donald trump couldn t win, that they had had mitt romney and john mccain force fed to them. a lot of establishment republicans liked romney and mccain but the base didn t. and everyone said donald trump can t win, including me, donald trump can t win, and donald trump won, and i think this was a thumb in the eye to the media and to the left and the liberals, and they thought, okay, if we just followed this recipe, we re going to eventually win, and these elites keep telling us this isn t going to work. i think it s hard to deprogram people from that. there have been a lot of republican establishment politicians or old guard politicians, if you will. they were too scared over the last eight years to point out all the ways that donald trump was hurting them, all the ways that maga extremism was hurting them, and so voters got conditioned, right, to thinking that this isn t true, right, and that they can win without some of these extreme positions, and so i think that explains trump,
lexus at 80% less than prescription hearing aid prices on capitol hill and this is cnn. asked me a decision between donald trump and ron desantis. what i m looking for somebody who can come in day one and get america back on track. donald trump has done it once he can do it again. we ve got a great governor. he s done a tremendous job, but what we need is a person who can actually lead on day one. i think the governor has done a great job in florida. there s nothing i m not. it s not against governor desantis. it s for president trump. welcome back to state of the union. and my panel joins me now that what you just heard were a series of republican house members from desantis, his home state of florida. coming out and supporting donald trump. just as desantis is here in washington. what do you think of that? move scott jennings not surprised. i mean, look, donald trump s the establishment candidate in this race, he was the president. he s running for president for a third time. these a
former republican congressman david jolly, and new york times national political respondent, lisa lair, you wrote a great article on cpac, and you said that for rising stars, it s losing its pull. more of a kind of side show, right, than a feature act. what is what s happening right now at cpac tell us? that s a great question. i think it tells us that cpac has become much more of an event that exists on the farther fringes of the maga movement than emblematic of the debates happening inside the entire republican party. part of what we saw evolve with this event under the trump administration is it really became a reflection of former president trump s image and his movement, rather than a broader discussion over issues in the conservative movement and a place where many, you know, establishment politicians and very powerful republican party politicians would go to win over the conservative base.
sure. and we ve seen a litany of far right trump-backed candidates win gop primaries to date. in pennsylvania where i am for example, doug mastriano who has peddled conspiracy theories is the republican nominee for governor. we ve seen elections up and down the ballot in various states, really a sobering thought when you think about what these trends represent. i think that there is some skepticism about whether these ultra maga candidates can be viable in general elections and we ve seen some liberal pacs even work to get trump-endorsed candidates the nominations anticipating that they would be easier to beat in a general election. to me i think that is playing with fire. over and over we ve seen the repudiation of establishment politicians. i don t think that impulse is fading and given trump s resurgent base particularly in the wake of the mar-a-lago search, i think the possibility of those republican candidates
wanted to get you on the screen so we have enough time to talk to you. in the polls running up to this you ve been down by as much as double digits and i m wondering as you sit here on election day is there anything you wish you would have done differently as you ran this campaign? good morning, dana. not at all. this has been a race of people versus politicians. you see pence coming in all the other governors. the rhino establishment politicians, the career politicians coming to georgia to make their case. in georgia people are upset about how our career politicians have treated us over the last couple years and why i got in the race. we ve taken our message to the people. i m running against an incumbent governor struggling to get to 50%. the polls haven t picked up the mood of the people. they aren t talking to half of the voters who voted early. half of the people who voted so far in early voting 19 days of early voting did not vote in