be a massive story, all of the attention be about him and he be the biggest guy standing in the middle of the stage the way it was all through 2016, and then he doesn t show up for the debate and everyone else is diminished and the guy he hates and wants to stomp on desantis will be the focus of everyone s attacks as are scorpions in the bottle so eventually this luck or whatever it is will run out but it hasn t yet. howie: regardless of who rich and other people think should have a moment and i only have a moment here, doesn t this nice segway, howie, wow you re a real pro. howie: [laughter] doesn t a stage where vivek ramaswamy can talk, nikki haley can talk, tim scott can talk, chris cristi can talk, represent a real opportunity for them to breakthrough a little bit, to normal americans. absolutely. absolutely. if donald trump were there, he would take up all of the oxygen like he always does and the
compared him in that column a little bit to mayor pete and mayor pete shouldn t have run for president but he s a very talented guy in many ways very well-spoken and never got corner ed on anything and vivek is the same way. no ones attacked him, trump certainly hasn t attacked him. the other candidates ignored him but beginning to eat into the vote of other candidates especially desantis so that s why you had that debate pointer in there. howie: you know if he is having his moment and starts to get more media scrutiny people start to look at some of his positions like raising the voting age to 25 and not a big supporter of aid to ukraines but maria i ll say one thing for vivek ramaswamy. he s done a lot of media interviews, he didn t have much choice but that s how he has moved up in the polls. he has, and that s sort of where he s like mayor pete but i also think he s like the andrew yang of this years republican primary class. he comes from business, a very
deplorables. as an insult listless develops doesn t really rate for me. it s clear to me what he meant. he s trying to say literally trump shouldn t define whether you re a loyal republican or a loyal conservative, but it seems like one of those things now that s just going to enter and this is a snake bit campaign, howie. it s hard to think of one good news cycle that desantis campaign has had in the last six months. there s some state level endorsements besides that its just been bad news story after bad break after bad news story. howie: there have been missteps , the debate about slavery and then changing campaign managers. i don t know if you re more excited about list also vessels but attack the media seems like a no-brainer seems for a republican candidate but take a sludge halperer to vivek ramaswamy who i m sure a majority of americans have never heard of. well first of all, his super pack never should have leaked
state desantis positive vision two to three times. hammer vivek ramaswamy in a response. four, defend donald trump in response to a chris cristi attack and the key part, take a sledgehammer to vivek ramaswamy, vivek the fake. he dismissed the attack by robot ron and a new country erupted when desantis said this. if all we are is listless vessels that are just supposed to follow whatever happens to am come down the pike on truth social every morning that s not a durable movement. howie: okay, rich we ll come back to vivek ramaswamy later i know you have things to say about that but the desantis campaign tells me the dishonest media are distorting the facts and that the governor was referring to trump and d.c. insiders who feel entitled to vorticity your vote, but it sounds like hillary integrating trump voters as a basket of
very good at. love him or hate him, he s good at retail politics. ron desantis isn t. i think the big question about the debate for ron desantis, because he s the second candidate under trump, but for all of them, how much do they actually want to talk about trump versus how much do they want to talk about their vision, their policy ideas? if they spend this whole debate defending donald trump or attacking him if you re chris cristi, none of them are going to benefit from that in the poll s, i don t think. howie: there will be some questions about trump but i don t think bret baier and martha maccallum will let it be about the guy whose not there. rich, here is what i wanted to ask you earlier. you wrote about a month ago in a column in politico, get ready for the vivek ramaswamy moment and two days ago, time had how vivek ramaswamy became 2024 s breakout candidate. what gives the media the magic power to declare the moments for candidates? well what else is the media going to do? th