Part One: Ron DeSantis: Florida Man

Robert sits down with Katy and Cody to talk about the life, career, and violent implosion of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.

2 Part Series.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What's meet Ball my Ron's This is Behind the Bastards,
a podcast about the worst people in all of history.
And this week we are talking about Ronnie the Big
d DeSantis Meet Ball ron ron desanct Demonious lockdown, Ron,

(00:25):
I think is the other thing that Trump.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Calls Anyway, we all have horrified faces.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
I know, I know you all have have beautiful faces.
And let me introduce those beautiful faces right now because
no one else could be the guests on our Ronathan
Sanctimonious d episodes. But Cody Johnston and Katie Stole here

(00:56):
for me is that I was amazing.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
It's he's doing wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Yeah, it's like a frozen animatronic if you were to see.

Speaker 5 (01:04):
Him do it.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, like it was unsettling functioning. It was. It was
when Cody becomes president and gets his his his animatronic
Cody in the Hall of Presidents.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
When I become president, and that's the big reveal. That's what.

Speaker 5 (01:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22):
Actually I'm like this.

Speaker 1 (01:24):
So guys, y'all, yin's what would your nicknames be if
Trump gave you a nickname?

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Uh, probably something like like dirty Cody or something dirty
like lose to like the the unkempt nature of my
persona disheveled Dusty Cody, Dusty Cody yor something like that.

Speaker 5 (01:53):
Little beardy Beardo Cody Yeah beard o.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah Beard Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:00):
I don't know what. Mine would be probably crazy with
a k or something.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Crazy, Katie, mine would Mine would just be that woman.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
That woman. See. I think he would just alter his
his Ron DeSantis nickname for me and call me meatball
Rob because because Ron and I are both very Italian,
tragically Italian.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
That's not wrong.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
But I have never ever thought of you as a rob.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I thought you were going to say you never thought
of me as a meatball? Wow, Katie, Wow Wow?

Speaker 4 (02:39):
Occasionally sure, yeah, honest with each other. No wait, though, seriously,
has anybody called you rob before?

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Not and lived?

Speaker 3 (02:50):
No? Yeah? So okay, so Ron, get on.

Speaker 5 (02:59):
Something with machetes.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Maybe it is. No, that's too cool sounding, very funny.
My favorite thing about Donald Trump because you know he's
a bad person. Hated him, done tremendous damage both to
my family and to the world. But I have, you know,
as a writer, as a longtime comedy writer, game recognized

(03:21):
game and he is an incredible nickname giver, just one
of like stunningly effective. My favorite example of that is
meet ball Ron. Because people may not be aware of this,
he hasn't publicly called Ron de Santis meet ball Ron.
In fact, it was like back in February, a story
broke that in private, Trump was calling him meet ball

(03:42):
Ron as an insult. This is back when he was
publicly calling him like lockdown Ron and dsanct demonious, which
are both much worse nicknames. And as soon as everyone
heard he's calling him this in private, it instantly became
like nationwide.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Trump was like, from the privacy of your own home,
you still did it.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Trump has even been like, no, I'd never call him that,
you know, it's a it's an appropriate I'm not gonna
engage the Italian discription.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Oh he's a he's an amazing it's so funny. He's
so good at the at the this, the marketing, and
just like he knows how to do it because all
he do is like I would never call him that. Maybe,
you know, maybe some people call him meat Ron. I
wouldn't call him that. Men off the tongue. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
It's a great nickname made up by a smart man,
but no, but I would know something, so are are
y'all ready to learn the Ballad of Meatball. Ron will
not be titling this episode.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I have a I have a question for you before
we begin. Do you address his name? His last name? Oh?

Speaker 4 (04:49):
Yeah, wait, his last fun Yeah, because this is God's
fat hobby horse.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
A little just a little factoid. His name is pronounced
de Santis. Yes, but he pronounces it DeSantis. Yeah, because
when he was running for governor, he people call him
DeSantis and he's like, I guess it's DeSantis. Now he
just changed the way he pronounced his name under like
vague social pressure. Yeah. I think it's pretty amazing.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
And that's and very consistent to the to the man
we are going to be talking.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
About, exact color it with uh yeel.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Oh yes, yes, uh so. Ronathan J. DeSantis was due
to a filing mishap, born under the legal name Ronald
Dion DeSantis on September fourteenth, nineteen seventy eight, in Jacksonville, Florida. Now,
but you're all wondering about that middle name, right, Dion.
That's an odd middle name for a meatball. Uh Well,

(05:50):
Ronnie's father, also, Ron DeSantis, was a huge fan of
Dion de Mucci, The doo wop singer whose most well
known hit was the nineteen sixty one song run Around
sou Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's why Governor On DeSantis'
middle name is Dion.

Speaker 5 (06:08):
That's so funny.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Yeah, just right out the gate with some with some
mind blowing fact on. Yeah, Dion de Santis.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
It's a good most almost runner out.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, almost the same name as Dion Sanders, who would
have been a better governor of Florida. Probably he might
have been a terrible person.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
I oh, we are all in on Sanders.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Okay, that's good. That's good. So I should note off
the top here that when I say Ron was born
in Florida, I am referring to the state in the
southeastern portion of the United States, not the seminal genre
defining rap artist flow Ryda aka Tremar Dillard, who recently
represented San Marino in the twenty twenty one Eurovision Song Contest.

(06:54):
Listeners get confused whenever we mentioned the state, and I
want to assure you that Meatball Ron was not birthed
z A morph like from the belly of one of
America's great cultural treasure is just a yeah, yeah, I
double checked. I double checked. I even sent in an
email request to the sheriff of Jacksonville, who responded, please
stop messaging us about flow Rider.

Speaker 5 (07:17):
Seems like a pretty good conversation and.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
You trusted them.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Well, you know, I just I legally, I can't uh
u further by suspicions until we get some sort of
like a photo for the police. All right, uh see
A I will not be of any use to me
until we can generate a perfect, perfect cover of that

(07:42):
scene from Alien where it's Ron Desantist bursting out of
flow Righter's chest and flow Right is singing whatever song
flow Right I got famous for. I know nothing else
about flow Rider.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
Pretty someone has to be able to do something like that.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Proved me right or wrong? I forget which. So before
we discuss Rod DeSantis's childhood, we should talk briefly about
his family background. His mom and dad were the first
generation of their family to move to Florida. He is
fairly recent about was recent. I think about as recent
as my family is. Immigrants too good old fashioned the
United States. Most of his relatives remained in western Pennsylvania

(08:23):
and northwest Ohio, which is why now Yeah, classic grease
ball stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
But Italians and Western Pa and Ohio.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Damn, oh yeah no, it's what we do.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Baby, Get up there, get to Akron.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Come on, yeah yeah, Akron, the Promised Land. That's what
for generations, Italians were like, sitting around in Tuscany looking
out at like the unfolding glory of nature and going, fuck,
I wish this was Akron.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
I want, guys.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
So because of the fact that most of his family
has stayed in this chunk of the Midwest, Ron claims
in his memoir, which he published immediately prior to launching
his presidential campaign, that despite growing up in Florida, he
is culturally a Midwesterner Quoa. I was geographically raised in
the in Tampa Bay, but culturally my upbringing reflected the

(09:16):
working class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio, from
weekly church attendance to the expectation that one winner in
his keep. This made me god fearing, hard working, and
America loving. And there's a lot that's funny about that,
particularly the fact that it's kind of insinuating that Floridians
are like shiftless, godless degenerates, which.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Is true, is exactly what he's saying, and there's this
element of like I'm I invaded the place and took
over with like it's like this weird like reverse like
americanized like great replacement thing of like culturally I'm here
and I'm bringing those values to Florida. But also he
wants to make America Florida, right, yeah, so what like

(10:00):
what is it? Do you want to actually make America
like Ohio's version of Florida?

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Like yeah, he's saying, yeah, the Ohio version of Florida,
which I don't know. There's a Jimmy Buffett joke there,
but it's not coming to me right now. So Ron's
decision to do this has been right, James James Buffett, that's.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
The Midwestern Jimmy Buffett.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
He's scared of the water. He doesn't get anywhere.

Speaker 4 (10:22):
I think it's actually pronounced James Buffet James.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
So this has been made fun of by a lot
of people. It's worth noting that he only very recently
started claiming to be culturally Midwestern. In his initial congressional
campaigns and first governor goombinatorial campaign, he described himself repeatedly
as from Florida, from Tampa Bay. So this is something

(10:48):
he has picked up as an attempt to get votes
in the Midwest himself.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, the common man.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, the common the common man, the common idiot. Like
that's what that's how he's what he's saying about Midwesterners
is like they're so dumb. I can pretend to be
from there despite growing up as far away almost as
you can.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Right. It's funny because like he's like, he's insulting the Midwest,
but you're dumb if you'll believe, yes. But also he's
insulting Floridians by being like, yeah, they're fucking.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
I'm not one of them, and I'm not one of them.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
I'm bringing my good ship over there, like yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
And it is. It has not seemed to work. A
recent article on Florida Politics dot Com notes that he
is at least ten points behind Trump in Pennsylvania, and
he recently dropped to third place in the Ohio primary
polls behind Vivic Ramaswami. Shocking. Hey, come on, he is
fifty five points behind Donald Trump there.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
So that's painful.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Hasn't exactly played out. That's Ohio, Okay, the Midwest isn't
doing so hard.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
How's he doing in Florida?

Speaker 1 (11:55):
He's not beating Donald Trump last I checked, like, I
don't think so. How could he be realistic anyway? That's
actually what we're talking about. That's the whole point of
this week's episodes. So back to his family. Ron gets
his interest in politics from his grandfather, who was a
major figure in the Republican Party of mid century Ohio.

(12:16):
He was on deck in nineteen sixty for a major
political scandal where a number of voting machines failed during
an election and led to something like fifteen hundred people's
votes failing to be accounted, effectively disenfranchising them. Right, this
is like a very serious issue. The Secretary of State,
who was a fairly rare Republican and state government at
that point in time, cleaned house and put Philip Rogers,

(12:38):
Ron's grandpa and his director. By all accounts, he was
very good at this job, and he became a respected
expert on election integrity. The Republican Party in Ohio in
those days was not a mighty force, but Philip gained
widespread respect and traveled around the state helping to ensure
integrity in a number of smaller elections. When the local
steel workers union needed to do a vote, they trusted

(12:59):
him to manage it and ensure that it was done
with integrity. He was even contracted out to other states,
including Louisiana, to help them set up modern voting machine systems.
Rogers is described by one colleague as quote someone who
believed in the way the system worked. He was political,
but not a politician, and instead someone who believed enough
in the system to work a pretty thankless and intricate job.

(13:23):
By all accounts, he was not especially ideological, and I've
run into no complaints of him taking advantage of this
job to further his own political INDs. Crucially, Roger was
on the moderate wing of the Republican Party. One write
up from NBC News notes there was a group of
Goldwater rights who were a thorn in the side of
the party at the time, says Binning, referring to acolytes

(13:43):
at Barry Goldwater, the failed utra Conservative presidential candidate in
nineteen sixty four. Phil wasn't in with them. This was
one of his fellow Republicans in Ohio at the time.
So he's not an extremist, not a hard right guy.
Ronda Santis, the dad of our Randa Sis Santis, the
son of this dude, moved the family away from its
Midwest roots after he graduated in nineteen seventy and got

(14:07):
a job for Nielsen, the company that used to determine
what TV shows got renewed. Most of our gen Z
viewers will not know what the fuck we're talking about
when we say mentioned Nielsen families. But once upon a
time people paid money to subscribe to something called cable
because we hadn't yet invented lime wire TV. Shit, they're

(14:27):
not going to remember LimeWire either.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, what is that?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
TV shows lived or died based on how many Nielsen
viewers turned tuned into them. The basic idea was like
a percentage of families in each state got like sent
a box that they would hook up to their TV
and it would record what they were watching, And then
Nielsen would do some whack ass math to determine how
many people are actually watching the show, and advertisers would

(14:54):
use this data to decide where to buy ad space
and what the value of ad space was. Right, And
thus was American popular culture shaped for decades. Old Ron,
as he probably is not called, was a low level
cog in this system. He's physically putting the boxes into
people's houses. Uh, r Ron DeSantis' mom, it was a
first generation Polish immigrant and became a critical care nurse.

(15:17):
It's interesting to look at what some of the elder
adults in Ron's youth did for a living. His parents'
siblings became a priest and a nun respectively, which suggests
a strong Catholic upbringing. Ar Ron doesn't talk about this
as much as he speaks generally about God and going
to church, but it's worth noting that from what is
publicly available for us to see, his nun aunt does

(15:39):
not seem to be the kind of Catholic you might
expect given her nephew's path. Here's NBC again. Be open
to diversity, Sister Regina said during a twenty twenty commencement
address to graduates at Ursuline High School. Do not be
afraid of those who are different from you. It's okay
to change your thinking. Change is the constant in our lives.
Oh that's inesting, Yeah yeah, So that's different from.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Artist in one ear in one end of the.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Yeah yeah. His priest uncle, father Rogers, has been known
to recite Teddy Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech from
the pulpit, but doesn't have a reputation for bringing up
politics in a more relevant modern sense. He has a
sizable fan pace among the Catholic subculture, including many people
who have followed him from two different churches. Because of
his raw charisma. It said he doesn't need a microphone

(16:31):
to reach the back pews. I bring this up because
it's a notably distinct difference between r Ron and his kin.
DeSantis is known for a lot of things, but in person,
charisma is not one of them. People who know the
family will say that he takes after his mom, Karen Moore,
as she is something of an introvert and uncomfortable with
the spotlight. Even as he's become a national figure, she

(16:51):
doesn't really show up in public, which you know is
her right he should, He should take her take advice, Yeah,
approach to avoid being known by people.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, you know, we become a big weakness for Ron
seems to be being perceived.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Being perceived exactly. If no one could see or be
aware of him, he would be a lot more likable.

Speaker 4 (17:14):
Man.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
I bet he was.

Speaker 5 (17:16):
I bet he wanted to be like his uncle so bad.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, No, it's too much of
a meatball, not a speech, absolutely the driest meatball. As
a kid, young Ron was bright and a good student.
Excellent student. Actually, his grades were so good that one
the teacher would describe him as having a Stepford report card.

(17:41):
He was also a very capable athlete, and in his youth,
Ron's first love was baseball. He was known to other
kids as D, which he still prefers to be called
and claims to like more than his real name. So
you know, that's that's the add he should have gone
with Florida got that D you know some D. Yeah

(18:02):
that D take this D D in you, Ron, If
you weren't a coward, we would support you, just just
based on that. Don't even care about your politics.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
It's a good D joke, can't I can't go find that.
I feel like if you weren't a coward, he'd be
uh uh saying a lot worse stuff than he already.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
That is almost certainly true, Cody K Money see money anyway.
The earliest influential book that Ron read as a kid
was the Science of Hitting by baseball legend Ted Williams.
One of Ted's pieces of advice in that tone is
to be very careful about the swings that you choose
to take. Ron's father claims his son took this advice

(18:43):
to heart, telling the New Yorker, I must have thrown
half a million pitches to Ron. I think he swung
at about five hundred of them. What are you laughing
at about their Cody he.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Would after Disney like seven months.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
I know, I know he did not learn that fucking lesson.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
I did not stick with you.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Man. Well it's you know, I might argue Cody. And
this is one of the things I find interesting about Ron.
He did abide by that advice in his life and
career up until like a year and a half ago.
Like he's even the most of his political career extremely consistent.
It's really about littless than two years ago that he

(19:19):
decides to take some really wild swings that have just
just shattered him, which is interesting to me, Like you
almost get the feeling like this guy is like this disciplined,
coiled spring and managed to like keep himself in line
and then just for whatever reason twenty twenty two, decides, yeah,

(19:40):
it's time to go off the leash.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
No it was not, No, it was not. Yeah. I
think the topification of his desires, and I think the
libs of TikTok talkification. Like he's got some people surrounding
him that are very online and radical in the bad
sense of the word radical. You could call him, you could.
I feel like even that gives him too much Uh yeah,

(20:04):
rad but like the yeah, this sort of like he's
been sort of injected with a lot of awful shit
that he's let sort of steep into him because he's
a dry meatball. So they're they're pumping him full of
like the poison, yeah, meatballs juice, which he needs. Oh okay, okay, okay,
So I'm mixed up. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
His hometown was Dunidin, which is famous both for its
long standing lawsuit with a Tolkien estate over its name
and for baseball. It was the spring training home of
the Toronto Blue Jays, so as a kid, Ron could
easily go down the street and watch the pros play.
His upbringing was very parochial, and he notes that he
graduated that until he graduated high school, he had rarely

(20:44):
traveled further than five miles away from his house for
anything but baseball. In his memoir, he writes, baseball was
the engine that expanded my horizons In those days, little
leagues like DUNI in national had a regular season in
which the individual teams, each sponsored by a local business,
would compete against each other. Now, I also played Little
league baseball. Did you play Little league either, y'alls?

Speaker 3 (21:06):
I did?

Speaker 5 (21:06):
I sure did.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah. I think it should be a federal felony to
make children play baseball. But I'm not sure if you
guys had a better experience, maybe maybe slightly better.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
I enjoyed it personally, Okay, okay, wow.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, Well there's diversity on the panel today. It's good.

Speaker 4 (21:25):
Sure, yeah, criminals a variety of opinions.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Well, meatball Ron loved it. Couldn't get enough baseball, and
he was very good, and so was his team. He
kind of like lands in with this group of boys
who were all they make like a pact when they're
eleven or twelve together to get to the Nationals effectively,
and you know, they do very well. The first big
year they get to the district tournament, they're eliminated by

(21:52):
game three, but like it's further than they thought they
were going to get. Ron and his teammates are super
like four of them are going to wind up getting
drafted into the into the majors, like they are, like, uh,
it's kind of a dream team of little boys ue
baseball Ron.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
So, after getting eliminated in game three the district tournament,
they train even harder to compete the next year with
the hope of earning a spot in the prestigious Little
League World Series. In williamsport news articles often include a
photo of Ron's team from this period. You see him
holding an aluminum bat on his shoulder. One local Tampa
source described him as staring into the camera with a

(22:31):
look so assured it's almost unnerving on a twelve year old.
You get similar hype and other write ups, most of
which describe him as an unusually serious kid. I don't
see it. I haven't found that photo, but I found
I've got another one here, and like he just looks
like a normal preteen boy.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Like, yeah, I want to see that the unnerving one,
because I feel like unnerving is a very another good
word to describe him and his interactions with people.

Speaker 5 (22:56):
Yes, he's a very serious kid.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, I mean he doesn't. In this photo he looks
he's just laughing like the others, Like he just looks
like a smiling kid. He does look like it.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
He's not put on the face right.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
No. No.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Also, we've also all seen him laugh at this point.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
I guess his his nightmare laugh, like the like the
crowing of a fucking funeral bird.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Oh yeah, he's like smiling, looks like yeah, he's yeah,
what happened, Ron, what happened?

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Well, that's what we're talking about today. Whether or not
he was an unusually serious kid, he was openly ambitious
in a way that is not the norm for preteen boys.
From that Tampa Bay ride up quote. I always knew
he was going into politics, said Brady Williams, who is
now the Raised Triple A manager in Durham and was
then one of Dessanta's closest friends. His goal was to
be the president of the United States. Was that far fetched?

(23:49):
A lot of things we talked about that summer were
far fetched, and a lot of them happened. So he
is one of these And I do feel like I
think we need a government agency specific to go after
little boys who talk relentlessly about becoming the president or intah. Yeah,
parents have to like register them, like, yeah, my son's

(24:11):
been talking about becoming the president or the first trillionaire.
You know, we gotta gotta tamp down.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
On that deal with those ambitions. Yeah, are kids fucked up?

Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah? This is this is a use that we could
have for like Philly sports fans, right where the government
sends a bus of them out to each of these
kids with just like eggs to just like start pelting them. Actually,
I think we may have solved a major societal problem here.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Jobs.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
It greats jobs for Philly sports guys, most of whom
are unemployed.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
Yeah. Jobs.

Speaker 5 (24:54):
There's nothing anybody could possibly find wrong with this.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
I think we've gotta I think we've got a playing
all the meatball. Yeah, yeah, we've got it.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Now.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
The next year, his little league team does much better.
He describes them as storming into the regional tournament and
making mincemeat of the other's southern teams. One of his
former teammates has discussed how manically they had to train
that year, rarely going two days in a week without playing.
They eventually made it to the regional championships, where they
won the Southern regional title and earned a spot in

(25:25):
the national contest or in the World Series. Quote. I
was surprised at how big of a deal it was
for our community. We found ourselves on the local news
and on the front page of the local newspapers. A
long way from being a bunch of kids putting on
a far fetched motto beneath the brims of our hats.
Williamsport is the Shangri Law for Little leaguers. The games
take place in an actual stadium that can hold more

(25:46):
than forty thousand spectators. Thanks to the terrace hills beyond
the outfield fence, the field was perfectly manicured. When we
first got a peek at the stadium, it was like
entering Finway Park or Wrigley Field for the first time.
The teams all stayed in cabins on site, and there
was a dining hall for all all meals. And this
is this is Meatball Ron's first brush with fame. This
is the first time he's like on TV. He gets

(26:07):
like a card made of himself.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah, sees himself how he can be, how he should be,
how he has the right to be, how it's his
destiny to be.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
You do get that feeling again. Bring in Philly sports
fans for the Little League World Series. You know, give
him free batteries just to pigs Tampa batteries. Oh yeah, Phillies.
Guys love their fucking batteries. So uh, every biographical look
at Ron will discuss his little league team's rise to

(26:42):
the championships. It does seem to have been a crucial
moment for his self conception, the time where he realized
that his humble middle class upbringing wouldn't lock him out
of national aspirations. In his memoir, he also uses it
as an excuse to make a baffling political point about China.
So currently, the big little league competition includes a team

(27:03):
from Taiwan. It is the World Series, and like, I
don't know why they lost their big game at Williamsport,
and he describes the other team's pitcher as throwing like
Nolan Ryan, which makes me think of the time Nolan
Ryan coldcock that dude on the field, and I want
to see Ronda Santis take a hey Maker from anyway
whatever after losing to the Taiwanese team, this is the

(27:24):
thing I don't understand why he brings up. So they
eventually lose to this Taiwanese team, and then after noting
this disappointing loss, Ron gives us this gym. I also
think it may have informed some of my later political judgments.
For example, while my hostility towards the Chinese Communist Party
and my support for Taiwan is reflected by my general
political outlook, the respect I had for Taiwanese baseball no

(27:46):
doubt made my pro type stance more natural. After all,
I remember playing ping pong against these guys and they
were just normal kids having fun, not maoists trying to
further a cultural revolution. Yeah, I'm sure all pre teen
shiniest kids are a hardcore maoist political opinions.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
Yeah, like the idea is, so it's just like yourself.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
If they'd been kids, you would have had the same
experience because you're all fucking kids. You're playing sports game like,
they're not going to be just like reading from the
fucking Red Book to you.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
So sure it just speaks to like the way like
his mind, like yeah, this mind works of like yeah,
an experience, what experience with people who are different from me? Yeah,
and now that that informs my entire worldview, whether it
be negative or positive, it's just weird, like well whatever, Yeah,

(28:43):
I hate meatballs.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Now I don't like meatballs anymore.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
So.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
After graduating high school, Ron claims to have worked full
time at an electric company that had sponsored his little
league team in order to pay for college. So he's
they sponsor his team, the guy who runs the electric
business company. Thing is like Meatball Ron, if you ever
want a gig when you're done with the with the baseballs,
you gotta gig here. So he he gets this job,
and he he will not shut up about this job. Right,

(29:10):
this is like the one blue collar moment of his life.
And that absolutely as hard as he can and he
will use this. He's gonna make as much political hay
out of this motherfucking gig as it's possible to make.
But you know who else will? Milk and Meatball Cody,
you know who loves milking meatballs. Can't get enough of

(29:30):
that of that ball milk as they call.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
Yeah, who's the ball milk milkers?

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Well, if you want wow ok ball milk meat is
your question? Uh huh yeah, well you can ask Meatball
Ron that her name is Casey. So you know here's
an ad Oh yeah, oh yeah, I don't know why

(30:01):
I came back that way.

Speaker 5 (30:03):
It was a fun choice, I think I do.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Thank you, thank you, thank you both. So Meatball Ron
is very proud of his working class credentials as a
briefly an electrician. Now he never bothers to interrogate whether
anything has changed to make it harder for a kid
today to pay for Yale tuition with an entry level
gig at a power company. What he does make time
to do in his memoir is shit on those lazy millennials.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Quo, thank goodness.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Will it was come and for rising college freshmen to
spend their summer enjoying themselves on the beach and sleeping
in until noon. I was up at the crack of
dawn to start work just after six am, five days
per week as an electricians assistant. I made a mere
six bucks an hour, but it felt great to receive
a paycheck for a good day's work.

Speaker 3 (30:52):
Okay, yeah, she's just rotting a job.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:55):
Also yeah, because you were a kid that didn't know
better than you had a job.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
But also, like you, you are going to Yale and
you are legitimately one of the few working class kids there.
But like going to guarantee you, most college students in
most colleges worked because they're not Yale's. They don't have
like millionaire parents with legacies.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Right, like go to a different school and you'll experience
will be like, Oh, everybody's kind of doing this the
thing that I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
You. You chose to go to the school for rich assholes,
which is what Yale is. Everyone knows it. It's the
school for rich psychopaths. And like you're being like, Wow,
nobody else here as a fucking job. Yeah, of course not.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
You expect they're all Yale.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Yeah, it's a mix of George H. W. Bush's blood
sons and fucking illegitimate children. That's all of Yale except
for you in this period. I assume. So assumes yeah,
one one assumes. Uh so. Ron also uses his early
work history to make the usual litany of conservative complaints
against the regulatory state. When I showed up to work

(31:58):
that first day, I will retire, that was typical of
what an electrician would wear, jeans, a long sleeved shirt,
and an old pair of work boots. Then I was
promptly sent home. Why because it wasn't clear if the old,
worn out boots were actually OSHA approved. I didn't know
what OSHA was, but I soon learned that the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration was a federal agency charged with

(32:19):
promulgating workplace safety rules. The net result for me was
that I had to spend the lion's chair of the
share of what would end up being my first week's
paycheck buying a pair of boots that were clearly approved
by OSHA. I doubt this made me any safer, but
it did make me a tad bit poorer. Now, uh,
I have my doubts. We'll talk about this, but I
have my doubts as to whether or not this happened

(32:41):
more accurately. I doubt if Ron DeSantis at the time
had a serious issue with being required to wear approved
safety footwear. It is very silly that he chose to
complain specifically about footwear to make a point about unreasonable regulations.
Because electricians die all the fucking time if they don't
wear proper footwear. It's an extremely reasonable regulation written in blood.

(33:02):
Here's one quote from a twenty fifteen article in Electrical
Contractor magazine titled feet on the Ground. Bad things can
happen with the wrong footwear. These are two real life examples.
An electrician wearing cowboy boots loses his footing and slips,
and he comes into contact with a life conductor, resulting
in his electrocution. In another example, alignment wearing tennis shoes
is electrocuted when his foot comes into contact with a

(33:24):
fallen energized wire. The incident occurred when the victim was
attempting to restore power disrupted by a severe storm. Both
incidents could have been prevented had the victims been wearing
proper protective footwear. And he does describe his boots as
worn out.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Now worn out. I was gonna say, yea thank you.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, yes, you say your boots sucked, Like this is
a job that can't boots and more.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
The point it's it's this element about regular regulations general.
It's that Dave Ruben thing on Rogan I you've seen
where he's like, yeah, all these regulations for building stuff
this Yeah, it's so you don't cut corners and like
houses collapse or like the wires, Like there are reasons
that these exist on not every single regulation in the world.

(34:06):
But it's such a weird complaint. Also, shouldn't your boss
buy those? Maybe that's your that is.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Like, this is not an issue with This is not
an issue with regulations. This is an issue with the
fact that independent contractors are Like the legal classification is
so fucked that your boss doesn't have to equip you
with proper safety gear, like it be required.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
That the bosses provide these that you should Yes, you
need them, they're making you get them. You shouldn't have
to pay for them necessarily. There's there's your little complaints, Ron.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Now, but you can't that can't be the complaint because
that doesn't go along with conservative dogma.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
And and it probably that probably was the complaint at
the time, Like that's probably what bothered him at the time.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
I can't believe I have to buy these?

Speaker 5 (34:51):
Why do I have to buy this for myself?

Speaker 1 (34:53):
But I mean, I will say I wish he'd been
allowed to work as an electrician wearing let's just put
those worn out now, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now. Because he
was such a good student with excellent grades and extracurricular performance,
Ron earned admittance to Yale. He was not a legacy admission.
His parents certainly did not have the money to bribe

(35:14):
a spot for their son in the prestigious school. It
seems clear to me that Ron say Yale is an
opportunity for him to increase his social class and network
with powerful, rich people in the hopes of becoming one himself.
He was successful there, becoming captain of the baseball team
and rushing for the famous Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Now
he is going to as we'll say, really try to

(35:35):
downplay the degree to which he fit in at Yale,
but going to this fraternity puts him in rarefied air
because DKE is one of the oldest frats in the country.
Its alumni include George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush,
Teddy Roosevelt, and Rutherford B. Hayes, who I know is
your favorite president, Cody, You're a big hate so Rutherford

(35:56):
to stay on as we call them mmmmm heads yeah,
Hayes heads, sure, Jesus yeah, you got hay fever. That's
another good term for Rutherford B. Hayes fans uh. Yeah.
Although I will say dan Quail was also a member
of dk So it's not that rarefied, right the.

Speaker 5 (36:15):
Let Quail sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
So it's the club that little boys growing up who
wanted to be president.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah go to.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
It is exactly that club, and like it is the
kind of thing. Clearly, this was the thing he did
because he thought at the time, this is the way
to become president. Right, you go to Yale, which is
a very fancy school for presidents, and you go to
fucking you get into DKE right now. Because Republican politics

(36:44):
have since taken a major populous plunge, particularly in the
last six seven years, Ron has now been forced to
disavow his alma matter. Roughly half of the first twenty
percent of his MEMOIRIR is just him shitting on everyone
but him at Yale to try to salvage his blue
collar credentials. He does this by trying to paint the

(37:05):
school that both Georges Bush went to as a breeding
ground for communists. What he's really.

Speaker 5 (37:13):
Trying to dance a tight rope right now?

Speaker 1 (37:15):
All this different, Yeah, this part's fun. While Yale's popular
motto made homage to God and country, the ethos of
the university's academics was hostility to the Almighty and disparagement
of America. Before I got to Yale, I believe that
almost all Americans were proud that our nation defeated the
Soviet Union to win the Cold War. But at Yale

(37:38):
I was told that the United States was to blame
for the conflict in the first place, not the Stalin
era Soviets. Well the late nineteen nineties was one of
the most prosperous times in human history. At Yale, we
were led to believe that communism was superior, even though
it was impossible point even one example of the superiority
since real communism had never been tried. I wondered if

(37:58):
some of my professors in class it's rooted for Ivan
Drago to defeat Rocky Balboa in Rocky four. Just what
an amazing paragraph, What.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
A rich, rich, rich passage.

Speaker 5 (38:12):
He didn't get his book.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Wow, I don't believe saying that what I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
I don't believe anybody could push back on this. They've
never taught that, not now, not then.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
It's so funny, how like I simply don't believe it.
This like red scary stuff is so funny and like,
I mean, it's alarming for sure, but like just like
how hard he's going in on this, Like, oh, I
just need to like say that communism is bad and
also like distance myself from the clear path that I
chose for myself. I don't believe you, Ron, is my point.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
I think, Yeah, I don't believe he's definitely a liar.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
The commis at Yale, What the.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
Fucking commis at Yale. Don't even like Rocky Yes, don't
even like seminal film Rocky fo Yeah, not even one
of the good Rockies.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
And he's such a like a it's such a funny
like he's such a ted cruise in so many ways too,
of just like the touch that cultural touchstone too. You're
you are culture pop culture.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Ha yeah, yes, fucking fucking meatball. Anyway, DeSantis goes on
to note that experiencing unbridled leftism on the fucking Yale campus, yeah,
pushed him right. Uh that so he does say that
he he includes that line, I was I was forced
into conservatism by those Yale communists. My god, the gender

(39:48):
studies at Yale, Like, give me a fucking wild god. Now,
as you're.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Probably not gonna Saarl Lawrence or something.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
As you're probably not going to be surprised here. Not
everyone who went to college with old Ronnie d had
a positive opinion of him. And I'm going to quote
from an art Yeah, yeah, yeah, here's a fun quote
from an article in The New Yorker. Some recall that
DeSantis was so intensely focused that he wasn't much of
a teammate. Ron is the most selfish person I have
ever interacted with. Another teammate told me he has always

(40:20):
loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I'm speaking for others. He
was the biggest dick we knew. But the same teammate
praise DeSantis's intellect. This is the frustrating part. He's so
fucking smart and so creative. You couldn't even plagiarize off
his work. He takes some angle and everyone knew there
was only one person who could have done that. So yeah,
he's a smart asshole who likes to bully people. That's

(40:41):
that's that's that's.

Speaker 5 (40:43):
Making president, I tell you.

Speaker 4 (40:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean like not that smart though,
because sometimes.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
Well this guy may not be very smart. Right, he's
another gay, old dude, and yeah, it's given us a
lot of dipshits.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
So well, there was an element too of just like yeah,
you got good crazy like worked hard, but like there's like.

Speaker 5 (41:04):
It's different than it's just related.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Yeah, yeah him, what is intelligence?

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Right?

Speaker 1 (41:11):
That gets us into anyway, whatever, Let's let's move on.
He's a dick and selfish. After he graduated with honors,
Ron became a history teacher and taught for a year
at the prestigious Darlington School in Rome, Georgia.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
I A.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
It is here that he first runs into his initial
his first serious controversy. Last year, a source with quote
close knowledge of the matter provided information to The Hill
about a photo that had started going viral. This photo
showed a young adult Ronnie d posing with teenage girls,
some of whom were students of his, while holding a beer.

(41:45):
Now this picture that first came to prominence when Trump
started his campaign against meatball Ron. The former president shared
this picture from another user's post with a text that's
not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing?
Question mark now the origin? Indeed he did, indeed, And
this original post, like Trump was, the post he was sharing,

(42:07):
included a caption by another user that read Ron DeSantis
was having a drink party with his students when he
was a high school teacher. Yeah, such a weird way
to frame it.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Having party also, but also trum Trump competing on it.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
There's a lot of photo woman silly.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Wait, So who used the phrase drink party?

Speaker 1 (42:31):
The person who originally posted, because that is a Twitter
blue ass phrase. That is a is a very Twitter
blue phrase.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
A drink party. Yeah, having your drink parties with your leftists.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Yeah, I get that is that is Yeah, that is
a phrase written by someone who has forgotten the face
of his mother in favor of an Elon Musk Snapple fact.

Speaker 5 (42:52):
And has never been invited to a drink.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Party and never would be invited a drink party.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
I also love just like, obviously we don't need to
too much into the Trump of it all, but the
idea of Trump sharing this photo, bro, there are stories
of you walking in at miss plain dog, what are
you doing? But also like he's teflon. It doesn't matter,
It doesn't matter, god man, guy.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
The the post that Trump was quoting went on to
say having drinks with underage girls and cuddling of them
look pretty gross and a foebopheliesque.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Oh it's also.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
You get a lot from the post because it's like, yeah,
you gotta make a you gotta like it's the very
libertarian thing to like really emphasize the difference between pedophilia and.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
Gotta make.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
Oh my god, Yeah, this guy owns a bored ape.

Speaker 3 (43:48):
Absolutely absolutely all his apes are gone, though all his
ages slurp juice. You know, he doesn't have slurp juice
that's right.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Can't even slurp now. This created an uproar on conservative
social media and The Hill, which is a liberal leaning publication.
Talk to someone who had apparently Yeah, yeah, it's kind
of kind of libby. Yeah, more on the lib side.
It's not it's certainly not like a left wing rag
or whatever. But it's like, it's not a not conservative media.

(44:20):
Uh yeah, talk to someone who had apparently been at
the party where Ron has his arms around these girls
drinking a beer. According to our whistleblower, very silly thing
to call a whistleblowering, fucking ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
According to the micro yeah, like.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Uh. DeSantis had a reputation among students for being a young,
hot teacher who girls loved, and the girls in the
photo are believed to have graduated in two thousand and two,
making them seniors at the time. Hill reporter also added
the source who provided the photo says that it was
taken prior to graduation, meaning the young girls would have
still been with the Santas responsibility at the time.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
That is gross. Even if they weren't his responsibility, he
is grabbing drinks with By the time.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
You have graduated college and are working as a teacher
shouldn't be drinking with high school.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Girls, especially not a drink party.

Speaker 5 (45:17):
It's not a drink party, not a drink party.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
It is also sad. It's like we all we all
knew guys.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
It's very say you could drink some water with some
teenage girls in class, I suppose, but that's sure the
same thing at all.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Although I would say if anyone ever described to me
that they were drinking water with teenage girls at their
I'd be like, well, why are you? Why are we
talking about this this way?

Speaker 3 (45:39):
That's all.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
That's that's peculiar. Most people don't describe it that way. Yeah.
So The New York Times followed up the Hills reporting here,
positively iding DeSantis as the man in the photo and
finding further sources that would back up in several interviews
that quote. Several students recalled mister DeSantis has a frequent
presence at parties with the seniors who lived in doubt.

(46:03):
So that is deeply off.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
Frequent.

Speaker 1 (46:06):
Frequent.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yeah, he is crashing a regular face at the drink parties, yes, which.

Speaker 5 (46:14):
I don't think their parents would like that.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, And it's the Times is what feels nothing damning
in a legal matter, right, there's no no one is
accusing him of like sexual harassment or assault or of
like anything like that. Those allegations just aren't present. But
there's not a good reason why, as a teacher and
an adult you become a frequent presence at high school parties. Like,

(46:41):
there's not a non creepy way for that to happen.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're not there because you're just you
really get on with these No, you're in part like there,
You're you're really lit up intellectually from the conversation at
the drink party.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
I don't think so the best case scenario is like
you have no friends and no sense of judgment. Uh,
and yeah, yeah, feel like you get her along better
with people who have less life experience.

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Because it's not even like this is like his hometown
or something. No, like oh I knew like, oh I
was a senior and this was a sophoire.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, and they were like they were yeah freshmen or whatever.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
Yeah, it's like a new town and you're like hanging out.
Yeah god no.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
One of the sources that I'm going to continue to
quote from that Times article, two former students, both women,
remembered him attending at least two parties where alcohol was served,
but they said that the parties took place after graduation
and that they were not bothered by his presence at
the time, although they question it now. It was his
first job out of yet he was cute. We didn't
really think too much about it. Yeah, you kid, Yeah,

(47:48):
that's why it's the adult's responsibility to wed. Yeah. Well,
mister D shows up at a lot of parties.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
He's always taken a pictures.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
They're like, mister D's not a normal teacher, he's a
cool tool.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (48:02):
But then like five years later they're like, oh no.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Wait yeah right, because it's also not even like high
school like in twenty twenty, where like that is kind
of like understood. It's like, no, this now that's weird.
It's weird.

Speaker 5 (48:14):
Yeah, lots changed in the last twenty years.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Yeah, yeah, good for that changing at least, yes, and
hasn't changed any.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
It also hasn't changed it. So after this really creepy
gap year, he enrolls in Harvard Law School. Again. He's
doing this because he is trying to maximize his chance
of like being accepted as a member of like the
upper crust concert to get intelligence, rule the club.

Speaker 5 (48:40):
You want to be a part of the illuminati, you
gotta do the game.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Yeah, yeah, you got to do the gig. He claims
now that he decided to go to Harvard because he
was motivated by Tom Cruise's performance and a few good men,
and yeah, like Tom's character. He became a judge advocate general,
joins the Navy, and gets deployed to Iraq as a
lawyer with a seal team. Now, because the Navy Seals

(49:06):
have the reputation that they have among conservatives, Ron has
attempted to beate. He's basically like claim like he will
always say I deployed with the Seals, which is technically accurate,
but he's clearly trying to like, like he's a lawyer,
his job is when they go shoot people, to be like, yep,
you're allowed to shoot these people like that. That's why
what he was doing. He makes a big point about

(49:29):
this now in all of his campaign events. He told
a voter in New Hampshire this July, I'm the only
veteran running out of all these candidates. Yeah, I'll be
the first president elected since nineteen eighty eight who's actually
served in a war. Now, that is true. Although he
was not out, you know, getting shot at or doing anything.
He was looking at paperwork. He was being a lawyer.

(49:52):
He was also not universally popular among his comrades at
the time. From the New Yorker quote, a colleague who
served with DeSantis remembered Ron was a voracious worker, and
he worked at phenomenal speed. He was a superb writer,
especially for his age. But even then his ambitions seemed consuming.
Ron's a user. The former colleague told me, you had
utility to him. He would be nice to you. If

(50:12):
you didn't, he wouldn't give you the time of day.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
Yeah, you know, I gotta say this is a little controversial,
but I hate people like that, I really do.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Yeah, bold, bold plenty, of.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
Course he is. And it's like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
This is also it's interesting because I mean, sure, we'll
get into this, but it's that a lot of these
elements are very heavily reflected in his governance. Yes, absolutely
everything about how he approaches politics. And yeah, it's not
a good guy. No bad bad meatball.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
Yeah, bad meatball. Now you know what is a good meatball? Like, Yeah, oh, man, bison,
you can make a fine bison meatball. You guys, what
my uh my, my wild game meat recipe that I
that I that I It's great if you've got like

(51:10):
wild boar uh, you know, anything that's like kind of
get get you know, if you've got like a bunch
of ground up boar meat or whatever.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Anything anything for like uh, impossible beef.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
You could you could do this with impossible beef. You
could do this with like ground venison. I would get
I would take a pound of ground venison, a pound
of ground boar meat and mix them together with a
whole sleeve of saltine crackers. Just crumble up in there.
You crack one maybe two eggs in, stir it all together.

(51:42):
Then you baste it with either barbecue sauce or ketchup,
and you bake that ship in the oven. Uh, and
you cook yourself a delicious meat loaf. It's perfect like food.

Speaker 5 (51:52):
Yeah, Like when do we roll the meat loaf into balls?

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (51:56):
I see no, no, no meat loaf.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
No.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
But because the loaf is the loaf is the strongest
shape in nature, you could do a meat loaf ball, Katie.
You could chop up meat loaf.

Speaker 5 (52:06):
I'm sorry, that just sounds like a nice thing for.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
You know, It's like it's like the crab shape, how
like it sort of independently appears in all all across nature.
The loaf appears all across.

Speaker 5 (52:20):
So question, were we about to throw to ads?

Speaker 3 (52:23):
Yes, okay, yeah, that's what this whole thing is about.

Speaker 1 (52:25):
Okay, yes, yes, here's an ad Ah. We're back. And
I wanted to delay this next part because it's horrible
because after being in Iraq, Ron gets stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now,

(52:46):
this is by far the most contentious part of his backstory,
and so I will be very careful in my phrasing here.
In a two thousand and six interview with CBS, Decantists
told his interviewer that at one point, several prisoners launched
a hunger strike while he was at Guantana. He says
that his commanding officer asked him, how do I combat this?
And Ron answered, Hey, you can actually force feed. Here's

(53:08):
what you can do. Here's kind of the rules for that. Now,
there's some questionable elements of this recollection because force feeding
started at Guantanamo somewhat slightly before Desanta's actually got sent there,
So he's probably exaggerating in order to take credit for
this what is torture?

Speaker 3 (53:26):
Right?

Speaker 1 (53:26):
This is torture we're talking about.

Speaker 3 (53:28):
I actually invented a fun new way to torture people.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Yes, hurting them was my idea. Ultimately, the Pentagon authorized
force feeding. Detainees would be strapped to a chair, a
nurse would force a lubricated tube down their nose and
then would pump in nutritional supplements. Lawyers for detainees have
argued that this was torture because force feeding is banned
by a UN Convention against torture. Former inmates now released

(53:55):
have accused DeSantis of having played a role in their torture.
Mansour a Day wrote an article for Al Jazeera and
described meeting DeSantis, who initially told him that he was
at Guantanamo to ensure that prisoner's rights were respected. Quote.
I remember him asking why we were all still on
hunger strike. We told him to look around. Camp Delta
was constructed from metal shipping containers, divided into cages with

(54:18):
wire mesh. In the summer, the cages were like ovens.
In the winter, they were cold and wet. They were loud,
with huge fans and the echoes of all the men's voices.
There was the persistent harassment by guards, desecration of Koran's
non existent medical care systematic torture, and being cut off
completely from the outside world. We told Dasantis we were
on hunger strike because we wanted to know why we

(54:38):
were being imprisoned, because we wanted a fair judicial process
to prove our innocence. He took notes. He promised to
register our complaints. Now Ron may or may not have
registered their complaints, we don't know, but it had no
impact on what happened next. Days later, a day fee
was brought back to the wreck yard where nurses and
Navy corman which is Navy medicisent were waiting with a

(55:01):
restraint chair in several cases of insure. Ron de Santis
and other JAG officers stood nearby observing quote. I was
informed that the US government was determined to break the
hunger strike. The doctor in charge, a colonel, told me
that he did not care if I was innocent or
protesting mistreatment. He was there for one thing to make
me eat. I refused and was immediately and violently strapped

(55:23):
into the chair so tightly that I could not move.
A nurse forced a thick tube into my nose and
down my throat, My nose bled, and the pain was
so great that I thought my head would explode. The
nurse would not stop. Instead, he began pouring insure into
a feeder bag attached to the tube. They poured can
after can into the feeder bag until my stomach and
throat were so full that in sure poured back out

(55:43):
of my mouth and nose. I thought I was going
to drown if you throw up. A corman said, we'll
start from the beginning with a new case and fill
you up again. As I tried to break free, I
noticed Dessantus's handsome face among the crowd at the other
side of the chain link. He was watching me struggle.
He was smiling and laughing with the other officers as
I screamed in pain. Mm hmm, it is very upsetting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Cody,

(56:12):
you got a good meatball.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Joke, uh something about Oh no. But I did think
when you were describing this it sounded like you said,
jack Off.

Speaker 5 (56:23):
I get you. I did you.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
That's good. I'm glad we pulled out of this tale.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
Also, I mean, there's been some references to him being handsome,
and I don't agree with them.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
They keep saying he's handsome.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Yeah, subjective, but I know.

Speaker 4 (56:44):
But multiple people, there's been multiple suggestions in today and I've.

Speaker 5 (56:50):
I take issues.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
It is really interesting that a specializes, like specifies that
that he's like getting torture is like, damn it. Guy's
kind of good though anyway, peculiar the things that occur
to you when you're in an intense situation.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
So A.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
Dafy was one of several former inmates who claimed to
have recognized DeSantis. He was featured along with several whistleblowers
in an unreleased Vice documentary. The whistleblowers include a former
US Naval sergeant, Joe Hickman. So, Joe was on guard
duty during a night when three prisoners, the ring leaders
of the hunger strike, died somewhat mysteriously. Our government claims

(57:31):
that these guys all, we had a suicide pack together, right,
that they committed suicide. Hickman does not agree with this. Again,
he was on guard duty that night, and he believes
the men were assassinated to restore order and put an
end to the strike, which was very bad pr for
the US government. From a write up by The Daily
Beast quote Hickman, who later contributed as a whistleblower for

(57:52):
the Justice Department's investigation into the deaths, recalled to Santis
as popular and extremely handsome. So here we go again.
Balls would go crazy. No, I'm not, I swear to God,
I'm not. I'm not adding a like, it's just a
thing that comes up with like all everyone from these
girls at this, at the school he taught at to

(58:13):
this sergeant to the duty was tort helping to torture
all mention this. I don't I don't get it, but
it's it's like an undeniable thing you have to you
have to acknowledge it, Like yeah, yeah, I agree, I
I do agree. For the record, I I don't understand this,
and it makes me question my own sanity. It's like,

(58:36):
it's like fucking being best friends with Jimmy Stewart in
that movie where he sees the giant rabbit and you're
just like, they're really a rabbit. Like he's so consistent
about this.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
What am I missing?

Speaker 1 (58:46):
Yeah, fucking Harvey somewhere around here. Yeah, great movie, by
the way, Harvey, fucking absolute classic. Yeah classic. So yeah,
I'm going to continue that quote. Navy girls would go
crazy over him, Hickman said, although he added that he
doesn't believe DeSantis, who became a jag straight out of

(59:09):
Harvard law. I'd argue he's been a jag forever, would
have been in the room that night. They weren't going
to give somebody like that that kind of responsibility, Hickman
said in the transcript. So that Vice documentary was canceled
at the last minute for very shady but unclear reasons.
It seems likely that it was killed to avoid angering
a potential future president out of cowardice at the highest

(59:31):
levels of a failing media company. But I just really
have nothing more to say because it's unclear still at
this point. In the spring of two thousand and six,
Ron met his future wife, Casey, at a driving range
at the University of North Florida, again not flow Rida.
He and his wife did not meet on flow Rida. Again.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
Get we got that.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
The subreddit fills with confusion every time we mentioned this,
so I just want to make sure we're really keeping
it straight. It is from this period that we get
our only context on Ron's flirtation techniques, which I know
everyone's very excited to learn about.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
How does the handsome man flirt?

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
I'm gonna read you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
How are you gonna regret asking that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah, this is how he opens with his future wife. Hello,
somebody left these balls behind? Would you like to have them? Y? No, golf,
it's a driving rage. Yeah, balls, Yeah, very very funny.
This works on Casey and their first date is that

(01:00:35):
evening at Beef o Brady's, which is apparently a restaurants.

Speaker 3 (01:00:44):
I'd like balls. Some people say I'm very handsome.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
Some people this guy I tortured. I'm very handsome.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
This guy tortured and teenage girls. He's got a.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Poster in his like like, I imagine his apartment is
completely empty aside from a pillow and a blanket on
the floor and a poster he made that says like
people who think I am attractive guys I tortured at
Guantadamo teenagers.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Sergeant you question? Mark? Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Great?

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
So.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Jill Casey Black, usually called Casey, had grown up in Troy, Ohio,
one of two daughters of an optometrist and a speech pathologist.
She had also been an active student athlete and had
done very well in school. She went to the University
of Charleston and graduated with a degree in economics and
French She competed as an equestrian and had started a

(01:01:49):
promising career as a reporter and on screen talent for
the local Jacksonville station wj t x U. The one
story I found of her as a as a TV
reporter is that there was a story about an alligator
that had gotten into a suburban neighborhood, which she described
as a story with real teeth if you're if you're
curious as to the level of rigor she brought to

(01:02:10):
journalism as a profession.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
You know what they call getting a degree in economics
and French?

Speaker 1 (01:02:18):
What's that?

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Monet? Okay, studying monette. No, studying monette.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
You're proud of yourself, aren't you. Yeah, studying money. Yeah,
we get it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
It's like wait, wait, wait, we get it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
No yeah, good, good one, Thank you, good one, buddy.

Speaker 5 (01:02:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
So they get hitched in two thousand and nine at
Disney World.

Speaker 4 (01:02:43):
Oh now, how about that?

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
That is funny because of the war he's going to
have with Disney later.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
By all accounts, it's not a very Disney Disney wedding.
There's not like Mickey or any characters hanging around. They
go to Epcot after, which is like the least Disney
thing to do at Disney World. I think it's more
of a rich Florida people thing than a Disney super
fan thing, right, like Disney World's just.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):
Yay, Yeah you got to get you get the photos. Yeah, yeah,
oh I got the prince is here and the other prince.
Oh the Prince is over there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah exactly. Uh so.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
The two are a famously power couple in Florida politics,
where Ron is tight lipped and reserved and introverted. Casey
is an extrovert. She's going to do when he runs
for office. She does a lot of on the ground campaigning,
even like knocking on doors for him. She does a
lot of introducing him at evinsign stuff like. She is
the talker of the two of them.

Speaker 5 (01:03:44):
She's more likable.

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
Here's my weird husband by far. Yeah, here's handsome. Look
at me.

Speaker 5 (01:03:50):
Just look at him. Don't listen to his word.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Yeah, I'll talk. I'm attractive and charismatic. Please ignore my
husband's words.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
Yeah, I studied money in college.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Yeah, way to go, Cody. So these ambitions and she is,
you know, the two are, by all accounts, deeply in
love and partners in Ron's political ambitions, and those ambitions
would become evident for the first time in twenty twelve
when Ron noticed that the newly drawn sixth district in
Florida had again not flow Rida, Florida had an open

(01:04:21):
campaign for Congress. It was a tweener district in between
Jacksonville and Orlando and had no incumbent. Because of the
demographics of the district, it would be a guaranteed win
for any Republican who could win the nomination. With Casey
at his side, meetball Ron decided he was going to
be that Republican and we will talk about that and

(01:04:43):
his rise to power in part two.

Speaker 3 (01:04:47):
God, here's also something to say about the phrase tweener district.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Yeah, Ron's yeah, it's uncomfortable to me.

Speaker 3 (01:04:54):
Yeah, yeah, tweens. Yeah yeah. His wife is age appropriate though,
so good for that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
That is good. Yeah, yeah, yeah he is. He is
married to an adult. That's positive shows growth.

Speaker 4 (01:05:11):
Mm.

Speaker 5 (01:05:12):
I'd like to end things on a positive note.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah, modern politics.

Speaker 5 (01:05:16):
Yeah great, Well, thanks for having us here for this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah. How you feeling, guys?

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
I feel excited to see Meet ball Ron up on stage.
Just yeah, you know, just being around, just just being himself.

Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Yeah, just be and just you, just be yourselves. You know,
if you are a relentlessly dedicated psychopath who wants to
become the president purely for reasons of self gratification, don't
let anything stop you, you know, relentlessly craft a life
towards that goal. Uh and and proceed on a rocket
ship like course towards it until fucking Biff Tannon calls

(01:05:58):
you meetball Ron and utterly and iholates all of your
dreams in a single shot back to the Earth. Yeah,
it's like the Death Star shooting a taxi cab.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Just absolutely wiped out some taxi.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Hands, some taxi cab. Anyway, you guys got some plugs.

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
Sure you got shows?

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):
Oh yeah, we got shows. Yeah, check us out. We
got a YouTube show called some more News. It's also
a podcast, and we have a companion podcast called even
more News.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Hell yeah you do.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
Hell yeah, we do gues. I've got oh we've got
a Patreon for that as well, Patreon dot com. S
hast some more News. I've got a band called the
Hot Shapes. It has an album out now. Check it
out on band camp and SoundCloud. The Hot Shapes dot
band camp dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
Yeah, we do.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Work with this out where we split up the plugs
because yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Got it all well, you said, you said, Cody go,
so I did. But then I was like, well, O,
Katie's not going to want to plug my band.

Speaker 4 (01:06:52):
Oh you're right, Yeah, I agree with what he said,
but also I do want to plug his band.

Speaker 5 (01:06:58):
Go ahead, listen to.

Speaker 4 (01:06:59):
His yeah stuff. Check it out, all right, the next
episode probably.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
Yeah, see you next episode. You can find us at
Cooler Zone Media. If you want to get this without ads,
you can subscribe, and uh, I'm gonna I'm gonna also
put in a free plug for a YouTube channel that
I like. Just just google Bobby Fingers YouTube. Watch the
watch the Steven Sagall video first. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
All right, no, no, no, this is just like my

(01:07:28):
favorite thing that exists. This this artist. I don't know
why he doesn't have tody. You need to you need
to watch these videos. Bobby Fingers.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
Okay, I don't know, I don't know. I'm not familiar
with this, but the thumbnails.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Are Yes, I have no way to describe this to you.
There's three videos so far. Watch the one about Steven Seagal.
That's all I'll tell you listeners. I have no affiliation
with this guy.

Speaker 4 (01:07:52):
I just love him, all right, all right, looking forward
to that support.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Supporting Bye Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Bye Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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