Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, Puck’s private email on what the political class is really whispering about. In this evening’s edition, my conversation with Florida’s most dialed-in political-media operator, Peter Schorsch, about DeSantis’s recent shadow-primary stumbles, the governor’s secret inner circle, and the Jeff Roe of it all. But first…

• Trump’s Pre-arrest Party: Donald Trump did not let his pesky indictment get in the way of an opportunity to court donors. On Friday, he ventured out from the confines of Mar-a-Lago to the housewarming party of John Paulson, the billionaire hedge fund manager extraordinaire who accentuated his fortune by betting against the American economy in 2008. Paulson, who was recently divorced, has long been a loyal Trump supporter and even served as an economic advisor the 2016 campaign, making him one of the first money men to publicly throw their support behind the then-dark horse. (“He’s disruptive,” they used to say.)

  Trump did not grab the microphone and speak or even take over the deejay booth, as he’s known to do at weddings and bat mitzvahs at Mar-a-Lago, according to a source who was there. Instead, he just mingled with Melania in the room brimming with other Trump-friendly billionaires like Bob Kraft and Steve Schwarzman, I’m told. These are, of course, the donor types who have largely moved on from Trump and are now gravitating to the myth of Ron DeSantis, which explains why Trump left his safe confines to remind them he’s still there. The rest of his weekend was spent golfing. Nice life!

• Scott’s Indecision: Last week, I wrote about Mike Pompeo’s eat, pray, love adventure in Italy where he was contemplating whether to run for president while still talking to operatives on the ground in Iowa and New Hampshire. As of late, I’m hearing that Pompeo is leaning against running, which may explain why he’s been M.I.A. on major foreign policy issues like TikTok and China. Meanwhile, I’m hearing that Tim Scott, a perennial could-be presidential striver, is now leaning against running. A source close to the senator told me that he’s “back and forth,” despite having the backing of billionaire Larry Ellison. (Scott’s team declined to comment.)

  At the same time, the front page The State, a South Carolina paper, today blared that Scott’s super PAC, Opportunity Matters Fund Action, has just hired two new people on the ground to run his operation: Mark Knoop, a former campaign manager to Gov. Henry McMaster, and Matt Moore, the former state party chairman. Scott is still scheduled to make his first appearance in New Hampshire next week. We’ll see…

Herewith, he spills the tea on how state political insiders are digesting the governor’s recent shadow-primary stumbles, the entry of Jeff Roe into DeSantis world, and other hot Florida political gossip. This conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Peter Schorsch: Not well. It’s his second or third walk-back in 10 days. He used to be Mr. Rule of Law, now the rule of law is not what matters? Of course, it’s extraordinarily difficult to run against a person and then be supportive of them at the same time. I think that’s why you still see people like George Conway and Tony Fabrizio saying maybe DeSantis isn’t going to run in the end. I talk to Desantis world and they do not see a problem with their campaign right now. There is no re-tool. The campaign is operating in a vacuum, external influences be damned. It’s still book tour, travel the country, set up the super PAC, etcetera, no matter what is happening outside of their very tight bubble. They’re not concerned about it.

What about the polls?

I think those who are in his circle, who have national connections, are urging them to say something in response to the polling and the media. I know one of them said to Team DeSantis this week: “You may not care about the New York Times but the people that you are meeting with who you want to donate, they read the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.”

So he’s not playing the inside game.

There is no inside game. I do think one place where they have reacted is bringing on Jeff Roe. It was explained to me that there was a need for a person with a national profile where they can say to big time donors that this is one of the people in the room. Obviously since he is only running the super PAC, Roe isn’t necessarily in the room. But it allows them to present someone with national credibility to the people who were critical of the current operation, which did not have a lot of national experience.

Even with Phil Cox there? They didn’t think there was enough national experience?

The person I spoke with, one of his biggest bundlers, said that they needed a bigger adult. Someone said to me Phil Cox is all but a hologram now. He’s not involved at all.

What about his partner, Generra Peck, who led the successful DeSantis midterm reelection campaign? Will she still be campaign manager?

Yes, from what I’ve been told, there’s going to be a distinct separation now between Peck and Cox on the business side. I haven’t gotten to the bottom of that. [Peck has been removed from the website of Cox’s consultancy P2 Pathway Public Affairs. Neither Cox or Peck commented.]

I’m surprised that Heather Barker is going over to the super PAC [from the state level political committee] because they just like her so much. She’s extraordinarily capable. In theory, they’re not going to be able to talk to her as much. She’s right there. Maybe she’s really good at raising national dollars, that’s why they want her there. She’s an extraordinary fundraiser. We have connections to her husband, she was top five in DeSantis world, I’m a little surprised that they moved her.

How do you think Jeff Roe and the Ted Cruz alumni he brings with him are going to tangle with the Tallahassee crowd?

The Tallahassee crowd is laughing at the selection of Jeff Roe. They’re sending memes of Jeff Roe.

They don’t think he’s as good as the hype?

This was about the choice for DeSantis. They think DeSantis didn’t need this guy. So many people are just dumping on him. Someone sent over an enormous oppo file on all of Roe’s losses in 2022.

What type of person sent over the file?

A top G.O.P. consultant with ties to both Trump and DeSantis world. They’re probably a little jealous that they’re on the outs. They have a good position now. There’s a lot of bad blood for Roe in Florida. He took on one of the most beloved politicians in the state in a primary, Ray Rodrigues, and he got involved in four other primaries in 2022 and lost them all. I know these races, I followed all of these races. He just ran really shitty, scorched-earth, money-wasting campaigns.

For disclosure, did you have any candidates this past election?

No, I haven’t done any candidate work. Jeff Brandes, the former state senator, was my last political candidate, in 2020.

DeSantis always says he doesn’t poll. Do you think that’s true?

DeSantis doesn’t poll but one of his top five advisors, Ryan Tyson, runs the biggest G.O.P. polling shop in Florida. He has plausible deniability about polling but he’s a phone call away from some of the best numbers in the state. Ryan ran the war room. I’m not familiar with the conversations between Ron and Ryan, but if my best friend is a stock broker, I’m probably going to have some good insight on what to buy and sell tomorrow.

Everyone says the DeSantis inner circle is just his wife Casey, but you’re saying Ryan Tyson is in there too. Who else has his ear?

The staff is still in the inner circle. Obviously there is his chief of staff, James Uthmeier, and his deputy Alex Kelly. His former chief of staff, Shane Strum, is still in there and still talks to him, and his other former chief of staff, Adrian Lukis, is also still on the inside. Nick Iarossi is on the inside. Lobbyist Brian Ballard has definitely worked his way from the outside and is back inside, especially with the hiring of Adrian.

I think there’s a trend among the DeSantises where they tend to gravitate toward other political couples and husband-and-wife teams, like Cord Byrd and Esther Byrd. Cord gets appointed to Secretary of State and Esther Byrd gets appointed to the board of education. They’re both from northeast Florida, and I’m not saying that they’re best buddies, but they’re definitely on that second tier. Same thing with the Donalds—Rep. Byron Donalds and Erika Donalds—with whom they’re often interacting there. Same with Mori Hosseini, a University of Florida board of trustee and a major developer. The joke used to be that Ron flew “Air Hosseini”—maybe not as much anymore, because Ron probably has access to a lot of private jets—since he would fly him and Casey around for events.

There are a lot of disgruntled ex-DeSantis staffers. Do you think he’ll have to deal with the vengeance of his former team?

I think it’s very telling that he doesn’t have more staffers still in his orbit. You gear up for a presidential campaign, you had 300 or 400 people who wanted to be a part of that operation. You don’t have that now.

How many does he have?

I’d say 40 or 50. He’s got a lot of these people who he appoints and empowers, but I don’t know that they’re best friends with him. I don’t know that they’re late-night-bull-sessions kind of people. I had a person who was a double appointee, to two important boards, who just met the governor’s staff and had dinner with him recently but he can’t tell you anything on a personal level.

Ron’s not really a people person. Do you think he has a softer side he can show?

I think whatever softer side he may have had he lost during the pandemic. The isolation of the governor’s office. His wife’s health issues, having to go through that during the pandemic. He would talk about it during off-the-cuff moments, that the kids’ grandparents didn’t get to see them be born. I think that really impacted him.

I don’t think he views it as politically perilous. I don’t think he views any of these positions as politically perilous at this point. I think there is a deeper, larger effort by them to transform Florida into a place where anyone other than the center right, and anybody to the left of the center right, are not welcome here: artists, teachers, educators, academics, anybody in the meritocracy, the consultant class, the work-from-home folks, creative intellectuals, the people who fuel Disney. All of that is to make Florida unwelcome. That is why Florida has tilted so hard to the right. If you are a gay couple in Des Moines and you have a job offer at the University of Florida, you’re not coming here, you’re just not going to do it. I think Ron is playing the long game to transform Florida into this incredible Texas-like state, where it’s just off the board as a swing state.

He has no hesitation about any of these policies. In his view, abortion would be outlawed, you would have complete open carry. You would have very little regulation of industries. He would go to the full absolute view of modern conservatism.

Even if it ends up hurting him in the general election with swing voters?

I don’t think he views these as going to hurt him in a general election. I think he just got done running a general election and he won big.

Do you think Ron DeSantis has good political instincts?

I think he’s redefining political issues. His ability to identify issues that will play is better than anything I’ve seen in Florida. I didn’t know how to spell E.S.G. before he put it on the political radar. And now he’s doing this thing with the Global Currency. Ninety percent of Floridians have no idea what that means and it will never impact them and he’s got people so upset about it. I think what we used to think about political instincts was being able to read the mood of the electorate and what they’re concerned about. Ron DeSantis tells you before anybody else does what you should be concerned about and then shapes public opinion towards it. It’s very different from what I’ve seen before.

He’s always on the offensive.

I know, he’s proud of that, but deservedly so. Ron DeSantis is like that character from Seinfeld, who makes you think about your weaknesses and you can’t get it out of your brain.

I know you have worked on campaigns for Disney in the past, but did DeSantis go too far in picking that fight? It seems like he got played in this latest kerfuffle: his appointed board can’t do anything about Reedy Creek, in many cases, without company consent.

He absolutely did. That’s indicative of a bad trait inside the DeSantis administration. You see it with the Andrew Warren firing, now you’re seeing it with the migrant shuttling. They’re so eager for a headline that they kind of mess up the details and the follow through and that leaves them open to additional scrutiny. With the Disney thing, they should have known Disney was going to do something. They should have assigned an intern to watch the computer where public notices that govern the Reedy Creek district are posted. They were too busy on a book tour to pay attention to this major, major, major issue. A stuck pig squeals. They’re so intensely upset because they’ve been so intensely embarrassed here.

Speaking of embarrassments, can he handle more attacks on Trump?

He better batten down the hatches because it’s only going to get worse. A quote I got from a Trump aide was “DeSantis brought a mercenary army to a holy war.” This person was responding to how Disney owned him.

Do you think he’ll still wait until June to announce his candidacy? Will he ignore Trump till then or will he have to eventually engage?

I think they have a plan. I see no evidence that they’re going to change from it. I think it’s going to be book tour and out-of-state travel from here until Memorial Day.

Will they actually attack Trump in the meantime?

The window to attack Trump is now closed because of the indictment. It would have been one thing if Trump had not been indicted, but the G.O.P. has so circled the horses around Trump right now that any lack of enthusiasm for him is treason. DeSantis can’t say anything but this double negative that he would not extradite Trump. But nobody is asking him to do it.

In the meantime, his aides must be thinking of something they can do to protect DeSantis from Trump’s attacks.

I don’t know that they have that dimension of thinking. That’s where they’re lacking—that three dimensional thinking. They’re running a campaign in a very strong but two dimensional framework whereas Trump is running a very three dimensional framework.

A lot of people are now saying, Does Ron admit that it was a mistake to not sharpen his saw by engaging with reporters down here? By not sparring more? He hasn’t done a sit-down interview with one of us. The one time someone got to lay a glove on him was Charlie Crist in that debate and he was exposed as horrible, bad. It was probably the high water mark of the Crist campaign. He doesn’t interact with anybody. He doesn’t have public moments. He doesn’t have public press conferences in large cities. There’s no place to lay a glove on him. Whereas Trump will walk down to the state fair. Ron has run a very sheltered political effort and it’s always very safe ground.

And all of that got him to this stage, which is great, but it didn’t prepare him for the rough and tumble of the next thing. I think it would have been so beneficial for him if he had spent the last year sparring with editorial boards. He would have been better at answering tough questions during interviews if he had sparred with these people and he didn’t do that.