Donald Trump pollster John McLaughlin and Ken Cuccinelli, the founder of Never Back Down, the PAC that supports Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, discussing the presidential campaign on Newsmax on Saturday, remained divided on whether there are Americans who are undecided on their votes.
"We now have the most corrupt, failed president in the history of the United States," McLaughlin told Newsmax's "The Count." "[On] Feb. 21, I said there will be buyers' remorse when [Joe] Biden fails. I just never thought he'd fail this fast and this badly and be this corrupt."
But now, former President Donald Trump is running 40-50 points over his challengers for the GOP nomination, and when it comes to DeSantis, "he leads 72 [percent] to 28. There's no undecided, and it's because Joe Biden is the target."
Voters, he added, want the election decided by the ballot, not because of any legal troubles Trump is facing.
Meanwhile, Cuccinelli insisted that DeSantis won the last debate, and people saw him as the "alternative to Donald Trump."
"The first votes will be cast in about 4.5 months, so the idea that nobody is undecided is a little bit outlandish," Cuccinelli said. "We're in a situation we've never been in before. All of us support the concept that the American voters should be deciding this, not these politically motivated assaults in courts."
He added that the continuing grassroots efforts for DeSantis are continuing, as "we've knocked on 1.8 million doors" for him.
"No campaign has had anywhere near that kind of personal contact with voters," said Cuccinelli.
DeSantis' leadership skills were also in full force during last week's hurricane strike in Florida, he added.
"What a spectacular and frankly unmatched leader he is in a point of crisis," he said. "There's literally never been a chief executive anybody can name with that handles natural disasters better than Ron DeSantis in any state or president."
Cuccinelli further insisted that DeSantis will not be dropping out of the race, despite what Trump has been saying.
"That's just silly bull," he said. "Trump was doing that while DeSantis was getting around the state taking care of people. Donald Trump never said a word about hoping those folks were OK. He did nothing but attack DeSantis the whole week."
He further commented that the government has gotten more "incoming fire" than "any other candidate in the race, and yet people still have the most favorable view of him of anyone in the Republican race."
"He moved up in terms of the number of people that would consider voting for him," Cuccinelli said. "After the debate, he passed Trump in that space."
McLaughlin, meanwhile, commented on the expectations that Trump will not be participating in any of the GOP debates and said he does think it was a "good move" for him to bypass the first one, as he was to be booked the following day in Georgia.
"Instead of taking shots at Donald Trump and trying to embarrass him to come there, they should have given up the debate and gone to Fulton [County] just like leaders used to go with Martin Luther King, the civil rights leaders, and stand up to the corruption of Joe Biden," said McLaughlin.
But Cuccinelli interrupted him, commenting that DeSantis is the "only one who has stood up to this kind of corruption and removed [George] Soros prosecutors."
McLaughlin agreed that it is "unprecedented in the history of the country" that Trump is facing indictments, and called on the Republican Party and the presidential candidates to "get behind Donald Trump" to defeat Biden.
"Let's unite the party because this is an existential threat," he said.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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