135,128 views May 3, 2023 Farron Balanced
Both Donald Trump and Kari Lake have recently hinted that MAGA Republicans might sit out the 2024 presidential election if Ron DeSantis gets the nomination, effectively causing a boycott of the election on the Right. They likely aren't wrong, as Trump has personally spent the last few months trashing DeSantis to the point where his supporters are openly attacking the Florida governor. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.
*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos. According to multiple different news outlets, both Donald Trump and Kari Lake are openly suggesting that there could be a MAGA Republican boycott of the 2024 presidential election. If Ron DeSantis is the nominee. Now pay close attention to what I just said. It's not if Trump doesn't get the nomination, it's only if Ron DeSantis gets it. They're making no mention of anybody else. Maybe they're not afraid of anybody else the way they're clearly afraid of DeSantis, but they've both suggested that DeSantis needs to wait his turn because if he doesn't, those MAGA voters out there are absolutely not gonna support him in a general election. Now, this whole weird saga actually began from an April 27th truth social post from country singer John Rich. Now, rich put on truth social, I don't understand the logic of DeSantis running. Let's just say he beat Donald Trump in the primary, which won't happen. But let's hypothesize. If he won, there wouldn't be one true Trump supporter left that would vote for him and he would be destroyed in a general election. This is a losing proposition no matter how you look at it. So why on earth would he voluntarily run head on into the wood Chipper actually kind of sounds like Donald Trump himself wrote that, but Donald Trump did RET truth it and he added quote, I've always said John Rich was a very smart guy. So again, kind of, kind of seems like Trump wrote that. I know he didn't, but that's kind of what Trump would say minus, you know, or add in a few more capital letters. But either way, Trump retruded it on truth social, put it out there in the ether that no real MAGA Republican is gonna vote for Ron DeSantis if he somehow takes the nomination away from Donald Trump. So then this past weekend, Kari Lake also jumped in on it. Kari Lake said quote, this is a podcast for Rudy Giuliani. All I'm saying is I really believe DeSantis needs to realize that if he wants to have a political future, he needs to wait until 2028. I think he could, if he does the right thing and handles it. If I think if DeSantis was to back out now, it would be really smart for him to do that. He has got a big career ahead of him. And the question is, does he want a big political career? If he does, I think he backs out now and supports Trump wholeheartedly and then continues to run Florida into the ground, basically is how you should have ended that. Because I live here, you don't, I know how horrible it is. Uh, so Carrie Lake, a little more, you know, subtle with her threats, but basically saying like, back out now and everything's gonna be okay. Now here's the thing, they're not wrong. Donald Trump has spent months trashing Ron DeSantis to the point where Trump supporters show up at pretty much every DeSantis event they can to disrupt it, to yell at him, to call him names, to tell him not to run for president. They don't like the guy Donald Trump has done to Ron DeSantis. The same thing he did to Mike Pence was turn a significant portion of the Republican base, the MAGA freaks against them, to the point where they have no viable shot at winning a higher office. So the question becomes for Ron DeSantis, do you risk it in 2024? I mean, your poll numbers are already dropping like crazy, bud, everybody seems to hate you. You're now losing to Biden in head-to-head hypothetical matchups by nine points a month ago. You were only losing by two points. By the way, Trump's numbers against Biden have also fallen to like five or six points that he loses. So both the two front runners, the Republican party lose handily to President Biden based on current polling. It'll continue to change as time goes on, but if DeSantis waits and doesn't run till 2028, is the damage undone? Like all those attacks from the MAGA Republicans, like those suddenly disappear. Like, oh, we we love him now. Right? That's certainly a real possibility. It's also a very real gamble. You willing to risk that? Not to mention by the time 2028 rolls around, you will have been out of office for two years. You'll no longer be in the spotlight. You will have faded from public memory.
