Hey, Michael Goodwin back from vacation. It was a rough couple of Sundays without him, but he's back every Sunday, every Wednesday, the best columnist in America. You read him in the New York Post, and it's good to have him back. Michael Goodwin. How are you?

Good morning, Mark. Thank you. Now, look, a lot of people, even though Trump was a great president with great results, they don't

like the personality, they don't like the circus that surrounds him, they're looking for an

alternative. Can we now admit it's not going to be Ron DeSantis?

It certainly looks that way. As I say in my column, they don't take a miracle for DeSantis

at this point. I mean, the polls just keep getting worse.

And look, we're still, we're still five, nearly five months from the Iowa caucuses. So nobody's

voting yet. Nobody's doing anything except expressing opinion to pollsters. But these things matter.

They're creating momentum for Trump.

You know, Mark, back in the beginning of the year, or in late last year, I think the general

theory among DeSantis people and other campaigns was that Donald Trump had a base of support within the party of about 25%.

At that point, he was getting 35, 38, 40% in the polls.

And these are these rivals, potential rivals, and their donors, looking for a logical reason

that this case was winnable, they looked at it and said,

well, we think anything above 25% is persuadable. In other words, it's soft and we can persuade

that if we make the right case. That theory, which I believe made a certain amount of sense, I mean, the numbers weren't

precise, but it was a general idea. That theory has been proven wrong so far, because Trump's

support is now in the mid-50s, and in some cases even higher, mid-50s consistently, nationally.

And so his support has not only refused to be pulled away, it has grown.

And you hear more and more of his supporters saying it's Trump or nobody.

So I think the whole Republican Party has to reassess here because, you know, if Trump is going

to run the table in the first states, let's say, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina,

...