Nov. 29, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
15:16
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| We all wanted Trump to succeed in 2016 when he was promising things like building the wall. | ||
| He didn't do it. | ||
| And people take great issue with this on the campaign trail. | ||
| He didn't do the things he said he was going to do. | ||
| He didn't take the government and reduce its footprint and get the bureaucracy under control and just be the great disruptor that he said he was going to be. | ||
| In fact, a lot of stuff was status quo under Donald Trump. | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is the press secretary to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, | ||
| Brian Griffin. | ||
| Brian, welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Hey Dave, thanks for having me. | ||
| Brian, I know we've got limited time here and I don't think I would be doing either of us any favors if we just took it easy on each other. | ||
| Sounds good. | ||
| So I'm gonna dive in real quick and let's see what we come up with. | ||
| So first off, Newsom, DeSantis, this is the big debate, Florida, Cali, what should we expect out of this thing? | ||
| Not just Florida and California, Dave, because that debate is over. | ||
| Everybody has already voted with their feet. | ||
| People left California in the hundreds of thousands, by the way, I think that includes you, and came to Florida. | ||
| This is about the future of our country. | ||
| What kind of country do we want to live in? | ||
| Do we want to live in the California Gavin Newsom model of collapsed cities, of prosecutors unwilling to go after crime, unsafe streets, of high costs, of homelessness, of perpetual problems that never seem to get solved? | ||
| Or do we want to live under the Free State of Florida model that was built thanks to Governor Ron DeSantis Where he safeguarded liberties, we've got prosperity in Florida, people have jobs, and COVID was treated in a way that respected people's lives and liberties. | ||
| So, what is the model we want for the future of our country? | ||
| That's what this debate is all about. | ||
| All right, so that was my softball, and now I gotta give you the tough one, which is that it seems to me that the one thing that the DeSantis campaign has been unable to do is capture the zeitgeist. | ||
| Nobody thinks he's a bad dude. | ||
| Nobody thinks the policies are bad. | ||
| Nobody thinks there's any flubs or any failures or anything like that. | ||
| But there seems to be something else that it hasn't been able to catch with. | ||
| I think that might change with this Newsom debate. | ||
| But do you think that that's a fair criticism, and is there anything that can be done, if you do think it's a fair criticism, is there anything that can be done, say, in the next month and a half before we hit Iowa? | ||
| I don't think that matches what we see on the ground. | ||
| When we're talking to people, when they come to our events, when they meet with the governor, They get it. | ||
| This guy knows what he's talking about. | ||
| He is 10 layers deep on every item and detail. | ||
| He knows policy. | ||
| He's going to come into the White House day one. | ||
| He's going to have personnel ready and in place. | ||
| He's going to have plans. | ||
| He's going to be able to execute. | ||
| And anybody that takes a look at Florida can see he says what he means. | ||
| He does what he says he's going to do. | ||
| And he has put win after win on the board for conservatives and just for kind of decent, honest, hardworking people. | ||
| To be able to live their lives normally. | ||
| That's what people want in this country. | ||
| And when you get all of the media chatter out of the way, when you get the polling class out of the way, that's what it comes down to. | ||
| That's what Ron DeSantis represents. | ||
| Do you think that some of that Zeitgeist thing, whether you agree with the premise or not, is partly because he's so competent and because he's good and because there aren't flubs so the media doesn't know what to do with it? | ||
| I think there's a lot of people that want to attack Ron DeSantis that have nothing to attack him on, because I think he has a solid record. | ||
| He's a good, honest, hardworking family man, and he's put on the board more detailed policies and plans for this country than any other candidate. | ||
| So sure, people are going to look for ways to try to make an attack. | ||
| But again, you know, Twitter's not real life. | ||
| Even corporate news media is not real life. | ||
| What's real life are the people's concerns on the ground that we are hearing from. | ||
| Ron DeSantis is addressing those and his policy proposals. | ||
| He's addressing those specifically with people. | ||
| That's why we're going to win Iowa and do well in this primary and win this primary. | ||
| What is it that you're hearing from the people in Iowa? | ||
| Because for months, even before the governor had announced, when I was traveling, I had a lot of people, because everyone knew how much I loved Florida and what was going on here, a lot of people saying, I appreciate Trump, I'm ready for DeSantis. | ||
| You guys have been tweeting out a lot of videos lately of just random or decent citizens of Iowa kind of saying the same thing. | ||
| It's not that they hate Trump, it's just that they're seeing something else different. | ||
| We all wanted Trump to succeed in 2016 when he was promising things like building the wall. | ||
| He didn't do it. | ||
| And people take great issue with this on the campaign trail. | ||
| He didn't do the things he said he was going to do. | ||
| He didn't take the government and reduce its footprint and get the bureaucracy under control and just be the great disruptor that he said he was going to be. | ||
| In fact, a lot of stuff was status quo under Donald Trump. | ||
| So we need someone who's going to come in and actually do these things. | ||
| Ron DeSantis, everything he promised he was going to do in Florida, he did. | ||
| He over-delivered. | ||
| If Trump had built that wall, Dave, we wouldn't be able to have the situation that we have today. | ||
| You know, even if Joe Biden continued his policies that he's got now of an open border and not, you know, willfully not wanting to tackle this issue, a wall would be there nonetheless. | ||
| And as many people would not be able to come into this country. | ||
| So if Trump had delivered, we'd be in a different position. | ||
| We're not there. | ||
| Ron DeSantis will deliver where Trump failed to do so. | ||
| All right, so now let me ask you one of the tough ones, which is the same question that I asked the governor last time I had him on, which is, what do you do about the ride or die Trump folks? | ||
| The people that, it's not that they don't care about the things that you just laid out, but they're just going, I'm Trump all the way. | ||
| Is there any way to kind of shave off some of those people to the movement that you guys are trying to build? | ||
| Of course, we're speaking with people directly on the ground, which makes a difference. | ||
| And Dave, we've had plenty of people in Iowa and other early states that said, I came to your event and I was going to vote for Trump, but now I'm going to vote for you because Governor DeSantis lays out those specifics. | ||
| And this message does resonate with people. | ||
| Again, we supported what Donald Trump wanted to do in 2016. | ||
| He just didn't deliver. | ||
| He got distracted with things. | ||
| He put bad people around him. | ||
| We've got a lot of chaos right now. | ||
| But Ron DeSantis is the antidote to that chaos. | ||
| And as you make that case to people on the ground and in person, you turn things around and that's what we're doing. | ||
| What do you make of how Trump has treated Governor DeSantis? | ||
| Again, I think it's probably the case of looking for something to attack him on because he's got such a stellar record. | ||
| Ron DeSantis is just a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. | ||
| He understands details. | ||
| He can quote the founding fathers off the cuff like nobody I've ever seen in office, and he's a good person. | ||
| So if you're looking for something to take issue with, you really have to search deep for that in Ron DeSantis. | ||
| So that's why we feel good about this. | ||
| I mean, look, Dave, we're going into Iowa, okay? | ||
| We have only several weeks until the caucus. | ||
| We've got more people committed to caucus. | ||
| We've got more than 30,000 committed to caucus, more than the last couple of Iowa winners have gone into the race with. | ||
| And one, we've got Governor Kim Reynolds on our side. | ||
| Bob Vander Plaats just endorsed us. | ||
| We've got big voices like Steve Dace. | ||
| So the groundwork is in place. | ||
| Every Iowa county has a campaign chair. | ||
| And in fact, we're about to hit our 99th county visited. | ||
| Ron DeSantis will have performed the full Grassley ahead of the Iowa caucus. | ||
| That's the type of work ethic that wins that state, and then Iowa propels, you know, momentum into future victories. | ||
| So we feel very good about the state of this campaign. | ||
| Yeah, and you know, now I can give you one of the easy ones. | ||
| I mean, you know I'm seeing that myself, and that's what I'm hearing from a lot of people and everything else. | ||
| One of the bizarre ones to me is that Kim Reynolds, who's an incredibly popular governor in Iowa, she endorsed DeSantis, and it basically wasn't covered by the mainstream media. | ||
| You would think that if Kim Reynolds, who's popular, endorses a guy supposedly 50 points down, she might be committing political suicide. | ||
| At least write that article. | ||
| But instead, they just didn't cover it at all. | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| Look, I think that Kim Reynolds, you know, as she said she did, looked at all of the candidates and made a determination that Ron DeSantis, one, had the best vision for the future of this country, and two, had the best chance of winning the general election and the primary. | ||
| And all of that goes into an endorsement. | ||
| And Dave, she's not the only endorsement that we have there. | ||
| Like I said, we've got Bob Vander Plaats, and we've got Steve Dase, and we've got 41 state legislatures, all of whom believe that Ron DeSantis is the best choice in this race. | ||
| And that means something. | ||
| I think that means something to Iowans, certainly means something to us. | ||
| So, yeah, look, media narrators are going to be what they are, and I think everybody has different, you know, dogs in this race. | ||
| But at the end of the day, the people who come out to our events, okay, the voter, right, they care about the things that are affecting them. | ||
| Not the media narratives, but the things that they see and they feel in their lives every day. | ||
| The prices of gas, the safety of their streets, the prices of food, right? | ||
| How we stand on the world stage. | ||
| These things are what people are going to base their decision on when it comes to making a selection in this race. | ||
| And Ron DeSantis, on every single one of those issues, is the best candidate. | ||
| Yeah, you know, it's funny, having lived in Florida, it'll be two years and about two weeks from now, all the quote-unquote problems that we have in Florida are the functions of success. | ||
| I mean, we have some traffic in South Florida, because there's a lot of people moving here. | ||
| Our house price is kind of high, a lot of people moving here, but we're building fast, both at homes and infrastructure, which I've discussed with the governor before. | ||
| Do you think that the whole country Wants as much freedom as Florida is trying to export? | ||
| Do you think it's possible that places like Cali and New York, that they are so far gone that they wouldn't even know it if it smacked them in the face? | ||
| I think that common sense always resonates with people. | ||
| I think that the American founding principles and ethos still resonates with people. | ||
| And I think people want that. | ||
| And we know that, Dave, again, because everybody has left these blue jurisdictions and they've come to red jurisdictions. | ||
| And more than any other jurisdiction, they've come to Florida because of what Ron DeSantis not only promised, but delivered on. | ||
| What would you like to see happen at the next debate? | ||
| You know, obviously there's a sort of, let's say, orange elephant not in the room, and that creates this odd atmosphere there, because they should all kind of be going after him if he's supposedly number one. | ||
| Nobody really goes after the governor, I think, for some of the reasons you said, and then there's some, like, little mini-bickering between them, but it doesn't seem to move the dial much. | ||
| Is there something you'd like to see when we get to this fourth and final debate? | ||
| Well, look, we're going to participate in the debates. | ||
| I think they're important. | ||
| We'd love for Trump to show up and debate, right? | ||
| Because I think he owes it to the American people. | ||
| This nomination is not something that is handed to people or that anybody is entitled to. | ||
| You know, may the best candidate win. | ||
| We'll do the debates. | ||
| We'll have those conversations. | ||
| I hope we have a robust conversation that's issue-focused. | ||
| But then we want to get back on the ground and continue the hard work of campaigning. | ||
| Of reaching people one-on-one, of listening to their concerns, and of demonstrating the policies and the ideas that Ron DeSantis has to address those concerns. | ||
| That's how these campaigns are won. | ||
| That's what's gonna matter at the end of the day. | ||
| Tell me something about the governor that people do not see. | ||
| I think everyone sees the competency. | ||
| They see the decency. | ||
| They see a good family man. | ||
| They see a beautiful wife. | ||
| They see three good kids. | ||
| Everyone gets it. | ||
| Nobody's debating it. | ||
| You're spending a lot of time with him now on the road. | ||
| Give me something that people don't see. | ||
| He's a good guy behind the scenes. | ||
| It's the same you get in front of the cameras, right? | ||
| And a lot of politicians and a lot of leaders are not like that. | ||
| But he is the real deal. | ||
| He's very genuine. | ||
| And I'm just honored to be working for him because I have been able to see him in those moments when the cameras aren't on. | ||
| And he, you know, he acts justly and says what he means and speaks with truth. | ||
| And I think that's important. | ||
| We've lost that in American leadership, certainly in the Democratic Party. | ||
| We've got too many people in the Republican Party that are deceptive, I think, with the American people. | ||
| We've got Congress with all of their own agendas. | ||
| We've got people that are bogged down with all types of, you know, personal problems in their lives that keep them distracted from being able to deliver for the American people. | ||
| Ron DeSantis doesn't have those issues. | ||
| He is going to be able to put wins on the board because that is what he is going to be mission-focused on from day one, and he will score win after win. | ||
| And not just that, Dave. | ||
| He doesn't just, you know, do the things he says he's going to do. | ||
| He takes ground from the left. | ||
| He's been reclaiming our institutions here in Florida in a way that we direly, desperately need in America. | ||
| Let me ask you one other thing, Brian, because one thing that I hear from OG Floridians to the new Floridians is, oh man, I love DeSantis, but if we, if he becomes the nominee and he becomes the president, then what happens to the free state of Florida? | ||
| And I think that is a very legitimate concern. | ||
| Or another version of it is, you know, that the federal government is so screwed up That maybe even he, the best guy that we have, can't fix it. | ||
| So why bother sending him out there? | ||
| Let's just keep fortifying Florida. | ||
| What would you say to the people who are here in Florida right now and want to make sure, no matter what, that Florida continues all that goodness that brought people like me here? | ||
| I mean, let me take both of these. | ||
| So this is America, right? | ||
| We can do big things and accomplish what we need to accomplish. | ||
| Nothing is too far gone in this country to be able to fix it. | ||
| We just have to put our best foot forward. | ||
| We need the best candidate as our nominee to face the Democrats, whoever they put up in 2024, to win and then to fight for us on issue after issue until we win on issue after issue. | ||
| To reclaim our institutions from the left and to get this country back on track. | ||
| with a nod to common sense and the concerns of the American people. | ||
| That's why we need to nominate Ron DeSantis. | ||
| Florida, you know, Ron DeSantis has been able to not just deliver policy wins through executive leadership, but through the legislature also. | ||
| So Florida is set up for generations to benefit from the policies that Ron DeSantis, the legislative accomplishments that Ron DeSantis was able to accomplish while he's been governor. | ||
| Also, he put together a very big coalition, in fact a historic coalition, to win in Florida in the last election. | ||
| We've now got more than 500,000 Republicans, more of those than Democrats. | ||
| So that's going to last, you know, for a long time in this state. | ||
| He's been able to bring lasting, effective change to Florida. | ||
| He'll do the same for the country. | ||
| That's why we should nominate him. | ||
| The only Democrat I've met in my entire time in Miami is my dentist, and I think he's on the fence right now. | ||
| I've been working on him, although it's a little tough when he's got all that stuff in your mouth and you're trying to explain what freedom's all about. | ||
| Brian, it's gonna be an interesting- Sounds like a setup that the media would like. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Brian, it's gonna be an interesting, what, month and a half until we hit that caucus, but you know who I'm rooting for, so I wish you a lot of luck. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Appreciate that. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop screaming, check out our politics playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist, all right over here. |
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