DeSantis Down and Out

Plus: Javier Milei’s powerful speech on economic prosperity in Davos

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

DeSantis Down and Out

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman hold a postmortem examination of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' suspended campaign for president before considering Donald Trump's recent claim that presidents deserve full immunity from prosecution.

00:27—Ron DeSantis drops out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination

19:54—Trump claims full presidential immunity

30:05—Weekly Listener Question

47:00—Argentine President Javier Milei addresses Davos

54:38—This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Ron DeSantis Could Have Run on a Message of Freedom," by Eric Boehm

"So Long to the Man in Lifts," by Liz Wolfe

"4 Reasons Why Dean Phillips Could Shock Write-in Joe Biden in New Hampshire Tuesday," by Matt Welch

"No Labels Has 13 Presidential Candidates, 14 State Ballots, and 7 Weeks To Decide Whether To Run," by Matt Welch

"Is DeSantis a Principled Governor or a Retaliatory Culture Warrior?" by Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie

"How Should Libertarians Think About Ron DeSantis?" by Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller

"Trump's Demand for 'Total' Presidential Immunity Reflects His Authoritarian Impulses," by Jacob Sullum

"Meet the New Boss: Donald Trump, Who Wants To Tell You What You Can Buy and Sell," by Nick Gillespie

"Should Libertarians Vote For Trump? Nick Gillespie vs. Walter Block," a Soho Forum debate by Gene Epstein

"Donald Trump on Libertarianism: 'I like it. A lot of good things.'" by Nick Gillespie

"Javier Milei Tells World Leaders: 'The State Is Not the Solution,'" by Katarina Hall

"Is Javier Milei a 'Doctrinaire Hayekian' and a Secret Reason Science Project?" by Nick Gillespie

"Conservative Liberals for Mainstream Anti-MSMism," by Matt Welch

"Talking about Punk as a 'Cultural Antibiotic' for the Body Politic!" by Nick Gillespie

"School Choice Is Popular and Increasingly Common," by J.D. Tuccille

Reason's archive on National School Choice Week

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsors:

• The world would be a better, freer, and happier place if constitutional protections for private property were taken just a tad more seriously. That's according to our friends over at the Institute for Justice, who have just begun releasing a new season of their legal history podcast, Bound By Oath. Bound By Oath tells the story of how the Supreme Court has cleared the way for government officials to abuse property rights: to trespass on private land without a warrant, to restrict peaceful and productive uses of property, to seize and keep property without sufficient justification, and much more. Featuring interviews not only with scholars and litigators but also with the real-life people behind some of the Supreme Court's most momentous property rights decisions, the new season explores the history behind today's civil rights battles. So plug Bound By Oath into wherever you get your podcasts, and start with Episode 1.

Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

What are we consuming this week?

Nick Gillespie

• Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll by Lenny Kaye

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• Mean Girls

Peter Suderman

• For All Mankind - Season 4

Matt Welch

• A Compassionate Spy

---

Comments

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Immunity is bad enough for university bureaucrats and grade school teachers. It is much worse for cops and prosecutors and judges. It is a travesty for any politician.

Self-ownership, personal responsibility, those are what matters. Any government agent claiming immunity for anything deserves to spend the rest of his life in a bucket of tar, with citizens bringing their own pillows.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Yup. Make elected or appointed officials criminally AND financially liable for their decisions and actions.

[JesseAz]

Especially since we are in the middle of political lawfare. Wait.

You guys know what you're asking for right?

Do you enjoy when the DoJ Civil Rights division goes into local jurisdictions to push reformative race based policing?

What about Sue and settle for legislation?

Youre opening up an entire can of worms for political use of courts to go after political enemies as we are seeing.

[creech]

Yes, you aren't going to like it when the pendulum swings in the other guy's favor.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

Random prediction of the day: In the next 24 months, the abbreviation D.E.I. and the terminology surrounding it will largely be disavowed by the woke left and their institutions in media and corporate world, and a large chunk of them will deny they were ever for it.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

It’ll be a “conspiracy theory” to suggest it ever existed.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

We've always been at war with EastAsia.

[Don't look at me!]

Something worse will take its place.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

Of course, that's why they're called 'progressives'. They don't stop. They go away, come back as something else, while claiming the thing they want, and got which killed millions has never been truly tried.

[A Cynical Asshole]

the abbreviation D.E.I. and the terminology surrounding it will largely be disavowed by the woke left and their institutions in media and corporate world

Their academic institutions will continue to embrace it and, more importantly, indoctrinate the next generation in its tenets. Until, like the PC craze of the '90s, it reemerges in ~10-20 years as something even worse. Perhaps then they'll go full Bolshevism. And "you never go full Bolshevik."

[Michael Ejercito]

What was D.E.I. known as one hundred years ago.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

Marxism.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

And the only good Marxist, is a dead Marxist.

[Mother's Lament]

Sarcasmic and Jeff say you mustn't "dehumanize" Communists and Nazis, Elmer.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Never stick your dick in full Bolshevik.

[Roberta]

...

Their academic institutions will continue

No, a great many will go out of existence. You don't realize how rapidly the college bust, like all busts, will have its effect. In a generation liberal arts education will go back to being a plaything of the rich. So it'll be irrelevant whatever fads they get into.

[Vernon Depner]

Yes. Young people are wising up to the scam and aren't going to pay for it any more. Colleges and universities will be going under by the score very soon.

[Square = Circle]

How long before it becomes something the Right did?

[Beezard]

DEI was the obvious result of unfettered capitalism.

[MK Ultra]

All DEI employees will just get new titles, like Lefty Rosenthal in "Casino."

[Vernon Depner]

No, they won't, because young people will no longer be willing to go into massive debt to pay their salaries.

[Ersatz]

dont they just get Biden to pick up their tab?

[Fats of Fury]

The women of the Supreme Court vote en bloc to punish Biden's defiance on student debt by allowing him to let in a few more million through the border. That'll show him!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-border-patrol-agents-remove-razor-wire-installed-rcna132890

[VULGAR MADMAN]

The 19th sure was a great idea!

[Don't look at me!]

This is why you can’t have chicks in charge.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Right after women got the vote we got prohibition.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

And sandwich production went way down.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

Don’t worry, ENB is on the case.

[I, Woodchipper]

this is incorrect. The 18th amendment precedes the 19th.

[I, Woodchipper]

however in one sense, that's kind of true because some of the states were already allowing the women's vote when they ratified prohibition.

[Beezard]

Prohibition was a woman’s cause. And arguably the first use of political brainwashing in public schools.

The men had the understandable desire to enjoy some speck of their miserable 12+ hours a day worker lives. The women were understandable pissed when they were stuck in their hovel all day while the men blew the grocery money on beer at the saloon. Violence and strife ensued.

It took decades to realize the solution: let women into the saloons. Now you can just go to a brewery and let the kids and pets run amok right there, while mommy and daddy both get shit faced on some overly hoppy concoction or another. Conflict resolved.

[Quicktown Brix]

To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.

[SRG2]

Recall WC Fields' line about his wife..."she drove me to drink, and that's the only thing I'm grateful to her for".

[CharlesWT]

An AI-generated English translation of Milei's 2024 Davos Talk(In His Accent)

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

Thanks

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Thank you; I've read about his speech but this is the first time I've listened to it.

Life, liberty, and property. What a radical idea.

[SRG2]

And a transcript: https://www.eurasiareview.com/18012024-speech-of-argentinas-president-javier-milei-at-davos-transcript/

Bottom line: capitalism works, feudalism and socialism don't

[Public Entelectual]

It is doubly droll that Milei's speech

1. Turned the "hockey stick" meme climate deniers hate on its head :
" What we see is an ‘explosion’ of growth once capitalism is adopted, he told the audience, which takes the ‘shape of a hockey stick’ (i.e. an exponential rise). "
and
2. That it took an AI speechbot to figure that out for him.

[JesseAz]

Lol. Found the idiot who still believes the hockey stick. The algorithm that turns white noise into a hockey stick.

[Public Entelectual]

Your API playbook is out of date Mining statisticians McIntyre & McKitrick got smoked by Wahl, Amman and Caspar decades ago"\;

Wahl, Eugene R.; Ammann, Caspar M. (31 August 2007), "Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures: Examination of criticisms based on the nature and processing of proxy climate evidence" Climatic Change, 85 (1–2): 33–69,

doi:10.1007/s10584-006-9105-7, S2CID 18640802

[Mother's Lament]

Decades ago... by the same guys vvho grossly overestimated every-single-fucking-prediction they made for 2010 to 2020. You sure shovved Jesse.
Novv, don't you have a scam site to go run? vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

[Public Entelectual]

Since U asked for it, I've added post there dedicated to curing your crackpot view by comparing all the predictions in question, in a single animated graph

https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2024/01/an-inconvenient-graph-for-unreasonable.html

albeit I doubt you'll dare look, as the truth that sets men free is not always the one they wish to see.

[SRG2]

You're trying to argue with biblical inerrantists. No evidence you provide will be good enough.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Straight up trade: DeSantis for Milei. Would the Argentines go for it?

[BigT]

Milei can’t be POTUS….unfortunately.

[I, Woodchipper]

Milei is the best thing since Elon Musk.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul. they/them)]

So the WHO is warning about "Disease X" which, according to the WHO is a fate WORSE than a fate worse than death. And the person in my feed that was discussing this for quite a while was called a 'grifter' by Reason.

[Mother's Lament]

I sort of wonder if they're going to keep this up until even JFree-tier hysterics don't fall for it anymore, and then pow, out comes the Bubonic plague.

Agenda 2050 250-million population achieved.

[Quicktown Brix]

Formerly known as Twitter disease?

[mad.casual]

What I used to think: The largest threat to humankind going forward was a man-made virus.

What I now think: The largest threat to humankind going forward is a tie between a man-made virus and mass regression that "forgets" the last 50-100 yrs. of human medicine, epidemiology, biology, physics...

[BigT]

Welch said he couldn’t support Trump b/c he wanted to see the Heffalumps get beyond Trump.

Think about that. He would rather have an Alzheimer’s patient and/or a ho run the country because he wants to heal the R’s. What incredible BS. Welch has a deep case of TDS. Trump did a pretty good job and Welch prefers a couple of idiots. I blame his French wife who, like most bleeding heart Marxist frogs, probably has him on a short mental leash. And he’s pw’d. Sad.

[Elmer Fudd the CHUD 2: Steampunk Boogaloo]

Welch is a leftist. He doesn’t hold many libertarian views at all. And he is way to cozy with beltway leftists.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

psst: it is possible to not want Trump AND to not want Biden

[R Mac]

I want a pony.

[Mother's Lament]

Jeff really wants more Biden... well Obama, but this was basically his third term.

[SRG2]

A 3rd Obama term would be better than a second term for either of the Aricept duo.

[Vernon Depner]

Sure, but it's going to be one or the other, barring an assassination. It's obvious which choice is better for the country.

[SRG2]

It’s obvious which choice is better for the country.

Yes. (c) None of the above.

There are other reasons of course why one or other might not be in a position to be elected by November.

[Vernon Depner]

That is not one of the available choices.

[Quicktown Brix]

To non-Trump loyalists, Trump is a dangerous wild card.

Biden is a known bad, driving the country where no libertarian leaning person wants to go, but weakly and with little party support.

Trump is an unknown risk with a fervent cult of personality hold on his party. We have few principles on which to predict his agenda. He says extremely irrational things and makes impossible claims that his supporters interpret as good or say he didn’t really mean, but leave the rest of us cautious. Best case scenario, is you cannot take his word seriously meaning skeptics have no idea what he wants to do or will try to do if elected. You cannot depend on Trump to honor any rule or law that he doesn’t like.

While my personal risk assessment puts Trump as the least terrible outcome of the likely possibilities at this point, I can see how someone could come to a different conclusion without necessarily being a TDS addled leftist.

Ultimately I think it mostly comes down to if someone believes Biden and the dems stole the 2020 election or if Trump tried to overturn an election he lost as the critical factor in which candidate you find more dangerous.

[mad.casual]

To non-Trump loyalists,

I get the distinct impression that you don’t represent any significant fraction of non-Trump loyalists or Trump loyalists one way or the other and this is a “I don’t mean to sound racist, but…” right before you call Trump and people who support him a bunch of niggers.

I mean, you don't have to be loyal to Trump to recognize that he isn't any more of a wildcard than Bush or someone who threatens to launch airstrikes against civilians on American soil. And you'd have to be a retard to have not heard the half of his loyal supporters who've almost literally said "Yeah, he's a fucking wildcard, that's why we fucking support him."

So, again, you assessment doesn't seem to be anything resembling objective reality and really more of just an opportunity to disparage people you find deplorable.

[Quicktown Brix]

I get the distinct impression that you don’t represent any significant fraction of non-Trump loyalists or Trump loyalists one way or the other

That's fair. I'm speculating on reality the way I see it, but admittedly rarely fit in with any group, let alone speak for it.

right before you call Trump and people who support him a bunch of niggers.

You lost me.

[mad.casual]

You lost me.

Despite the fact that he's been a fairly high-profile public figure for over 50 yrs., you somehow come to the assessment that he doesn't have any discernible principles and his loyalists support him. He is LBJ and they are his loyal voting block.

I mean, he doesn't support The Party, any party, the way LBJ did, and that should be a relatively obvious principle to relatively principled market-driven, equality of opportunity, anti-TPD libertarians of all stripes and it is obvious to non-loyalists and loyalists alike. They even say so out loud. But, he and his followers are just unprincipled and ignoble compared to principled libertarians and/or party faithful.

Sure, facts on the ground is that the people who voted for Trump are white supremacists who, numerically and in large portion, voted for Obama too. But facts aren't your problem, principles are your problem but not your concern, your problem is that those people aren't predictably staying on the plantation you want them to stay on.

[Quicktown Brix]

Thanks for the clarification. Of all of that, the only thing I actually said or think is:

he and his followers are just unprincipled

[mad.casual]

It that really the only thing you think you said? Because it's right up there for everyone to see. You reference Biden, and Loyalists, and skeptics, and the party that he has a cult of personality hold on...

It's almost like you were saying a lot of things about a lot of people that didn't really apply and, in the smokescreen and pettifogging, were just trying to convey that people with principles you can't understand, should understand but don't like, pretend not to like, or otherwise don't fit into your worldview, aren't people or don't count.

[Quicktown Brix]

It that really the only thing you think you said? Because it’s right up there for everyone to see. You reference Biden, and Loyalists, and skeptics, and the party that he has a cult of personality hold on…

Yes, I said all these things, but your comment, to which I was responding, addressed none of those, only other things I didn’t say.

It’s almost like you were saying...aren’t people or don’t count.
You're arguing against an opponent made from whole cloth in your mind.

[Quicktown Brix]

I mean, you don’t have to be loyal to Trump to recognize that he isn’t any more of a wildcard than Bush or someone who threatens to launch airstrikes against civilians on American soil.

I disagree. After 911, Bush was a very predictable war monger, not a wild card.

And you’d have to be a retard to have not heard the half of his loyal supporters who’ve almost literally said “Yeah, he’s a fucking wildcard, that’s why we fucking support him.”

OK. I'm a retard then.

So, again, you assessment doesn’t seem to be anything resembling objective reality and really more of just an opportunity to disparage people you find deplorable.

Your opinion is noted.

[mad.casual]

OK. I’m a retard then.

I mean, the guy has a book called “The Art of the Deal”, builds Casinos, Hotels, and Golf Courses with his name at the top, had his own brand of steak and liquor, and two very public divorces the women and adult children results of which he’s still very much in touch with and you can’t discern any general operating principles? Not one? Seems more like an intentional blindness iss-you. Like you deliberately don’t see a person, you see a subhuman thing. Akin to people who “struggle” with what a rat was thinking when it walked into a trap, while everyone else who isn’t a self-retarding bigot would say “There’s cheese, he was hungry.” out of hand. That even a rat isn’t just a thing that lacks discernible principles or motivations.

[Quicktown Brix]

Your argument is that he is a wild card and I have an intentional blindness issue for saying he’s a wild card?:

And you’d have to be a retard to have not heard the half of his loyal supporters who’ve almost literally said “Yeah, he’s a fucking wildcard, that’s why we fucking support him.”

Seems more like an intentional blindness iss-you. Like you deliberately don’t see a person, you see a subhuman thing…that lacks discernible principles or motivations

[mad.casual]

Your argument is that he is a wild card

That's not my argument.

It's weird, when I literally say "half his loyal supporters say..." you read "mad.casual says..." and when you say "Trump's skeptics say..." you mean "Trump says" because Trump was the only thing you were thinking or talking about. Again it's not like Trump is really exceptionally unprincipled and hard to predict, it's that you people can't help but be more transparently dishonest than he is and then act astounded when people look at him as though he's not some repugnant alien from outer space.

[Quicktown Brix]

It’s weird, when I literally say “half his loyal supporters say…” you read “mad.casual says…”

Whatever…Fine, then I’ll rephrase: Your argument is that half his loyal supporters say he is a wild card and I have an intentional blindness issue for saying he’s a wild card?

Again it’s not like Trump is really exceptionally unprincipled and hard to predict, it’s that you people

"You people" meaning me and half of Trump’s loyal supporters?

[Vernon Depner]

Trump is an unknown risk

You might have been off the planet for the last few years, but Trump was already president for four years, and did an at least passible job. I see no reason to think he has suddenly become incompetent since then.

[Quicktown Brix]

I didn't say he was incompetent (a subject for another time perhaps?), I said he's unpredictable.

Is he justice reform or pro-police?
Is he anti-war or does he want to bomb Mexico?
Is he pro-gun or will he do more than ban bump stocks in the next mass shooting?
What I mean is that he doesn't have a set of operating principles that allows me, at least, to predict what reaction he will have to any potential situation.

[mad.casual]

Is he justice reform or pro-police?

The fact that you think these are two inherently opposing things says more about you than him.

Is he anti-war or does he want to bomb Mexico?

First, again as above, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, Trump, and Biden have *all* demonstrated that between funding and arming foreign militaries and/or puppet regimes, direct US air, missile, and drone strikes, and formal declarations or continuing resolutions of war, this is not a dichotomy and you’d have to be voluntarily retarded to ignore that mountain of facts. Again, more projection about you.

Second, as indicated immediately above, he could’ve conducted clandestine operations at any point. He didn’t. Instead, he loudly proclaimed he was going to build a wall and that they were going to pay for it. Leveraged tough-on-immigration bravado and the enforcement of 1st safe haven policy, and renegotiated fair trade in the exchange. You might be dubious as to the terms of immigration or free trade and how they benefit Americans vs. Mexico but, again, the issue isn’t which percentage of trade was regulated for which percentage of immigration. The issue is you announcing to the world that you’re too stupid to figure out whether Trump would spend money on a war vs. extort wealth by bravado.

Is he pro-gun or will he do more than ban bump stocks in the next mass shooting?

You mean like banning all 10+ round magazines, implementing a National Background Check System, telling Americans to fire two shots through a closed door and/or threatening to airstrike them for do so or failing to do so with the appropriate firearm? He’s more unpredictable than that?

Oh, no, he’s not and this is just more sarcasmic-style, retarded, BOAF SIDEZ! tar baby bullshit that people should really just mute your stupid ass than paying attention to.

[Quicktown Brix]

You mean like banning all 10+ round magazines, implementing a National Background Check System, telling Americans to fire two shots through a closed door and/or threatening to airstrike them for do so or failing to do so with the appropriate firearm? He’s more unpredictable than that?

Yes, he’s more unpredictable. Those are all terrible, but predictable positions. I’m a pro-self-defence, pro-2A gun owner which is one of many reasons I hope for the unpredictable Trump over the predictable Biden. I still don’t trust Trump not to come up with some other dumb gun law if Kim Kardashian asks him to.

[mad.casual]

Those are all terrible, but predictable positions.

You predicted an American President threatening to airstrike American civilians on American soil?

I’m a pro-self-defence, pro-2A gun owner which is one of many reasons I hope for the unpredictable Trump over the predictable Biden.

Sure, you, Michael Moore, Penn Gillette, and the Johnson/Weld ticket are all principled, fervent, liberty-loving gun supporters who are more reliably pro-liberty and pro-gun than Trump.

[Quicktown Brix]

All your arguments have come down to grueling technical nitpicks of my imprecise use of language or attacks of imagined thoughts.

Sure, you, Michael Moore, Penn Gillette, and the Johnson/Weld ticket are all principled, fervent, liberty-loving gun supporters who are more reliably pro-liberty and pro-gun than Trump

Without a doubt. Is it that hard to comprehend that someone can love freedom, but not Trump?

[Vernon Depner]

Is it hard to comprehend that one cannot love freedom and vote for Biden?

[Quicktown Brix]

I think loving freedom and voting for Biden are incompatible.

[Quicktown Brix]

wrong place

[Mataratones]

Oh for goodness sake, if you're going to say "immanentize the eschaton," at least pronounce it correctly. (Clue: es-ka-ton, not esha-ton.)

[Mataratones]

"The Muslim ban" -- sometimes these people sound intelligent, and sometimes they just sound extremely ignorant.