The magic is gone according to an advisor.
When you say the magic is gone,
he's saying he's not gonna be able to get it back.
And he is right now the only person running as a Republican for
the presidency in 2024.
>> The difficult thing about a campaign that is just really about
a personality, right?
Is that even if it were to be run in a really common sense way it was really well
run, would it really matter if the personality that the whole thing is
built around that the entire political movement is about if that
personality is not really on his game?
If he's like lost his mojo in some way.
>> Lost his mojo in some way, that was Olivia Nuzzi, who is a correspondent for
New York Magazine, talking about her recent scathing piece on Donald Trump,
where she quotes individuals in his innermost circle who do in fact
think that Trump has lost his mojo and
is currently running a failing campaign for president in 2024.
Now, the piece did not sit well with Trump for obvious reasons.
He doesn't like any negative coverage on anything he does and
he usually attacks immediately and this is definitely no exception.
But before we get into Trump's attacks towards New York Magazine and Nuzzi,
why don't we talk a little bit about the piece itself?
It's titled The Final Campaign Inside Donald Trump's sad, lonely,
thirsty, great word, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for
reelection, which isn't to say he can't win.
Okay, interesting.
So Cenk, I'm gonna go to you right away cuz before we get to Trump's reaction to
it, do you think that's an accurate interpretation of what's happening?
And again this is based on people in his innermost circle.
>> I think everything is driven by media.
And so it doesn't have to be fake news for to still have an agenda.
So is everything Olivia saying or writing there accurate?
Yes.
Is Donald Trump thirsty and
leaning towards crazy conspiracy theories and his desperation etc?
Yes.
But let's be honest for a second, that's how he's always been.
He was born thirsty, he bankrupted himself in Atlantic city because he
wanted three different casinos to have the name Trump on it.
He's a child and he's always been everything that Nuzzi describes him to be.
It's just now the media is painting it as pathetic loser.
And so now all of a sudden they're saying that he's losing momentum and
thereby creating the situation where he loses momentum.
Now if you're saying, but wait a minute,
didn't the mainstream media always hate him?
First of all, no.
Before the 2016 election, they gave him enormous coverage and
a lot of it was positive.
Afterwards, they did attack him, but the right-wing media had his back and
no matter what happened, the right-wing media would tell you, no,
whining like a little baby is what strong men do.
Going bankrupt is what really smart businessmen do.
And they would say these things in such a powerful gaslighting way that it worked,
it worked completely.
But now right-wing media has joined mainstream media in
painting Trump as pathetic.
So now he is.
>> That's right.
I think what really made the difference is right-wing media starting to
promote Ron DeSantis rather than Donald Trump.
Right-wing media being far more critical of Donald Trump's behavior lately.
And you're seeing the impact of that in the polls.
We've talked about several polls where the majority of Republican voters are now
looking forward to voting for DeSantis as opposed to Donald Trump.
And it's interesting Cenk, I was just in Florida for the holidays and
I was talking to people there about, what do you think about Trump versus DeSantis?
I mean, you guys seem to really like DeSantis here in Florida.
So would you want him to run for president?
And they either love the idea of DeSantis running.
They're exhausted by Donald Trump.
They're sick of the drama and they just want to get away from all of that and
just have a Republican, I guess, who doesn't have as big of a mouth, but
still wants the same things.
And then there were some Republicans in Florida I spoke to who said, no,
we don't want to lose Ron DeSantis to national politics.
We want to keep him here because we like him so much.
Now, remember Florida is a pretty red state.
People still refer to it as purple, which I don't understand,
it's a pretty red state at this point.
So that's where the voters are coming from.
But again that's just anecdotal evidence.
The real evidence is reflected in the polls that show republican voters now
wanting DeSantis over Trump.
Now in the piece that Nuzzi wrote, she also talks about,
I thought this was the funniest part, he's been kind of cooped up,
bitterly cooped up in Mar-a-Lago for the past 28 days,
[LAUGH] trying to escape the world which I get it.
Some more detail, she explains that though his 2016 campaign gave him
a platform to build his MAGA cult, his recent troubles including January 6th.
The election lies, multiple lawsuits,
all these investigations have taken away from his public appeal.
Now, many in his inner circle feel that Trump's campaign is weak and
the ex-president is quickly losing influence with no possible way to get
it back.
Now, one adviser said this in the piece quote,
when he was in New York in 2016, the whole world was coming to him.
Now we've got the villages, and it shows.
>> Yeah, the village's senior citizen center basically in Florida.
>> In Florida.
>> Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
And guys the relevant part of this story is that insiders have leaked
about him 1000 times over, right?
But not like this.
They might do a snipe against someone else within the Trump world.
They might do a snipe a small one to get a favor from a reporter etc.
But this is basically insiders and then he doesn't have that many of those left.
Turning to a reporter and saying, yeah,
the guy's kind of pathetic now, and that one hurts.
>> So here are a few other comments.
An ex-Trump loyalist and former White House official, by the way,
these guys like of course they're giving anonymous comments which is annoying, but
this person says it feels like he's going through the motions because he said
he would.
A Trump adviser also said it's not there.
In this business, you can have it and have it so hot and it can go overnight and
it's gone and you can't get it back.
I think we're just seeing it gone.
The magic is gone.
God, I love it so much.
So Trump loses his mind over this piece.
So let's go to this post on Truth Social where he says, the Fake and
Corrupt News is only getting worse.
As an example, I agreed to do a short telephone interview for a once very good,
but now on its way last legs and failing, New York Magazine.
The reporter was a shaky and unattractive whack job, known as tough but
dumb as a rock who actually wrote a decent story about me a long time ago.
Her name, Olivia Nuzzi.
Anyway, the story was Fake News, her anonymous sources don't exist
true with many writers, and I'm happily fighting hard for our GREAT USA.
Cenk, final words.
>> Yeah, he can't help himself from being a pig at all times.
So everything that is complimentary of him is real news.
Everything that tells the reality of his life is fake news.
And if your reporter was nice to him before he'll give you another interview,
and that was a nice little admission there in the middle.
And then if your report honestly about his foibles,
they'll say you're not attractive because that's how he thinks.
And by the way, all this time the right wingers have loved that
when he attacked women is unattractive.
That was not a bug, that was the feature.
They enjoyed that part.
The part they're not enjoying is him being a loser.
And that's where white media has got him now and
it is going to be very hard to get out of that hole and it's not magic, it's media.
>> Well, he also called Nuzzi dumb as a rock,
which right-wingers typically don't have a problem with.
But Nuzzi didn't like it.
She didn't respond with words, but she did respond in a way that I appreciate.
She just posted this picture featuring Donald Trump looking at
the sun without protective glasses on.
[INAUDIBLE].
>> Yeah, that was during the eclipse, a great picture.
Because everyone knew as soon as he came out in the patio that he was gonna look
at the sun when he shouldn't, [LAUGH], okay?
And he did it anyway because he's a dumb ass.
Him calling someone dumb as a rock, the most ironic thing you're gonna imagine.