Ron DeSantis - Trump, Wokeness & Freedom ”Jan. 6 Was Not an Insurrection”,
Florida Governor and Republican Presidential candidate, RON DESANTIS joins Russell for a MUST-LISTEN conversation, discussing culture war issues around wokeness, pardoning Trump, the on-going war in Ukraine, censorship and how his handling of lockdowns in Florida was used as a parable for American freedom.WATCH the FULL INTERVIEW ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/v31cjcc-ron-desantis-and-russell-brand-taking-on-trump-fauci-and-the-war-in-ukraine.htmlFor a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
It's a very special episode because Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida and presidential candidate, is joining us.
We're going to talk to Ron for 15 minutes on YouTube, if you're watching us there.
Then we'll be exclusively on Rumble to talk about Trump, CBDCs, war in Ukraine, anti-riot, stroke anti-protest laws and what that distinction means.
In our item, Here's the News, we're going to be talking about Biden's temper.
Is he a toddler or is he a lethal lunatic?
Let us know in the comments where you stand on that particular issue.
And is even this new revelation that Biden behaves extraordinarily in public... This is an allegation, it's not big.
It's not been proven.
Is that potentially PR to make him sound a little more edgy, a little more priapic than he otherwise may, and a little less docile?
But now, the reason that you've joined us, I'm sure, is because we have the great privilege of welcoming the Governor of Florida and Republican presidential candidate for 2024, Ron DeSantis, and I've got a copy of The Courage To Be Free, Ron DeSantis' book, in my hand now, to endorse it by proximity and contact.
Ron, thank you so much for joining us on Stay Free with Russell Brand.
Well, thanks for having me.
And thanks for plugging the book.
Not everyone does that.
I didn't even ask you to do it.
So appreciate it.
We are very professional here and we're very grateful to have you on the show.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for supporting and endorsing Rumble, which of course has its home in the state that you are the governor of.
Ron, when I was in Florida recently, I was struck by the amount of pride that Floridians have in their state.
You appear to be universally endorsed by the population of Florida.
I did stand up comedy there.
A lot of my stand up was talking about measures taken in the pandemic where I live in the UK and the broad and I would say spookily ubiquitous response to the pandemic in most places in the world, except one might contest in Florida.
I'm sure that the sense of state pride that Floridians have is a source of great joy to you.
I wonder how you came to the position of confidence in taking a stance that was antithetical to the stance taken elsewhere in America.
Well, I'm glad you noticed that.
I was born and raised in Florida, and while I've always loved the state, we didn't have the same type of pride growing up that, say, people in Texas have about Texas.
And yet, in the last few years, particularly since I've been governor, we've developed that pride, and I think a lot of it's rooted in the fact that we told people like Fauci to take a hike during COVID.
We were going to do it our way.
We were going to be the free state of Florida, and obviously that meant people had a right to work, right to operate businesses.
Kids needed to be in school.
We fought back against mandates, both in terms of not letting local governments impose mask mandates, not letting government or business impose COVID vaccine mandates.
So in every step of the way, we were really leading.
And how did I come to it?
I mean, part of it was I just looked at the data that was coming in.
The whole premise of lockdown, both in the UK and in the United States, was in the idea that COVID would cause massive amounts of hospitalizations and we wouldn't even have any more hospital beds left over for normal patients.
We all got those models, all governors, all heads of state, and I'm looking at this in like March and April, And none of it was accurate.
All the predictions were bogus.
And so I said, listen, this is something that we're going to have to live with.
Sweden is living with it, and they're doing much better than most of these other countries in Europe.
Let's have people make their own decisions rather than forcing Fauci-ism on our state.
And I think That the goal of Fauci was to have rolling lockdowns so you'd lock down then COVID would go down then you could maybe open back up but when the next wave started you would have to lock down again and I think they would have wanted to repeat that over and over again had Florida
Not stood in the way.
I think they would have gotten away with it.
But what happened was, we said we're standing for freedom.
We remember we had a COVID wave summer of 2020.
Everyone was telling me, you've got to lock down Florida.
Fauci was saying it, the White House, the press, the left, all these people.
And I said, no.
I said, I'm going to stand.
A lot of people said, your political career is over.
And you know, at the end of the day, so be it, right?
A leader's got to do what he thinks is right.
You got to stand up for your folks, protect their jobs, instead of worrying about your own political hide.
And so that's what we did.
It made the state better, and that did.
But I do think it had an impact around the country, because anytime the lockdowners wanted to do more restrictions, people could just point to Florida and say, well, wait a minute.
Florida's not doing this.
Why don't we have to do it?
So we were glad to be able to take that stand.
But here's the thing.
You still have people today, Fauci and the like, They think that what they did was right.
They think that these lockdowns worked.
And so my fear is, if this happens in the future, a lot of these people are going to want to do the same thing again.
So one of the things I pledged as president, and I think I'm the only one running on the Republican side who will be willing to do this, we're going to bring a reckoning to this health bureaucracy and this medical swamp.
Because these agencies like CDC, NIH, FDA, They failed the American people, they become corrupted, and they did a lot of damage with these unscientific anti-freedom policies.
Well that's pretty heartening to hear.
In retrospect, your stance increasingly seems to have been the correct one, and that's interesting and exciting, in fact, to hear you talk about a reckoning.
One thing that is evident from the position that you took as governor of Florida, the
decentralization and the ability that you had to take that position, which must have
felt like a huge risk given that it was in opposition to the proposed mandate in elsewhere,
the sacking of key workers in New York City, the advocacy for shaming by CNN of people
that were hesitant or reluctant to pursue certain medical propositions, a risk that
has doubtlessly paid off, but also it helps us to identify the importance of decentralization.
With this in mind, how do you feel that you would preside over the United States of America
if you fundamentally believe in the rights of individual states to establish their own
laws and govern in their own way?
Well there is way too much authority in Washington, D.C.
and in the federal government right now, and a lot of that is, I'd say, illegitimate authority that has been accumulated over many, many decades.
Some of that is because Congress has been neglectful, presidents have been neglectful, but you have a massive bureaucratic administrative state that exist almost outside of typical elections.
They exert power over the populace regardless of the outcome elections.
None of these people are elected and they purport to tell us what kind of
energy we can use, what kind of car we can drive, even whether potentially you're allowed to have a gas stove.
In Florida, we made gas stoves tax-free because we believe that you should have the ability to do all that.
Part of the project, I think, is to take power out of Washington and send it back to the states, the localities, and individuals.
That means we need a radical reduction of the federal bureaucracy.
We're going to tell our cabinet secretaries that they have to reduce the number of employees that they have inside D.C.
by 50 percent.
And that's going to probably be the biggest reduction in power in Washington in modern American history.
But we cannot go down the road of letting more and more power consolidate in Washington, D.C.
Part of the reason is the founders never wanted to have consolidated power like that because they
understood that's a threat to freedom. You also have another problem that the ruling class in D.C.,
they get almost every major issue wrong. And so these are the last people you would want to
surrender judgment and freedom to. They're going to lead us down the road to ruin. So we've got a
lot of work to do. But at the end of the day, part of the reason we've been successful in Florida
is we fought back against the federal government. For example, when the federal government tried to
impose the COVID-19 vax mandates on the economy, you had one through the main economy, which we
fought back and won. Then they did one on the medical personnel, nurses, who a lot of these
nurses had had COVID. They didn't want to take the vax. And so we called a special session of
the legislature. We're going to have to do it again.
We said, you don't have to do it in Florida.
Federal government said, well, we're telling you you have to.
And we said, go pound sand.
We're not going to cooperate.
So the federal government fined us $2 million.
But you know what?
We saved the jobs of tens of thousands of people throughout our state.
And so there's a lot you can do when you just stand up to these people to do what's right.
But there's no question that there's too much power in Washington, D.C.
Presumably, this process of devolving power and breaking down centralized bureaucratic power in Washington,
if undertaken in good faith, would mean in states like California and New York State,
you would get different cultural and ideological inflections, certainly based on a current reading
from the type of cultural values that are espoused and somewhat represented and, in fact, embodied by you, Ron.
And I wonder, if this process is undertaken in good faith, how will that affect the culture war, an issue that you've
been most outspoken on, if you genuinely are devolving power in the manner that you have described?
That's the first part of my question that I may offer you, because presumably, California
because presumably, California would have a whole different set of values, different policies
would have a whole different set of values, different policies on green issues, for example,
on green issues, for example, different policies on homelessness, and many of the topics loosely corralled
different policies on homelessness, and many of the topics loosely corralled
under, let's say, wokeness and the anti-woke discourse that's been dominating political and culture more broadly for a
under, let's say, wokeness and the anti-woke discourse that's been dominating political and culture more broadly for a
while.
while.
And the second part of my question That's the first part of my question that I may offer you,
And the second part of my question is, are you willing to approach and rebut centralized power
in its corporate and private form in the same way that you would confront it in the state form?
I'm talking, of course, of giant monopolies and duopolies in the areas of big tech, and even energy and media.
Because of course, one of the arguments that is advanced, that is for pro-state power, is that it gives us the
ability to confront corporate power, even if that isn't happening
anywhere in American politics at the moment.
Well, no, I mean, I think it's a great, great issue.
But I actually think it's just the opposite.
I think what you've seen is a collusion between big government and big business.
I mean, just take big tech.
A lot of the things that were being censored during COVID, for example, that wasn't just being done because Mark Zuckerberg thought that he wanted it censored.
No, he was working with people like Fauci.
They were working with people inside of government to censor dissent on lockdowns, on mask mandates, on school closures, on vax mandates.
All these things that, I mean, if you think about it, a free society has to have debates over important issues.
What more important issue have we had in the last decade or two Then whether society should be locked down.
I mean, are you kidding me?
And they didn't want to have that debate.
So I actually think that, yes, obviously when there's less power in Washington, individual states, they have certain powers to make different decisions.
but i do think if we break up the relationship
between big government and some of these big monopolies particularly in the text
fear uh... i think that's actually gonna have universal benefit
third throughout the country because there's going to be more ability to
speak freely uh... you're not gonna have on call sam with its thumb on
the scale and let's just be clear about this
the federal government could not censor you and say you can't say something
about say lockdowns that would violate the first amendment everybody knows that
but they can't subcontract doubt that to a private entity and have the private
entity do what the federal government couldn't do directly It's still a violation of the First Amendment.
One of the things we did in Florida as governor, I signed legislation expressly prohibiting
our state and local government employees from colluding with big tech for any type of speech
censorship or to police quote misinformation or disinformation.
They are not allowed to do that as a matter of law.
As president, I'll issue an executive order basically barring federal employees from colluding
with big tech like we've seen in the past.
But I think this whole idea of freedom in our society has got to be through a view to
the lens of yes, we know big government, it can be bad for freedom.
There's no question about it.
But we live in an era where a lot of these big private concentrations of power are exercising
kind of government like power.
I mean, if if you have Wall Street banks collude to deny funding for, say, gun shop owners,
well, that's an indirect attack on the Second Amendment.
When you have different types of tech companies colluding with government to censor certain subjects, that's an attack on the First Amendment.
So you've got to understand that freedom's under attack, not just from government power.
There's also concentration of private power, which does threaten a free society.
So far, so good, so presidential, and so many questions yet remaining.
Of course we have to follow up Ron on the aspect of my question that touched on the
culture war because freedom is a two-way street and if we're going to grant freedom to people
to express themselves culturally in the manner that is embodied by your success there in
Florida then what about the freedom of those opposed?
But the next question that I'm going to ask Ron DeSantis is would you pardon Trump on
the charges around January 6th and the handling of classified documents.
And if this man can speak so eloquently and appealingly, how is it that Trump is still soaring in the polls?
To hear the answer to those questions, you are going to have to join us on Rumble.
There's a link in the description right now.
If you watch it, so join us over there on the home of free speech.
We're going to be speaking freely because some of the issues that Ron's already touched upon are most relevant to us on our independent media platform.
If you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button on your screen now and join our locals community.
You may be familiar with the former proprietor of Locals, our friend, our mutual friend, Dave Rubin, Floridian gay man, friend of Ron DeSantis.
Actually, before we get on to Trump, Ron, could I just say that are you willing to acknowledge and accept that the kind of freedom that you're talking about, and of course it's telling that the example you use is like, you know, gun shop owners, Would you, as president, a president that's looking to decrease state power, recognise that in states that are conventionally more aligned with liberal values and even the kind of woke values that you have publicly condemned, would they have the right to pursue policies in those areas?
Would they be granted the same freedom that you have demanded and exhibited in Florida Well, actually, I don't even think it's a question of granting.
I think our Constitution is set up.
It was created by the states.
The states created the Constitution.
They retained the bulk of the power, and they're allowed to use that power to do what their constituents want.
and as much as I kind of look to see some of the stuff that may go on in California and shake my head,
clearly they're gonna have a right to pursue some of the things.
Like for example, how they handle their energy situation.
I think it's a mistake.
You have rolling blackouts, you have all these problems.
I think they're putting ideology ahead of sound science, but nevertheless, if people don't like that,
they can vote in a new government.
They can vote them out of office.
So that's just the nature of a federalist system.
We understand that there's 50 different states.
We say it's a laboratory of democracy.
I would point out though, that the people are leaving those woke states
and they're migrating to states like Florida who are doing it differently.
So I think in terms of the experiment of people voting with their feet,
the results of that have been very, very clear.
They're choosing Florida above all else.
They're choosing Texas, Tennessee.
They're basically choosing states that have rejected the woke agenda.
And that are focusing on what I would say are just common sense principles,
but certainly things like safe streets, quality education.
Yeah, that's just been our bread and butter.
In Florida, we're ranked the number one economy in the country out of 50 states by CNBC,
which is not a fan of mine.
We have the number one for new business formations and we've had more wealth migrate into Florida
since I've been governor than has ever migrated into an individual state over a similar period of time
in American history.
So we're proud of that and we think Americans can make judgments about where they wanna live.
No one's saying you haven't done a great job in Florida.
I've been to Florida.
I had a good time in Florida.
My stand-up comedy audience love you in Florida.
No one's saying that except perhaps when it comes to devolving the power for schools and allowing them and allowing their parents to participate in all Which books should be permitted when it comes to ideology, and which books should be banned?
Now, I agree with decentralisation, and I fundamentally believe that true freedom is other people's freedom.
And I wonder, just to use this rather localised example, if you were to grant similar freedoms in California, You can imagine that the types of books that might get banned wouldn't be books that promote certain sexualities and certain lifestyles.
They might be more traditional and orthodox books.
Would you be happy with that and would you permit that?
If schools, for example, in California said we want to ban the Bible or we don't want to talk about Christianity or we don't want to talk about heterosexual families or we want further gung-ho legislation, you'd be down for all that?
Well, they've done that for years.
I mean, I don't think in California they would allow a Bible.
I think it should be allowed, of course, but I don't think that they do do that.
In Florida, what we've really done, though, is we have devolved power to the parents, because ultimately school systems don't exist Uh, just for their own sake.
They exist to serve the community.
And so we think it's appropriate that the education reflects community standards.
So when you have some of the stuff which has been very graphic and pornographic in a fourth grade or fifth grade classroom, it's not a question of banning it because you as an adult are free to do that in Florida.
We're not getting rid of it.
It's not like Amazon where they won't put books on that talk about negatively, talk about like gender ideology.
In Florida, everything's available for adults.
But there's a time and a place to have something that graphic.
We don't want to be treating kids like adults.
We want to be treating kids like kids.
And so injecting some of these concepts in first or second grade is just not appropriate.
So we're just giving parents the ability to know what's being taught in schools.
And then if something violates the standards that Florida sets, they can do it.
For example, take it away from the sexualization.
We have Holocaust education in Florida.
If a teacher teaches that the Holocaust didn't happen, we obviously, the parents would blow the whistle and there would be issues.
So we have a right to set what standards we want to be taught.
We can pick what subjects that we want to be taught and do it in that direction.
But nothing is being banned.
You guys can knock yourself out on any of that stuff.
Just don't put it in a fourth grade classroom where it's not appropriate.
So I think we've gotten it right.
I think we're getting the education back on the idea that this should be about instructing kids for a better life so that they can think for themselves, be citizens of the republic.
We don't want our schools to just be indoctrination centers where it's all about imposing an ideological agenda.
And here's the thing.
There's an opportunity cost for doing some of the sexualization and some of the other stuff, because you're not doing as much as you need to on reading.
You're not doing as much as you need to on science and math.
And so from both what's appropriate and what parents find appropriate, but also from the perspective of opportunity costs, let's just focus on things we can all agree on and we all know are important and we can do it.
But anytime the media says there's any type of bans, That is a total hoax.
All these books are available for people who are of age.
And in a truly decentralized model that enshrines decentralization and democracy, what would be important would be the principle rather than the subject.
So you would likely get schools that said, yeah, we want these type of books.
And if that were democratically agreed upon by the parents of those schools, you as president of the United States would say, sure.
Well, obviously, I think the president's role in K-12 education is incredibly limited.
These are things that are really bottom-up, school districts and states, and I think the proper recourse would be for parents on that local level to elect more people to the school board.
uh... so that they could uh... change the curriculum in ways that they think
are appropriate but yet we will not be having a federal government imposed
uh... national k_-twelve curriculum uh... first of all i don't think that he would even work in
second of all i don't think the federal government has the affirmative authority
to do that that's interesting because it seems increasingly what you're
saying is from the office of president you would be involved power
wherever possible and leave ideology to democracy
Yeah, I would eliminate the Federal Department of Education if we can.
I don't think that the federal government was never envisioned to have really any role in K-12.
What they've tried to do is they've tried to use funding to force behaviors of K-12
districts, school districts. So for example on the women's sports, they say you have to have,
if a man identifies a woman, they have to be allowed to do women's sports, otherwise you
lose lunch money.
So they've used that aggressively under the Biden administration to try.
to try to change behavior.
My view would be like, let's take education, send it back to the states, get the federal government out.
Yes, is Oakland and in Berkeley, are they gonna do it a way that I would like it?
No way they're gonna do that.
But that would free up the vast majority of school districts
who probably would see it my way to have the freedom to be able to institute sound policies.
Yeah, man, democracy works.
Thank you, that's really interesting.
Now, what is evident, even after just this limited amount of time in your company, is that you are a competent orator, that you are a successful politician, that you are very appealing, that you've succeeded in Florida, and yet you have to deal with the spectre and the phantom, the gargoyle demagogue that is Donald Trump.
How do you, in your position, knowing that there is no pathway to the presidency via Donald Trump, that this is a phenomena and a fact that you're going to have to deal with, how do you confront his position in the polls?
And what would you do about some of the charges that Donald Trump is facing in the event that you were president?
And also, how does it personally feel as, you know, like just talking to you for a while, and clearly you and I would see a whole host of issues very differently, but It's pretty clear that you're a pretty potent political voice and figure and orator.
How do you deal with the sort of wild card of Donald Trump and what he represents to so many people?
Well look, this is a campaign that's still very early on.
Most people are not paying attention over the summer.
They're doing things like be with their families, and they're enjoying themselves.
So we've been laying the groundwork in the early states.
The media will talk about polls, but they'll take a poll from the whole country.
That's not how the primary process works.
You do Iowa, then New Hampshire, then South Carolina.
So we're actually on the ground in those states doing the work that is not always kind of headline-grabbing, But it's really grassroots and we're building support.
So we're doing a good job.
We're going to continue to do more.
I think at the end of the day, looking forward, our voters, they want to win.
And so we need to beat Biden.
I will beat Biden.
And then they want somebody that's actually going to be able to deliver Well, I think I'm one of the few where I made bold promises, no doubt, but I over-delivered on the promise.
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and under deliver. Well, few where I made bold pro
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military officer, so I'm I don't give the other side a lot of rope to hang me with.
I'm not shooting myself in the foot.
I'm focusing on the task at hand.
I'm focused, I'm disciplined, and it's all about accomplishing the mission.
And I think our voters are in a situation where increasingly they're saying, you know, that's what we have to do.
Also, the way the United States is with the two-term limit for president, Trump would be a one-term lame duck.
I could serve two terms.
So I'm in my 40s.
I would go in on day one.
I'd be incredibly energetic.
I would be very active.
You want to talk about the administrative state?
We would be able to slay the administrative state.
We'd secure the border.
We'd do all these things, and it would really be a flurry of activity.
So more and more people are going to see that.
We haven't even had debates yet.
And just keep an eye on those early states, because I like what I'm seeing there.
It's a little bit different on the ground than some of the stuff that gets put out
on some of the national stuff.
How do you manage the tension when there is a plain appetite in your country
for anti-establishment figures?
RFK becoming an emergent force in the Democrat Party, Trump having been the defining figure in the last five, six, seven years in American politics and American campaigns.
How do you deal with managing the tension of being a representative of establishment forces while acknowledging that many people no longer trust the media?
Many people no longer trust the government.
Many people are deeply cynical about American institutions.
How do you deal with the massive mistrust and neonialism of American cultural life?
Can we imagine a situation where whatever the result of the next presidential election, the opposing side will likely say, The election was stolen, it was because of Russians, it was because of broken or corrupt voting machines.
How can you ever bring together and justify a centralised American experiment, particularly when you seem to believe so strongly in decentralisation, federalism and maximum democracy?
How do you deal with this mistrust and this great appetite for outsiders?
Well, one, I would push back on this idea that I'm representing establishment forces.
I get attacked by the corporate press more than anybody running for office, more than Joe Biden, and now more than Donald Trump, because I think the corporate press views me as a bigger threat.
They understand that I will beat Biden, and they know I will actually deliver on all these things.
Whereas I think they think that Trump would not beat Biden, and then I think they think even if he did, that he would be distracted with all these other stuff and wouldn't be able to deliver.
So I've been the target of all these people, and I think it's because I've been willing to lead.
Also, I would point out during COVID, I was the one fighting Fauci.
Donald Trump put Fauci in charge.
He never fired Fauci.
In fact, Donald Trump's last day in office, he gave Fauci a presidential commendation.
And I'm just thinking to myself, this guy had been responsible for justifying school closures, for justifying mandates, for justifying lockdowns, and by January of 2021, we knew how destructive it was.
We knew it had failed.
So on the biggest hysterical issue, the biggest current thing, where all these elites got together, COVID-19, I was one of the leaders throughout this world to stand against those people, fight back against them.
And so I think that the fact that I've been willing to do that, I mean, for example, I've got a grand jury.
hearing evidence in Florida about misrepresentations by pharmaceutical companies over COVID-19
jabs.
There's not another elected official in the country who's been willing to ask those types
of questions.
You know, we're doing it and we're getting answers for that.
So I think I present a great opportunity for people because I have all the right enemies.
You see it by how they're attacking me, but I also have a proven record of beating these people, and we would do the same thing as president.
Two of the most powerful voices in the space that you currently occupy, Governor, have to be regarded as Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.
Both of them have taken strong Over-explicit anti-war stances, saying, among other things, that the Pentagon can't pass an audit, that the money that American taxpayers are funneling into this Ukraine war that increasingly seems like a disaster and a proxy war ought be
As a former military officer, where do you stand on this conflict and are you willing to match that kind of anti-war rhetoric?
And how do you reconcile the enormous revenue, the vast budgetary and treasury weight that this war and the military-industrial complex places on the American people generally, With the conditions that many former military personnel are enduring.
Many of them having to use food banks.
Many of them, like a significant number, ending up homeless.
A great stain on American culture, I would say, is the rhetoric that supports veterans and the shameful way in which they are treated.
What is your stance on this current conflict and would you end this war?
So one on the military industrial complex, we are actually going to overhaul how these retired generals are allowed to then just go work for defense contractors.
As commander in chief, you can put restrictions on that.
You basically have a revolving door.
Uh, where people go from high military positions into just a handful of major, uh, defense contractors.
We're also gonna, uh, democratize the ability of people, because we obviously need to have a strong defense.
Uh, but we don't want it to go to just a handful of companies.
We used to have all these companies, like, during World War II.
Uh, so we want to do that, uh, for sure.
And we absolutely need an accounting to just do a blank check.
Uh, that doesn't serve the American people.
As in, when I was in Iraq, The thing that I noticed was, and this was 2007, so we were there fighting Al-Anbar province, Al-Qaeda in Iraq.
I was attached to Navy SEAL Team 1, and the mission was very murky.
Yeah, beat Al-Qaeda, but then create a democracy in the Middle East, in Iraq.
Well, we weren't able to do that.
And so you ended up being there for many years.
There was a lot of money spent.
There was no clear-cut victory.
Same with Afghanistan.
And I think what's happening in Ukraine is they're barreling towards a multi-year stalemate where a lot more people are gonna die, where you're gonna have a lot of treasure that's gonna be spent.
For basically no change in outcome.
And so what I've said is we need to focus on achieving a sustainable peace in Europe.
We should not want to see this thing go on.
We have pressing problems at home that we're neglecting, as you mentioned, our own veterans.
We have an open border in the United States of America.
We have American families that are losing children to fentanyl overdose by the tens of thousands because we haven't secured our own border.
And yet what?
We've sent how many hundreds of billions of dollars there?
They're not sending that to us.
Also, I do think we have threats in this world, such as the Chinese Communist Party, which you've seen as the amount of ammunition and the amount of weapons that have been sent to the Ukraine has actually Dwindled our own stocks so that if we were potentially in a major conflict, we would not be able to likely to respond.
Now, Donald Trump, you know, had made different comments the other day.
He said he wanted to flood Zelensky with weapons.
So I'm not exactly sure, you know, where he is on that.
But I think the goal needs to be no blank check and have a sustainable peace in Europe.
It doesn't serve our interests to be involved in this thing infinitum.
As you have identified as an outsider and an anti-establishment figure, what are your views on two men that have perhaps done more to reveal the deep corruption of the American experiment?
Julian Assange, currently facing extradition to your country under the Espionage Act, and Edward Snowden, of course, currently in exile in Russia.
Do you think these men should be pardoned?
Do you think their status should be revised to that of heroes?
Or would you similarly persecute those individuals in the way that they currently are?
You know, it's interesting because I think this is an issue that was raised when Donald Trump took office.
And of course, we've seen a lot of abuse of power by the deep state during the Trump administration.
And I know there were a lot of people that were counseling him to pursue relief on these
two individuals, you know, and he didn't do it.
And I think he said that there was reasons why he didn't do it.
So I think when you're talking about using power under Article 2 for pardon, you really
need to get all the information.
You got to look at the files and you got to see, okay, what is this all about?
But I am definitely convinced that a lot of those agencies have abused their power over the years.
I would not have probably said that as a young man, as a young military officer, because I was working with people in the intelligence and FBI in different capacities in my young professional life, and I found everyone to be very professional.
I thought that these were very patriotic people, but I think what we've seen, particularly over the last 10 years, is we've seen exposed a lot of abuse of power.
So there's a lot that needs to be done to rein all that in.
And so I would say I go into this stuff with much more skepticism about government's rationale for things than I probably would have 15 or 20 years ago.
Finally, Governor, your critics have noted that post January the 6th, a repressive anti-riot bill was passed that previously had failed.
And even in the video promoting the bill, there were images of the Capitol breach alongside images of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protests.
When we are talking about freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to protest, how do you reconcile that with the passing of this bill?
Well, it doesn't infringe on anyone's ability to protest.
That's protected.
That's First Amendment speech.
When that goes into violence, so for example, during the Floyd, you know, we saw a lot of violent activity.
And then the question is, is how do you deal with those folks?
So we all agree, you can protest, you can say whatever you want about me, about anybody else.
If it does go into violence, how are those folks treated?
And I think in a place like Portland, You'd have people riot, they'd be violent, they'd get arrested, they'd get slapped on the wrist, they'd go out and do it again.
Harassing police officers, doing things like that.
That's not conducive to a healthy society.
If you look at what happened with the BLM riots in Minneapolis, Minneapolis has still not recovered from that.
It is something that's likely going to take many, many years to be able to do.
And so I think we can all agree, yes, say what you want, it's a free country.
Don't attack police officers.
Don't throw Molotov cocktails.
Don't do any of that.
And I would note, as much as the corporate press has tried to demagogue our anti-riot bill, they've not actually found anybody who wasn't able to protest.
There's massive protests that take place in Florida.
about different issues almost every other day.
A lot of times there's messages that are done that I don't particularly agree with,
but that's the way the world works.
People are free to express their mind.
But I do think if you let riots take over a city like they did during the BLM, that has huge, huge impact.
And the thing about it was with BLM, they were talking about racism,
but a lot of the businesses that they were burning down were black owned businesses.
And so you're ruining those people's lives?
Why?
That didn't do anything to solve any problems, and so we're very strong on that.
I had the National Guard called out in Florida during BLM because I didn't want to see any of our cities burnt down, and nobody did.
They did protest, that's fine.
They protested in front of the governor's mansion.
Uh, and they were, they were, um, you know, saying a lot of nasty things.
I have young kids that were, that were there hearing it and that's fine.
But, um, but definitely we got to draw the line at violence.
And so that bill struck the right, right balance.
And in fact, uh, it's been, um, uh, they have not been able to bring a successful challenge in the courts.
Ron, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
It seems to me that your country is in the midst of an ideological reckoning, much like the one that you pledged would take place in the agencies around health in your country in the event In the event that you were to ascend to this position, what I find most heartening and interesting is your commitment to decentralisation, your acceptance that free speech means the rights of the free speech of people that you oppose, the acknowledgement and recognition that different communities will want to live life differently, and it seems that decentralisation and diversity, to me, live hand in hand.
I wonder what you feel in particular about the protests around January the 6th.
Do you think that they were insurrectionists as described?
Do you consider them to be protesters?
What do you think about the subsequent funding that the Capitol Police received and how the Democrat Party in particular has used these events to enact more power and to control media spaces?
Well, I think it's ridiculous how much money that they pumped in for the Capitol Police.
It was not an insurrection.
These are people that were there to attend a rally, and then they were there to protest.
Now it devolved, and it devolved into a riot.
But the idea that this was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true, and it's something that the media had spun up just to try to basically, you know, get as much mileage out of it and use it for partisan and for political aims.
And so I know there were a lot of people that were there who were just there, and they didn't have any designs on doing anything.
And so we just have to be honest about it.
If somebody is honestly doing an insurrection against the U.S.
government, then prove that that's the case, and I'll be happy to accept it.
But all you're showing me is that there are a lot of protesters there, and it ended up devolving, you know, in ways that was unfortunate, of course.
But to say that they were seditionists is just wrong.
Who's your favorite tech billionaire?
Is it Elon Musk?
Is it Mark Zuckerberg?
Do these figures have too much power?
Well, they do have too much power, but obviously I would take Elon because he's done Twitter and he's actually opened it up.
And if you think about how Twitter censored things like the Hunter Biden laptop story to try to interfere with the 2020 election, that would never happen under Elon.
So I think he understands the threats posed to a free society by woke ideology and by
some of the other corporate consolidations of power.
He's obviously very rich himself.
Nevertheless, I'd like what he's done with Twitter and he even floated maybe buying CNN.
So hopefully if he did that, I bet you'd probably be a little bit more reasonable by my lights.
Oh, Ron DeSantis, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.
I'm going to be back in Florida soon.
I'd be grateful for the opportunity to meet with you and even interview you again in person if you would permit it.
Let us know, man.
It was great.
I appreciate it.
You asked really, really good questions, and I would not have gotten those questions with just kind of corporate journalists, so good.
I think you're actually talking about things that people care about.
