Like, I was invited recently to, by somebody, they're like, oh, will you debate, like, some, like, I don't know, some, like, TikTok influence or something.
This is their friend of mine.
And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna debate some guy I've never heard of before who has, you know, But there should be a place where we can get back to those 2010-era, media-ite, Thunderdome, throw-down debates.
I mean, I remember Chris Hitchens, RIT, you know, throwing the middle finger up to the Bill Maher audience, like, there used to be this stuff, and dude, it's all gone now.
But the truth is, and I know this is easy for us to say, but this is a failure of the left, not of the right.
We all would have done it.
When I was still on the left and my show was starting to take off because I was complaining about the left, from the left, I would have Ben Shapiro on and Larry Elder and Prager and all these guys, and I would get hate only from the left.
Why would you even sit down with them?
The people on the right would be like, Reuben, you seem like a bit of a nutbag, like a lefty nutbag, but it's nice you treat them with respect.
We were in D.C.
two weeks ago.
I interviewed, I think, 16 Republicans.
Every person we reached out to said yes, and then three couldn't do it.
Mitch McConnell fell, so he couldn't do it.
Rand Paul's assistant got stabbed in DC, so he couldn't do it.
And then there was the shooting in Tennessee, so Marsha Blackburn had to bail.
We got everybody else.
We reached out to, I think, 20 Democrats.
No responses from 19.
Rashida Tlaib at least said no.
So that tells you it right there.
I'm not known as a hardcore... People used to criticize me.
And, by the way, the answer after a while was, well, now it's no longer worth me going there.
But there was a time when you would actually be able to get some shots in.
Like, I crushed Alan Dershowitz in a gun debate once because he doesn't know anything about guns.
My son's a brilliant constitutional law professor, doesn't know a damn thing about firearms, right?
I mean, you have these opportunities.
I mean, you know, Van Jones and I debated BLM 1.0.
Like, you have these chances.
Now, the host would cheat and like, you know, step on you and not the other person and all that sort of stuff.
But I feel like one of the reasons why, you know, we're sitting here, we're just talking about how crazy they are all the time now, is that no one has to defend their ideas anymore.
In any forum, anywhere, anytime.
It's all just, you know, amen corner for the left.
But Richard Dreyfuss, an actor not known for politics particularly.
But he wrote a book about civics.
And for an hour, that's all he talked to me about.
He just wants to find a place that you can have these debates.
And I was like, listen, that's really what I set out to do and what I would still do.
But we have one side that simply will not do it.
The thing is, they're winning despite not doing it.
And the reason, in real time, when you're wondering why the guests are so shitty, it's like, he knows if he puts good conservatives on, or good libertarians, or whatever the hell we all are, if he puts any of us on, we will do it well.
Do you remember when Dennis Prager was on there, like two years ago, and it was shocking that they put him on at all, and Dennis started talking about transgender stuff, and they're mocking him, and making fun of him, and everything Dennis said turned out to be true.
One thing that I underestimated in all of this, and it's partly what I saw with COVID and also what you're seeing in some of these cities, is that because of the ideological ossification, right, because of that hardening that's occurred where no one's exposed these ideas, what we would think would be corrective pain Doesn't actually result in, Chicago is a perfect example, this doesn't actually result in, because they're like, no, no, this is part of the process.
And you start to see it's almost a Soviet, early Soviet Bolshevik level thinking of, all right, like there's going to be famine, but on the other side of famine is going to be the utopia, the promised land.
And so in places like San Francisco, for example, people say, like, well, hold on.
People are fleeing.
There's trash everywhere.
There's open-air drug use.
There's more overdoses than ever before.
All the metrics show it's getting worse, but they're just thinking, well, this just shows how broken and and racist and oppressive the system actually is.
So we need an even more radical solution over the long term and double down on this in the short term.
Now, I do think that breaks at some point, like they start to lose more people.
I'm just saying that their threshold for that pain point is way more than I had anticipated.
It did used to be the case that Like, even the notion of flag-waving.
And there have been articles written in the New York Times about this more recently, how it has changed.
But, you know, Democrats, and I mean literally flag-waving, right?
Like, not in the figurative sense, that flag-waving was something both sides did, and it was who represents America better, who has a better vision.
Who loves the country more.
And now, from the left, flag-waving is scary.
Unless it's the trans flag, or the UN flag, or the American flag.
This was a thing during COVID.
You may have even seen this.
The New York Times wrote about it.
In Long Island.
Yeah, in Long Island.
People see too many American flags.
Like, oh, that's scary to me.
And it just goes to show the psychology of this and how much it's changed.
And the other part of it is, It's amazing to me to see how they will say that our side has become the radical side when all of the positions of the Democrat Party that felt like they were on the slippery slope ten years ago have just been rocketing down that slope without question.
And when do we actually get the beginning of a real fight?
Because what we talk about on our show is, first of all, we don't think we're in a position, because the legacy of Rush and the audience that we are fortunate to have on the radio show, we don't get involved in Republican primes.
He talked about Trump, supportive of Trump, but, you know, gave a fair shake to talking about Ted Cruz and Rubio and everybody else, you know, assessing it and really approaching it like we do as, you know, balls and strikes or, you know, the coach of the team or whatever you want to say, and this demand that people You seem to have, in the media right now, some other people to come in at this... Can we at least see what the campaigns look like before we're supposed to make a decision?
That's also why politics... It's funny because your ability to use sports metaphors to explain politics is incredible, but also the more politics becomes like sports, the more dangerous it is in a certain sense.
He's very proud of me when I'm like, Clay, on this one we're going to have to drop back and punt because we don't want to get a two-point Well, I mean, you know what I mean?
My gut feeling is Well, until it's made, it's not made, right?
Like, we all assume, but until it happens... This is what we say, by the way, about... And we don't mean this, and this is one of these things, like, Media Matters is going to get this one day, but who cares?
I mean, if you don't have a Media Matters vertical of 820... Oh, I love Media Matters.
But everything that we're saying about 2024 and the landscape of American politics...
Joe Biden's 80 years old.
Let me talk about this.
When you're 80 years old, when you're 80, I was saying this, like I remember, you know, spending time with, I had a grandfather in New York City that I was pretty close to, and spending time with him at 80, and like 80 is 80.
So point being here, you know, if Joe Biden was truly, between now and the election, by natural causes, health, just let's say, clearly incapacitated in some way, it changes everything, right?
So all this projections about the matchup and everything else, So this notion that we're supposed to set in stone right now what 2024 on our side, even on the Republican side, is supposed to look like, to me, it's just this is a process for a reason that has to play out.
I mean, what are the foreign policies?
What are the projections of the top candidates?
I do think it's funny, and we've got to be honest about this one.
It does seem like all the Republicans running so far, DeSantis obviously isn't in.
The other ones, they're running for positions in a Trump cabinet.
that you can't really think of who, you know, your dreamiest dream candidate is right now.
You really, if you want to win, and the one thing I will say about Democrats that I really do have a begrudging respect for is their sheer ruthlessness at whatever works.
They take a Stalin-esque approach to winning here in America, which is just like, however I'm going to stay in power is what I'm going to do.
If you're looking at it from the perspective of independents and persuadable voters, that notion of somebody who's clearly visually, you know, it also gets into what are these people going to make their final determination on?
These aren't people that are following politics generally.
If you're an independent, People might argue this, but I think you're kind of, you know, open to things and maybe you're gonna just go with, you know, last few weeks before the election, like, this guy looks good, like, I'm gonna give him a shot.
And the optics of it, I think, are very clear with a, then it'll be, what, 82?
Yeah.
Versus a guy who is clearly in his prime and also has really put points on the board.
And let's remember, Joe Biden, the only points Joe Biden ever put on the board are getting re-elected for 40 years to basically be a show for the credit card companies in Delaware.
Like, this guy is a joke who stood for nothing his whole life, so there was nothing ever impressive about him.
So, I think the weakness is purely aesthetic and subjective versus policy.
I don't think it's policy-based.
I think it's just not possible to hit him on policy.
I think the way you could go after him is that he's Scott Walker.
Meaning, great at that... I'm not, by the way, I'm not saying I agree with this, but I'm saying the way you could sort of attack DeSantis and I think not have it be... When they say he's not good on COVID, I mean, the two of us, you know, you were living in the free state of Tennessee, right?
The two of us are sitting here going, We literally moved here.
We uprooted our lives because he was so good on COVID, because we saw what was happening here.
So that's just, it's actually insulting.
It's insulting the intelligence of Trump voters when he says DeSantis was bad on COVID, because that's just crazy talk.
Okay.
But Scott Walker was a really solid governor, popular at the time, obviously purple state, difficult, good with the teachers union stuff, dealing with this.
And then he ran for president and just for whatever reason on the national stage it just sort of went like, just sort of collapsed of its own weight and didn't have that national level sizzle.
Do I think that's likely to happen with DeSantis?
No.
But do I think it's fair to say that maybe he's not yet ready for that big stage and the theatrics of it and the retail politics and everything else?
Fine.
On the policy ground, I have no answer by the way.
The idea that maybe he isn't the most perfected, and I actually don't take this argument, but like, to just kind of give the devil his due, that he maybe isn't, Trump is better on TV?
Sure.
Like, do I think if it was now Trump and DeSantis on the debate stage at the end, they'd get rid of everybody else.
Is Trump a better debater?
Will Trump have more zingers?
I mean, I was at the debate that DeSantis did with Charlie Crist.
He's not the best debater.
There was a moment, actually, where Charlie Crist says to him, you won't even commit To not running for president, will you, DeSantis?
And DeSantis won't answer.
Now, the reason he wouldn't answer was because they had agreed in writing beforehand, you will not question the other candidate.
So DeSantis was trying to be honest.
He was trying to abide by the rules that they set.
Now, Trump would have never abided by the rules, right?
And Trump would have turned back at him and had a great singer and Charlie Criss was horrible at every level.
But the point is, That may not be his strength.
And if at the end, if we're just looking for a television star, I know that's not what you're asking for, but at the end, if that's really just what we want, then we will get Trump again as the nominee, but he will not be president.
He's incredibly comfortable in his own skin and I think that translates and so I also think that if I were like sketching out the Trump, so let me tell you also the DeSantis attack.
The DeSantis attack should be you lost to Joe Biden and you will lose to him again and Biden is the worst president in any of our lives.
I think it should be, look what I set out to do in Florida, look what I've done, look at the 1,200 people that move here a day, a million in three years, nobody's leaving, highest ever... You have a guest house, by the way, because real estate here, very expensive in Florida, Ruben.
I think it's going to get nasty, and that pudding ad that we were talking about when we started, is so ridiculous that I think that both of these guys are going to get rolling around down in the muck.
And my biggest... I don't know that DeSantis will do it.
And then there are going to be pictures taken, and then the crazy people of the internet are going to take these pictures, and they're going to say that we're coordinating things.
We're working against certain people, working for people, but we're just having a drink.
Well, again, this is the world that exists now, because 2022, everybody's on the same team.
Didn't go the way we wanted, right?
Let's be fair.
For most races, they were close.
2023 is the Alabama, Auburn, Michigan, Ohio State, you know, Yankees, Red Sox.
And then 2024, everybody will come back together and sing Kumbaya, unless Trump decides to run as an independent.
Then everything would fall apart.
But look, I mean, I think it's going to get really nasty throughout much of 2023.
And I don't think there's anything wrong, but you guys are like, I don't think you should rule out.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Things getting nasty because I think ultimately what it does is Biden's not running against anybody, right?
He's already an awful candidate.
If they allow him to be on the stage with whoever emerges from the Republican primary... Well, I hate to tell you, he could drop dead or they could just kick him out.
I don't even know technically how you do it, but it is clear that that thing is in motion where if Biden goes down or literally cannot speak or whatever it is, they're going to figure out a way for him to be gathered in Guatemala.
I think that they will, especially if Trump is a nominee, I think that they will say that they can't platform Trump and that's the way they'll avoid Biden having to debate him.
Because he's so toxic, he's such a threat.
And the other question that I have that's out there floating around is, to what extent, as this Biden ridiculousness continues to roll, To what extent might they, behind the scenes, start spending money to help Trump and attack DeSantis?
Like they did in 22.
They claim that Trump is this existential threat, but then everybody who supported Trump, they helped to boost him up by spending money.