A Trump Protege Auditions for 2024
S1: Being a political reporter in Tallahassee, the way Mary Ellen Klas is means bearing witness to an evolution, this evolution is happening in the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis and Mary Allen says it all started in the wake of the presidential election. It was clear Donald Trump had lost. Acolytes like DeSantis were looking around for their next move,
S2: and he began this culture war campaign, starting with, You know, Florida is a free state and we we operate businesses without any requirements of vaccines or for masking.
S3: Thank you. Thank you so much. It’s always wonderful to be in Florida’s friendliest hometown, which happens to be the center of the freest state in the United States.
S1: And then dissenters began to get a little bit obsessed with this word. The word is woke
S3: understanding of, and I think, what you see now with the rise of this woke ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history. And I view the wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism.
S1: Governor DeSantis has started talking about wokeness all the time.
S3: I mean, tell me where you would find this success story of woke progressivism imposed on a people. I don’t see it.
S1: The governor says Big Tech is woke.
S3: I think the corporations have gotten very woke colleges.
S1: They’re definitely woke. But so are anti-Semites.
S3: And let’s just be clear, the woke are anti-Semitic. They are anti-Israel. We know that
S1: infrastructure
S3: that is woke to, they’re saying that highways are racially discriminatory. I don’t know how a road can be that. But you know, this is the woke ification of federal policy.
S1: The governor has even proposed legislation that he calls the Stop WOAK Act that stands for stop wrongs against our kids and employees. It is the same kind of anti-gay critical race theory law that a lot of states have been passing. But it got a cute acronym.
S2: The bottom line is that. It is Donald Trump’s popularity among the Republican base, and Ron DeSantis has really wants those people to be behind him. And so he has kind of been fishing for ideas that will keep those people engaged. And the result is we now have these ideas that, to be honest with you, I’ve covered the Florida Legislature for 30 years, and we never have had them talk about the need to create legislation that prevents people from feeling bad because somebody may talk about this country’s racist past. No one has ever raised that as a threat
S1: for a governor who came into office promising to address the environment, who rushed to vaccinate his elderly population as soon as a COVID shot was available. This culture warrior stance, it caught Maryellen by surprise. It’s interesting talking to you because I get the sense that you think of Ron DeSantis like he’s been in a chrysalis for a little while, and maybe now we’re seeing like the full butterfly break free of like who he is as a politician.
S2: I think that’s interesting. I also do think that he is somebody who is able to mutate. He has shown that he can change based on where the political winds will take him.
S1: So this may not be his final form.
S2: This may not be his final four, right?
S1: Today on the show, the evolution of a Florida man. Will this new identity help propel Governor DeSantis to Washington? I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to what next? Stick around. It’s remarkable how quickly Governor Ron DeSantis has assumed the role of culture warrior in the Republican Party. Back when he was just a Florida congressman, Mary Ellen Klas says DeSantis was a relatively dyed in the wool small government conservative.
S2: He actually wrote a book. I think it was in 2011 or something, and it was pretty much a takedown of the Obama presidency. And in it, he really espouses very libertarian views, which like
S1: keep the government out of everything.
S2: Where, yeah, where you’re basically saying you don’t see government as anything that can help you do anything, you know, it’s you want to keep government away and liberty is freedom.
S1: This is why the governor’s current priorities are so noteworthy. In what looks like a total about-face, DeSantis is pushing legislation that would tamp down hard on free speech that stop WOAK Act. For example, it would bar schools and workplaces from facilitating conversations that could make someone feel responsible for historic wrongs because of their race or color, sex or national origin. Then there’s the so-called don’t say gay bill that would ban schools from encouraging discussions of sexuality or gender that aren’t age appropriate. The problem is exactly what is and isn’t prohibited here is not very clear.
S2: That’s the key thing. They don’t define it. And the intention here is to just kind of freeze teachers from fearing what kinds of discussions they can engage in. Parents get to decide if it’s age appropriate or not, because parents are the ones that have the enforcement tool under this legislation because they could sue.
S1: That sounds chaotic.
S2: No kidding. And the interesting thing is, school teachers and school districts have arrived at the Capitol, basically saying this is unworkable. It’s not realistic to expect us to manage this. But it doesn’t seem as if that’s really. What they’re concerned about, and they’re not they’re not too focused on making this workable.
S1: You mean the legislators aren’t right? Yeah. There are other pieces of legislation that DeSantis has been pushing that also caught my eye like. This idea that he was going to create election police people to look out for, you know, some kind of fraud. The idea that there’d be a 15 week abortion ban modeled after what Mississippi’s put out there, it’s all really conservative stuff. When I’ve always thought about Florida is basically a purple state. Am I misreading the state?
S2: Florida continues to be a very purple place in its urban areas. However, I think overall the state has grown so much that I think we’ve actually tipped the balance and we are now almost reliably red. And that is something that’s been playing out for the last couple election cycles. I do think that the way things have changed, especially over during COVID, the states just had a flood of new residents. The Republicans believe that many of those new residents are are registering as Republican and for the first time in 100 years, more than 100 years, Republicans now outnumber Democrats in voter registration.
S1: It is Ron DeSantis goal to solidify this perceived Republican advantage through the redistricting process. He’s found a way to be extreme in this regard, too. He’s pushing a new voting map that would eliminate a democratic district where a plurality of voters are black and reshape another one.
S2: If you think about what the governor’s long term goal is, he wants to be known as a powerful Republican on the national stage. Well, there’s nothing that could burnish his record more than if he helped get Congress Republican. And certainly one way to do that is to draw maps that give Republicans a greater advantage in Congress in Florida. So the governor did something that no governor has ever done publicly, and that is, he submitted a map, a congressional map.
S1: Is he allowed to do that?
S2: Yeah, there’s nobody. I mean, everybody is allowed to submit a map. There’s nothing preventing him from doing it. He does have veto authority over it. Unlike the legislative map, which he doesn’t, he cannot veto. So because he is, he’s got this big hammer and he’s like, he’s he sends them a map and the map dismantles two of the black districts, divides them up and then makes sure that there are 18 Republicans and only 10 Democrats.
S1: And this was after a little bit of a pressure campaign from Steve Bannon.
S2: Right, right. So, you know, Bannon is taking credit for persuading this governor to submit a map because the Florida Legislature had moved forward with some maps, especially the Senate, that were pretty close to the existing maps. And that didn’t give Republicans this massive advantage. So Steve Bannon got on his podcast and he told all his viewers to to write Ron DeSantis or call Ron DeSantis and tell him he needed to draw more partisan map. And that’s what happened. So the governor’s lawyer submits a map and it’s, you know, much more partisan and it dismantles two black districts. And because of that, and Florida’s got a unique provision in our state constitution that mirrors the the Federal Voting Rights Act, and it says that you cannot diminish the voting strength of a minority group. And so when the governor dismantles these, these black districts, the Florida Legislature is wary because they they were embroiled four in a three year legal battle in the last cycle because they violated the the redistricting standards in the state constitution. So they’re they push back. The Senate passed its map and ignored the governor’s map and the House it was in. The House is on the house’s plate. You know what was going to happen next? And it’s up to the Florida House to decide whether they go the direction the governor wants or not. And we’ll see this week how that plays out.
S1: I read that even Republicans were shocked by DeSantis moves here. But I I did wonder a little bit. Why would Republicans be shocked by this? Of course, DeSantis is under pressure to deliver Republican seats, and frankly, Democrats are doing a lot of work all over the country to gerrymander the heck out of their districts. So it may be a panic move, but maybe not surprising.
S2: I think what’s surprising is that it was so public. There must have been enough of a disagreement behind closed doors that the governor felt he had to take this public because watching Republicans, there’s no doubt in my mind that they strategize that this governor has often come out with a, you know, a really ostentatious proposal, and he knows that he’s going to get the headlines for that. And then the then the Legislature is going to kind of fix it. So this has been the pattern that we’ve watched, and the Legislature has pretty much gone in lockstep with this governor because he’s so popular nationally. So when this happened, it was clear that there either is a strategy where it looks like the governor wants to show the national audience that he’s fighting for more Republicans or they need this to play out in court and have the court settle this legal quagmire there.
S1: You say taking it public was important here. When you say that, I wonder, like, who’s the audience when you take it public, it’s not the Legislature that would be behind the scenes move. Is it like Steve Bannon’s listeners who’s the governor talking to?
S2: Yeah, yeah, that’s a really good question. There’s a lot of people they’re talking to. I mean, if you are a gung ho Republican donor and you live in Los Angeles or Nevada, Colorado or somewhere else, you and you want to see that this governor is, you know, doing everything he can to maximize Republican strength in Florida. His audience, maybe them as well.
S1: How is advocating for these kind of ultra conservative moves impacted Governor DeSantis financially? Do we know?
S2: I think it’s worked very well for him. He has raised almost a hundred million dollars for his gubernatorial campaign. And the result is, you know, you can, you can. Go very far with that kind of money in Florida. Florida elections are run on. You know, television ads and internet ads and and you can you can get a lot of mileage with that kind of money.
S1: But DeSantis. He might have his sights set beyond Tallahassee when we come back, how this playbook is serving his presidential ambitions. When reporters like Mary Ellen Klas look at this $100 million war chest, Ron DeSantis is piling up. They can’t help but wonder if he’s going to be trying to spend it not only on his gubernatorial run later this year, but on a presidential bid. Come 2024. But for DeSantis, running for president is complicated because there’s another Florida resident who is also likely to run in 2024. Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis owes a lot to the former president.
S2: Ron DeSantis can credit Donald Trump with making him governor. Ron DeSantis was a little known congressman, essentially when he ran for governor. And did
S1: you think he was a shoo in or were you, like, never
S2: know the person who looked like he was going to be the favorite was a longtime Republican former agriculture commissioner, which is a pretty powerful job in the state. Former congressman and that was Adam Putnam. So DeSantis challenges Adam Putnam and Donald Trump, then president endorses him, and that just allowed two senators to catapult over Putnam and a couple of other Republicans in the field, and he won the primary.
S1: I read that Trump even sent staffers to work with DeSantis,
S2: Trump’s primary political director in Florida, then went to work for Ron DeSantis and, you know, was able to use their network and their base of supporters and really help elevate this governor.
S1: So Ron, DeSantis and Donald Trump were politically close, not just ideologically aligned, but like they were close. Are they close now?
S2: Well, they are supposedly personal friends.
S1: I send some suspicion in your voice.
S2: Well, only because I think that things have become increasingly very tense. I mean, we have heard that DeSantis is resentful of the fact that Trump expects him to bend the knee so much. Trump is resentful because DeSantis doesn’t seem grateful enough and loyal enough to him now. Every time DeSantis is asked if he’s a candidate for for president in 2024. His answer is. I am focused on Florida. I am running for re-election.
S3: I’m not considering anything beyond doing my job. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on in Florida. I’m going to be running for re-election next year and we’re also that answer.
S1: It’s always the answer until it’s not.
S2: It’s always the answer. And you know, of course, Donald Trump wants to hear. There is no way I’m going to challenge Donald Trump. If you know, if he wants to run, I’m all I’m 100 percent behind him. But Ron DeSantis is not saying that. And that has raised a lot of speculation. And the reason it’s raised a lot of speculation is because many of the Trump supporters see Ron DeSantis as. Maybe a smarter Donald Trump, maybe somebody who has a little bit more, you know, finesse and he’s certainly younger. It’s a difficult place for Ron DeSantis, however, to navigate because as you mentioned, he’s got former staffers that worked for Trump. He is an acolyte of Trump as close as you can find them. So in order for him to get elevated on the national stage, Donald Trump has to. Be diminished or acquiesce. And we all know that it’s very unlikely that Trump is going to acquiesce.
S1: We’ve talked about how DeSantis is dealing with Trump. What do you notice about how Ron DeSantis is dealing with Biden and what does that tell you about what he’s going to do next?
S2: That’s a really good question, and it’s very clear that every opportunity that Ron DeSantis has to blame a problem. It’s Joe Biden’s problem, right? So right now, we have a affordable housing crisis in Florida, and that is because the state has failed to invest as workers have not been well paid. And meanwhile, the real estate crunch is intense. So when Governor Ron DeSantis is asked what he’s doing about it, he said Well. You should be asking Joe Biden because of inflation now this affordable housing crisis is decades in the making. It’s not just about inflation, but what’s really interesting is that Joe Biden, you know, every poke that Ron DeSantis has, Joe Biden is starting to respond, which
S1: shows that he sees him as a real opponent.
S2: Right in it, and that just elevates and encourages Ron DeSantis. So at the end of this week, we’ve got Joe Biden showing up in Florida and and Jill Biden is is traveling the state. So yeah, it’s it’s very clear that Ron DeSantis sees Joe Biden as his opponent at this point.
S1: Do you think any of DeSantis political fortunes rise or fall on whether all this legislation we talked about the Anti Woke Act and the don’t say gay stuff, if any of that passes or fails? Or is that really just? Is it fine that he just said these things out loud?
S2: Well, you know, a lot of these very controversial ideas get challenged in courts and the courts have thrown them out or put a hole in them. And it really hasn’t matter. You know, he’s able to say, I push this and it’s not law, but much of this is is fighting for notion and the headline. Many of these things, I think, will be challenged in court, I think. I think they’re enormous. First Amendment violations, if they are sustained and allowed to become law, I think it will have dramatic consequences. It will have dramatic consequences on what people can say in Florida and what people can, what people can behave. It will have a chilling effect in business and schools. But I don’t think that is their ultimate goal in some ways, and I think they’re they just want to be in it for the fight.
S1: Mary Ellen Klas. I’m always really grateful for your Florida Insights. Thanks for coming on the show.
S2: Glad to be here. Thanks.
S1: Mary Mary Ellen Klas is the Capitol bureau chief for the Miami Herald. And that’s our show. What next is produced by Daniel Hewitt, Elaina Schwartz, Mary Wilson and Carmel Delshad. We’re led by Alicia Montgomery and I’m Mary Harris. Go see her on Twitter. I’m at Mary’s desk. Meantime, I’ll get you back here tomorrow.
