CLAY: I want to talk about this story because of the significance of it, but also because it seems quite clear to me that Democrats are on the run. They were supposed today, Buck — this was the deadline that Chuck Schumer put in place — to vote on the voting rights bill as well as a modification of the filibuster in the Senate. They certainly now have scrapped that deadline.

At some point this week, the voting rights changes that the Democrats wanted to put in place as well as their filibuster places will go up in smoke because two Democratic senators have said “no” to the idea of changing the filibuster — Senator Manchin from West Virginia and Senator Sinema of Arizona. And, as you look at the data points…

We talked some about it with Glenn Youngkin being inaugurated, and that is a very visible representation of how things are moving rapidly against the Democratic Party. Joe Biden: 33% approval rating in the most recent Quinnipiac poll; the biggest advantage that Gallup has on record right now for the Republican Party, a five-point advantage in terms of the national mood. The biggest advantage that the Republican Party has had since 1994-ish when obviously the big win, the landslide election against Bill Clinton in the midterm in 1994, Republicans get swept in to the House of Representatives.

That is where we are looking right now as we move towards the midterms in 2022. The Democrats see all this. That bright, shining light that they are seeing out in front of them, it is not the Pearly Gates. It’s not a positive thing. It is a train, and it is going to flatten them. And so, Buck, what is the way to combat this, is to try to seed internal division with Republicans, and the best way to do that is to go after two of the top Republican hierarchy right now both down in the state of Florida.

As we speak the headline at the Washington Post: “Who is King of Florida? Tensions Rise Between Trump and DeSantis Over What DeSantis Might or Might Not Do in 2024.” But ultimately, this is about trying to create a side story from the failures that are going on right now in the Democratic Party the greatest solution, I think, really, Buck, is if Trump were to… First of all, DeSantis has to win reelection in 2022 as governor, which I think he will.

And if Trump then decided immediately to say, “Hey, I want Ron DeSantis to be my vice presidential running mate,” I think that probably would be a union that many people out there right now listening to us would enjoy, then DeSantis will have to decide, “Hey, do I want to run against Trump in 2024?” But that’s a long way into the future. Right now, they’re trying to use it as a distraction for the upcoming midterms.

BUCK: Yeah. There’s just no upside here, and we all understand the people that are trying to manipulate the conversation in order to create a rift in the Republican Party. There’s no upside in getting into a DeSantis-versus-Trump situation. Look, they both bring a lot to the political table. I still think that it’s likely that if Trump decides to run again, he’ll be the nominee and the party will rally behind him. Trump is also at an age where that’s a real consideration for him.

And two years, when you’re in your mid-seventies, is very different from two years when you are in your fifties or you’re in your sixties. So we’ll see where he is, and in many ways one of the best possible outcomes here could be if Trump decides on his own that he wants the MAGA machine, if you will, to anoint a new leader in a sense, and that would be Ron DeSantis, and have the full backing of Trump and all that he brings to bear with Ron DeSantis, who obviously he’s about…

I think he’s actually your age, Clay. He’s a few years older than me. I think he’s 42, 43. He’s young for someone to even be talked about as a president, young for a governor, and so I think that’s how this plays out. And everyone should be careful playing into the left’s hands here because what they would want to see it. You know, Trump is like a grizzly bear. Even if you win a wrestling match with a grizzly bear, you’re gonna be really cut up — and maybe, you know, make it a few days later.

You would you not want Ron DeSantis and Trump going against each other. We want them fighting against the commie apparatus, and they’re gonna do everything they can to try to create this divide-and-conquer strategy in Florida. So I just think that conservatives should be on guard against it. Everyone should understand that there’s no good… It’s not like they’re trying to help us clarify the future of the GOP.

There’s no good intention here when the New York Times writes about this. They’re trying to poke Trump. They’re hoping that they can create a perception that Trump is being unseated by the DeSantis folks in some way as the heir apparent or whatever that may be. And we just sit here, and there’s no need. There’s no need for that. If Trump says, “I’m gonna run again,” I think the party unites behind him. If the former president decides that it’s time to anoint a successor, that would be great too.

CLAY: I also think DeSantis has to be super, super smart in not allowing himself to get dragged into something other than the governor race going on in November. Because it’s easy, I understand, for the media to get focused on something beyond running for the governor of Florida because, candidly, I think that most in the media are recognizing that DeSantis is going to win relatively easily.

I know how combative elections are in Florida and how even they are, but I think Ron DeSantis gonna win by — this is my prediction — a couple hundred thousand votes minimum in the state of Florida. He won, I believe, by around 30,000 or 40,000 votes, 50,000, something low. I think it was 30,000 or 40,000 in that massive knock-down-drag-out race —

BUCK: — to Andrew Gillum which, by the way, good heavens. I mean, the fact that that race was as close as it was is stunning, when you think about it.

CLAY: No doubt, and imagine this is one of those things where it’s really difficult to even contemplate, but what would the United States of America look like if Andrew Gillum wins that election and is the governor of Florida when covid starts? I’m not kidding about this, Buck. I think Andrew Gillum would have locked down Florida like New York and California were locked down.

And people could say, “Well, there still would have been other states that would have potentially looked at the data and looked at the science and tried to stay open.” I think it’s hard to understate the amount of shrapnel that Ron DeSantis took as the tip of the spear, being willing to look at all of the data and say, “Florida is staying open” in a state that is relatively even, right, in terms of Democrats and Republicans in that state.

So, so many other governors and other political figures, when they saw that DeSantis was taking the stand that he was taking — and I think, by the way, one reason that he was willing to take the stand, this guy’s really smart, okay? I mean, he went to Yale, and then he went to Harvard Law School, and he trusts his ability to look at the data and actually make decisions.

Whereas I think a lot of politicians are not as confident in their own intellect and they’re not going to look at the data themselves and make rational the discussions. Buck, I would even say this about you and me. One reason why we’ve been comfortable looking at the data and having opinions about covid like we have is because we trust our ability to analyze that data. I think there’s a lot of people in media who just look to see which way the wind is blowing, and they follow those trend lines, right? And I think that happens in politics in a big way too.

BUCK: Yeah. I was briefing the president in the Oval Office for the first time when I was 27 because I was pretty good at analyzing data. You’ve built a media empire because you’re pretty good at analyzing data. So when people like Jen Psaki get all snarky with us, you’re gonna say to yourself, “Uh, I think we can handle assessing what’s working and what’s not.”

When you can see it as clearly as you do — whether it’s about, you know, school masking or any number of issues. But DeSantis I think deserves a lot of credit because, remember, it wasn’t as easy in the early days. They were suggesting he was literally murdering people is what the narrative was from the left. It wasn’t he has a different approach or he’s not being as cautious as he should be. They were called him “DeathSantis,” and I will say, one area, the first 60 days the pandemic, you know, it was a different.

We didn’t know, and there was a lot, but I think that, you know, that Fauci should have been fired, and I think that there are areas where the Trump administration also got a bit distracted because of the rise of BLM and all that which was happening in the summer of 2020 where people forget this now.

CLAY: Chaotic.

BUCK: You had these two major issues rolled together that the administration was dealing with at the same time, and I believe right now that the most important thing, as I’ve said, is Republican states show that — and it shows through the data but also where people are voting with their feet, where people are moving… You brought up how Florida will be a place that Ron DeSantis wins by more votes. I think in part that will be driven by friends of mine, my own brothers.

My one brother is a permanent Florida resident, and the other one is thinking he’ll be trying to think make that happen and working through logistics of it. But my own family members are now Florida residents — or a family member, I should say, the Florida resident. He’s gonna be casting his vote for Ron DeSantis, and there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people just like him because the decisions that were made had consequences. We saw the results, and ultimately everybody should be reminded of this too. DeSantisism… We talk about Fauci-ism. DeSantisism was right.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Fauciism was wrong, and they will never accept this and they will never admit this because of the immediate threat that it poses to their power, the immediate realities of what that would do.

CLAY: There’s no doubt, Buck, and I would say this. You were talking about the early days of the pandemic. I went down to Florida with my family in early May, and there was literally a lawyer down there walking around dressed as the Grim Reaper on the beach getting tons of media attention — you may remember this — criticizing DeSantis to the high leavens for opening the beach back up.

Buck, the outdoor beach where you could sit in the sunshine may be the safest place that you could possibly have been during covid. Probably sitting at the beach, nice little breeze going on with as much vitamin D as you can possibly get. There was a guy walking around dressed as the Grim Reaper, and the media was covering him as if was he a savant.

BUCK: Unbelievable.

CLAY: That’s where we were.