CLAY: We are joined now by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Appreciate him coming on and hanging out with us. And, Governor DeSantis, want to dive right into it. We’ve loved on the show that you haven’t buckled down over the parental rights bill that you signed yesterday. Disney, I’m sure you saw yesterday, released a statement condemning the bill.
What would you say to Disney, which obviously through Disney World and the properties there has a substantial component of its company located in your state. What was your response when you saw their public statement yesterday? And do you anticipate talking with CEO Bob Chapek anytime soon? What’s the relationship like there?
GOV. DESANTIS: Well, this state will be governed by the best interests of the people of Florida, not based on the ideology of corporate executives in California. And for Disney to come out and say not only that the law should have never been enacted in the first place, but that they’re gonna actively work to repeal substantive rights and protections that have been put in the law to benefit parents in our state, I thought that that crossed the line.
I mean, first of all, they were not involved in lobbying on this bill when it was going through the House of Representatives. I don’t think they even registered to lobby on this bill, and so it was something that was going through. They were not involved in it; then all of a sudden, the mob came after ’em so now they’re acting like it should never been enacted.
Also, they’re gonna work to repeal it? You know, I think that they think that they control this state just because they have a big theme park here. And I got news for you. That is not the way the state of Florida is gonna be run and we’re not going to be bending any knees to any woke corporations.
BUCK: Hey, Governor DeSantis, it’s Buck. I just wanted you to get on the record where people all across the country listening because as you know there’s been such an onslaught of propaganda around the Parental Rights Bill in the state of Florida, most people without even thinking about it in the news media or perhaps after thinking about it depends what we’re talking about, refer to it as the “don’t say gay” bill. You I’m sure saw the celebrities the Oscars who were pretending it was a “don’t say gay” bill. That you have that. What does the bill really do, and why was it important to get this through?
GOV. DESANTIS: Well, first just let me say people in Hollywood, these are the same people that held degenerates like Harvey Weinstein up as exemplars. They serenaded him for years and years knowing full well about his misconduct and his behavior. So they’re criticizing Florida, that is a badge of honor for this state. In terms of what the bill actually does, it doesn’t even mention the word gay.
It does two main things. It bans any classroom curriculum on things like sexuality and transgender for grades K through three, and so it’s totally inappropriate that that would be something that would be injected into your kids’ kindergarten or first grade classroom, and that anything beyond that has to be age-appropriate. So that’s kind of the curriculum component.
So that’s really what they’re talking about. What they don’t talk about as much… So they’re misrepresenting that. What they don’t even acknowledge are some of the substantive protections for parents beyond that, so we had a woman at our press conference yesterday from Tallahassee named January Littlejohn. Her daughter was in school, in the school system here, and the school — without telling her or her consent — was “transitioning” her daughter to become a boy.
They even assigned her a boy’s name! They had her use boy pronouns. And so in Florida, that is totally inappropriate to do that without informing the parent or without the parents’ consent. So now parents have a substantive rights, if a school would tried to do that, and schools know that is not something that they’re allowed to do. So I think if you talk about the bill to parents, I think overwhelming, massive majorities think that this is just common sense.
CLAY: We loved what you did… We had one of the female swimmers that competed against the Penn transgender swimmer yesterday on our program, swims at the University of Kentucky, and you honored — because the girl who came in second really would have been first place if a biological man —
BUCK: Emma Weyant, right?
CLAY: Emma Weyant. You released a proclamation because I believe she was from Sarasota, if I’m not wrong. Explain how you came to make that decision and what your perspective is in general on men competing against women sports which still become a cultural flash point in our society of late, unfortunately.
GOV. DESANTIS: Well, I signed a bill last year protecting women’s sports in Florida from the early grades all the way through college, because women deserve to have equal opportunities. And when you have a man — who may identify as a woman but is still biologically a man — competing and swimming and some of these other things, it’s not fair, and it destroys the integrity of the competition. So that’s really what the NCAA did.
They destroyed the integrity of that women’s swimming championship, and they robbed Emma Weyant of a national championship. And, yes, she’s from Sarasota. She was an All-American all four years of high school, she won a silver medal at the Olympics, and she should have been crowned national champion, and this is a girl that is really fantastic.
And to have something — a life achievement like that — taken away from you because of a woke organization like the NCAA, I think that was an injustice. And also think the NCAA is asking people like us to be complicit in what is a fraud. We’re not gonna accept what they’re doing. That is not an honorable competition. That is not a competition with integrity. And I can tell you this:
Of everything I’ve done as governor, this is one of the things where I’ll just have random people come up to me just saying like, “Hey, I really love that you stuck up for the woman swimmer.” Here’s the thing, guys. People know this is wrong, but a lot of people are scared to speak up about it because they’re worried a woke mob smearing them.
They’re worried about a media that will smear them because this is something that they hold dear in terms of their agenda with elite media and these wokesters and so I’m just like, “You know what? I get attacked every doggone day. What do I care if they attack me? I need to speak up for these people,” and I’ve gotten a lot of correspondence from women college athletes around the country writing and saying things like, “Hey, thanks. We all believe this. We can’t say it, and we’re worried about saying it. But you’re speaking the truth.”
BUCK: Speaking to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And, Governor, you were on the very front line of holding the line against the covid lockdown masking mandate madness. We’re new two years into this, and I don’t know if you saw this, Governor, but there’s just now a lawsuit that’s making its way up in the press of airline attendants who are saying that masking on planes is absurd — which I think anybody who thinks about it for a few minutes or even shorter will come to that same conclusion. What are you doing in this? First of all, I just wanted you to weigh in on the mask mandate that the federal government lawsuit in Florida.
GOV. DESANTIS: Yeah, you know, we just announced that today myself and our attorney general announced that because, you know, they extended the mask mandate into April and then Fauci’s now put his head back out saying, “Oh, well, we may have to impose restrictions based on where cases are,” and this is unacceptable. So even if Biden lets the airline, the transportation mask mandate expire next month, he very well may reinstitute it at some point.
However, you cannot tell me that if you’re sitting in a window seat nibbling on peanuts for two hours with your mask underneath your chin, and I’m sitting right next to you and I can’t just put my mask on my chin if I want to just read a magazine? I mean, give me a break. This is covid theater, and it needs to end.
CLAY: Amen, and you’re preaching to the choir here for a lot of our audience. We talked recently with you — I don’t remember, a couple months ago — about the overall number of people moving to Florida. Couple things here. One, what would you say to people out there who are afraid that people…? The numbers have reflected, I’m sure you saw ’em, Governor, that people are leaving New York, they’re leaving California, they’re leaving Chicago.
Are you concerned at all about what political beliefs those people are going to bring with them as they move into Florida which is been one of the top states to gain? What is the data showing you there? And second my cohost here Buck Sexton is considering making the move from New York to Florida as many have. What pitch would you make to him on why he should officially make that move?
GOV. DESANTIS: So first thing, when I got elected governor, there were almost 300,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state of Florida. This month of March, we are officially passing over 100,000 more Republicans than Democrats. And so that’s about a 400,000-registration shift in favor of you Republicans.
What that tells me is that the people that have moved here since covid have been disproportionately moving for philosophy reasons because they liked what we were doing in the state of Florida. Yes, they like the low taxes, but we’ve always had low taxes. They like the fact that Florida was a free state, and they were fleeing lockdowns.
They like the fact that Florida’s a law-and-order state, and they were fleeing areas where crime was exploding. And there’s a lot of other things that we’ve done that I think people do. So I think it’s skewed very favorably to us and look, you know, I’m running in 2022, we’re gonna run, run hard, hopefully we win big. But if we do, I think people will start conceiving Florida less as a swing state and more as a red state. So stay tuned that.
What I would tell Buck? I don’t know what part of New York City… I will tell you this. You saw analysis that Manhattan had the biggest decline in registered Republicans of any other jurisdiction in the country. They lost 25% of their registered Republicans. And I know there’s a lot more registered Democrats in Manhattan than Republicans, but I think that shows you that those folks were very sensitive to disastrous policies, and a lot of them came to Florida to do it.
And so what I would tell Buck is, anytime I see somebody — California they move, Washington State, New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota, you name it — I will always say, “Do you regret it?” and I have not had one person say they regret the move yet.
BUCK: Save some room down here, governor, for not just me, a whole lot of other folks listening across the country in crazy blue states. Governor Ron DeSantis of the great state of Florida. Governor, really appreciate it, sir. Thanks for being with us.
GOV. DESANTIS: Thanks, guys, take care.
CLAY: Man, I know there’s a lot of people listening to that right now, Buck, that are fired up about the fact that… I mean, you’re willing to go toe to tow with Disney in Florida? You ain’t gonna apologize for what you believe. And I do think, you know, we were talking about the Trump legacy. I believe the… We’ll talk about this a little bit more when we come back.
But I believe the number one legacy of Donald Trump and the Republican Party is going to be the willingness to fight. It is not being concerned about what the New York Times editorial page is gonna say or what a Washington Post columnist or what they’re gonna say at CNN or MSNBC ’cause those people don’t speak for the masses. Fight for what you believe in.
BUCK: Trumpism means the willingness to go on offense in politics, to not constantly feel like you have to wring your hands and apologize and prevaricate.
BUCK: Yes, it’s the anti-Mitt Romney of Republicanism, and Governor Ron DeSantis is certainly right there, throwing punches for the good guys.
CLAY: No doubt.
BUCK: Metaphorically speaking after the whole slap thing.
CLAY: (laughing) Open-handed slaps to America.
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