Can There Be Another Star in Trump's Cinematic Universe? (with David Drucker)
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark. And this week, we are going to indulge in a little 2024 talk. Now, I know what you're thinking. I said I was going to wrap up on the last election, and I promise you I am. But as you may have heard, Donald Trump announced that he is running to be president again in 2024. And I'm sorry, but I want to talk about that for a little bit.

Because Republicans' lackluster midterm performance, especially among Trump's endorsed candidates in swing states, seemed to have sapped Trump's announcement of his typical dark electricity. I was actually a little bored. And instead, the guy getting all the buzz is a potential Trump challenger right now, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

is fresh off a 19-point re-election win in Florida, where he won Miami-Dade County by 11 points, even as Republicans underperformed in most of the rest of the country.

Now, over the past year, we've talked to a lot of Republican voters about their interest in Trump running again in 2024, as well as their interest in DeSantis and other potential GOP candidates. So we've pulled together a bunch of that sound to give you a sense of how Trump voters are thinking about the Republican Party's future. My guest today is David Drucker, author of In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP. And he is a senior correspondent at The Washington Examiner.

David, thank you so much for being here. Good to be here, Sarah. Thank you. So you're at the RJC, the Republican Jewish Coalition's meeting in Las Vegas right now, where there's a whole bunch of 2024 contenders in attendance. What are you seeing and hearing? Who's there? What's the vibe like? Well, there was a big fundraising dinner last night. Of course, they don't let us into that. Glenn Youngkin was supposed to be the headliner. He had to back out because of that horrific shooting in Virginia.

Larry Hogan spoke, Ronald McDaniel, the RNC chairman, spoke. And there are a number of Republicans who would like to be president that are going to be here over the next couple of days. And so I'm going to be talking to activists and donors active in the Republican Jewish Coalition, trying to get a bead on exactly how much appetite there is for the party to move on from Donald Trump.

As you and I have discussed for a long time, and as your focus groups have proven, within the Republican base, there is still a lot of fidelity to Trump. The question is coming out of the midterm elections, do Republicans get restless because it's been three elections in a row with disappointment? The midterm elections in 2018, you could toss out by saying, hey, this is what happens to presidents in their first term, although it didn't exactly happen to Joe Biden.

But 2020 and 2022 are squarely on Trump's shoulders. And I've already detected more restlessness, more willingness to look elsewhere than ever before since Trump announced for president in 2015 the first time.

But the question is whether once all of the dust settles, this sentiment sticks around and continues to grow or whether, as we saw after January 6th, 2021, we get past the initial shock of it all. And then we realize that the Republican Party is still Trump's to run as long as he sees fit. Yeah, I mean, this is the problem, right? Which is at this point, I keep trying to say this to people that like,

We've learned so much over the last seven years. One of the lessons that we've learned is that

No matter what Trump does, he seems to survive it. He incited an insurrection. He refused to engage in a peaceful transfer of power. He went to Helsinki and stood next to Vladimir Putin inciting it against America's intelligence community. He was caught on camera talking vulgarly about sexually assaulting women. And every time it looks like he's done, he's not. And so we have learned that lesson.

But we've also, we've learned what the vibe of that is like. The vibe of him coming back and not getting sort of taken down by it.

And what feels different about this, it's not just the way people were reacting to him. It's him. Like his speech announcing his candidacy for 2024 both strategically was very poorly timed, but seemed like he'd boxed himself in. It's like he just had to go ahead with it. But more importantly, and there's been a couple of pieces written about this, like he also seems joyless and bored and not funny and like he's not enjoying himself. And,

And none of the rest of us are enjoying it either. You can't sort of underestimate just the normal human emotion of boredom and like the interest in something new.

Like, it just doesn't seem as dangerous, as exciting. I don't know. Do you get that sense? Well, I do think that he's in a weakened position. And I've been trying to look at this from a couple of angles, right? And on the one hand, I have never with Trump, given his potency with the Republican base and his ability to dominate the media landscape, I've never wanted to take for granted as an analyst this idea that now they finally got him.

They being Republicans who oppose him, Democrats who oppose him. If you look at the course of his life in business and politics, the man often seems like he has nine lives. I mean, he had four bankruptcies and still commanded a high rated television show where he was the world's greatest businessman.

which shows that he's very resilient and willing to push through more setbacks than most people, including narcissistic politicians. But I think that we also have to understand that Donald Trump in 2022 is not necessarily Donald Trump in 2015, 2016. And I wrote about this for the Examiner this week. In 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump was the ultimate change agent.

He challenged Republican dogma that had grown stale in the Reagan era. He challenged Democratic dogma. He drew in longtime Democratic voters. He put together a coalition that included support in the suburbs and among independents. And he was able to do that because he was fresh and he was new. And even though he didn't win the popular vote, he won where it mattered.

Donald Trump, having lost the presidency and seven years later, is now more of a retread incumbent who is no longer a change agent. It doesn't mean he can't win the Republican primary. And if you're nominated, it means you can win. But he is not the same figure. And he even alluded to it in his speech, which I would say did not live up to the standard that Trump has set for himself.

occasionally during his presidency, he would give teleprompter speeches that were, you know, at least according to expectations, not bad. And this one fell very short. But one of the things he said during that speech is, I guess I'm a politician now. I don't really like the way that sounds, but I guess it's true. But the thing is, he is just a politician now. And we've seen with two term presidents, usually in year seven and eight, the country grows tired, even if they don't dislike them.

And one other thing that could also be different this time around, depending on whether these people are willing to challenge Trump in a vigorous way, is in 2016 and throughout Trump's presidency, the choice for the Republican base was often Trump or going backward. That's how they looked at it. Well, you keep telling us we have to go back to the Republicans we used to have and we don't like them. This guy is new and different and represents what we want today.

But the figures that are available to Republicans now are not Reagan era retreads. They're not going backwards. And so if any of these people are willing to run against Trump the way you need to, to show Republican voters that you're a fighter and willing to do the job, then it's not going to be as easy for Trump to come up with a catchy nickname and get rid of them.

Yeah. Well, that's what I guess I mean about sort of learning a lot. I mean, I'm just watching the media, the Rupert Murdoch empire backsliding.

Back in 2015, 16, like they would crap all over Trump. Right. They didn't like him, but they would still put him on the cover to crap all over him. And so there was this constant amplification. And that's something that Trump does really had to use to his advantage. This time they put him on like page 26. You know, they had a totally different cover. Fox News cut away from him. And so there seems to be like an understanding of how you drain Trump.

Some of the oxygen from him and these candidates will have learned something, right? They know he's going to come at them. I mean, before Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, they were like, what is happening right now? Like, this is not how these things go. But now people understand how he would come at them. And so they might be in a better position to deflect some of it.

So I want to start by walking you through how our focus groups have thought about the Trump 2024 question. Now, we did dozens of groups of Trump voters after January 6th throughout 2021 and into 2022. And it was a pretty hard and fast rule that.

More than half of any Trump group would want to see Trump run again in 2024.

That all changed with the January 6th hearings. Now, we did nine groups during the January 6th hearings of 2020 Trump voters. And in four of those groups, we had zero participants who wanted Trump to run again in 2024. That was a huge change. And it is when we started to see all

A lot more voters starting to think about electability, starting to think about other potential candidates. It's when we started to hear Ron DeSantis' name a lot more. So let's listen to how some of these Trump voters were talking during the hearing. I do not want four more years of orange man bad and everybody screaming about every time he tweets. And believe me, he did some really bad tweets. I don't want four more years of that.

I think Trump did a great job for this country, especially since so many presidents focus on the East Coast and sometimes the West Coast, and then they forget about all the rest of the United States. And so it was nice to have a president who was

focusing on the rest of us. And just so many things he did was great. But then we had all this stuff that happened that the media just pounced. And then since then, with the trials and everything, I think if he won presidency, there'd be so much backlash from that. I don't know if...

it could be as effective as a presidency as he did with his first four years. I would love for Trump to be president again. However, my only concern is that, you know, would he actually get elected? Because I want to make sure that whoever does run has the best, very, very, very best chance of beating whoever the Democrat candidate is.

And I just think the Democrat side would just have an absolute firestorm if he ran again. And I think they would pull out every punch, every trick, everything they can possibly do to not get him elected. Kind of like what happened with 2020. So for those reasons, I mean, even though the baggage, most of the baggage is probably media based stuff that the media has put on him, which a lot of stuff isn't warranted. I just think it would just cause too much of a firestorm.

He's older and not to say that somebody of that age isn't able to do the job. But if you want to get eight years, you don't know what's going to happen into your early 80s and late 80s. You don't want to be like Biden who's having issues cognitively. And the same thing happened to Reagan. All right. So there's like a theme that has run through this.

the voters since the January 6th hearings began, because that was when we started seeing this drift away, they still like Trump. They're not mad at him. They're not out on him. It wasn't that they were watching the January 6th hearings and deciding, boy, now that I know this about him, I'm very upset and I'm out on Trump. It's more just like,

all the ephemera that surrounds Trump, the fighting, you know, like the first woman said, you know, orange man bad, like they like can't take the circus that kind of like comes with him, or at least that's how they explain it. But I will say one postscript on this is that after the January 6th hearings happened, and then there was the search of Mar-a-Lago, there was a big rally around Trump effect in early August that people didn't trust the FBI and,

And so I guess I feel like I can sense this shifting away if there are alternatives. But what do you think the chances are if Trump gets indicted, which it sounds like he may very well, that that is the kind of thing that causes voters to come back to him? Or do you think it's the kind of thing that has them moving further away from him? Well, I'm sort of of two minds about this, because as we heard in the clips you just played,

Republican voters, many of them still really like Trump themselves. Their potential move away from him is very pragmatic. I'm not sure he can win. He may inspire so much Democratic turnout that it makes it harder for Republicans to win. Somebody mentioned the fact that you wouldn't have the potential for an eight-year presidency because Trump only gets one more term. So these are all pragmatic reasons to turn away from Trump. These are not

voters concluding that the juice was not worth the squeeze after all. They're just worried that he either can't win or wouldn't be able to do as well as he did the first time because of the firestorm he would generate around himself. And they said it wouldn't even be his fault. It's just

way it is. So it shows you that he hasn't necessarily lost Republicans. On the other hand, voters are often rather pragmatic about their choices in primaries. People forget, but one of the reasons why Trump was able to win in a divided field in 2016 was

was because a plurality of voters determined that he was the least ideological of the group, and they believed he had the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton. And so if Republican voters look at their choices in 2024 and conclude that there is a better choice, no matter how they feel about Trump, I think

Given three consecutive electoral disappointments, there's a possibility they'll move away from him. But finally, I get to this point. You can't beat somebody with nobody. You know, and this often comes up in discussions, Sarah, that I have with friends and family. It's like when a Republican voter is going to finally get fed up with him and just leave him.

We've seen some of that happen. You've been at the forefront of that to some degree. But ultimately, Trump will be deposed because somebody else takes it from him. And so it's going to require a competitor or competitors in the Republican primary that go at him and make the case and give these voters somebody else to choose.

even if they ultimately make the decision on pragmatic grounds and not a sense of falling in love. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And in these groups, when we ask the voters who they would like to see other than Trump in 2024, there is one name that clearly rises above the rest. You'll be able to guess who it is, but let's roll the tape. Who wants to see Trump run in 2024? Nobody. Nobody.

My Trump voters. Tell me why. Because I want DeSantos to win. Is there anybody that you like want to see step up or get a little more attention? Yeah, Trudy, who do you have? DeSantis. Is there anybody else that comes to mind that you guys like that a leader in the Republican Party that you'd like to see jump into a race like that? Governor of Florida. Yeah, DeSantis. Yeah. Who likes Ron DeSantis? He's the current governor of Florida. Mark, Maggie, Stephen, Chris.

I'm hearing the governor of Florida seems like he's really conservative. And it's not that I'm against Trump. I just feel like it would be awful for the Republican Party if he ran. That's how I feel. I'd love to see a ticket of DeSantis and Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota. I really think that would be a strong ticket. Both of them are leaders. And I know Brian's not a fan of DeSantis, but DeSantis led...

I like what he's done in Florida. I understand what he's doing. But if he's going to be president, he's got to be able to build a consensus too. And I think all of us know that there are machinations that have been going on for a while to pave the way for DeSantis to be the candidate in a couple of years. And I think he's going to be the next president of the United States. Really would like to see Nome as his vice president. There is like no competition for the name that gets brought up. DeSantis is

Always the first name that people say, and he is always the one who has the highest name ID of Trump alternatives. But David, I don't know if you saw it, although I don't know how you'd miss it. DeSantis' God Made a Fighter web video that he put out a few days before the election. Oh, I saw it. I thought it was pretty weird.

I thought it was pretty weird. But nevertheless, you make the point in your book, I think it's a correct point, that being a fighter is way more important to the GOP base than checking boxes from what you call sort of self-important conservative groups in D.C. You also mentioned that cheap knockoffs of Trumpism are likely to fail and that Trump's base was intensely loyal because they viewed him as being very authentic. I agree with all that. So do you think that DeSantis is a knockoff of Trump?

And I had Caputo on here, Mark Caputo, who's a Florida reporter for one of these shows where we talked a lot about DeSantis. And he said that DeSantis has a bit of a glass jaw. What do you think of him? Do you think he's a Trump understudy? Well, I think that Ron DeSantis as governor is a product of the Trump era and a Trump-inspired candidate. I think Republicans...

have flocked to him because he has been successful in Florida and because I think they view him as a more controlled, disciplined, effective version of Trump, a culture warrior willing to pick fights or fight back, if you will, against the media, you know,

And those are the very things they liked about Trump. But here they see somebody who doesn't get caught up in their view in petty fights with nobodies. He gets caught up in fights or picks fights with Disney and all of the sacred cows that you're not supposed to mess with. And these are things that they liked about Trump. But here they see a more refined version.

And Florida having a reputation for being a swing state and a purple state, they're thinking this guy has improved his standing in a state like Florida. Imagine what he could do nationwide. Now, we could get into the weeds and talk about the mass migration of Republican voters to Florida during the pandemic.

because of his leadership in Florida through the pandemic and maybe look at that state as a little bit more friendly territory for Republicans. But the scoreboard, as he pointed to the other day, doesn't lie. And winning by 20 points, even against a weak retread like Charlie Crist, is nothing to sneer at. I would say to Mark Caputo's point, and there's probably no better expert on Florida politics than I can think of, he does have a bit of a glass jaw or at least an unproven jaw.

in that as governor, he's had the benefit of getting into fights with all the right people from a Republican standpoint. He hasn't had to get into fights with other Republicans, other Republicans that people think highly of. He's been able to work with a legislature in Tallahassee dominated by the Republican Party. So when he wants to get something done and he says jump, they say how high, and it's very easy to look like an effective chief executive there.

when the other government body you have to work with is willing to do it. Running for president, running a national campaign, being attacked by a bunch of people that were praising you until the day you jumped in and then they jumped in. We don't know yet how Ron DeSantis will function in an environment like that. He can be a very prickly politician and the pressure that comes with running for president is immense and it's impossible to understand until you do it.

And so I think that he would have a lot to prove, but I don't think we can discount how much of a following he has cultivated in the Republican Party. I mean, I feel like in some ways I haven't seen anything like this since George W. Bush was governor of Texas in the late 90s, preparing to run for president and.

All of the buzz was surrounding this Republican who had flipped Texas red, which was a relatively new phenomenon back then, who could speak Spanish and attracted a good portion of the Hispanic vote. And man, imagine what he could do nationally. And he ended up being the central figure.

And nominated in 2000 because of that. Now, we're in a bit of a different era. A lot more people now run, even if they don't know that they can win. The incentive structure is different. But as many questions as there are about Ron DeSantis, the buzz around him in the party among the grassroots is very real.

It is real. There's no doubt about it. I guess I take your point about W, but I also just as much see him as like Scott Walker or there's other people that have risen to stardom for picking fights in their own state and looking like an effective governor and then just like collapsed on the national stage. And so I'm just not willing to sort of anoint

This guy, especially because so many of these voters, like the extent to which they have engaged with him is for the most part through like viral clips of him yelling at teenagers or because the don't say gay bill or like looking at him shouting at a reporter. Like they haven't necessarily seen him full on. They certainly haven't seen him go toe to toe. I mean, I watched his debate with Charlie Crist yesterday.

He's like so uncomfortable in his own skin. His smiles are kind of awkward. His suit's a little too big. You know, when Chris... He's a personally awkward dude. Yeah, he doesn't have the natural charisma Trump does. No, he does not have Trump's charm. You know, if you engage with Trump one-on-one...

as I have in a couple of interviews, both in person and on the phone, he can be charming as much as he can be bombastic. You know, I call it rally Trump versus meeting Trump. You meet with him in person and it's a twinkle in his eye and he calls you by your first name and he stares at you. And, you know, when the president of the United States, no matter who he is, looks at you and calls you by your first name, it's a very effective tool.

Ron DeSantis has always been when he was a member of Congress and I would interview him. I mean, he was gracious enough to take my questions, but he's a personally awkward dude. He, he keeps everything close to the vest. When you run a national campaign, you need to rely on people to,

You need people willing to take fire in a foxhole with you. And I don't think that he's proven yet the ability to build a team and keep a team and deal with the incoming when it's not the kind of fire that is easily rewarded by Republican primary voters. And on top of which, look, other people will run. And once Republican primary voters see who these people are and see how they perform and

presuming it's not just a Trump versus DeSantis race, which I wouldn't anticipate, then they'll take the measure of him. And look, maybe he'll perform really well and they'll conclude you're everything we thought you were. But as you noted, we have seen before where candidates come and go at the top. And once voters have taken their full measure of them in the context of a Republican primary, either move on to somebody else or move back to the person they were with at the beginning.

All right. So I want to dig in on something we heard a bit in those other clips. So one thing our groups have historically liked about DeSantis is that he can deliver the things they like about Trump, but he is not quite as divisive. Let's listen to some of the voters talk about that. His policies are a lot like what Trump's were, but he doesn't bring all of the Trump baggage with him. And the second thing is that given he has such a strong performance in Florida, I think he could be a viable contender, certainly on the national stage.

I think if you had someone like DeSantis who would have the same policies as Trump, basically all the Trump stuff, just without that extra baggage that's baked in there already, I think that would help keep from alienating a section of voters. I think my worry, besides what the Democrats would do, is like, are we going to get those independent voters? And if we have someone like DeSantis, I think he has a better chance of pulling a lot of those independent voters out.

I think that he's a polished politician. The Floridians love him. He almost won by a landslide. He didn't the last time he ran. He marginally made it.

This goes to show that he has a proven record that he is able to do, you know, the things that he promises to do. I mean, not everything, but he's getting things done. And if you can do that for Florida, especially after this hurricane they dealt with, he managed it beautifully. I think he'll do a great job and hopefully help unify our country.

So both the first guy and the last guy in those clips were actually Biden 2020 voters. They were from flipper groups. And I think that a lot of the elite conservatives interest, although somebody said it just now in these clips. So even our armchair pundits in the focus groups, they see DeSantis as being able to sort of put back DeSantis.

together the old coalition. Like these independent voters will vote for him. These suburban voters will find him more palatable in a way that they don't for Trump. I understand why people think that, but I also look at him and think this guy's not like quite a unifier. He sort of makes his bones on being divisive. He's got kind of that bullying instinct. He's pretty conservative. Do you see him as somebody who could have a big draw with independent voters? Well,

I would look at it this way. First of all, let me just say, I think he has to prove that he has the ability to be a unifier in the way we think of a Reagan or a Clinton or an Obama circa 2008 versus a base-driven candidate, let's say circa Obama 2012 and Trump circa 2020.

But what I would say is there were a number of soft Republicans or just Republicans generally, not to mention Republicans.

voters who are independents but lean conservative that would have loved to have voted for a Republican for president in 2020. And I'm also thinking of all of those suburban voters in 2018, but just found Trump unpalatable. These voters didn't become liberal all of a sudden, let's say, or change their positions on fiscal policy or foreign policy.

They just simply found Trump to be either unfit or they were exhausted by his antics and just wanted normalcy. So to the extent that the Republican Party in 2024 nominates a conservative who operates within the bounds of what the broad middle considers normal, I think that that could be a very strong candidate. And if DeSantis can do that by proposing policies that have broad appeal and have

managing how he picks fights, how he appeals to the base, then he could be that kind of a candidate. Look, we have seen in the past that

candidates that were either defined as very conservative or very liberal do quite well in a general election setting for president because of the way they managed how they presented themselves and how they appealed to people. And it also, of course, depends on what the conditions in the country are. Democrats were able to maintain control of the Senate in 2022. The House is Republican, but only narrowly so.

whether Biden runs for reelection or there is a new Democrat in his place, voters could conclude after four years and not a big snapback in the midterm that we really would like a change in how the country is being governed from a policy perspective. And if Republicans couldn't present somebody that's broadly acceptable, I have seen voters overlook all sorts of peccadilloes before, as long as they don't find somebody unfit or unreasonable.

And I don't see why DeSantis couldn't be that person. It just depends on how he manages himself in a national campaign, particularly if he runs, wins a nomination and ends up a candidate in the general election.

Yeah, I think that analysis is spot on. Questions is like, is he the kind of candidate ultimately that can do it? So DeSantis, as we mentioned, it got reelected by a Florida landslide at 19 points. When we talked over the summer to people who didn't vote for Trump in 16, but did vote for him in 2020, we found people were largely supportive of DeSantis running for president. Eight out of the nine people in this group from Florida were

would have preferred DeSantis for president over Trump. Let's listen. I don't want to lose him as our governor. I like that he's not a pushover. I don't want a soft guy. I want him to be forceful and stand up to people. I don't want him to be like a Biden where he's completely lost and doesn't know what he's doing. I like his family morals. I would agree with those statements of everybody else too, that he's very family oriented.

I like that he kept Florida open. Very refreshing. He does let people maintain their freedoms as long as you're not hurting anyone else, which is why this whole Disney thing is happening. Yeah, I'm 100% A with him. You know, pretty close to an A+. But again, it's just a guy that aligns with a lot of our feelings, a lot of our morals. So yeah, I hope he makes it to 24 and becomes a president.

I don't like being told what I can and can't do. I am immunocompromised. I have three autoimmune diseases. But you know what? I've been dealing with this stuff since 2011. So I stay away from people. I don't get in people's faces. But I also don't like wearing a mask. It gives me high anxiety. And so I like that aspect of DeSantis kind of not allowing governments to

Tell us what we can and can't do. So a lot of love for him from this Florida group. But let me ask you this. This is one of the things that I think when it comes to Trump,

you have to consider is that he doesn't really care about the Republican Party. They're not really Republican. He's a guy who hijacked the party to use it as a vessel for his own ends. And so like, let's say DeSantis mania sweeps the nation. And actually he kind of blossoms into maybe a better candidate than we think he's going to be. And Trump's been kind of running against himself for six months because he's randomly announced in November of 2022. People are sick of him.

What does Trump do? Could he drop out of a Republican primary and go run as an independent and grab 15 percent of the Republican Party in an independent lane and just burn the whole thing down? Sure, he could. But I think Republicans, given that you could never count on Trump to not do that.

Because as you mentioned, he's not invested in the Republican Party. He never has been. He is more interested in adding to his power than adding to the party's electoral success. But he has been sort of burning the party down slowly. And I think after three electoral disappointments, I think the way they should look at it is that the risk factor is less given the

that it's already happening. And it's a matter of whether or not you want to sit around and let it happen slowly and do nothing or risk that it might happen fast, but at least you get it over with and you can rebuild. And what I mean by that is,

Take a look at the fact that Republicans are going to be in the Senate minority for another two years. It's a counterfactual exercise here. But imagine that Trump is a party person and understands that Jeff Flake just doesn't like him all that much, but that he seems to be a good representative for the state of Arizona in that he reflects what a mix of Republicans and independents and soft Democrats would prefer. So he doesn't push Jeff Flake out of the party. And there's one Senate seat you've got back.

in 2020, he doesn't tank the Georgia Senate races by complaining that the election was stolen and rigged and therefore don't go vote. There's two Senate seats. Then I could point to Michigan's third congressional district and Washington's third congressional district where he pushed out Republicans because not nice to Trump. There are a couple more seats to pad the Republican majority in the House that's about to get seated in January. In other words, he's already sort of slowly ripping the party apart.

apart as Republicans tiptoe around him out of fear that they're going to make him mad and he's going to torch the place. So why not fight back? And maybe it burns down anyway, but then you can at least rebuild because it's happening to you anyway. And look, if Trump had won reelection in 2020, and if they had won a big wave in 2022, then no matter what any of Trump's critics think of him inside the Republican party or not,

Well, you could just say whatever he's doing isn't hurting the party. In fact, the party is only continuing to build on the success that he started in 2016 by winning those Midwestern battlegrounds, the success in 2020 by improving Republican numbers with nonwhite voters. And we've got all this policy success. And this is the way. And not everybody likes it because of the downsides. We know what all those are. But, hey, it's working.

At this point, Republicans are getting none of the upside and all of the downside. And it's just this slow burn. So if that's your fear at this point, what are you really have to lose?

Man, I couldn't agree with that more. Just to add on to your point, it's also like the people who don't run, right, who could. Like Hogan didn't run for that Senate seat. Sununu didn't run for a Senate seat. They could have picked up a bunch of Senate seats. Ducey didn't run. Yeah, Doug Ducey might have run. Pat Toomey, maybe Pat Toomey decides to run for re-election. Totally. Because he doesn't feel like he's completely at war.

I think that's totally right. And I think at some point they got to rip the bandaid off. They can't let them hold them hostage with this idea that he could go run some independent party. They just got to do it. Okay. So DeSantis isn't the only Floridian looking at 2024. You mentioned in your book that senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are looking at the race and given that

Rick Scott can self-fund a presidential race, and he recently challenged Mitch McConnell, although it didn't go that great. Is he picking up some Republican conservative fighter credentials? Could you see Rick Scott doing it?

It's a good question. So as I write in my book, and full disclosure for the audience here, my wife is Rick Scott's chief fundraiser along with her business partner. And so I don't dig into his machinations too much. But what I would tell you is as a political analyst, without asking him or his team any questions, everything that he has been doing seems to me to make sense if he's planning to run for president. But I have no idea on purpose what

how serious he is considering that at this point. But I will say, just to add to my point here about Senator Scott, getting into a fight with Mitch McConnell, who the Republican grassroots hates with the heat of a thousand suns,

is a very valuable thing to have in your back pocket if you're going to show up in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, or elsewhere and ask for votes in a Republican presidential primary. Because you can say that, yes, I was in Republican leadership, and yes, I'm in Washington now. But you can see, I don't get along with those guys. I went to war with them to try and change things. So it would make sense to me

But I purposely don't ask these questions. Marco Rubio is interested in running again, but he was very clear to me when I interviewed him for interim shadow and I've not talked to him recently about this, that he was interested in doing it again if he felt there was a market for him and his agenda.

He overhauled his domestic agenda, and it is really much more of an industrialist, populist agenda. His foreign policy has remained the same, rather hawkish and Reagan-esque. But Marco Rubio has been operating more like somebody who is content with the Senate than he is interested in trying his hand again. But with his kids grown...

and feeling freed up from a family perspective to pursue other political positions, I wouldn't necessarily rule it out. I do think, and this is something that wasn't considered four years ago, that the governor of Florida has become much more of a figure. And as Florida Republicans look at the donor pool for Florida money and the donor pool for outside of Florida money, that is going to have an impact on

on how they look at a presidential race. Although, as you mentioned, and this is just a known fact, Rick Scott has a

fortune that he made as a businessman before running for governor of Florida. And he's proven that he's willing to spend it for his political campaigns. Yeah. Well, like we said, you're at the Republican Jewish Coalition's meeting there in Vegas. I hope you're gambling. So I want to hear a mashup of some of the other people who are going to be in attendance there and then some of them who won't. But these are the other names we hear a lot in focus groups that people bring up around 2024.

I thought Kristi Noem would be, I think she would be great in a role like that. That's who I wrote in at the time. Oh, who's the lady? She's actually a Democrat from Hawaii. I've really always liked her. Kelsey Gabbard? Yes. The governor of Texas who sent the immigrants to D.C.? I like that move. That's what I like, too. What about Chris Christie?

Oh, no. Any fans for Christy? Any hands up? No? I like Christy. You like Christy? Okay. Same guy who closed the beaches and sat on the beach? Yeah. How about Ted Cruz? Any Cruz fans? Maybe if he shaved his beard and got a haircut. You know, he's always changing. I like Cruz. I think Florida's better, but I don't know. Even though it's awkward, but she's a big Trump supporter and she's somebody that's very factual and strong. Candace Owens.

What about Mike Pompeo? He lost a lot of weight. Yeah, that's usually a sign that somebody's gearing up for some photo ops, right? I like him better in pants. So I got to tell you, the names that come up in addition to DeSantis, you heard it here. Kristi Noem comes up a lot, like sort of a surprising amount. Candace Owens also comes up sort of a disquieting amount of time. Part of what I think is funny is

is how much people are not interested often in like Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, like basically anyone who ran in 2016. They're kind of pretty ish on them. And they really want people who like came of prominence during the Trump reign that they see as part of kind of the broader Trump cinematic universe. Does that surprise you or does that jive with what you've heard talking to voters?

Well, it doesn't surprise me because as I wrote it in Trump's shadow, after talking to so many Republicans across the spectrum in the party, Republican voters really want candidates that are Trump inspired, if you will. They want fighters. They want

fresh leadership. I mean, one of the reasons Trump did so well is many Republican voters believe that the party had grown stale. And so Kristi Noem, who was another proponent of allowing residents in her state to make their own decisions regarding the pandemic,

That's a big selling point for her. But she is somebody that has really come of age as a Republican figure, even though she had been in Congress in the Trump era, and she was very supportive of him. And so I think what you're seeing is this trend where Republican voters are looking for somebody new, or at the very least, they don't want this sense of going backward. And when Trump defeated everybody in 2016, in a way, a lot of Republican voters were saying that,

As much as we might like Ted Cruz for what he's done and Marco Rubio and Chris Christie for what he did in New Jersey, we're looking for a new era in the party. And so I think that's why it may be a little bit more difficult to

for candidates that voters believe are from the old guard. Now, we are going to see, and they are going to be here at the Republican Jewish Coalition Conference, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Chris Sununu. And it'll be interesting to see how the actives here feel about a lot of these candidates. Pence and Pompeo are planning to run. Will they pull the trigger? Not sure yet, but they are

actively planning to and have been dropping hints that they will run. And, you know, we will have to see if once they're candidates, they can change people's minds. As we were just discussing about, is DeSantis really the only guy, but can they change people's minds once they get into the race and attract the necessary support?

I think what you're seeing is that people want Trump inspired candidates. They just would like to do so without what they feel has become ineffective, counterproductive behavior. You know, speaking of Mike Pence, we've got a bunch of sound on Pence. Let's just listen to how some of these voters have been talking about him in the groups. He's milquetoast. He's a nice enough guy, but he is just milquetoast. There's nothing exceptional about him.

Even when he was the vice president, he was always in the background. And it was another instance of what's he doing exactly? We never really knew. Maybe that's just part of his personality. The way he's acting, I mean, the shit was going down. You know, everybody was against Trump. Oh, well, yeah, he's on that side too. I mean, you know, don't be like a worm. I mean, pick your side and stand with it. Michael Hentz is the one that got rid of Flynn.

General Flynn and some other key players that are patriots. He helped get them out. And I read that Mike Pence was put there to manage Trump. And based on the things he did over the four years, it makes sense.

What initially made me vote for Trump the second time was, well, if it doesn't work out, at least I can get behind Mike Pence. And if I saw a Mike Pence, DeSantis kind of ticket, I think that that's something that would be a hot ticket.

I'm not sure Pence is getting over the line if he doesn't have somebody like DeSantis with him to bring him over. I got to tell you, there's basically nobody who lives more in the sour spot with voters than Mike Pence. Like the swing voters don't like him because they think he was too close to Trump. And the Trump voters don't like him because they think he's boring or they think he's a traitor. You know, they get animated about him. It's usually in a negative way. But I guess the thing that I never understand, why don't Republicans talk more about like Sununu or...

or Kemp. Kemp just won by a gajillion points against a Democratic boogeyman, Stacey Abrams. That doesn't get him any street cred. Hogan has been the third most popular governor in a blue state the whole time. Why do you think those guys never come up or get mentioned? I think broadly, the reason governors like this don't come up

based on the success they've had at the ballot box is because Republican voters, and I think this is true of Democratic voters too, they don't look at wins and losses as reasons for supporting candidates. They first look at somebody that inspires them, somebody who shares their values, somebody that they believe is a strong leader, right?

And then as they sample all of those, they begin to look at electability, even though candidates who make that a central plank in their argument often fall flat. But that doesn't mean voters don't go through the paces on electability. And so.

I think that Hogan is a separate case because he's been a Trump critic and he still very vocally hearkens back to the Reagan era as the model. But I think it's possible that if a Kemp or a Sununu got into the race and

and they were able to inspire, I think voters would then say, and not only that, did you see the landslide in New Hampshire? Republicans don't win there that often anymore. Did you see the landslide in Georgia? Man, Kemp, he just crushed it. So they're not going to say, wow, Kemp did great in Georgia or Sununu did great in New Hampshire, therefore I want to vote for him.

But because neither of those are not considered never Trump Republicans or even anti-Trump Republicans per se, although Sununu dabbles in that occasionally, if they get into the race and they can inspire, then I think what a voter will do is say, oh man, I'm inspired by them. And not only that, I think they can win. If you take a look at the clips you played about DeSantis, it's like,

His values are great and he's getting all this stuff done. Oh, and he could win. Did you see what he did in Florida? This is the sort of the order in which voters go through the paces and they always get to the electability part after they've gone through the other things that are important to them. Now, sometimes they will conclude that the person they really like is just simply unelectable and

And they will make pragmatic choices about just having to vote for somebody else. And in some ways, you're seeing that as Republican voters now reconsider Trump. It's like, wow, I thought he was a great president and I wish he could do it again. But I just don't know that he can win. So I think I'm going to have to look elsewhere. I think that's how voters tend to approach this. Yep.

And with that, I want to say thank you to David Drucker, the senior correspondent from the Washington Examiner and author of In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP. David, thank you so much for being here. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of The Focus Group. I promise you we'll be back to do more election wrap up. And so we will see you again very soon. Bye bye. Sarah, thanks for having me. This was fun.