Filmmaker and political commentator Mike Cernovich appeared on The Charlie Kirk show on Wednesday where the two discussed former President Donald Trump's potential indictment from Soros-backed NYC DA Alvin Bragg, and the comments Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made about that pending grand jury decision, when asked by press about it earlier this week.
Bragg is alleging that so-called "hush money" paid to porn star Stormy Daniels by Trump's then attorney Michael Cohen was improperly classified by the Trump Organization as legal fees, a misdemeanor, should be elevated to a felony as he believes it was the basis for a further crime of election interference. Bragg has yet to charge Trump, and a grand jury that has already been impaneled has not yet voted to serve an indictment of this nature against the former president.
When asked about it, DeSantis said that he beleived an indictment would be polticially motivated, but also said that the state of Florida would not get involved in what could be the extradition of his most famous constituent. DeSantis also quipped about not knowing anything about what it must be like to make hush money payments to a porn star.
"We are not involved in this, we won't be involved in this. I have no interest in getting involved in some type of manufactured circus by some Soros DA, okay. He's trying to do a political spectacle. He's trying to virtue signal for his base," DeSantis told press on Monday.
"I was surprised to see that Ron DeSantis and his team blew their moment to become head-to-head against a New York-Soros district attorney," Cernocivh said, "to elevate themselves to a national profile, to rile up the fake news media and the regime propagandists. I think it was one of the biggest missed opportunities of a political campaign season."
"Tell me why," Kirk asked. "What should have been said, and do you think it kind of changed or put context into the 2024 race?"
"What you would say is everything that Ron DeSantis said until the final paragraph," Cernovich said, "that was a killer statement. But you have to know, as you know, Charlie, if you're in media, how the videos are going to be clipped. You have to know what to take out.
"And that final paragraph is— calling it a 'sideshow,' 'I'm not going to get involved,' 'I'm focusing on issues that matter'— What in the world are you thinking? A 'sideshow'? The selective prosecution of persecution of Americans happening when Dinesh D'Souza was wrongfully indicted?"
Kirk added that Steve Bannon was among those who were wrongfully indicted. Bannon was indicted on contempt of Congress after not replying promptly enough to a subpoena from the January 6 committee, which he later complied with after Trump had rescinded his executive privilege on Bannon's testimony.
"Yeah, Bannon," Cernovich continued. "I was talking to Dinesh’s daughter actually earlier today, and I was reminded of the Dinesh case, the Ricky Vaughn meme case, and you can always show the example of the left doing the same crime and not being prosecuted. So Hillary Clinton and the Steele dossier, she did bad business record-keeping too, which is allegedly what Trump did. There's no investigation [or] indictment for her. So the fact that Mr. DeSantis, Governor DeSantis saw this as a Trump issue was a huge, huge mistake."
Clinton was fined $8,000, while the DNC was fined $113,000 for claiming that the funds used to pay opposition research team Fusion GPS for what was essentially the creation of a false dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election were legal fees. Neither she nor the DNC were charged with a follow-up felony of election interference for the faked materials that led to an impeachment for Trump in 2019.
Kirk followed up by asking if DeSantis’ strategy was just a miscalculation, adding that Cernovich had been "very positive on DeSantis" leading up to the situation with Trump.
"They're still in the policy long phase that the 2015-2016 election didn't put to bed," Cernovich said. "The argument that you need to have a white paper and you know … so I'll give an example, not to throw shade on [Ben] Shapiro. But Shapiro is articulating more like the Ron DeSantis argument, which is, 'Well, technically he couldn't stop an extradition and Trump was going to surrender himself anyway. Therefore, why would you even get involved?' Yeah, that's called a legal formalism. That's called literalism. And that isn't how you win elections."
Kirk brought the conversation home by saying that someone wins elections by having an attitude.
"It's about attitude. You win an election with an attitude. People are voting for an attitude—a tone, a spirit, a tenor and a a mantra, not specifics," Kirk said.
