MASSIVE DUMPS: Donors dump DeSantis, Trump inevitable?

The bad news just will not stop for Florida Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who's trying to run for the Republican nomination. The latest is massive dumps, not of votes, but of donors and would be Republican donors dropping out and saying, we're not going to keep giving this guy money. It is all going south. There is a very interesting writeup in Politico, which we will link to showing that there are many Republican donors that are ditching DeSantis, others who are simply not starting donations despite being approached. And these are really major, major donors, the likes of which, quite frankly, you need. I wish it were different. I wish it didn't depend on fundraising and we had a different system. But there is a very interesting trend in what some of these donors are saying. Former Illinois governor was Bruce Rauner was one of DeSantis, his biggest supporters early in the season and during his gubernatorial run in twenty twenty two, gave nearly a million dollars to his reelection bid through a pack. But right now, when Rauner is looking around and saying what's going on, what does the polling look like? He has stopped donations to the Florida governor and Rauner spoke to Politico. And this is fascinating. Rauner now thinks that Nikki Haley may actually be better positioned to defeat Biden than Ron DeSantis would be positioned to defeat Biden. Now, this is a totally separate issue from whether Nikki Haley or DeSantis could even win the primary. Obviously, that's something that needs to be looked at. And we don't know. We don't know that yet. But this is a theme and there's two parts to the theme. There are other former DeSantis mega donors from twenty twenty two who aren't giving DeSantis any money right now. Of the 50 donors who gave at least one hundred and sixty thousand dollars in the years leading up to DeSantis is twenty twenty two campaign. Only 16 of the 50, in other words, less than a third are donating to DeSantis is current pack. Never back down. Now, remember, you might say I thought you could only donate twenty seven hundred dollars to these super PACs. You can donate way, way, way more money. And one of the themes is not only are they saying it doesn't really look like DeSantis has what it takes, his campaign's not exactly taking flight. There's the additional element of looking at Nikki Haley as maybe the person that could do better in this campaign if given the right resources. If we look at polling, what we see is that Trump continues to bounce between 52 and 55. DeSantis has seen an insane decline from 31 to 13 with just a little pop. DeSantis has gained about a point and a half in the last 10 days. But the most interesting thing here is Nikki Haley. If you look at Vivek Ramaswamy, there was talk of a surge and you can actually see here Vivek got all the way up to seven point six. And maybe this was the start of Vivek's ascendancy. And it didn't happen. He lost about half a point and is down to seven. But Nikki Haley, who polled right around three or four for months, is now at six point one, the highest she has been since she entered the race, increasingly with discussions that she may actually have what it takes to take on Trump, for example, in New Hampshire. And if she were able to win New Hampshire, then who knows what the future path may hold. So three basic stories here. Number one, the crumbling of Ron DeSantis seems almost inevitable unless something turns it around. I quite frankly don't know what that would be at this point. He's so uncharismatic even in the debate stage where he was given front and center positioning. He was just really not a factor. Second story, the actual climb of Nikki Haley. And what might the future of that be? And then the third story, it's almost like a story about addiction. The Republican Party is addicted to Trump ism. What will it take to get beyond the cult of Trump? That's what I want to talk about next.