Bannon's War Room - May 24, 2023


WarRoom Battleground EP 300： Desantis： Failure To Launch


Episode Stats


Length

59 minutes

Words per minute

157.71266

Word count

9,346

Sentence count

681

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the War Room, Stephen K. Bannon and I discuss the impact of DeSantis' victory in the governor's primary race against Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for the 2020 presidential election.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 this is what you're fighting for I mean every day you're out there what they're doing is blowing
00:00:14.480 people off if you continue to look the other way and shut up then the oppressors the
00:00:21.460 authoritarians get total control and total power because this is just like in Arizona this is just
00:00:27.380 like in Georgia it's another element that backs them into a quarter and shows their lies and
00:00:32.120 misrepresentations is why this audience is going to have to get engaged as we've told you this is
00:00:36.400 the fight all this nonsense all this spin they can't handle the truth war room battleground
00:00:42.780 here's your host Stephen K Bannon okay welcome it's Wednesday 24 uh May in the year of our Lord
00:00:51.480 2023 we're going to go to the Twitter spaces is up we are connected my always crack staff want to
00:00:59.680 thank Lindell TV and um Frank speech for um doing this uh we are so we're we're hooked in there are
00:01:07.940 many other people hooked in right now in fact there'll be millions before this thing that gets
00:01:12.180 rolling uh they're going to start as soon as they start uh we will go to it uh we will go to it live
00:01:18.540 now here's my assessment just coming out of the box and I don't know if Memphis has this you don't
00:01:24.140 need to put it if you got to put it up but the New York Times reports today that the uh the the
00:01:29.320 strategy of DeSantis is quite simple he is uh as I've said from the very beginning and I think
00:01:35.520 Governor DeSantis is doing a very good job as a governor uh I like the way he's going after
00:01:40.440 Disney's and corporations I think he ought to be more aggressive even more aggressive I think a lot
00:01:45.200 of it is in performative and we need to really get down to uh to to basics and you see these
00:01:51.140 companies are the most progressive things in the world so I think Governor DeSantis is doing a good
00:01:55.620 job there uh I don't think he's anywhere near uh being ready to be President of the United States
00:02:01.080 as I said um I think his the international trip he took for four or five days was so amateurish
00:02:08.080 uh and finishing in London and what we call the City of London which is their Wall Street
00:02:13.120 uh was so pathetic that uh you know it was just uh you know I I can't tell you how bad it was and
00:02:20.960 people just didn't think he was a world leader people didn't think he would ever beat Trump it
00:02:24.260 was it was just terrible the Economist in fact has come out just put out moments before uh DeSantis
00:02:31.220 is going to take this Twitter space and said uh there's no chance or very little chance very low
00:02:37.740 probability that he could beat Trump I think in their poll he's down I don't know 58 29 something
00:02:42.800 so it's a huge gap but it's also it's also direction not just the point in time but it's
00:02:48.700 the slope of the curve um and and like I said as soon as they start going we're going to cut right
00:02:54.100 to it okay let's go ahead let's go ahead and do it we're not going to have a commercial break okay
00:02:57.060 you're in the war room let's go listen to DeSantis headquarters it's David Sachs here uh Elon is
00:03:02.600 sitting next to me and we want and we want to welcome you to this historic Twitter Spaces event
00:03:06.840 and more broadly a first in the history of social media uh tonight I'm pleased to introduce two
00:03:11.880 individuals who've done more to loosen the ground
00:03:32.600 no just just keep the screen on you don't need to look people need to see don't need to see me
00:03:40.520 uh it's another terrific boy you don't get that on getter on getter you don't get these all right
00:03:45.600 sorry about that we've got so many people here that I think we are we are uh kind of melting the
00:03:51.840 servers uh which is a good sign um all right I'd like to just introduce the the uh the folks in
00:03:58.400 in the room here so it's safe to say we wouldn't be making history without the man sitting next to
00:04:03.060 me Elon Musk his decision to purchase this platform last year to restore to its original mission as a
00:04:08.920 beacon for free speech and even to expose Twitter's past complicity with a government censorship regime
00:04:14.460 might have surprised many but not those of us who've known and worked with Elon for nearly a
00:04:18.960 money while his mouth is upset the narrative of control imposed on us by our government
00:04:26.400 elite institutions and corporate media uh go ahead and send a heart up if you want to say thank you
00:04:31.600 Elon uh governor DeSantis first drew my attention and support when I saw how he responded to the
00:04:38.180 covid pandemic and refused to believe what we now know to be the many falsehoods that government
00:04:43.000 experts their media mouthpieces were feeding us he kept Florida schools open and its economy
00:04:48.520 thriving while my state of California chose two years of learning loss and lockdowns that we have yet to
00:04:54.000 fully
00:04:54.160 okay uh I'm just coming in on a voiceover this is
00:05:18.420 Stephen K Bannon um Twitter keeps crashing because you know Elon Musk for all his big talk
00:05:25.080 hasn't taken care of the basic engineering problems you don't get that problem with Getter
00:05:28.620 I never get that problem with Getter um David Sachs is the oligarch that drove the bailout of Silicon
00:05:35.960 Valley Bank with your money another telephony and of course uh Twitter is not a free speech platform
00:05:43.000 because uh since Elon Musk is bought and paid for by the CCP he will not let any of the voices
00:05:48.660 of the leaders of the anti-CCP movement on Twitter and as Dr. Shiva tells you they've got a backdoor
00:05:56.760 into the government that they've never fully explained to people and Dr. Shiva says it's still there
00:06:02.200 so we're going to hang around and we're going to do this this is another kind of uh this shows you uh
00:06:08.100 the sanctimonious should have been more on point here and these guys should have committed to him
00:06:12.960 that they could actually launch how are you going to beat Trump when you can't even get a uh
00:06:17.060 you can't even watch on Twitter here we go
00:06:18.900 yeah I think so um just to simplify
00:06:22.260 I think we're just going to use your
00:06:52.260 I think we've got a just a massive number of people online so it's um serves as a straining somewhat
00:07:11.460 um
00:07:41.460 We're just reallocating more
00:08:11.000 sort of a capability to be able to handle
00:08:12.920 the load here. It's really going
00:08:14.620 crazy.
00:08:16.160 So, yeah, I'm
00:08:18.400 super excited to
00:08:19.920 have
00:08:22.000 Governor DeSantis
00:08:23.520 make this
00:08:25.220 presentation.
00:08:41.000 Thank you.
00:09:11.000 Okay, we don't know if they're coming back
00:09:14.980 or not. This is a clown show.
00:09:16.700 This is a clown show.
00:09:18.180 If you're going to launch DeSantis,
00:09:20.440 you got to be, you know, you got to launch.
00:09:23.060 This is failure to launch.
00:09:25.840 I don't have, they're coming back
00:09:27.060 in rooms, they're not going in rooms.
00:09:28.780 We're busy people.
00:09:30.280 You know, we're what?
00:09:30.880 We're 20 minutes into the show.
00:09:32.520 We're 15 minutes into the show and I'm bored already.
00:09:34.920 I got Elon
00:09:36.840 mumbling, right?
00:09:38.560 He's on the spectrum.
00:09:39.460 I got him mumbling.
00:09:40.460 I got DeSantis.
00:09:41.340 Who knows where DeSantis is?
00:09:43.020 I got David Sachs trying to tell me how historic this is.
00:09:46.160 This is historic screw up.
00:09:48.720 They bought a crime scene.
00:09:50.760 Am I sitting here just talking trash about these guys?
00:09:53.260 Is it back up yet?
00:09:54.100 The elevator music.
00:09:59.760 This is, okay, here we go.
00:10:02.400 This is the great engineering.
00:10:03.800 Don't have this problem on Getter.
00:10:06.100 Ken Wong and the team over at Getter.
00:10:07.680 A little Getter.
00:10:08.700 Not having this problem on Getter.
00:10:10.740 And it was not massive.
00:10:11.880 I mean, 300,000 people is a lot.
00:10:13.340 Don't get me wrong.
00:10:13.900 That's good.
00:10:14.300 But that's not like millions.
00:10:15.700 It's not tens of millions at the beginning.
00:10:17.520 Not massive at all.
00:10:19.060 You got to be able to hunt.
00:10:19.860 And don't blame it on the servers.
00:10:21.480 It's not the servers.
00:10:22.320 The servers are not crashing with 300,000 people.
00:10:25.880 I'm calling that out.
00:10:27.880 And David Sachs, who now is like, oh, I'm a conservative.
00:10:30.880 You're not a conservative, dude.
00:10:32.000 You gave money to Hillary Clinton, okay?
00:10:34.120 You were a grown man when you did that.
00:10:36.120 You were already a mini oligarch.
00:10:38.720 No, I'm going to keep talking trash.
00:10:40.900 My own staff is saying, hey, can't we play your takedown of Silicon Valley Bank?
00:10:47.460 I'll do it word for word right now.
00:10:50.020 Okay.
00:10:50.320 If Ron DeSantis is serious, to be the champ, you got to beat the champ.
00:10:56.040 This is not how you're going to do it.
00:10:58.560 Donald J.
00:10:59.140 Trump would not do something like this.
00:11:00.460 If you're going to come at Trump, where's your 200 million, dude?
00:11:04.020 If you're going to come at Trump, you got to come.
00:11:05.900 You got to bring it.
00:11:06.660 You got to bring the heat.
00:11:08.100 Bring the fire.
00:11:09.220 Where's the fire?
00:11:09.960 All I have is disembodied voices.
00:11:12.480 First off, ladies and gentlemen, who launches a presidential campaign that's not either in
00:11:18.460 person in a room like Tim Scott or, you know, who does it that way or on TV in front of people
00:11:25.900 and, you know, with an audience and you're interacting?
00:11:27.980 Who does it in a Twitter space when it's just audio, not even video?
00:11:33.900 Is Ron DeSantis that afraid of how he comes across?
00:11:40.400 Okay.
00:11:40.960 He comes across as maybe not, you know, the most presidential, a guy that comports himself or holds
00:11:47.400 himself as a president.
00:11:48.260 But hey, you got to work through that.
00:11:50.020 You got to take your brand and run with it.
00:11:52.760 We are, and people know I'm a nut about not wasting time.
00:11:56.360 We're 16 minutes into this and we're still, you know, they still, they're still playing
00:12:00.480 elevator music.
00:12:02.400 They're still playing elevator music.
00:12:05.200 This is what?
00:12:06.740 Did he not do due diligence?
00:12:08.120 Did Elon Musk sell him a bill of goods?
00:12:09.480 This is more of Elon Musk, just happy talk.
00:12:11.880 All this great engineering.
00:12:12.900 Look, he's had done some great stuff on the rockets.
00:12:15.700 I think Tesla is a mess, right? 0.72
00:12:18.460 And it's totally financed by the CCP or underwritten with tax breaks from the American people.
00:12:24.080 I think that's a mess.
00:12:25.160 I know people disagree with me on that.
00:12:27.580 His other companies, I think a lot of these companies are a mess.
00:12:31.120 Twitter is a train wreck.
00:12:32.940 It's a crime scene that became a train wreck because, you know, he's supposed to be bringing
00:12:39.400 all these great engineers and they're redoing it.
00:12:41.200 Does anybody feel that on Twitter?
00:12:43.540 And I realize I'm just kind of rolling on smack tar, which I normally don't do, as you
00:12:48.760 know, but I'm 18 minutes in this.
00:12:51.340 I'm a busy man.
00:12:52.420 I want to get to it.
00:12:53.380 I want to hear Ron DeSantis give me some pearls of wisdom with the CCP asset on the spectrum.
00:13:00.300 Transhumanist Elon Musk.
00:13:01.160 Here we go.
00:13:01.760 We're going to have it again.
00:13:02.620 Let's go ahead and roll.
00:13:23.380 All right.
00:13:34.720 I'd like to welcome Governor DeSantis for this historic.
00:13:38.520 We're just trying to get it going because there's so many people.
00:13:45.160 It's unfortunate.
00:13:49.240 I'd like to have never seen this before.
00:13:50.880 Governor DeSantis for this historic.
00:13:55.060 We're just trying to get it going because there's so many people.
00:13:59.740 Okay.
00:14:07.660 I'm going to come back and smack talk again.
00:14:09.160 This has not, it's not that many people.
00:14:11.560 It says 300,000 at the open.
00:14:13.220 You got, you're, you're supposed to be Mr.
00:14:15.240 AI.
00:14:15.800 AI is all about computing power, dude.
00:14:18.920 But computing power.
00:14:19.960 Are you, yes, you're going to have a crowd here.
00:14:21.580 I got that.
00:14:22.120 But that's not why it crashed.
00:14:24.260 It crashed because your engineering sucks.
00:14:27.260 Twitter sucks.
00:14:29.180 Twitter sucks.
00:14:30.240 And no offense.
00:14:31.180 Elon Musk sucks.
00:14:31.880 I understand all the conservative fanboys out there.
00:14:34.500 They're all rubbing up.
00:14:35.400 They're all 11.
00:14:35.980 Their maturity is all 11 years old.
00:14:37.520 They all want to be Iron Man.
00:14:39.700 They all want to be Batman.
00:14:40.940 They all want to be some Marvel, you know, cartoon character.
00:14:44.500 What's the guy?
00:14:45.260 Tony Stark.
00:14:45.920 They all want to be Tony Stark.
00:14:46.920 That's Elon Musk.
00:14:47.620 Elon Musk gets all the hot girls.
00:14:49.960 Goes around and creates all kind of great war fighting machines.
00:14:52.520 Jumps in and out.
00:14:53.720 Right?
00:14:54.120 That's where they all want to be.
00:14:55.820 And here we are.
00:14:57.460 We're 19 minutes into this.
00:14:59.300 I hope that Jeff Rowe and those guys are sucking down big bucks, big dollars, big dollars,
00:15:06.700 and telling us $200 million.
00:15:08.460 This is, you know, I put $200 million in the campaign and all I got was a crummy t-shirt
00:15:13.420 and this, a non-event on Twitter, on Twitter, was it Twitter Spaces?
00:15:18.920 How about Twitter Silence?
00:15:19.980 It's called Twitter Silence.
00:15:22.620 I've got a new name for this.
00:15:24.800 Can I say this on Frank's speech?
00:15:26.440 It's the Ron the Shit Show.
00:15:28.520 Okay?
00:15:29.320 Eek! 0.94
00:15:30.980 The boys in Memphis, are you blocking me out?
00:15:34.120 I don't like sitting here in a stream of, you know, we like, we have very structured
00:15:38.280 shows in the War Room.
00:15:40.420 Why are the shows so structured?
00:15:41.700 Why do we get guests on?
00:15:42.900 We have clips to get the team, everything's clicking, and I give a little bit of commentary,
00:15:47.400 some analysis.
00:15:48.100 We have another guest.
00:15:48.860 We ask questions.
00:15:49.620 They give you two cents.
00:15:51.000 The audience is live streaming the whole time.
00:15:53.200 War Room is highly structured.
00:15:55.120 That's how we get too much stuff in the day.
00:15:58.020 This is not structured.
00:15:59.940 This is Elon Musk.
00:16:01.220 This is another Twitter disaster.
00:16:04.180 And if Ron DeSantis can't launch his campaign, how's he going to take on Donald Trump?
00:16:10.400 Are people mocking him right now on Twitter?
00:16:14.240 They did not.
00:16:15.160 They just did.
00:16:17.620 Cut the camera back to me.
00:16:19.380 This is too good.
00:16:21.180 So now I'm mocking him.
00:16:22.260 Come on.
00:16:22.860 Bring it back.
00:16:23.760 Okay, Denver.
00:16:24.340 There I go right there.
00:16:25.180 Now I've got to sit here and figure out what we're going to do for the next 40 minutes.
00:16:30.600 This is just a clown show.
00:16:32.920 It just ended.
00:16:34.160 Are they going to reboot it or my crack staff?
00:16:36.540 Are they going to reboot?
00:16:37.700 Is there anything to reboot?
00:16:39.480 Okay, as soon as we know.
00:16:40.640 Can't they play some elevator music?
00:16:43.180 Here's what you got.
00:16:44.020 You're going to have a Twitter space.
00:16:45.380 I can put their pictures up.
00:16:46.360 You're going to look at my ugly mug for the next 40 minutes where I kind of wing it because
00:16:49.960 we have no guests.
00:16:53.120 I've got a couple of clips and we play.
00:16:56.320 Okay, full stop.
00:16:58.020 This is trying to be serious.
00:16:59.580 And how can I be serious?
00:17:00.300 I can't be serious.
00:17:01.540 You can't be serious because this is not serious.
00:17:03.820 If they're going to be serious, I'll be serious.
00:17:05.560 I'll give you the knitted brow.
00:17:07.140 I'll give you the knitted brow.
00:17:08.340 Is he coming back up?
00:17:10.340 They're going to move it to what?
00:17:13.040 They're moving it.
00:17:13.680 Okay, we're moving over.
00:17:15.140 We're shifting.
00:17:17.000 We were on Elon Musk and now we're going to be on David Sachs.
00:17:19.700 Okay, David Sachs.
00:17:20.560 The mini-me oligarch, Peter Thiel's wingman, the guy who drove the Silicon Valley bank bailout
00:17:33.660 for the billionaires.
00:17:35.900 Okay, can we play that music?
00:17:40.240 You know, that music is horrific.
00:17:42.360 Can we go ahead and mute the music and I'll go ahead.
00:17:44.660 No, you're trying to.
00:17:46.440 Yeah, that's not even elevated music.
00:17:49.900 That's like Bridging the River Choir.
00:17:51.580 You're in the box music, right?
00:17:52.960 They play that music all day long.
00:17:54.300 You're like, ah, okay.
00:17:56.640 I guess I'm just going to keep stream of consciousness here.
00:17:59.980 I would be serious.
00:18:01.260 I'd give you the knitted brow.
00:18:02.900 I'd talk about transhumanism.
00:18:04.540 I'd talk about the debt ceiling.
00:18:05.600 I'd talk about the invasion of the southern border.
00:18:07.660 I'd talk about Ukraine.
00:18:08.520 I'd pick a topic that is not just of interest, but worthy.
00:18:13.720 I'd pick a topic that's worthy of the war room audience.
00:18:17.260 This is the same war room audience that's got everybody going home.
00:18:21.320 And they just put out, by the way, now is everybody going home?
00:18:23.700 They said they're calling back, but they get 72 hours to read it if they come to everything.
00:18:26.920 So guess what?
00:18:28.180 Just some basic math.
00:18:29.820 I think that goes through the first of June, so we call it bluff.
00:18:32.640 Now, I'd go through some big rant.
00:18:36.260 I'd go through something serious.
00:18:37.680 If this was serious, it's not serious.
00:18:41.880 This is another, this is why, think about it for a second.
00:18:45.660 This guy started, he was ahead of Trump after the midterms.
00:18:49.240 Trump was terrible.
00:18:50.140 Trump pulled everybody down.
00:18:51.240 Trump's awful.
00:18:52.540 Trump's alone.
00:18:53.980 You know, Trump's down Mar-a-Lago.
00:18:55.440 Nobody loves him.
00:18:56.520 All that.
00:18:56.980 You know, Ron DeSantis, he's the next, all these bayonaires.
00:18:59.340 He's going around the country and all the things.
00:19:01.060 DeSantis is, he's Trump without the baggage.
00:19:03.540 He's Trump.
00:19:03.960 Okay, here we go.
00:19:04.720 We're going to go right back to this fiasco.
00:19:08.380 Let's go ahead and pick it up.
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00:23:41.920 Do that today.
00:23:43.920 All right.
00:23:44.580 I think we're broadcasting.
00:23:45.340 Man, I think we melted the internet there.
00:23:48.520 Yeah, that was insane.
00:23:49.520 Sorry.
00:23:49.920 We are actually doing this from David Sacks' Twitter account because it looks like doing
00:23:55.940 it from mine basically broke the Twitter system.
00:23:59.700 Anyway, thanks everyone for joining.
00:24:00.600 We're incredibly excited to announce that if you want to have Governor DeSantis on with
00:24:07.380 us for this historic announcement.
00:24:10.300 And I look forward to a live Q&A from the audience.
00:24:15.400 So yeah, with that.
00:24:18.520 Yeah.
00:24:18.760 I mean, so Governor DeSantis, are you there?
00:24:22.380 Can you hear us?
00:24:23.020 I think you broke the internet there.
00:24:27.320 We had over half a million people in one Twitter space.
00:24:29.680 And it was growing by like 50,000 a minute.
00:24:32.960 So congrats on breaking the internet there.
00:24:37.540 Well, yeah.
00:24:38.000 I mean, try some new things.
00:24:39.680 Sure it was.
00:24:41.000 It's adventurous.
00:24:42.140 Yeah.
00:24:43.200 But I think the value here is actually really high for people to hear directly from presidential
00:24:49.120 candidates and to answer a Q&A live.
00:24:52.160 And you can get a sense for how a candidate really is, you know, and where it's not just
00:24:57.280 canned speeches and telepronters.
00:25:00.800 It's, in fact, you can tell by the, you know, some of the mistakes that it's real.
00:25:06.780 Yeah.
00:25:06.960 So, you know, with that, I guess I should turn it over to, yeah.
00:25:15.100 Well, let's see.
00:25:15.900 So, yeah, Governor, there's been a lot of speculation over the last couple of months about your plans.
00:25:21.480 I understand that you may have an announcement to make.
00:25:24.340 We've got, I think, a record audience assembled here.
00:25:27.640 You know, probably the biggest room that's probably ever been assembled online.
00:25:33.540 It's 80,000 people.
00:25:34.700 Don't let me lie to you.
00:25:35.720 This guy's a clown.
00:25:37.740 Well, I am running for president of the United States to lead our great American combat.
00:25:44.020 Look, we know our country's going in the wrong direction.
00:25:46.460 We see it with our eyes and we feel it in our bones.
00:25:49.940 Our southern borders collapse.
00:25:51.620 Drugs are pouring into the country.
00:25:53.540 Our cities are being hollowed out by spiking crime.
00:25:56.320 The federal government's making it harder for the average family to make ends meet and to attain and maintain a middle-class lifestyle.
00:26:03.500 And our president, well, he lacks vigor, flounders in the face of our nation's challenges, and he takes his cues from the woke mob.
00:26:11.400 I don't think it has to be this way.
00:26:13.160 American decline is not inevitable.
00:26:15.720 It is a choice.
00:26:17.300 And we should choose a new direction, a path that will lead to American revitalization.
00:26:22.500 We must restore sanity to our nation.
00:26:25.560 This means embracing fiscal and economic sanity.
00:26:28.900 Stop pricing hardworking Americans out of a good standard of living through inflationary borrow, print, and spending policies.
00:26:35.520 And please embrace American energy independence.
00:26:38.640 This also means replacing the woke mind virus with reality, facts, and enduring principles.
00:26:45.480 Merit must trump identity politics.
00:26:48.740 We must return normalcy to our communities.
00:26:51.420 America is a sovereign country.
00:26:53.760 Our borders must be respected.
00:26:56.260 We cannot have foreigners pouring into our country illegally by the millions. 1.00
00:27:00.320 We cannot allow drug cartels to poison our population with fentanyl.
00:27:05.160 Public deserves safe communities, and law and order must be maintained in American cities.
00:27:10.760 We can't have inmates running the asylum, and we must reject attacks on the men and women of law enforcement.
00:27:17.320 We also must reestablish integrity in our institutions.
00:27:22.160 This includes the military.
00:27:23.580 I'm proud to be a Navy veteran, an Iraq veteran, and I revere our services.
00:27:28.240 But when revered institutions like those in our military are more concerned with matters not central to the mission,
00:27:34.660 whether it's global warming or gender ideology and pronouns, morale declines and recruiting suffers.
00:27:40.760 And you need to eliminate these distractions, and we need to get focused on the core mission.
00:27:45.060 We also cannot have true constitutional government if the most significant issues are decided by the whims of unelected bureaucrats rather than the people's elected representatives.
00:27:55.980 Reestablishing integrity in our institutions means we must reinvigorate our constitutional system by returning the government to its rightful owners, we the people.
00:28:07.440 No social or economic transformation without representation.
00:28:12.760 Truth needs to be our foundation.
00:28:14.760 Common sense can no longer be an uncommon virtue.
00:28:18.260 And in Florida, we proved it could be done.
00:28:20.520 We chose facts over fear, education over indoctrination, law and order over rioting and disorder.
00:28:27.760 We held the line when freedom hung in the balance.
00:28:31.960 And we're thriving as a result.
00:28:33.700 Florida is the nation's fastest growing state.
00:28:35.700 We're number one in net in migration, number one in new business formations, recently ranked number one in education.
00:28:43.100 We have a 50-year low crime rate and one of the lowest tax and debt per capita in America.
00:28:49.120 But we also understand governing is not entertainment.
00:28:52.280 It's not about building a brand or virtue signaling.
00:28:55.240 It is about delivering results.
00:28:57.820 And our results in Florida have been second to none.
00:29:00.540 We can and we must deliver big results for America.
00:29:06.060 I pledge to be an energetic executive that will take on the important issues.
00:29:10.800 Biden's pursued inflationary policies that are hurting working people.
00:29:14.420 We will reverse those policies and we'll build an economy where working Americans can achieve a good standard of living.
00:29:21.140 Biden's opened the southern border and allowed massive amounts of drugs to pour into the country.
00:29:26.180 We'll shut down the border, construct the border wall, and hold the drug cartels accountable.
00:29:32.700 Biden's embraced medical authoritarianism such as unconstitutional COVID vaccine mandates.
00:29:38.140 Didn't Elon promise us a live conversation?
00:29:40.600 He's reading a speech.
00:29:42.340 Why don't cut the cameras on?
00:29:43.940 This is bullshit.
00:29:45.700 I thought we were going to get Elon Musk give and take.
00:29:48.400 All I got is some clown reading a freaking boring speech.
00:29:51.640 Biden's also politicized the military and caused recruiting to plummet.
00:29:56.340 We will eliminate ideological agendas from our military, focus the military on the core mission, and we will reverse the poor recruiting trends.
00:30:06.220 Finally, Biden's weaponized the power of the administrative state to advance his left-wing agenda.
00:30:11.580 We will reconstitutionalize the executive branch and we'll bring the administrative state to heel.
00:30:17.760 Now, you can't do any of that if you don't win.
00:30:20.740 There is no substitute for victory.
00:30:24.040 We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years.
00:30:29.260 The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant future.
00:30:33.140 We must look forward, not backwards.
00:30:36.340 We need the courage to lead, and we must have the strength to win.
00:30:40.660 And to voters who are participating in this primary process, my pledge to you is this.
00:30:45.860 If you nominate me, you can set your clock to January 20th, 2025 at high noon, because on the west side of the U.S. Capitol, I will be taking the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States.
00:31:00.520 No excuses.
00:31:02.060 I will get the job done.
00:31:03.600 Now, these past few years have given me a new appreciation for the fragility of our freedoms.
00:31:09.100 I never thought I would see things in America that we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:31:14.220 But our founding fathers were keenly aware of the fragility of freedom.
00:31:18.140 When they framed our Constitution, they came to arm with having studied the history of every republic and the history of mankind, and they noticed that all of those experiments only had one thing in common, and it was this.
00:31:29.640 Every single one of them had failed.
00:31:32.340 And so they knew it fell to our country, the United States of America, to determine whether people could really govern themselves.
00:31:38.440 Could we have a society based on the idea that our rights are God-given, not government-granted, and that society functions based on the rule of law, not the rule of individual men?
00:31:47.440 And when Dr. Benjamin Franklin walked out of that convention, he was asked, did you deliver a republic or a monarchy?
00:31:54.180 He said, a republic, if you can keep it.
00:31:57.060 They knew freedom didn't run on autopilot.
00:31:59.360 They knew each generation would have a responsibility to safeguard freedom, and it's our responsibility to do so at this important juncture in our nation's history.
00:32:09.000 We have a lot of work to do to ensure the country gets back on track.
00:32:12.220 I ask everybody listening to please join me on this mission.
00:32:16.220 Please invest in our campaign by going to rondesantis.com and making a donation.
00:32:22.420 Thank you.
00:32:23.360 God bless, and I look forward to the discussion.
00:32:27.600 All right.
00:32:28.300 Thank you, Governor.
00:32:28.860 Appreciate that.
00:32:30.520 I guess just as a first follow-up here, thank you for putting up with these technical issues.
00:32:37.100 I think we're definitely breaking new ground here.
00:32:39.020 As far as I know, no major presidential candidate has ever announced their candidacy on social media this way, certainly in a Twitter space.
00:32:50.120 So thank you for doing that.
00:32:52.220 What made you want to kind of take the chance of doing it this way as opposed to just doing it on cable news or the usual way?
00:32:59.460 Well, when COVID hit, I had to make decisions about do you go with the crowd or do you look at the data yourself and cut against the grain?
00:33:09.820 And I chose to do the latter.
00:33:11.640 I faced huge blowback for doing that from the bureaucracy, from elites, from the media.
00:33:16.960 But my view was I had to look out for the people I represented, prefer protecting their jobs over trying to safeguard my own political hide.
00:33:24.920 But it was very, very lonely in a lot of those decisions.
00:33:27.940 And part of the reason it was so lonely is because there was a concerted effort to try to stifle dissent.
00:33:34.580 There was an official narrative about lockdowns, about closing schools, about forced masking, about all these different things that we had to navigate during COVID.
00:33:43.520 And it was an orthodoxy being enforced by the major tech platforms in conjunction with the federal government.
00:33:51.200 And if we can't have an honest debate in a free country about issues that affect hundreds of millions of people, like lockdowns, then what good is the First Amendment at that point?
00:34:04.160 Those are precisely the times when we needed to have debate be robust.
00:34:08.960 You should not be taking down articles that criticize those draconian policies.
00:34:14.360 And yet that's exactly what happened.
00:34:16.160 So it occurred to me that if that had continued, I think free speech in this country was on its way out the door.
00:34:23.820 And so when Elon Musk stepped up to purchase Twitter, he paid a lot of money for it.
00:34:29.320 And I'm sure because he's a good businessman, Elon, I'm sure you'll end up making money off it.
00:34:33.960 But the bottom line is you had to put your money where your mouth is because I think you recognize that you can't have a free society unless we have the freedom to debate the most important issues that are affecting our civilization.
00:34:47.320 That did not happen during COVID. The truth was censored repeatedly.
00:34:53.700 And now that Twitter is in the hands of a free speech advocate, that would not be able to happen again on this Twitter platform.
00:35:02.540 So I think what was done with Twitter is really significant for the future of our country.
00:35:07.960 We cannot have a society in which government is colluding with major tech platforms to enforce an orthodoxy.
00:35:14.200 Well, thank you. Yeah, we're absolutely committed to freedom of speech and a level playing field and just a vigorous debate.
00:35:22.660 And hopefully this can be a platform that brings people of divergent political views to exchange those views.
00:35:32.240 And perhaps some minds will be changed one way or the other.
00:35:35.400 But it's just incredibly important, as you highlight, that the First Amendment is irrelevant if all the media and the government are operating in lockstep.
00:35:50.000 It makes the most important amendment, the one that was most urgently added to the Constitution, moot if you cannot have free and open debate.
00:36:01.500 So Twitter was indeed expensive, but free speech is priceless.
00:36:11.960 Awesome. Thank you.
00:36:14.940 So, Governor, I'm going to ask some questions while we get some other kind of speakers in the queue to ask questions.
00:36:21.260 I think maybe some people knew this announcement was coming because there's been no shortage of hit pieces on you in the press over the last week or two.
00:36:29.180 I want to ask you about some of these accusations that are being leveled at you.
00:36:34.080 Last week, the NAACP issued a travel advisory against your state claiming that Florida is not a safe place for minorities to visit.
00:36:45.040 What do you say to those who've been advised that somehow they aren't welcome in your state?
00:36:49.220 Claiming that Florida is unsafe is a total farce.
00:36:53.520 I mean, are you kidding me?
00:36:54.880 You look at cities around this country, they are awash in crime.
00:36:58.800 In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low.
00:37:02.260 If you look at the top 25 cities for crime in America, Florida does not have a single one amongst the top 25.
00:37:10.360 And if you look at cities like Baltimore and Chicago, you've got kids more likely to get shot than to receive a first-class education.
00:37:18.020 Yet I don't see the NAACP batting an eye about all the outrage and the carnage that's happening in those areas.
00:37:25.160 So this is a political stunt.
00:37:27.260 These left-wing groups have been doing it for many, many years.
00:37:30.120 And at the end of the day, what they're doing is colluding with legacy media to try to manufacture a narrative.
00:37:35.340 Now, the good news is, is fewer and fewer Americans are gullible enough to believe this dribble.
00:37:41.420 And platforms like Twitter are there where people can debunk these lies in real time.
00:37:47.920 And I would just say as an American citizen, if you are uncritically accepting narratives spun by legacy media and left-wing groups, you're failing at your job of being a conscientious citizen.
00:37:59.720 And I think people just see right through it.
00:38:02.040 And, oh, by the way, have any of these travel advisories, because they've been doing this for a while, these left-wing groups, have any of them worked?
00:38:08.760 Well, we're the number one state for net in-migration and have been every year since I've been governor.
00:38:14.360 We just capped the highest quarter for tourism in the history of the state of Florida.
00:38:20.520 And our view is we want everybody to succeed regardless of their skin color.
00:38:24.220 We don't divvy up people by race.
00:38:26.360 At the same time, it is worth pointing out that we have in Florida more Black-owned businesses than any state in the nation.
00:38:34.940 And we've also had more African-Americans lead state agencies under my administration than at any time in Florida history.
00:38:42.100 But with us, you know they're there because of merit, not because we're trying to play identity politics.
00:38:48.260 And if you want to look at education, the Black students in Florida perform much higher than Black students in most other states.
00:38:56.480 We rank number three in fourth-grade reading and number two in fourth-grade math amongst our Black student population.
00:39:03.400 And, oh, by the way, the head of the NAACP lives in Florida.
00:39:07.800 And a lot of their board members have put out on social media during my governorship Florida vacations,
00:39:14.380 where they seem to be having an awful good time.
00:39:18.260 That's great.
00:39:22.520 Well, I mean, Florida's a great state.
00:39:24.220 And I think people realize that some of the things that are being said are just truly absurd.
00:39:31.180 I mean, I saw some headline from The Atlantic basically claiming that anyone who listens to this spaces on Twitter is basically a Nazi.
00:39:40.200 Yeah, that was the Atlantic.
00:39:43.920 And then Vanity Fair said that you were hosting or interviewing because David Duke wasn't available.
00:39:51.960 Oh, yes.
00:39:52.380 Although I'm not totally sure who they were saying was David Duke.
00:39:55.800 I don't know if it was you or Governor DeSantis.
00:39:57.680 It's a little bit unclear.
00:39:58.900 But I think this is a function of these – the legacy media, these corporate journals, they're in their little bubble.
00:40:07.680 And to draw allusions to stuff like that, I mean, how crazy do you have to be?
00:40:12.880 But in their little bubble, it sounds like they're making some type of profound point.
00:40:18.000 And so part of, I think, what Twitter is standing for is people should be exposed to different viewpoints.
00:40:25.200 And I think the elites in our society have tried to cluster themselves to where their assumptions are never challenged.
00:40:31.240 And that's not a good way, I think, to live.
00:40:34.100 It's also not a good way to be a critical thinker because no one's ever going to question, obviously, wrong assumptions because everybody around you shares them.
00:40:42.600 Absolutely.
00:40:43.980 And I think they've become totally hysterical because they don't like the idea that their control over the media is being disremediated because now candidates for president can just speak directly to people through platforms like Twitter.
00:40:58.720 Yeah, I mean, the amazing thing about Twitter and things like Spaces are that – although I happen to be hosting it – I had to switch over to David hosting it because my account was actually –
00:41:11.500 There's too much interest.
00:41:12.660 My account was breaking the system.
00:41:15.580 But it's really never been a mechanism before where someone could address the nation or anyone who wanted to listen to them could from anywhere in the world, the United States or anywhere.
00:41:28.420 So I think this is a really profound change.
00:41:33.560 And it's also like the – it's not just whether the media reports something and an article is true or not.
00:41:39.100 But even more powerful is deciding what the narrative is.
00:41:42.240 Totally.
00:41:42.440 And so, you know, it's just like if there's only so much you can actually put in a newspaper or a magazine and there's only one thing you can really put on the cover of a magazine.
00:41:51.780 So whoever's deciding that is deciding to not talk about other things, whereas with a public digital town square like we have here, it's possible for the public to choose the narrative.
00:42:05.340 It empowers the people instead of a very tiny elite cabal, which I don't recognize the irony of using that phrase.
00:42:13.980 But nonetheless, it's true and judged by the results that this is a means for the people to decide the narrative and for the people to decide what – you know, which way a debate will go.
00:42:28.200 So not sort of five editors-in-chiefs of a few newspapers, basically.
00:42:33.340 Yeah, and I think one of the really crazy things that happened during COVID is that social networks really started censoring dissenting viewpoints on COVID, medical viewpoints, that ended up being totally correct in lockstep with what the mainstream media was doing.
00:42:50.420 So basically, big tech platforms were undermining their main reason for existing, which is giving people a choice.
00:42:57.400 And actually, there's somebody who I think knows more about that than any of us, which is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who's a professor of medicine at Stanford.
00:43:05.900 I want to pull him in here.
00:43:07.640 Jay, go ahead and unmute yourself if you can.
00:43:10.520 It'd be great to hear from you.
00:43:13.700 I know that during COVID, you worked with Governor DeSantis.
00:43:16.860 It'd be great just to hear a little bit about your interactions and if you have a question for the governor.
00:43:22.880 Thank you, David.
00:43:23.740 Yeah, I mean, it was an absolute honor to work with Governor DeSantis.
00:43:29.100 And I was really impressed by his decision-making in the face of an absolute firestorm of criticism.
00:43:39.000 But he – you know, Governor, you did the right thing when you opened the schools.
00:43:42.280 And my kids in California for a year and a half didn't see the inside of a classroom, whereas Florida kids were in school.
00:43:49.600 And you can see it in the results.
00:43:51.100 And the learning loss numbers are so much better in Florida.
00:43:55.940 I'm really curious, Governor, as you're running for president, what are your thoughts about reforming the public health authority in the United States, in the federal government, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH?
00:44:10.920 How do you see the reforms we need so that the mistakes of the lockdowns that happened during the pandemic don't happen again when there's another pandemic?
00:44:20.480 Well, first, we need an honest reckoning about what happened during COVID.
00:44:26.680 And the only honest reckoning is that all of those agencies, all of the elites, the public health establishment, they failed.
00:44:34.240 They instituted bad policies.
00:44:38.160 Obviously, it's a novel virus.
00:44:39.860 But I think what happened was when the data was becoming more and more apparent that the path they were on was wrong, they doubled down and wanted to do it even more.
00:44:49.900 And I really believe had Florida not just kind of stood in the way, I think this country would have had rolling lockdowns for probably a two-year period.
00:44:59.700 And so their impulses were authoritarian, they were not following the data, and I think the U.S. government needs to acknowledge the failures.
00:45:10.280 And I think all of those agencies need to be cleaned out.
00:45:14.180 What I saw just dealing with them was I saw an interest in the narrative and in politics over evidence-based reasoning and evidence-based medicine.
00:45:24.680 And so I don't have confidence that those agencies are up to the task, and I think you need major, major overhaul of the whole enchilada with respect to public health in this country.
00:45:38.940 Can I follow up with that?
00:45:41.760 I mean, I think the other thing that I saw during the pandemic, Governor, and you was subject to it just as much as I was when we were talking about COVID.
00:45:50.500 YouTube censored a video of us speaking in a roundtable that you hosted on COVID policy.
00:45:58.360 There's so much of the federal government infrastructure went into suppressing honest scientific discussion during the pandemic.
00:46:04.800 So it's not just public health agencies, but other agencies inside the federal government that worked to suppress the speech of Americans.
00:46:12.060 And I'd love to hear your thoughts about it.
00:46:13.780 No question.
00:46:14.220 So I'm actually, in Florida, we recognize the danger there.
00:46:18.400 So I'm actually going to be signing a digital bill of rights for Florida pretty soon, which will bar all state and local government officials from colluding or working with a technology company for the purpose of censorship of speech.
00:46:32.840 Because you're exactly right.
00:46:34.000 You had people in the White House.
00:46:35.500 You had people in all these other agencies working with these platforms to try to take it down.
00:46:40.280 And, oh, by the way, what did they censor Dr. Bhattacharya for?
00:46:44.540 It was a roundtable discussion that I led and convened.
00:46:47.440 We had Dr. Bhattacharya, MD, PhD from Stanford.
00:46:51.640 We had Martin Kaldorf from Harvard Medical School.
00:46:54.580 And we had Sinatra Gupta from Oxford, who was generally viewed as one of the best epidemiologists across the pond until she became anti-lockdown.
00:47:03.700 So these are all eminent people.
00:47:05.260 And what are we discussing?
00:47:06.340 We're discussing whether there's any scientific basis to force a school child to wear a mask for eight hours a day.
00:47:13.560 They all agreed there was no basis to do it and that you should not have school mask mandates.
00:47:18.480 YouTube thought that that was, quote, anti-science and that that should be taken down.
00:47:23.840 But even at that point, we had already had enough experience in Florida where you had some schools that had done it before the state banned the mandates.
00:47:32.580 You had some schools that had done it.
00:47:33.920 Some schools didn't.
00:47:34.740 And the results were no different.
00:47:36.260 And yet his video was taken down by Google YouTube.
00:47:40.400 So it was a huge, huge problem.
00:47:41.920 And, yes, I think the federal government, FBI, DHS, any of the health agencies, it's unconstitutional for them to be delegating speech restriction to a private company.
00:47:54.260 You can't do indirectly what the Constitution would clearly forbid you to do directly.
00:47:59.320 Let me let me pull in.
00:48:03.620 We have Congressman Thomas Massey.
00:48:07.220 If you're there, go ahead and unmute yourself.
00:48:10.780 I mean, what we're talking about here is, I think, really unconstitutional actions by federal agencies.
00:48:17.900 Congressman Massey, I know that you've been involved in this problem of, you know, government agencies being weaponized and used against the American people in an inappropriate way.
00:48:31.000 Do you have a comment on this?
00:48:32.540 And do you have a question for Governor DeSantis?
00:48:34.880 Well, first of all, let me say a big thank you to Elon Musk for buying Twitter and exposing all of this on our weaponization committee.
00:48:44.140 We wouldn't know so much of it if he hadn't done this, almost as a public service to the First Amendment.
00:48:51.220 It's a disturbing trend.
00:48:52.980 Government, as the governor said, the government is colluding with big corporations.
00:48:56.800 We found out this week from an FBI whistleblower that Bank of America voluntarily gave names and information on anybody who bought a hot dog in Washington, D.C.
00:49:09.580 from January 5th to January 7th and then overlaid that with gun purchases that they had on record anywhere in the country for any period of time.
00:49:19.100 And just they say they voluntarily gave that to the FBI.
00:49:21.960 So that's disturbing to me.
00:49:24.920 By the way, I've never met Elon Musk, but I'm one of your biggest fans and the first congressman to have a Tesla.
00:49:31.340 I'm on Starlink and I would have bought a Powerwall, but I'm off the grid and you wouldn't sell me one.
00:49:38.960 So I had to make one with a wrecked Model S and it's been running our house for five years.
00:49:43.940 But my my and just for the record, I as I was with Thomas our first year in Congress, he's got the Tesla, but his license plate is Kentucky coal.
00:49:56.700 So it's he's probably one of the only people that have that in the country.
00:50:00.120 Thanks for outing me, Governor DeSantis.
00:50:03.380 But no. So, Governor DeSantis, my question to you is, you know, you served here in Congress for six years with me.
00:50:11.980 And why is it that Congress is so feckless at reigning in these government agencies?
00:50:17.760 And and what do you think we need to do?
00:50:20.460 And if you were president, what what would you urge Congress or what bills would you like to see and sign?
00:50:26.700 To reign in this, you know, sort of overreach of government bureaucracy?
00:50:33.960 Well, first, I think there's a lot that the executive branch can do.
00:50:36.700 And I all I will say when it comes to these agencies, we'll put we'll we'll go into this a little bit more as the campaign goes on.
00:50:42.300 But buckle up when I get in there, because the status quo is not acceptable and we are going to make sure that we reconstitutionalize this government.
00:50:51.260 And these agencies are totally out of control.
00:50:53.280 There's no accountability. And we are going to bring that in a very big way.
00:50:57.000 Now, part of the reason it's gotten so bad, power has been consolidated and effectively a fourth branch of government because Congress hasn't used its two main powers that it has under the Constitution.
00:51:07.420 First, the power of the purse.
00:51:09.280 If an agency is gauging in conduct that is outside the realm of what is legal or you think it's not good for the public interest, then you can remove the funding for those for those operations.
00:51:21.880 There's nothing that they're not entitled to get the same level of funding every year.
00:51:26.180 And yet Congress runs the government on autopilot, either continuing resolutions or massive omnibus spending bills.
00:51:32.180 So these agencies are all bulletproof. They know that they're going to end up getting something similar or more every single year.
00:51:38.700 And it creates an incentive for them to abuse their power.
00:51:42.200 The other thing you can do is actually legislate.
00:51:45.960 So you're not delegating to the bureaucracy key issues regarding how to enforce federal law.
00:51:52.820 You should define what you want.
00:51:55.120 All they should be doing is implementing.
00:51:57.180 Instead, Congress will basically give an invitation for the bureaucracy to make really important substantive decisions.
00:52:05.120 And so Congress may never vote on something.
00:52:08.100 And the bureaucracy will cite a law from 20 years ago and do things that are going to transform our society or our country.
00:52:14.960 That is not the way the founding fathers drew up the Constitution.
00:52:18.260 So would you sign the RAINS Act?
00:52:19.900 We passed it out of judiciary today.
00:52:22.220 Oh, yeah.
00:52:22.900 No, of course.
00:52:23.720 Yeah, that's a no-brainer.
00:52:24.680 That would, I think, be a great check for that.
00:52:27.940 I also think that we're going to have a good chance to see some of this Chevron deference really curtailed or maybe even eliminated based on the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming jurisprudence.
00:52:39.560 And I think that's another reason why the bureaucracy has become so powerful, because courts have basically been told they can pretty much do what they want and courts are supposed to just defer.
00:52:49.960 I don't think that that's actually correct.
00:52:51.740 I think the courts, they have to make a judgment about what does the law actually say, and you can't just defer to, quote, unquote, experts in the bureaucracy.
00:53:00.900 Thank you.
00:53:03.320 All right, shifting gears, Governor, I want to ask you, another topic that's been in the news a lot is Disney.
00:53:08.700 They blamed you for canceling plans for a billion-dollar investment in Florida, said they were canceling 2,000 jobs.
00:53:18.180 I saw other reports that suggested Disney was going to make the cuts anyway due to a larger budget-cutting initiative.
00:53:25.140 Regardless of why they did it, why do you feel your fight with Disney remains important, considering you already beat them on the parental rights bill that they opposed?
00:53:36.520 And what would you say to some of your opponents in this race who argue that the fight is dragged on too long?
00:53:43.480 So first of all, Florida stands for the protection of children.
00:53:46.140 We believe jamming gender ideology in elementary school is wrong.
00:53:50.920 Disney obviously supported injecting gender ideology in elementary school.
00:53:55.600 They did oppose our parents' rights legislation.
00:53:58.300 And the fact is, when they opposed it, that was a big deal because for 50 years, anytime Disney wanted something in Florida politics, they pretty much got it.
00:54:07.040 But not this time.
00:54:08.280 I signed the bill.
00:54:09.400 We did, as you say, win on the issue.
00:54:12.260 But what happened was Disney's posturing, some of the other statements that their executives were making, kind of the corporate culture, had really been outed as trying to inject matters of sex into the programming for the youth.
00:54:26.940 And I think a lot of parents, including me, look at that and say, that's not appropriate.
00:54:30.460 I mean, we want our kids to be able to just be kids.
00:54:33.600 And that's kind of our mantra.
00:54:35.040 So you had this setup that Disney engineered many decades ago where they actually had their own government that they controlled with no accountability.
00:54:44.600 They were exempt from the laws that all their competitors had to follow, massive tax breaks, and they even racked up municipal debt.
00:54:52.160 And Florida basically put them on a pedestal many decades ago and joined the state with this one company at the hip.
00:54:58.680 We just didn't feel that we were comfortable maintaining that relationship.
00:55:03.080 And so we ended their self-governing status.
00:55:06.540 So Disney has to live under the same laws as everybody.
00:55:09.580 They've got to pay the same taxes as everybody.
00:55:11.840 And obviously, they'll be responsible for those debts.
00:55:14.320 So the reason why there's a, quote, fight is just because they filed a lawsuit against the state of Florida trying to get their special privileges reinstituted.
00:55:23.800 But I don't think that that's good policy.
00:55:25.980 And I think some of these Republicans that are taking Disney's side, they're basically showing themselves to be corporatists because these are all corporate goodies.
00:55:34.860 This is not the way you would run a competitive economy.
00:55:37.920 And the arrangement had really outlived its usefulness.
00:55:42.080 But it persisted because Disney was so politically powerful.
00:55:45.000 I think the company's ethos have changed in a way that's alienated a lot of people in our legislature and in Florida.
00:55:51.200 And so there was really no justification to keep it.
00:55:53.620 But make no mistake, they're suing to try to get special privileges.
00:55:58.480 People are making money in Florida hand over fist because we have a great business climate.
00:56:03.180 That's not good enough for them.
00:56:04.840 They want to be treated differently than Universal and SeaWorld.
00:56:08.060 And we don't think that that's appropriate.
00:56:09.440 So, you know, I think that they should withdraw the lawsuit.
00:56:11.840 But obviously, we're going to defend our actions because we think we have the right to do what we did.
00:56:16.820 You know, it's funny.
00:56:17.980 The media used to criticize Republicans for being in the pocket of big corporations.
00:56:21.920 And now they're attacking you because you're not.
00:56:24.780 Well, not only that, David, it's interesting because the media in Florida for years had had hammered Disney.
00:56:31.060 And they would they would point out like that this was this was not a good arrangement because, you know, Disney was not accountable to anyone.
00:56:36.960 I mean, when we when the state control board took over this district, the firefighters came to the board and they said, hey, we weren't getting survivor benefits for for some of these widows.
00:56:47.680 And so the state control board actually paid out some of the benefits that they were getting stiffed on.
00:56:52.420 There were a lot of people in central Florida who were really thankful that there was some accountability being brought to bear because, I mean, you know, it's human nature.
00:56:59.880 If there's no accountability over any individual or entity, of course, they're going to behave differently than if you have normal accountability.
00:57:07.700 But the media was always very hostile to that.
00:57:10.840 But just because I happen to be involved in bringing it back to reality and making sure that they were under the same laws, well, then all of a sudden.
00:57:19.360 OK, we're going to continue this on Getter right now on War Room.
00:57:23.280 And I'll be putting up my commentary.
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