Welcome to the CBS Evening News podcast. I'm Nora O'Donnell, and today we're bringing you a special episode that features my extended conversation with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis from September 12th.

We discussed everything from the state of his campaign, as he's a distant second to Donald Trump, to his position on abortion, the economy, and much more. Here now, my

interview with Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis. Governor, thank you so much for doing this

interview. I want to talk about the state of your campaign. You have spent about $50 million

so far, and you're about 50 points behind Donald Trump. Are you running out of time?

Well, they haven't spent that. That is now in the hopper, so you're going to see a lot of that

coming in the next couple months. We're focusing on a state-by-state strategy because that's how

this process works. People can take a poll nationally, but we don't run a national primary, So we're on the ground in Iowa. Everybody there has said we've done better there than anyone can remember in terms of what we're doing. We're doing similar stuff in New Hampshire. So that's what we're going to do, and we're going to get the job done. Are you betting everything on Iowa? We're going to win Iowa, but I think that there been people who've won Iowa who didn't end up going on to win the nomination. Goals to win a majority of the delegates, and so that's what we're going to do. What has been the main challenge because the former President Donald Trump still remains so dominant? Well, look, I mean, the last however many four or five months have been dominated by these legal cases, and that's unprecedented. and I think that that took a lot of oxygen out of the room I mean I

launched my campaign we're going in the early states we're getting all this buzzed

then the next week you have a case that camp comes down and then that was a hundred

percent of what people were talking about so so that's challenging but but at the end of

the day I think our voters are going to start processing,

what do we do in the future? And our, in my view, is very simple. If this election is about the

past and focusing on other things, we're not going to win. If the election's about the future

for American families in the country and we show where Joe Biden's failed, then we're

going to get the job done and we're going to win.

If it's not about the past, do you believe that voters will elect someone who is facing 91 criminal

counts?

So I didn't think even before all this that the president should, former president should have

run again.

I mean, I think that there's just certain, there's too many voters who he's a deal breaker for them.

Nikki Haley says Americans won't vote for a convicted criminal. Do you agree with that?

...