I'm not a candidate. >> [LAUGH] [MUSIC] >> Speaker 2: This is, my kids would say, that's my jam. [MUSIC] >> Speaker 1: Donald Trump, when he gets off the teleprompter now, you don't know what he's gonna say. He's a different Donald Trump than 15 and 16. [00:00:18] Back then he was colorful, but it was really America first about the policies. Now a lot of it's about him. And when he's doing and says that debating Hillary Clinton after access Hollywood was like an example of bravery that some general told him was more significant [00:00:34] than soldiers who fight and die in war, that is offensive and that is wrong. Donald Trump has refused to debate throughout this campaign. That last year with COVID, I think was mishandled dramatically. Shutting down the country was a huge mistake. [00:00:51] Printing trillions and trillions of dollars was a huge mistake, that set the foundation for the inflation that we see. So I don't know what the legislature, how they analyzed it, but it very well may be because of that ruling under Donald Trump that they may have had [00:01:06] a legal leg to stand up. My view would be, that's not a religion that the founding fathers were trying to create. But I do think that IRS ruling, I was really surprised to see that they did that. >> Speaker 2: Okay, so at the end there, he's talking about the satanic altar in the Iowa state capital. [00:01:23] But there you saw excerpts from Ron DeSantis' appearance with Jake Tapper on the CNN Town Hall. And you can see that a lot of that was his attempts to criticize Donald Trump within the very specific confines of how he thinks he's allowed to. [00:01:39] And that is what makes virtually every one of those clips utterly fascinating. I love what he can criticize and what he can't. So, he's gonna criticize him on the pandemic, not on a failed government response that resulted in over a million people dying, [00:01:55] but on the stuff that he did to not let the country utterly fall apart. The lockdown, which is barely a national lockdown, it was like for two weeks, but they still pretend that that was a terrible thing. You shouldn't have done that, you should have let everyone congregate and get sick and die. And the money they gave out, which, yeah, probably was linked to inflation, and [00:02:11] a lot of it didn't need to be handed out. Republican congresspeople were pulling in hundreds of thousands of dollars that they didn't need and didn't have to pay back. But it also could have resulted in the economy falling apart even more if you hadn't provided the stimulus that you did. And then you have stuff like him mentioning how now when he's off [00:02:28] the teleprompter, he's a bit random. He's different than he was in 2015, 2016. What are you talking about? That's exactly who he was back then. But I get it, you're supposed to pretend that he was cool back then and you liked him. It's not a change in you opposing him now, it's just that he's changed. [00:02:44] Now he says dangerous, random things, whereas back in 2016, he spoke like a Harvard professor or something. And so a lot of that is utterly ridiculous. But, Adrian, he has been sort of backed into a corner where he can't really attack Trump on the most significant flaws of Trump, but [00:03:00] he has to attack him because he's currently getting walloped in Iowa. He's down 35 percentage points among likely caucus participants. So, he's gotta do something. What did you make of his attempts? >> Speaker 3: It's clear, one of those last ditch efforts, [00:03:17] because you're absolutely right. The fact is that DeSantis is not polling well and the window is kinda closing here, so he has to step up and say something. It's just so interesting because before, when he did have to some extent, attack Trump, he would put his foot around it, [00:03:33] not necessarily be direct in saying it, never really use his name. And now it seems that he is definitely leaning into going after Trump. But as you've noted, he's not going after him on the most significant things he could attack him on. It just really shows you that DeSantis is extremely scared, as he should be, [00:03:50] but really, he should just pack it up and go away, take his heels and just maybe actually be a governor of a state. Because what he's trying to do in this candidate race, it's laughable, and it's not gonna pay off for him. >> Speaker 2: Arguably, those boots were made for walking, and [00:04:05] maybe he should just walk. Maybe we'll talk some more about that. But I just wanna make sure that I don't forget, as you said, there's things that he has to avoid criticizing him for. So the fact that he's facing 91 indictments, oops, can't mention that, that's all totally acceptable. It's fine that you're a serial criminal. [00:04:20] He talked there about him saying that the general had said that Trump was braver than all the soldiers he fought and died around him. But did you notice he wouldn't say what that story was about? It was about the grab and buy the p-word thing. And he can't be specific about that because he has to pretend that there was [00:04:37] nothing wrong with him saying that. Again, do you see the weird gymnastics that he has to do? And so, yeah, he's gotta criticize him, he has to pretend that his brain was relatively contiguous back in 2016. And I don't know how you're supposed to win a boxing match when you are willingly [00:04:56] holding both hands behind your back. To be clear, I don't he could beat him even if he was attacking him in all this stuff. Both because he doesn't have the juice and because the republican base loves Trump more than they'll ever love Ron DeSantis. But this definitely isn't the way. [MUSIC]