President Biden wants to run against Donald Trump again, but Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the one he needs to be worried about. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: President Biden wants to run against Donald Trump again, but Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the one he needs to be worried about. I don’t know why people are missing this. I don’t think they’re missing it. DeSantis, you know, I, I, here you wanna hear long term prediction? DeSantis versus Newsom out California. Newsom’s gonna take the East Coast and the West Coast. DeSantis is playing to middle America. He has a real chance to win the presidency. I don’t really think that Trump wants to run. I think all along Trump is, if you look at the way they’re interacting, he’s, he’s the guy behind DeSantis. He thinks DeSantis can deliver on a lot of his ideas without being Donald Trump. What do, what’s your take?
Farron Cousins: Well, the, the reason DeSantis is obviously a, a scarier opponent than Trump, which is what Democrats are trying to warn Biden. Like, hey, start paying attention to this guy.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: DeSantis, even though I disagree, by the way, with all of his, you know, legislation he’s pushed, he doesn’t have any scandals. You know, bad legislation is one thing, but there are no scandals involving this guy. There are no skeletons in the closet that we know of right now. And he’s not stupid.
Mike Papantonio: He is a very boring guy.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a very boring guy. He is not, he’s not, he’s not Pence boring, but he, the difference between him and a Pence is he will push back.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I think the guy’s smart. He’s strategic. He’s deliberate. I think he poses the biggest threat to the Democrats. I think in a, in a lineup between him and Newsom, he wins because you’ve got this, this angst that everybody has about the whole California scene, you know, that it’s just, it’s a problem that Newsom brings with him. I think Newsom would be good politician. I think he’s gonna run a good campaign. And I think it’s gonna be him when it’s all over. It’s gonna be a tough fight. But you know what they don’t understand, Florida is firmly a red state.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: And you have Newsom doing these ads in Florida as if it’s gonna change voter’s idea about the difference between Newsom and DeSantis. I, I don’t think.
Farron Cousins: Well, well, and Newsom’s doing that right now in Florida. Do you know what DeSantis is about to do?
Mike Papantonio: Tell me.
Farron Cousins: He’s about to go to Arizona, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Ohio to campaign and hold rallies for Republicans.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So what this is, which is coming up in just a, one or two weeks now, this is DeSantis’, basically his audition.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So if he can go to these places where you’ve got some Trump backed candidates, because everybody is endorsing or rallying for Trump backed people, if he does well and he plays well on those stages, again, these are swing states he’s going to.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: He, this is his audition. This is his big chance and if he proves he can do it, that’s a big, big problem for the Democrats in 2024.
Mike Papantonio: Well, you heard it here first, DeSantis versus Newsom. DeSantis takes middle America. He takes the West. He takes the South. Newsom picks up the two, the, the two coasts. It, it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be a tough race. This guy is, he’s a real, he’s a real campaigner.
The FBI carried out a raid on Donald Trump’s resident at South Florida golf course resort this week. And everyone on both sides of the political aisle have lost their minds about this event. Here, here are the arguments, you know, they, they’ve weaponized the DOJ, probably some truth to that. That it’s going to cause such a surge in GOP interest for the midterms that anything the Democrats gain with the abortion issue is now lost because you have so many Republicans, even moderate Republicans, very angry, willing to show up at the polls. So, so take it from there. I see a boatload of issues here, but we can talk about this a long time. Why, why don’t you take it from there.
Farron Cousins: I, I, I don’t disagree that there are obviously some political ramifications the Democrats are gonna suffer from here, but I’m, I’m personally glad that this happened.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: And, and I do think I, I wanna throw this out there is, I don’t think, you know, everybody says this is, oh, it’s the National Archives, the documents that he had had there. I don’t think that that is exactly what we’re looking at.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: I think it’s more likely this has something to do, because again, we don’t even have confirmation about what it’s really about.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: I think this is more about the fake elector scheme, where they’ve already gotten John Eastman’s cell phones. They’ve gotten Rudy Giuliani’s materials.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Okay. Talk that out a little bit, because a lot of the viewers may not know, talk about that issue.
Farron Cousins: So, so this is of course, you know, Trump’s attorneys and as far as we know, Trump himself were attempting to get by the states, send us alternate electors so Mike Pence can verify them.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: That is the one thing we know the DOJ has been investigating. They’ve been very aggressive with it in the last couple weeks.
Mike Papantonio: Mm-hmm.
Farron Cousins: So for this to suddenly happen now versus the National Archive story, which came out way earlier this year.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: The timing seems to lend more to the fake elector scheme to me.
Mike Papantonio: That’s, that’s a good point. I think you may be onto something there. The way I see this is the, the downside to it. We’ve talked about the Church hearings a lot.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. This is being shaped up like the same kind of argument that was done in the Church hearings. If you think about it, the Church hearings really started with the idea that maybe the IRS, well, it started, it started with a Phoenix program that a guy named Colby was running in Vietnam where he was assassinating people unnecessarily. And it was an ugly, ugly story. But then the other, the sub part of it began that the IRS they had added all these agents and they were targeting political opponents. It was part of the DOJ process. The DOJ themselves was, they were targeting political opponents. They were doing things like, you know, following journalists around, they were doing things like eavesdropping, bugging houses, bugging cars, and the, so it, it was, it was a really ugly time in history. And I, I think about this, this is being turned into that a little bit. This is being turned into, this is gonna be another example of weaponizing, you hear that term a lot, weaponizing the Department of Justice. You know, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you something, if it does go forward, what we’re gonna see is when the, when the Republicans are gonna take, they’re gonna take over at some point. And when they do the people that outta be really careful are people like Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden. They’re, and you know, the people that were behind this raid themselves, it’s gonna be another, I think it’s gonna be a parallel to the Church hearings.
Farron Cousins: Well, and we do have some interesting things here too, because Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, this guy Trump put up there.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So this is a Trump guy.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So far right now, we’re still trying to learn a little bit more about who the judge was. I think right now it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Rein, Reinhardt.
Farron Cousins: Was it Reinhardt?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. A guy named Reinhardt.
Farron Cousins: Okay, so.
Mike Papantonio: He’s a magistrate.
Farron Cousins: Okay. So he’s not a political appointee.
Mike Papantonio: No.
Farron Cousins: At least. Okay.
Mike Papantonio: Well, there’s, they’re already starting to attack him. You know, they’re tying him up to the fact that, of the, his wrongdoing when he represented the people that were involved with Epstein that were raping kids.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. I did see that. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: So he, he represented these people, even though he had inside information from a prosecutorial standpoint, he comes out and he starts saying, I’m gonna represent these people that are caught up in the Epstein trafficking issues. He, he represented some people that are accused of trafficking. And so, so they look at it, they look at him and they say, you know, that’s where they’re gonna start their fight. First of all, the magistrate shouldn’t have even issued the subpoena. It, you know, it’s impossible for us to know. We haven’t seen the subpoena. We haven’t seen the search warrant. We know they’ve got into his, his safe.
Farron Cousins: Safe, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And it was empty, you know, and we do know this. We do know that, you know, the people who are constitutional lawyers, really good ones, say that they really got ahead of themselves there. That this is the last possible act the Department of Justice should have taken before they negotiated for these documents.
Farron Cousins: But if we do not know obviously which investigation this is about, this might be the last act. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: Could be.
Farron Cousins: This might be the final, you know, nail in whatever coffin it is they think they have. If it is the fake elector scheme, again, they’ve already gotten all of his associates, you know, all of the enablers, the lawyers, their cell phones, if they’re looking for the final missing piece of the puzzle. And another interesting thing that happened too, though, at the same time, right before this happens, we get the major bombshell from Maggie Haberman.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: Who sends out the photos like this man flushes documents down the toilet.
Mike Papantonio: Well, A. A, there’s always, there, there’s always ,already suspicion that that was a setup picture. You, you’ve seen that?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, yeah. I mean.
Mike Papantonio: There’s always already suspicion it doesn’t have anything to do with government. It’s his private. But so, so the point is there’s no turning back here. Okay. This is never been done to a pres, a past president in the history of the country, ever. And so the point being it’s like Axelrod said, they better be sure that this is a tight case. That’s an open and shut case. Because if it’s not, we’ve got a DOJ that’s gonna be on the ropes. We’ve got a FBI that’s gonna be on the ropes for might a long time. I think that’s gonna happen anyway. I think you’re gonna see the, I think you’re gonna see the Republican base in power and they’re gonna turn out in droves, man.
Farron Cousins: Well, and Republicans have already told us if we take back the House, guess what? We’re, we’re doing the Hunter Biden investigation.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Which the DOJs already investigating Hunter Biden right now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: So that is happening.
Mike Papantonio: Supposedly, yeah.
Farron Cousins: But they’ve also said, we’re gonna investigate Fauci. We’re gonna investigate, Pelosi. We’re gonna investigate everything.
Mike Papantonio: Merrick Garland.
Farron Cousins: So they can just add another one to the list now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Which I think is gonna be a disaster for ’em. I mean, Republicans gonna do the same thing that Democrats did and spend too much time investigating and not time enough legislating.
Farron Cousins: Well that’s.
Mike Papantonio: And, and they’re gonna fall into that. It’s, it’s, it’s like a trap for ’em.
Farron Cousins: Well, and, and I will say, you know, bringing up the fact that this hasn’t happened to a past president before, it should have happened.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: To George W. Bush.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: With the whole torture and all of that.
Mike Papantonio: Absolutely.
Farron Cousins: You know, we should have seen it back then and set that precedent.
Mike Papantonio: But they didn’t because they didn’t want that precedent. That, that’s what happened there, Farron.
Farron Cousins: Well, Eric Holder was a coward, as well.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Eric Holder, Eric Holder was a coward. Well, the, I, I think it’s early to say we’ve turned into a banana Republic, but this is something that you see in South America. One pow, one, one political powers in, they’re in power, that they’re then out of power and the investigations and prosecutions start. That is almost, that, that is the, the way that a third world country operates. So I, I think it’s too early to say that right now, although you have people saying banana Republic, third world countries. I don’t know. I think it’s too early. Yeah, we don’t know enough facts at this point.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And I, I think once we know what exactly this was related to, again, my money at the moment is on the fake elector scheme.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, I think.
Farron Cousins: I just, I just think that makes more sense.
Mike Papantonio: You may be right. Let’s hope it’s something that they can actually, because if you’re gonna threaten the king, you better kill the king.
Farron Cousins: If they, if they fumble this.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: That, that is not gonna look. I mean, there’s nothing that would look worse than that at this point.
Mike Papantonio: That’s true.
