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Feb. 28, 2023 - The Charlie Kirk Show
18:39
The Florida Model for America with Governor Ron DeSantis
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Ron DeSantis New Book Launch 00:12:51
Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk Show, Ron DeSantis joins us.
He talks about his record as governor of Florida and talks about his new book.
You guys can get it at DeSantisBook.com.
That is DeSantisBook.com.
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Here we go.
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Leadership is so hard to find in today's America.
Florida is a blueprint, or you could say it's a red print for the rest of the nation.
Whether it be holding Disney to a transparent standard, getting rid of critical race theory, not mandating the vaccine, functioning schools, not just functioning schools, but flourishing schools, a booming economy, incredible achievements across the board on educational issues, anti-crime bills that are being passed to actually hold criminals accountable.
It's one thing after the other.
And Florida has done such an exceptional job.
Every time I see something that happens in Florida, I ask myself the question, why are the Republicans not doing this?
Well, joining us now is America's governor and author of the new book that you could find at DeSantisBook.com, The Courage to Be Free.
Governor Ron DeSantis.
Governor, welcome back to the program.
Hey, thanks for having me.
So Governor, tell us about your new book.
Well, The Courage to Be Free is answering the question, kind of, how did Florida become the focus of freedom in the country and even around the world, people that will have come over the last few years?
And we lay out one, our approach to leadership and then a lot of the issues that we tackled and then the results that we were able to produce.
You know, I got elected, Charlie.
You remember in 2018, B2,000 votes.
I was 40 years old, taking the helm of the third largest state in the country.
And a lot of the advice, listen, you barely won.
Trim your sales.
You got to be careful about what you're doing.
And I rejected that advice because my view was I may have gotten 50% of the vote, but I earned 100% of the executive power.
And I intend to use it to be able to advance the best interests of Florida and to fulfill the promises I made to the people that elected me.
So we studied all the different constitutional provisions in Florida, statutory.
So I had a keen sense of the pressure points, how the governor can act unilaterally.
What do I need the legislature with?
What can I do to local officials?
You know, we remove bad election officials and Soros-backed prosecutors and all these things.
So we did that because as a governor, you're not just able to snap your fingers.
You've got to put an agenda through constitutional checks and balances.
And so we were able to do that.
We also said, we're going to lead by conviction.
I never took a poll because the poll's not important about what people think initially.
What's important is if you set the vision and produce results, you can get people to join your side.
And then finally, we said we're going to lead on offense because so many Republicans sit back and they let the media define the terms of the debate.
They get take pot shots from the media.
And what I did is, I'm going out there.
I'm going to be making the news.
I'm going to be leading on all these issues.
And I think it makes it very difficult for them to hit you properly.
And really, it's like the best defense is sometimes a good offense.
So we did all those things, took on all the issues, and then we ended up winning not by 32,000 votes, but 1.5 million votes.
We took a state that had a decade until I became governor of one point races, whether it's president or governor, and we turned it into a nearly 20-point win that took every Democrat out of statewide office.
We have 100% Republicans in statewide office in Florida for the first time since Reconstruction.
We have super majorities now in the Florida legislature, and we won 29 of 34 school board races that we got involved in.
And so this was not just me that had success.
This was top to bottom.
The state of Florida now, the Democratic Party is basically a little more than a rotten carcass on the side of the road.
And as you mentioned, it used to be a total battleground state, you know, one or two points.
And you expanded it.
People were wondering, hey, where did the red wave go?
Well, it happened in Florida.
And not just on the state level, but members of Congress, Ana Paulina Luna benefited from that.
I do not think that there would have been a Republican majority if it wasn't A, for your courage to stand up on the bad maps that were first offered to say, hey, we just want fairness.
And then B, actually the red wave that occurred in Florida.
But that's an incredible transformation from 32,000 votes to 1.3 million votes.
Republicans are kind of going through a soul-searching moment.
If you were to just offer a public vision, which is what your book is about, the courage to be free, what should Republicans learn from Florida's success where other states floundered and had lackluster and mediocre results in the midterms?
Well, one of the themes of the book, particularly early on before I became governor, was just how kind of the entrenched D.C. Republican Party was just out of touch with our voter base.
And it left a lot of them disappointed and left a lot of them demoralized.
And so I think what we did in Florida is the people that are our core supporters, when you tell them you're going to do something, follow through and do it.
And when they see you doing and delivering on what you say you're going to do, man, they got your back.
They're going to be out there.
They're going to be flocking to the polls.
And so you really have got to be able to do that.
Now, you also do that in a way that wins the argument with kind of independence and the middle of the electorate.
And we want independence in Florida by 18 points.
And so whether it was COVID, whether it was education, crime, all these things, we decisively won the argument.
But, you know, what we also ended up doing is we demoralized the Democrat base because, you know, some of their voters had to acknowledge Florida's doing okay.
The governor's doing okay.
And so it's not that a lot of them came and voted for me, you know, but some of them just stayed home because they knew that what the Democrats were offering, you know, wasn't better.
So we did all those things.
But I think the root of it is, you know, some of these entrenched DC-centric, whether it's consultants or other type of stuff, they're typically going to give you bad advice.
And the fact that I didn't take a single poll in four years and went from winning by 32,000 to 1.5 million should tell you that following that advice is usually not necessary.
And indeed, it can be harmful.
So if it's not polls, then walk us through then what is, how do you make the decisions?
Is it instinct?
Is it obviously some experience?
Do you have a council of people around you?
I'm just curious because if it's not then public polls, you know, something is dictating, or is it just like, hey, I'm going to do the right thing and we're going to just keep fighting?
Well, I think it's a combination of things.
I mean, some of it is just instinct.
I mean, here I am as governor.
And so you look at things like our fight with Disney on parents' rights in education.
I'm obviously judging this stuff based on being a governor, but I'm also a dad.
And I've got two, four, six, a four, and a two-year-old at home.
And I'm sensitive to some of the influences that we can see in some of these schools around the country.
I think it's wrong that a parent would have to worry about.
some of the stuff like gender ideology be in their kids' second grade classroom.
So some of it's just personal experience.
Some of it is like, I have a foundation of what I vision for a free society based on understanding our constitutional tradition.
Now, I think one of the differences now between maybe even 20 years ago, but certainly when someone like President Reagan came on the scene in 1980 is that, yes, government is a problem, particularly the federal administrative state and the weaponized bureaucracies, but you also have a woke agenda being pursued by big corporations, universities, all these other institutions in society.
And so my view is the free state of Florida means, at least in part, that we're going to protect your freedom from having the pathologies of the left imposed on you, whether it be through legislation or whether it be through kind of this extra constitutional power that seems to be wielded.
And then finally, and this was really important during COVID, you know, I dig in there and kind of take the data in or read the different things that I need to read so that I'm able to make decisions.
I think that you do have good people that are around you that can provide you that, but I don't think that that's a substitute for you kind of grappling with it yourself and then asking the tough questions.
I just want to narrow in on that.
You've been one of the few courageous leaders on a state level to actually understand how big corporations and government get in bed together.
This is something that is a new development in the conservative movement because typically, especially, yes, sometimes in Florida, kind of representing, you know, the big chamber of commerce, you don't care about that.
You represent your voters.
Just tell us a little bit about the Disney thing, what you learned in that entire chapter and how that could be applied to conservatism more broadly across the country.
Well, I think Florida, when I became governor, you know, was really driven by the chamber's agenda.
And, you know, some of this stuff was positive, like, you know, better legal climate, what have you.
But I think I've really changed that to where, yes, just because you're a corporation and you're, quote, private, you know, if you're going to try to be exercising public power, you know, we're going to take that very seriously and we're going to fight back, particularly when it's injurious to education and our children.
And so the Disney thing was a situation where, yes, they were getting involved in trying to tank a bill that was very important to a lot of parents.
Yes, they were advocating things in Burbank about their programming and sexualizing their programming, which as a parent I found very, very problematic.
But they're doing that while getting subsidies from the state of Florida.
They had their own government given to them in the 1960s.
And so they were exempt from laws, had big tax breaks, were able to do all kinds of things that no other individual or company can do in Florida.
So we had to make the decision, okay, how can they do that and have all that and then turn around and use the subsidies to advocate against us.
So we nixed that.
They no longer have self-governing status and there's a new sheriff in town in the state of Florida.
God bless you for that.
Everybody, check out Governor DeSantis' new book, The Courage to be Free, Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival.
The facts speak for themselves.
Florida was a narrowly Republican state and it is now overwhelmingly conservative across the board, thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis.
Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.
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Florida Versus California Budgets 00:03:23
So, Governor, your blueprint in Florida has amazing success, and you contrast that with what Governor Newsom has and has not done in California.
It's not because of the weather.
That's what they always blame.
They say, oh, you know, people are moving to the Sunbelt only because of the weather.
No, they're leaving California to other states.
Can you just compare and contrast over four years, Newsom versus DeSantis, Florida versus California?
And if you had a direct message to Gavin Newsom, what would that be?
Well, it's interesting.
So California, for the entire history of the state up until four years ago, had always gained population.
It was viewed when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was viewed as the place people went to experience the American dream.
And now what you've had in the last four years is you've had a massive hemorrhaging of people.
They have net population loss in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands.
Meanwhile, Florida is gaining the most net population and we're the fastest growing state.
And here's the thing that I think is interesting.
When I was growing up in Florida, I never saw a California license plate.
I never, because people will never leave California.
I mean, it just wasn't you do.
We started to see it when I became governor, particularly in response to the California and Newsome COVID policies.
You start seeing California license plates in Florida.
I can tell you a lot of Florida voters freaked out because they're thinking about, oh my gosh, what are these Californians going to do in terms of their voting?
Well, it turned out a lot of them were people that think more like us who just had enough.
And yes, part of it was the lockdowns where he's locking down his people, his businesses, then he's going and eating without a mask at the French laundry.
And a lot of people got upset about that.
But it's also the crime.
They let people out of prison.
You have district attorneys elected with support from people like George Soros who say they're just not going to prosecute criminals.
If you're walking in LA and you get mugged, the chance that they hold that person accountable is very, very low.
They just release him and then he can do it all over again.
And then, of course, you've had economic policies to where they have like a $25 or $30 billion deficit right now.
Florida, we have a record $20 plus billion dollar surplus.
And so the results speak for themselves.
People vote with their feet.
And it's interesting.
We get a lot of comparisons with New York because New York and us are relatively close in population.
We've got a few million more people now than they do.
But even with a few million more people, Charlie, New York State's budget is twice the size of the budget of the state of Florida.
And yet our services are better, our roads are better.
We have higher performing K through 12, higher performing public higher education, and no state income tax.
So where is all this money going that they're spending?
And how come it's not helping the quality of life for the people that live in New York State?
And some of the numbers here, Florida population, 22 million, New York, 19.4.
Florida's budget is 110 billion.
Florida is 110 billion.
New York is 221 billion.
Florida's education budget is 24 billion.
New York education budget, 39 billion.
And their schools are crummy and garbage compared to Florida.
Florida's welfare budget is 29 billion.
New York's welfare budget is 79 billion.
So they're spending more.
They're taxing more.
They're getting less and they have less people than Florida.
Blueprint For Americas Revival 00:02:23
Going into 2024, Governor, I think the story of the contrast between states is a winning message that can maybe heal the country and also make Republicans victorious.
Your thoughts?
Well, I mean, if you look at the New York governor's race in 2022, I mean, Lee Zeldon came was like a seven-point spread in a state that has, I think, three times more Democrats than Republicans.
And honestly, if you took all the Republicans that moved to Florida over the last four years and let them vote for Zelda, it would have been even closer.
And so that's telling me that, yeah, you have the woke left and you have some people that are just never going to see the light.
But, you know, you've got a lot of people who have voted for Democrats in the past who realize we can't let the criminals run the streets.
We can't have children in school being told that they were born in the wrong body.
We can't have these draconian COVID mandates.
And even today, you have universities in blue states that are forcing the college students to get booster shots.
After all we know, they're still doing that.
And so I think we probably have a better opportunity than we've ever had, maybe since 1980, to get people to vote for our side who've not necessarily done that in the past.
Part of it is I think we have records of success.
You know, not just Florida.
We're proud of Florida, but you look at what some of the governors have done in some of the other Republican states.
There's a lot of great stories to tell.
And it really does go down to the fact that are you based on solid, tried and true principles?
Are you indulging in this woke insanity?
You cannot show me one jurisdiction, a city or a state in this country governed by woke ideology that has done better as a result.
Most of the time, not only do they do worse, the whole society starts to fray like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Seattle, that's right.
The courage to be free, Florida's blueprint for America's revival.
America's governor, Ron DeSantis, has really showed us how we can win in 2024 and beyond.
Governor, thank you so much.
Talk to you soon.
Godspeed.
Yep.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.
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