Andrew and Spencer Klavan dissect Hollywood's collapse under woke ideology, citing Disney's failures and the toxic "Me Too" movement as evidence of a crumbling industry. They critique US leadership's feckless handling of the Ukraine war, warning that Zelensky's NATO demands risk World War III while ignoring threats from Putin and Xi Jinping. Finally, they analyze Trump's polling lead despite indictments, arguing his message is diluted by rage and debating whether he should enter debates to avoid appearing weak against DeSantis, concluding that conservative infighting remains premature with six months left in the primary season. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, using our dial up modem, I am told we are now live on the internet.
I'm Dave Rubin, this is The Rubin Report, and we've got another Friday Roundtable extravaganza for you.
And this is a Rubin Report first, because joining me today is host of The Andrew Klavan Show, and author of A Strange Habit of Mine, Andrew Klavan, and host of The Young Heretics Show, and author of How to Save the West, Spencer Clavin, and yes, you may have noticed they both have the same name because they are a father-son duo.
I just had a feeling maybe you guys, you're very busy, successful careers, maybe you just hadn't connected in a while and I wanted to bring you together here on the Rubin Report mostly to talk about trans issues and other crazy things happening in the world.
But before we do anything, because you are a father-son duo, Andrew, you have written what, like 87 books?
Speaking of those rays, real quick before we get into the meat of the show and we're going to recap all the kind of craziness of the week from the woke stuff to Ukraine and some Trump to Santa stuff and a bunch more.
Andrew, you mentioned that you're actually on vacation in California right now, which sounds completely psychotic.
You live in Virginia.
Spencer, you're obviously in Nashville with the Daily Wire guys, but Andrew, real quick, because you've been in the biz for a long time, we mentioned right before we started that there's this writer's strike right now, which now the actors are getting in on.
I thought maybe you could just give us a little, like, minute synopsis on what you think's going on there, and then we'll jump into everything else.
Well, the actors joining the writers is a big deal because it will shut down production.
It'll even shut down promotion of big movies coming out.
The issues are really not that complicated.
The streaming revolution has changed the business and everybody, you know, some people want the business to go back the way it was, but there are some serious issues like residuals.
You used to be on TV.
If you had a hit show, you collected money every time the show was played.
Now, with streaming, they just put it up there, and you get the money up front, but you never get any of the success money.
You don't succeed when the show succeeds.
And AI is the other thing, because so many TV shows are sold by rote that AI couldn't write them easily.
The thing is, we're not going back to the past.
I mean, AI is here.
It's going to do what it does.
Actors should have a right to their images.
You shouldn't be able to use their images without permission.
Uh, and streaming is here to stay and you've just got to figure out a way to get paid.
But what's not coming back is the day of the, you know, 20 writer, writer rooms, uh, that lasted for 26 weeks.
Those shows are just gone and you can't bring them back.
And as that, you know, and the people that they're fighting against the people, these unions can be a little too lefty, a little bit too happy to take to the streets on the one hand, but the
people that they're up against are people who would literally rip the back of your spine out for a nickel.
And so, it is going to be an interesting, interesting thing to see who caves in first because
This thing that just happened with Sound of Freedom.
Because conservatives tend to be very stupid about culture, they don't realize what a huge deal this is.
This is a non-Hollywood distributed.
Distribution is the hardest thing.
That's where the big guys take over.
And they didn't distribute it through Hollywood.
They distributed it through Angel Studios, which does The Chosen.
They humiliated Indiana Jones by having 2,000 fewer theaters and yet doing better business for a day and better business theater by theater all together.
This is a Christian picture.
The left hates it.
It's against child molesting, so the left doesn't understand it.
What's wrong with child molesting, they think.
And yet it was a huge success, completely independently done.
This is this is a big threat to the business coming down the pike, and it's all to the good for those of us on the right.
You know, there's so much prestige lag that as conservatives, we sit here and we shake our fists and we say, oh, the you know, the Ivy Leagues and the Hollywood institutions and all the major culture centers, they've been totally captured.
They just produce garbage and it's politically motivated.
And we still send our kids to Ivy League schools because we want the fancy credential.
We want the you know, the note on the degree.
that's going to make us look special in the eyes of the people that hate us.
And gradually with movies like this that you're talking about that I think we start to catch up
slowly realize that you can actually make stuff now in these totally new ways,
it's kind of renegade ways, that will replace some of those old supposedly prestigious institutions.
Wait, don't say the ending because I am in season 4 episode 7.
I watched it last night.
I don't know how it ends.
Don't say anything about that.
Okay.
Actor Brian Cox, who of course plays Logan Roy in the show, he was on with Piers Morgan a couple days ago talking about social media and wokeness and its overall effect on society.
Take a look.
unidentified
Are things worse now, or is our perception of life worse because of things like social media inflaming everything?
Well, I don't think social media helps.
It hinders rather than helps, and I think it points up Too readily inadequacies that we can actually, and the whole woke, well we've talked about this before, the whole woke culture I think is truly awful.
And the shaming culture.
And the shaming culture.
Which I really feel quite strongly about.
This incessant need to shame and bury people.
And I don't know where it comes from.
I don't know who are the arbiters of this shaming.
And it's very hard to pin them down and it turns out it's usually a bunch of millennials.
And who gave them the halos?
I don't know.
I mean, it's extraordinary.
Well, I mean, I suppose in a way they're probably saying, well, you've all screwed it up, so we may as well do something about it.
But the idea that we shouldn't be celebrating who we are, what we do, the idea that we should constantly be slapping ourselves in the head for things that happened hundreds of years ago, it's just absurd and it's ugly and it's pessimistic and it's dark and people don't want to go to the theater to see it.
So they can watch more entertaining things on TikTok.
And by the way, it's not that it's just destroying the creative part of Hollywood, which is very obvious.
Look what it's done to everything.
Star Wars, for example, would be a good one.
Bob Iger basically put out a video yesterday in an interview saying, oh, we're kind of scaling back on it.
He's admitting they destroyed it now.
But you guys will find this interesting.
The guy, the lighting guy who did two of my studios when I lived in Los Angeles was a multiple time Emmy Award winning lighting guy throughout the business.
He had been in the business for about 40 years, about 65 years old.
He was a liberal his entire life.
And we would talk about politics sometimes.
And he'd be like, Dave, you're kind of crazy.
And then during COVID, He was basically told he is a white guy of a certain age, and he should retire.
That's what the studio told him.
And then I handed him my book, my first book, and he read it, and he said, Dave, now I get it.
And he's basically hanging on to a career that almost doesn't exist anymore, not having anything to do with his skills, because those are pretty awesome, but having everything to do with his skin color.
Spencer, Hollywood, crumbling, you're in Nashville.
Well, you know, you walk into the Daily Wire offices and every third person that you meet is a refugee from ESPN, Disney, I mean, ABC, these enormous media corporations that are bleeding top talent because of this idiot philosophy that white people don't get to speak or eat anymore, essentially.
You know, it's a genuine self-own that the universities have done as to themselves as well. Harvard, Yale, Princeton are now
effectively, effectively credentializing institutions for woke theology.
They don't offer you an education.
They offer you the imprimatur of a really sick philosophy.
And that's kind of what Hollywood's doing to itself as well. I love watching Brian Cox play the
real life Logan Roy in that interview.
I mean, this is one of a number of guys, Logan Roy is one of them, but the guy from Parks and
Recreation, the Nick Offerman character, the Alec Baldwin character in 30 Rock, the left thinks
these people are the bad guys and they present them as these sort of mean, nasty antagonist men
that say nasty things. But, you know, I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about
But they don't understand that the reason audiences love that show is because of those guys who say these uncomfortable things that are now forbidden by this weird speech code that they've all imposed upon themselves.
And as Dad is saying, you know, you watch the way that this has just strangled people in the business.
By the way, not just white people.
I can't imagine it's all that much fun to be Denzel Washington, you know, and one of the great actors of your generation, and to have your whole opus, your whole life's work, reduced to this kind of tokenism. Black lives matter. Great.
That's what we're going to say about the man who just delivered one of the best
performances of Macbeth in living memory.
It's appalling. And I imagine that nobody likes it. So I love that Brian Cox is saying it. I hope
that it keeps going. But sort of selfishly, I kind of want all of these people, keep doing it,
unidentified
keep alienating all of these great people. Like, come and bring them over to the Daily Wire.
Iger made an amazing statement yesterday where he said that they're basically their TV and streaming arms are not going to be core to their company's profits.
I thought, yeah, guess what?
Well, also on that and then on the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week is a story saying that Disney parks are emptying out.
And Iger is saying, oh, it's absolutely absurd that we're trying to sexualize your kid when Chris Ruppo has released videotapes of their Skype sessions or Zoom sessions where they're saying, yeah, we're going to sexualize your kids.
Yeah, these guys, they do not know.
They're so surrounded by people like themselves.
They do not know we hate them.
And they do not know that when we sit around and say, you know, men can't become women.
You know, listen, live any way you please, but men can't become women.
They don't understand that 99% of the country agrees with us and the people who don't agree with us are lying.
You know, they agree with us too.
And so they don't realize that until, I mean, the big one is this Bud Light thing with Dylan Mulvaney.
One can of beer and they've fallen off the top.
The number one beer in America has fallen out of the top 10 and is still losing money.
Just because people are offended by being forced to lie, by having the FBI take their tweets off, by being hounded for speaking the simple truth that we all know, this has gutted the Hollywood industry.
And Spencer is absolutely right.
You know, you walk into the Daily Wire and people are creating things, they're saying things, they're not afraid.
We're constantly being taken off YouTube for speaking simple truths.
I mean, things that everybody knows.
How long do they think they can go in this country, this diverse, crazy, free country, how long do they think they can go silencing the truth before it just rises up like a gigantic dragon and bites them on the ass?
And that is the moment, that moment is coming now, and it's happening now, and only because conservatives don't really understand the culture that well.
You know, I tweeted it out this morning, and I'm not kidding.
What a beautiful ending to the disastrous "Star Wars" Disney story would be.
Now that they've wrecked Star Wars, and they're also in the tank, and Iger admitted that DeSantis beat them, all of this stuff, why doesn't George Lucas come in?
I checked this morning, he's worth about 4.2 billion dollars.
Why doesn't he come in, buy Star Wars back on the cheap, And then just fix it, and then, I know he doesn't want anything to do with it anymore because the fans have all gone crazy, but like, what a beautiful ending that would be.
But let's shift to something else, also related somewhat to Hollywood, but I thought it had kind of bigger cultural ramifications.
This Jonah Hill story, we covered this yesterday, I'm just gonna read a bit from the Daily Wire.
Jonah Hill's surfer ex-girlfriend, Sarah Brady, released a number of text messages she said were attempts to control her behavior.
Hill explained what he expected of her with regard to the way she presented herself if they were going to be dating seriously.
One of the texts read, plain and simple, if you need surfing with men, boundaryless inappropriate relationships with men, to model, to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit, to post sexual pictures, Friendships with women who are in unstable places and from your wild recent past, beyond getting a lunch or coffee or something respectful.
I am not the right partner for you.
If these things bring you to a place of happiness, I support it and there will be no hard feelings.
These are my boundaries for a romantic partnership, my boundaries with you based on the way these actions have hurt our trust.
Spencer, let me start with you on this one.
When I read this yesterday, I was like, man, not only is everything he said there completely within bounds, even if someone was arguing that to some degree, OK, he doesn't want her to model, maybe that's like for somebody, maybe that's a bit much.
He was being clear and honest about what he wants, and it seems to me that that is what young people need more than anything these days.
No one is setting boundaries, no one's saying what they want, and understanding what they believe to even say it in the first place.
I thought it was beautiful, and of course the media is now calling him a misogynist and the rest of it.
I mean, this was a real mask off moment because he's doing everything that men are constantly being told to do.
He's being forthright and clear about his hopes for the relationship.
He's doing so in a respectful way.
He's using language pulled right out of a therapy session.
I mean, these are my boundaries.
He's effectively attempting to just reach out to this woman in, and say in the plainest terms possible, I want a committed relationship with you.
I don't want to be competing between myself and the internet, essentially, for your affections, for your love, all of these things.
I'm sure that that came along with, you know, a corresponding commitment on his end.
And she spits this in his face as like a form of abuse.
The Me Too movement has now cratered in on itself from a sort of understandable critique against rampant abuses In Hollywood into like somebody sent a man sent me a text basically what all of these complaints now amount to is somebody hit on me and I wasn't into it because the real secret behind all of this is if you are if you have chemistry with somebody and if you're flirting and you're getting along and you're figuring out a healthy way to build a relationship together none of this stuff is even remotely toxic who counts even slightly as abuse the message that this sends to me that this sent I think to a lot of
young men is there is nothing you can do. Being a man is the crime and therefore if you attempt
anything at any moment, even if you don't say anything at all, if you just sit there,
ultimately you are liable for some kind of exposure, for shaming, for public abuse, and
this is a completely untenable, unsustainable situation.
Men and women of goodwill all know it.
The sexual ethic of this neo-feminist movement is totally played out, totally kaput.
Something better has to replace it.
And what's interesting to me is that something better, quietly and secretly, is replacing it.
If you talk to young people, especially young women, they know that this stuff is junk.
It has destroyed their lives.
It has set men and women against each other when they should be a delight unto one another.
And much like the situation in Hollywood, it simply can't last.
Reality, certain facts about reality just come back around.
And one of them is that men and women aren't in a war.
They're not fundamentally at odds with one another.
Manhood is not a crime.
And I think the Jonah Hill thing was really revealing to people, not necessarily on the right, who just said, look, what does this guy have to do?
He's doing everything he's supposed to, being totally clear and forthright, and he's still getting burned for it.
There's just a big difference between how the media is playing this, the kind of feminist media conglomerate is playing it, and the way actual people are reacting to it.
There is, right this minute, a fascinating and, I think, urgent movement rising up that is not getting enough attention.
I'm covering it on my show.
I don't see anybody else covering it.
That is a movement of highly intelligent, intellectual women, mostly toward the left, who are suddenly realizing this has not worked.
Feminism has not worked and birth control has not worked.
birth control, as one of the brightest of these women, Mary Harrington, points out,
has turned women into sterile cyborgs who no longer have any reason to refuse sex, while
at the same time we are evolved to feel that women's sexual apparatus, which produces human
beings, when you have sex with them, it should be protected, and they should have the kind
of virtue that it takes to protect the ongoing generations.
All of that has failed them.
It has put them in this position where they're just being used.
You know, there was a hilarious, absolutely hilarious declaration that we should now refer to the vagina as the bonus hole.
And I thought, well, which is the bonus?
Is the bonus that it feels good or the bonus that it produces the baby?
Which one comes first, you know?
And I think that they don't know.
They just think that's what they think.
This is a bonus hole.
The woman who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
I can't even remember whether he or she or one of them or both.
It's a guy.
Yeah.
And he said something like, you know, the asshole is like the universal vagina.
And I thought, well, yeah, I think so.
If women are now sterile cyborgs, that is true.
When you dissociate yourself from the actual human body, you have dissociated yourself from humanity itself.
Speaking of assholes, let's go over to Europe because there was a big NATO summit and Zelensky, this guy from Ukraine, he just wants more cash and he wants in on NATO so he can walk us to World War III.
That's at least my humble opinion.
Here's a little clip of him telling us what he wants, because he just wants more.
Bear with us on the audio on this one.
We had to bump it up, so it's a little crackly, but you'll get it.
unidentified
I think for today, three priority questions.
The first one is weapon packages, new weapon packages for supporting our army on the battlefield.
And that is one.
The second, I think the invitation to NATO.
We want to be on the same page with everybody, with all the understanding.
And for today, what we hear, and I understand that, we'll have this invitation when security measures will allow.
No, I mean, look, from the beginning of this whole thing, I have said, I don't blame Zelensky for shooting his shot.
I blame us for being so feckless, misdirected and weak that we have no clue what to do except shovel cash at this problem and virtue signal about it.
The lack, the total lack of serious statesmen in Washington is what this really reveals.
And look, Zelensky is an actual world leader in an actual country having actual problems.
Our president, and every Democrat surrounding him, and many indeed of our Republicans as well, are fantasy LARPers living in Bizarro, who think that you can just print paper money, imagine dollars into existence, and that really nothing ever happens because it's the end of history, so it's all just kind of a big video game where we hang the Ukrainian flag.
Out our window.
When I go to visit my dad and mom in Alexandria, there are more Ukrainian flags hanging outside the door than there are American flags.
And they're often on top of the American flag, which I think is like a minor act of treason.
So to me, it's not that Zelensky is some kind of evil villainous scheming actor.
It's that there is an enormous void of seriousness, direction, competency, and assertiveness at the heart of American politics right now.
And Zelensky is not the only person who is gonna step into that void.
Xi Jinping wants to step into that void.
Vladimir Putin wants to step into that void.
The problem is us.
Once we fix ourselves and get our house in order, a lot of this other stuff will fall into place,
but we have serious work to do before we get there.
Andrew, Andrew, on the NATO side of this thing, I mean, basically the deal with NATO
is that if a NATO member country is attacked, that NATO has to respond.
Now, in essence, we all know that really means the United States has to respond.
It's not like some random Nordic country is going to attack Russia, right?
So we know it's on us.
But the fact that he's trying to drive us there, And actually, I can't believe I'm going to say this to slight, slight, slight credit of the Biden administration.
We're not doing it yet.
Right.
NATO hasn't accepted them yet.
So I guess I'll give like the tiny, the tiniest bit of credit there.
He wants to trigger World War Three.
It seems fairly obvious to me.
It's not as if they get in and the next day Russia is like, OK, we're done.
I think once both of you shuffle off this mortal coral, God will be about ready to bring the curtain down, so I don't have to worry too much.
The stars will fall from heaven.
The US is not a charitable trust. I will go that far in the direction of realpolitik. I think it's
absolutely true that unless you make moral judgments about regimes and leaders, you can't
think seriously about the whole picture in war. So as you guys were both saying, it's not just
so easy as to say, well, you do what you have to do and everything is relative to the situation
that you're in. There are good guys, or at least there are less bad guys when you're thinking
about who your allies are and what kinds of civilizations you want to
Defend.
Part of our problem is that we have no idea what our civilization is, as dad was indicating.
We basically, our major cultural export is like hormone blockers for small children, which is, you know, extremely bleak but accurate.
I mean, Al-Qaeda is painting over murals of George Floyd in Afghanistan as we speak, you know, now that we're now that we're out, but we don't exist. It's like, it's
very nice that Zelensky is so kind to us, to thank us for literally all of our money. But in
reality, in real world politics, as we should be playing this, the money that we give to
other countries is to support our interests abroad. And insofar as supporting Ukraine does
further those interests, I think there's a case to be made that there's some...
there's some money to be spent there.
But I'm actually not interested in improving the quality of life of other people simply for the mere sake of it.
There is something about this discourse in America and overseas that sort of treats us
like the World Bank that you just sort of dip in whenever you need something.
Speaking of something about the discourse, let's jump to the last segment I wanted to cover,
which is I've tried to dip a little bit out of the racehorse politics stuff for the last couple of
weeks, especially the DeSantis Trump stuff,
because people don't realize we are still over six months away from the first primary.
We have a debate next month, but the first vote will not even be cast in Iowa until January of next year, and everyone's fighting and going crazy.
So I've been trying to take my pedal, my foot off the pedal, just a little bit.
But I thought we'd dive in just to end today's show because I know you guys were all sort of roughly on the same side of this thing, maybe with some differences.
I thought it'd be interesting.
Here's more from that Daily Wire place.
Former President Donald Trump retained a large lead in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Florida following a boost in the polls after his indictments, according to the latest Real Clear Politics polling average.
Trump's national polling sits at 52.6 percent according to the RCP average.
DeSantis is in second place with 21 percent.
Former VP Mike Pence holds third at 6.3 and Haley and Scott come in fourth and fifth with 3.5 and 3.3 respectively.
DeSantis' polling average has leveled off around 20 percent nationally after jumping into the race in late May.
The governor had reached as high as 30% in some polls earlier this year before he officially launched his campaign.
Trump's large lead in the polls comes as he has dominated headlines for months following his April indictment in Manhattan on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Two months later, the former president was indicted in Miami on 37 felony counts relating to his handling of classified documents.
Many Republicans, including some of Trump's opponents in the GOP primary, have defended the leading candidate amidst his legal battles, calling the indictments politically motivated targeting of President Joe Biden's chief rival.
First, let me just ask you guys kind of philosophically, Andrew, you first.
Taking my foot off the pedal on this thing and just kind of letting it play out.
People know my personal feelings about this.
I voted for Trump.
I like Trump.
Obviously, I think DeSantis is a better choice at this point.
Do you think we could all take a breath?
Do you think that would anyone that's roughly on the right at this point or might vote for one of these guys?
Do you think everyone just kind of taking a breath might be good instead of all the infighting?
By the way, I actually agree with that assessment.
And I would love to see Governor DeSantis go on The View and say right to their faces the things that we're all saying about The View and woke culture and all of that stuff.
Like, he can do it and he should.
I think he should offer to go on Rogan.
He shouldn't.
You know, just do my show and Daily Wire and things of that nature, so we'll see about that.
But actually, let me throw to your point, Andrew.
Maria Bartiromo had the governor on, I think this is yesterday, and they talked a bit about what's going on with the campaign.
unidentified
Yeah, and you've done a great job pushing back against woke.
We know that.
But I'm wondering what's going on with your campaign.
There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year.
But here's this weekend's headline from the Politico playbook.
Failure to launch.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' campaign to topple Donald Trump has stalled.
We are way behind, says a top DeSantis PAC official sounding the alarm.
You know, it gives me no pleasure to say this because I, on balance, would prefer to see DeSantis But there's a likability problem there, and I didn't quite expect it.
I think that I, and maybe DeSantis himself, were laboring under the pleasant delusion that simply being an extremely competent and right-thinking politician was enough of an advertisement to the American people and to the Republican Party.
It's not, right?
And so there is this big issue about how he's presenting himself How he's getting his message across.
In a weird way, my dream scenario, which is in some ways the most distant scenario, is for us to have a presidential fight between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom.
And not because Gavin has my heart in any respect at all, but just because that would actually represent the fight that we are having at the national level.
A lot of this other stuff is distraction to me.
And a key point about drawing back, taking a deep breath, is that leaving aside, you know, the moment when we will all have to choose which candidate we vote for in the primaries and then ultimately in the general, it is a bad idea for us as conservatives to start slitting one another's throats this early.
It's already going to be a bit of a bloodbath, I think, this fight between these two camps.
You've seen some really nasty stuff emerging internecine Warfare and I just don't think it's it's worth it because the truth of the matter is although this is a very important presidential election What's more important?
is the energy of the new right.
And DeSantis has genuinely been a major figure, a major leader in that part of the conservative movement.
He will remain that way.
I hope sincerely that he bucks up his campaign.
It would be a delight to see him run on his record in Florida if what he was saying is, I'm going to turn the whole country into this, essentially.
These are going to be my issues.
And compare that to the apocalyptic hellscape run by lizard man Gavin Newsom.
All of that sounds like a great message to me.
But it's sounding stiff and wooden, and it's not really... It seems to be relying, alas, on competency and skill, which is actually, unfortunately, not enough.
All right, first off, the fact that the spokesman can't even say DeSantis' name properly, I'm just so sick of that shit, and I think more and more people are, but okay, they're just gonna do that, that's fine.
But Andrew, this idea that just because you're so far ahead, now national polls also don't mean anything because you have to win primaries, not national polls, but let's say it's all legit, and he is up by all those numbers, To me, that does not excuse you not going to debates.
If we are ever going to get out of the lunacy that Spencer was just talking about, we have to be able to debate ideas.
And if you're up by a ton, you should be able to debate them confidently.
So I think it's going to be a major hit for him if he dips out of these two debates.
By the way, Andrew, I try to give you credit on this one every time you're on the show.
I think it's worth mentioning again that we were together at the Daily Wire studios on the night of the Trump election with Ben and Jeremy and the whole crew, and you said something that really framed those first few years of the presidency for me and ultimately got me to be a Trump supporter, I think, in a certain respect, because you said on that night when the thing happened that nobody thought could happen, Trump became president, you said, wow, Only in this country can that sort of thing happen.
And that's a beautiful thing that we have in America, because in most countries, the thing that you don't think can happen can't happen.
Spencer, my other thought on Trump dipping out is that it's this is just my opinion, but it seems fairly obvious to me that he has cut a deal with Vivek, that Vivek will be the attack dog on DeSantis.
So what he's doing basically is I'll step away and Vivek, you're going to go all in and do all my dirty work at the debates.
Well, I have no idea whether he's cut a deal or not, but even if he hasn't, that is the scenario that he's going to gain by stepping out of the debates.
Naturally, if he absents himself and the big dog steps away, the number twos, the prospective number twos are all going to try to take up, take out the next biggest dog.
Um, so I would imagine if you're Trump, that's part of your strategy, right?
You want the Chris Christies and the Viveks of the world to go for DeSantis.
And then once they've taken him out, you want Vivek to take out Christie or Christie to take out Vivek.
However it shakes out, I just don't know what we learn from debates anymore.
Maybe this is too structural a point, but it seems like the spectacle of people getting up on TV and yelling at each other has been turned by social media into a predetermined conclusion.
We kind of all know what we think going into them.
It's not totally clear to me that we change our minds, except, as Dad says, to sort of turn off undecided voters.
So if I were Trump, I would also like probably think about stepping away from the debate because what do you have to,
what do you have to gain?
And you know, you do sort of then throw DeSantis as like a piece of meat to the rest of the pack, which, you know,