Conservative podcaster Matt Walsh recently acknowledged that he would back former President Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, if either is the Republican nominee in 2024.
That’s because either man would be far preferable to the left-winger the Democrats will nominate, Walsh suggested.
Right now, that seems a safe assumption. While at least three other Republicans have declared their candidacies, Trump and DeSantis, at this point, remain far ahead of all others as the choice among GOP voters — even though DeSantis has not said he’s running.
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Yet Walsh noted an important distinction between DeSantis and Trump that would cause him to favor Florida’s governor in a head-to-head matchup.
In his episode on Monday, Walsh played a clip of DeSantis’ recent interview with Fox News host Mark Levin.
In the interview, DeSantis said the federal government’s “entrenched bureaucrats” need to be cleaned out of the Washington bureaucracy “because they totally failed and they’re not advocating for the best interests of the people of this country.”
“It’s been a total disaster,” said DeSantis.
When Levin suggested removing them would be difficult because of civil service regulations and union protection, DeSantis recalled an idea that actually circulated under Trump.
He called it doing a “Schedule F.”
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DeSantis said federal bureaucrats classified as Schedule F have a “policy role,” and thus they serve at the pleasure of the president — meaning they could be fired for not following through on the president’s agenda.
“The left would litigate that,” DeSantis told Levin. “But I honestly think we would win on that in the Supreme Court.”
“Who controls the executive branch?” DeSantis asked. “Is it the elected president or is it some bureaucrat and the bowels of the bureaucracy that can’t be fired?”
“I think push needs to come to shove on this,” he added.
“Whoever gets a majority of the Electoral College has the right to impose their agenda through the executive branch. And what they did with President Trump was basically try to nullify the election through not only bureaucratic intransigence, but malfeasance with the collusion hoax and some of those things.”
“And so re-constitutionalizing government starts with re-constitutionalizing the executive branch,” said DeSantis.
DeSantis “might sound kind of wonky,” Walsh said, “but it is important.”
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“If you want to know why I would take DeSantis over Trump in a primary … really this is the only reason you need,” said Walsh. “It is the desire to actually clean out all of these bureaucrats, all of these entrenched bureaucrats, to clean them outta the system.”
“It’s like how do you get some Drano to clear all this gunk outta the pipe stream? And that’s what he wants to do.”
But, Walsh added that it was “not only the desire to do it but the knowledge of how to do it. This is what he’s done in the Florida state government. He’s done exactly this.”
It’s harder to take this kind of action on a national level, Walsh acknowledged.
“But we know that he [DeSantis] knows how to do it ’cause he’s done it,” said Walsh.
“And, also from giving explanations like that — the desire and willingness and follow through to actually use the powers of the executive branch, knowing how to use those powers and being interested in using them to get rid of many of these corrupt swamp things.”
“Trump never did that,” continued Walsh. “He just never did. He was elected to drain the swamp. He never did anything to actually drain it, or very little, I should say. Very little was done. And whatever he did do was undone within about 12 hours of him leaving office.”
“So that’s what you get from DeSantis.”
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“Can you imagine — be honest — can you imagine Trump calmly explaining, as DeSantis just did, how we would actually get rid of these people. Have you ever heard of him?” Walsh added.
“We know we get the platitudes and we get the bumper sticker slogans and we get the rally speeches and all that, and the talking points,” said Walsh. “But what about sitting down and saying, listen, this is how I’m gonna go about doing this and being able to explain it?”
“You don’t get that from Trump very often. You do get it from DeSantis.”
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