CLAY: We’ve been talking some about Ron DeSantis and the state of Florida firing back at Disney. And, ultimately, to me, the crux of this issue is that Disney needs Florida more than Florida needs Disney. And we’ll talk about this a little bit more in the third hour of the program as well. But this has turned into a battle royale.

And what is intriguing here is the degree to which the Democrat Party has decided that they are going to defend Disney getting special privileges inside of Florida. ‘Cause remember: Right now, based on this bill, next year when it goes into effect, in June of 2023, Disney would be held to the same standard as Sea World, Universal Studios, Legoland, any other amusement park in Florida as opposed to continuing to get the special treatment that they’ve gotten for the last decades, which is worth a lot of money to Disney in terms of being able to manage everything inside of their 40 square miles of land in Florida.

Well, Joe Scarborough decided to tee off on MSNBC. Remember back in the day when Joe Scarborough was sane, Buck, he was a Republican congressman from the Panhandle, right?

BUCK: What is he now? Like, how do you think he self-describes now in his politics when he’s not playing in his rock band? I’m just wondering.

CLAY: It’s a great question. But if you’re not familiar with Florida — and I know everybody’s not — Joe Scarborough represented the Panhandle of Florida, I believe, and that area of Florida… There’s a great line about Florida. It is, “The further north you go, the more South you get,” and if you’ve ever spent any time to the Gulf Coast, which is where I spend a lot of my time, that is an area where it is very strongly red.

In fact, if you pay attention to a lot of the battle years when Florida has been a toss-up state, they always make a big deal, Buck, when the returns are coming in of recognizing that’s the Central Time Zone, and those are the final numbers usually to come in in Florida. And they are overwhelmingly red. So, here’s Joe Biden defending Disney and saying that Florida’s lost its mind.

SCARBOROUGH: (screaming) It’s why the GOP agenda: Ban math books! They are banning math books and lying about critical race theory being IN MATH BOOKS — and they’re lying about it. They declare a war on Walt Disney, they raise state taxes on Floridians by attacking the Magic Kingdom!

And they raise federal taxes on millions and millions of working-class voters and middle class voters because Rick Scott is angry! (mocking) “He thinks taxes fall disproportionately on his richest donors.” These guys have crazy! These guys are out of their mind! These guys have lost the plot — and this extremism will fall back on them!

BUCK: First of all, calm down, Joe, okay? Calm down. Like, settle down a little bit there, big guy.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Beyond that, I’ve seen some of the Florida teaching materials. When they say banning books, choices are made all the time. The Democrats love to play this game, right? “Oh, you’re banning this book!” No, when you’re choosing what books to put in a school curriculum, you’re making a choice. You’re making an editorial choice.

CLAY: Yeah. Right.

BUCK: That’s not the same thing as banning it, which would be no one can buy it, no one’s allowed to have it. You’re just saying we’re making choices, we’re making distinctions. Have you seen some of the Common Core math instruction? Because it does have things like, you know, “Well…” First of all, I can’t even describe it. Have you ever seen Common Core math stuff?

CLAY: Yeah, I’ve looked at some of that stuff because my kids are in school, and sometimes they bring stuff home and my eyes roll back in my head. I was never a great math student anyway, but the last thing I want to do is trying to be teaching this version.

BUCK: And they do in the word problems, you know, if I have, you know, two ice cream cones and a third of one ice cream cone and two-thirds of another ice cream cone. You know, they will have in there trans theory and ideology, like this exists. They keep saying, “This isn’t real,” that CRT doesn’t exist, that the trans agenda doesn’t exist in schools. We have the receipts. It does, and that is what DeSantis… That’s why he doesn’t back down off this, ’cause he’s right.

CLAY: Also there’s a referendum coming up in six months on Ron DeSantis and the Florida GOP. And you know what that referendum is going to show? They are going to win by one of the biggest margins in a governor’s race in Florida ever. Ron DeSantis will have taken, in 2018, what was a 30,000-ish margin, tiny, tiny pinprick of a win over Andrew Gillum, and he’s going to post one of the largest wins in the history of the state of Florida.

Potentially such a significant win that people are gonna say, “Well, Florida is off the board now as a Democrat state with all the people that you have moved in as a result of covid.” Far from being on the outer fringe, the Florida GOP has become the heartbeat of the Republican Party, and it’s a heartbeat that’s gonna kick ass, Buck.

BUCK: I do think the Democrats are gonna find out that taking political advice from people with blue hair and 15 facial piercings on TikTok is a bad idea.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I think they’re gonna find this out, but we’ll have to wait and see what the midterms actually tell us.

CLAY: Six months. We’ve got six months until absolute evisceration. We have to make the win sting a hundred percent.