Welcome to the Bullwork Podcast. It is Tuesday, May 24, 2023, and we are fortunate enough

to be joined by our good friend David Phom, staff writer at the Atlantic. Welcome back, David.

Thank you so much. David, I felt that we needed to have a soundtrack for today's show,

a special soundtrack before we get into the news of the day. Go for it. Here it is.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Court in the land slide? No escape from reality. There's no escape from this reality.

I mean, where do we start, David? Donald Trump gets his felony court date. The country is

inching toward default. And Ronda Santis, the governor of the state of Florida, has chosen to

launch his candidacy for president with Elon Musk on Twitter. Can we start there?

Ronda Santis is going to launch with Elon Musk. I've had an observation about the way

Dessantis communicates and it struck me when he did an earlier pre-launch online ad. I watched

it and realized it was three minutes long. Every encounter between Dessantis and a voter in the

sad was mediated through a screen. The voter would see Dessantis on a telephone. They would watch

him on a TV screen. Even when the voter, they Photoshop'd Dessantis in apparent conversation with

actual voters. But when you look more closely, you realize that the voters were looking at each other,

nodded him. In fact, they were holding screens in front of their faces as they talked to him.

In this new ad that is, I guess, 24 hours before launch, Dessantis is walking toward a stage.

And we hear a speech by a voiceover. In a British accent.

In a British accent. It's something that really happened. This was at some rally.

In each case, there's an immediate motive. And the latest ad, the motive is to conceal

that Dessantis has an uncompelling voice. In the previous ad, it was to conceal the fact that

Dessantis' actual real life encounters with voters are few and look awkward. But the ad then

...