Ron DeSantis is the Governor of Florida and is one of the most maligned men in the media today. He is consistently at the center of the culture wars, using his power as the governor of the state of Florida to push for policies that swung the state from purple to red in just four years. In this episode, Ron talks about some of the latest media myths about his moves as the leader of his state, his governing philosophy, and how fatherhood influences the fights he takes on.
00:00:00.000Maybe the most maligned man in the media today, consistently at the center of the most important culture wars, using his power as the governor of the state of Florida to push for policies that swung the state from purple to red in just four years.
00:00:17.520Governor Ron DeSantis is here with me today to talk about some of the latest media myths about his moves as the leader of his state, his governing philosophy, and how fatherhood influences the fights that he takes on.
00:00:30.440Also, yes, I will ask him the million dollar question that all of you are wondering about, but you will not want to miss everything that he has to say first.
00:00:39.180This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
00:01:30.820So just tell me, tell me your reaction to that and tell me why you think that shift happened so quickly.
00:01:36.660Well, look, I think part of it is we were able to produce a lot of great results.
00:01:39.920I mean, especially during COVID, I was the one that really had to come in and say, you know, these businesses cannot be shut down by local government.
00:08:01.520And so our Department of Education rejected it.
00:08:04.760They said it doesn't it doesn't fit Florida standards.
00:08:07.060And so the media kind of had a hubbub about that.
00:08:09.840And they tried to say that that we didn't want black history, period.
00:08:13.000And then all you had to do is refer them to Florida standards.
00:08:16.280And you can see that for not just black history, but many other things.
00:08:19.780And so they don't want I think the problem with what corporate media has become is it's one thing to be biased.
00:08:26.040But what they do is they elevate the narrative at the expense of the facts.
00:08:30.480And so if it's too good to check, they'll just run with the narrative.
00:08:34.460And if they get caught on it, they figure, well, we've already gotten some people to believe the narrative.
00:08:39.240So it's worth it for them to try to launder false things.
00:08:43.020It's pretty incredible how far they take it from the truth.
00:08:57.220And obviously, we saw this with the whole Disney and parental rights and education bill, which we'll get to in a little bit.
00:09:03.860But they really do just keep inching more and more towards absurdities.
00:09:09.720I mean, the idea that you're not able to teach about a black baseball player or something like that in Florida or that you're not allowed to teach about slavery or Jim Crow or things like that, simply because Florida said, you know what, we're not going to teach our kids that just because they're white, that they're a part of an oppressive class or just because they're black, they're part of an oppressed class.
00:09:30.660It's really amazing, actually, how audacious the media is and just going more and more towards total propaganda without any regard whatsoever to the truth.
00:09:40.260I mean, that's stunning to me, actually.
00:09:42.300But I think it's a testament that we're winning these debates because they can't argue for things like genderqueer on the merits.
00:09:52.700Should a fifth grader be doing genderqueer?
00:09:55.600Should you see some of the graphic stuff that's in there?
00:09:58.620They don't want to have that argument on the merits, so they try to create these boogeymen and hope that people will buy it.
00:10:08.240But I think more and more people realize that, no, in Florida, all that, the normal stuff is taught.
00:10:14.940But, yes, we are not going to teach students that they are inherently racist because they're white.
00:10:22.120That is not appropriate, and that's not something that is permitted in our classrooms.
00:10:27.240But they don't want to have that debate because they know the vast majority of the public, of all races, agrees with us that that's inappropriate.
00:10:34.940So they've got to try to do these other things to try to act like Florida is doing something out of the ordinary when, in reality, what we're doing is supported by parents across the board.
00:10:45.640And, you know, I've had people come up to me about some of the things we've done thanking me.
00:10:49.920It's like, look, you know, the madness has got to stop, and we've got to just get to education.
00:10:55.780Let's give these kids the right foundation.
00:10:57.880Hopefully they can think for themselves when they get older.
00:11:00.260But this indoctrination has got to stop.
00:11:04.240I think the left gets really upset about it because they've just taken it for granted for so long that they had a right to use the school system to impose their agenda.
00:11:14.260And in Florida, we're saying, no, that is not your purview.
00:11:18.020These are taxpayer-funded institutions, and they should reflect, the mission should reflect the best interests of the state and the students in Florida.
00:11:26.060Yep. And it's not just K-12 that leftist ideology has really tried to take over and has successfully taken over in a lot of cases and in a lot of states.
00:11:39.080And you're going after DEI in higher education as well.
00:11:43.300And obviously this is going to get the same kind of blowback.
00:11:46.300But what does this look like and why is this important, not just K-12, but also talking about in academia?
00:11:51.260Well, this thing of DEI has really just exploded almost out of nowhere.
00:11:56.620I mean, I think back, I don't even know when I even knew what this was.
00:12:01.360And diversity, equity, inclusion, I mean, it actually sounds like, OK, maybe you have diverse viewpoints on college campus because that's what you need.
00:12:09.380Because the diversity is very superficial that they strive for.
00:12:14.380You do need more ideas and more free speech.
00:12:18.360What DEI is, is effectively taking the administrative machinery of the university and imposing under the auspices of these DEI programs an ideology.
00:12:31.080And they want people to have to conform to the ideology.
00:13:16.020I don't know if the intentions were good by some when they were doing it, but I know what it has evolved into, or maybe it was always planning on this, is something that is trying to enforce orthodoxy.
00:13:28.920And it's a very woke left-wing orthodoxy.
00:13:32.140So we are working with the legislature who comes in in Florida second week of March, and we're just going to eliminate all DEI offices and programs and employees in our state university system.
00:13:45.080We believe in having a system that treats everybody the same regardless of their skin color.
00:13:51.000We don't think that that's important involving in terms of their self-worth or their ability to achieve academically.
00:13:57.060And I think that's what people want to get back to, the idea that we're all equal before the law and we should not have this type of ideology imposed upon us that really ends up dividing us.
00:14:10.160Yeah, which is the exact opposite of what DEI and CRT teach, teaches that we are unequal before the law and the solutions that it tries to give as remedies just always lead to destruction.
00:14:22.200So you're going against this DEI, the CRT, also gender ideology, especially as it pertains to kids.
00:14:27.660Kids are most vulnerable to indoctrination.
00:14:29.620They're most malleable, which is why they're indoctrinated with this stuff.
00:14:32.880And when it comes to the parental rights and education bill, I mean, man, I feel like we talked about that so much on this show because of all the misinformation on it.
00:14:40.140But really, one of the most remarkable parts of it is you going against Disney.
00:14:46.320I mean, that's just not something that we see very often from governors and particularly Republicans.
00:14:58.360When they decided or they said, announced that they were going to go against the parental rights and education bill, you guys said, OK, let's play ball.
00:15:06.380So you got a lot of reactions on that from both the left and the right.
00:15:12.240Tell me kind of your thinking and saying, all right, we're going to come back after Disney.
00:15:18.500Well, as the governor, I got to look out for the best interests of the state.
00:15:22.300And that means that, you know, our state needs to be grounded in solid values.
00:15:27.820Also, as a parent, I'm very sensitive about what is being put in our child's education and programming, unfortunately.
00:15:56.160And so we had to put our foot down and say no.
00:15:58.540But one of the things I think, in addition to them saying that they were going to work to get the law repealed, they were going to sue and all this stuff, was you had those videos that came out where you had the Disney execs on the call talking about it's really their agenda to inject the sexuality into the programming for very young kids.
00:16:19.560And we have a 6, a 4, and a 2-year-old at home.
00:16:22.640At that time, I guess it would have been 5, 3, and 1.
00:16:28.300And my wife and I are just very sensitive about that.
00:16:31.460I just think that you should be able to raise kids in our country without them having an agenda shoved down their throat when they're watching a cartoon or when they're sitting in a second-grade classroom.
00:16:43.060So from that perspective of a dad, it was an easy thing.
00:16:47.640And, yeah, we faced a lot of media fire, and Disney's an 800-pound gorilla.
00:16:51.740It's interesting, though, when we did that, the media was saying, like, oh, the governor is going to pay for this in his re-election campaign because they're doing it.
00:17:02.960And it turns out that the county where the majority of Disney employees live, Osceola County, had been a solid blue county, and I don't think the Republicans want it in a while.
00:17:13.140So not only did we carry Osceola, I think we carried it by, like, 7 percent, and we did better in Orange, which also has Disney employees than a Republican's done in a long time.
00:17:22.660So it just shows you even people that were working there believe the company was out of line on this.
00:17:29.060And I think it was an issue, even though superficially you'd see the left have a spasm, corporate press have a spasm.
00:17:35.620But underneath that, across party lines, I think there was a broad agreement that, you know, this is not appropriate for these schoolchildren, and we need to focus on reading and writing and math and science and not be jamming this down.
00:17:51.320Now, what we ended up doing, and we're putting the finishing touches on that over the next few weeks, is Disney was unique because they actually had their own government that they controlled in central Florida.
00:18:03.860And I don't think there's a corporation that wielded that kind of power anywhere in the country, but certainly in the state of Florida.
00:18:10.640They really were treated better than every individual and every company in our state.
00:18:16.660And so the state chose many decades ago to put this one company on a pedestal to give them all this special treatment and, indeed, self-governing status.
00:18:24.680And my view on that was that that had to end because we cannot be putting on a pedestal a company that is going down the road of trying to promote things like gender ideology to young kids.
00:18:38.260And so we made the decision that that game was up.
00:18:41.860I'll be signing legislation soon to permanently remove their self-governing status.
00:18:47.940They've been stripped of any special privileges.
00:18:50.660And actually, it's reverting to the state of Florida.
00:18:53.200So we're going to ensure they pay their debts, their fair share of taxes.
00:18:56.800And, of course, they're not going to have self-governing authority.
00:18:59.820And so I think that that was an appropriate thing for us to do.
00:19:03.600And you have some Republicans that think companies are entitled to corporate welfare and that you should just give them all these subsidies.
00:19:14.040But certainly you should not be using Florida tax dollars to subsidize a political agenda that is not in the best interest of the state of Florida.
00:19:25.520And that is kind of the anti-democratic effort, not the other way around.
00:19:28.840Some people saw what you and your administration did is anti-democratic or tyrannical.
00:19:33.960But actually, passing a bill that very simply, just as a reminder to people, said kindergarten through third grade, you can't hold formal classroom instruction to these kids.
00:19:43.760We're talking like five to nine-year-olds about changing your gender and about sexuality.
00:19:49.140And it kind of makes you wonder why would you even want to hold those formal discussions with kids that age anyway.
00:19:55.360That's pretty much what the bill said in addition to some other simple things about parental rights and accessibility and transparency and things like that.
00:20:02.600And then Disney said, OK, well, we are going to actually undermine the wishes of the people of Florida who duly elected all of these officials who authored and then signed that bill into law.
00:20:14.460So in my mind, I'm like, of course, of course, the role of the duly elected governor then and the legislature is to say, no, you're not going to continue to undermine the wishes of the state of Florida.
00:20:26.480And more on gender ideology, last year, you guys said that you are going to ban surgeries for minors that would permanently maim their bodies in the name of gender confirmation.
00:20:38.140The Florida Board of Medicine, State Board of Osteopathic Medicine voted with a plan that will bar anyone under the age of 18 from receiving sex reassignment surgery or taking hormones.
00:21:07.540You know, when you look at this idea of the gender ideology, particularly for young people, I mean, one of the things that we found is by the time they become adults, most of this is resolved.
00:21:19.320You have like 80 percent just gets resolved.
00:21:21.960So why would you permanently mutilate a 15-year-old if whatever they're dealing with ends up being resolved by the time they're an adult anyway?
00:21:35.700And part of the problem is, you know, kids, especially in that age, they go through a lot.
00:21:40.500There's things that happen, and parents sometimes are kind of looking for answers.
00:21:46.100And I think one of the saddest things about this is that you have some of these physicians that are very aggressive at trying to direct these kids into this type of treatment or surgery.
00:21:57.520And so a parent may not know kind of, you know, what to do.
00:22:00.360And you have a physician saying, well, your child is transgender, and if you don't do this surgery, they're going to commit suicide or something.
00:22:08.920And so sometimes these parents are getting kind of not forced, but they're being pushed in this direction.
00:22:14.160You also have some parents, I think, that have really bought into the ideology, and this is something that they want.
00:22:23.160What you're going to do with the legislature is the legislature is going to pass statutory prohibitions that will supplement what we did administratively through our boards of medicine.
00:22:44.160I don't know if you saw that left-wing whistleblower that she spoke out out of St. Louis, and she just chronicled.
00:22:52.620She said she's left of Bernie Sanders, and she chronicled all of the horrors that are going on in these gender clinics, these kids and parents, no idea what they're getting into.
00:23:00.880And then they're met with permanent sterility, the permanent disfiguration of their bodies.
00:23:05.680Of course, kids can't make these kinds of decisions.
00:23:08.160Their frontal lobe isn't even fully developed yet.
00:23:11.080And so to me, I mean, it seems like common sense, but again, kind of as you've noted, the left continues to tell on itself when it defends these kinds of grotesque practices, and they're almost completely unashamed of it, too.
00:23:24.940Well, I think it's also an indication of something that's happened, I think, more recently in society.
00:23:30.920I mean, I don't know if you went back 20, 30 years that this would necessarily be the case.
00:23:34.120But you really have the politicization, the takeover of so many institutions by woke ideology or leftist ideology.
00:23:43.740So these medical associations are woke, and they're putting the ideology ahead of evidence-based medicine.
00:23:52.280You look at some of these medical schools.
00:23:56.120They have these medical students repeating CRT and all the woke nonsense, and you think about it, and that's a huge problem for our society if these elite institutions are all bowing down to this one ideology, which I think is very destructive.
00:24:15.620And so you're seeing it with the gender ideology with these minors, but I think it has implications in the field of medicine alone for so many other areas and can affect so many more Americans.
00:24:31.200And so when you see those institutions have been politicized, when you see that they're advancing an agenda that is adverse to the rights of the public or to the best interests of the public, you've got to stand up to it.
00:24:43.320And we've done that, and I think that you're seeing other states do it, and it's going to be the majority position very soon.
00:24:51.340And as you mentioned, this is not a partisan thing.
00:24:54.060There's people across the board who look at this and say, this is just wrong.
00:25:00.000Currently, the law is 15 weeks in Florida for abortion restrictions, but you recently said that you would sign, if the legislature put it on your desk, a six-week abortion ban.
00:25:09.220So what do you think is coming down the pipeline for pro-life legislation in Florida?
00:25:14.320Well, I think there's a lot of support in Florida for heartbeat legislation.
00:25:18.880Our 15-week was done last year, so that was prior to Dobbs, but it was also done with the understanding that the state of Florida Supreme Court has ruled in the 1980s that our state Supreme Court, that our state constitution mandates abortion on demand.
00:25:38.240And so it was, in some respects, even more aggressive than both Roe and Casey.
00:25:43.420And so we knew that that 15 weeks was going to be challenged under the Florida state case law.
00:25:49.980So the Supreme Court of Florida has now accepted that case.
00:25:53.580So they're going to be doing arguments, briefs and arguments over the next few months.
00:25:57.720So we will get a decision on that probably this year.
00:26:01.700And so if that decision is, if they reevaluate the doctrine, then that allows the 15 and a heartbeat bill to stand.
00:26:13.180And I think one of the things we've seen post-Dobbs is you have some state Supreme Courts that are trying to be very aggressive at inventing different provisions and trying to block pro-life legislation.
00:26:26.340Florida is a little bit different because this had been what the courts had been ruling for decades.
00:26:31.220And now we're in a situation where we believe I've appointed four of the seven.
00:26:35.200I think that they're going to look at that and say, you know, that decision wasn't really grounded in the text history structure of the Florida Constitution.
00:26:41.960But nevertheless, that is playing out right now.
00:26:45.740A lot of these are culture war issues that we've talked about today that a lot of politicians are just kind of scared to face head on.
00:26:53.020But you've mentioned a few times in this interview, and then obviously I hear you talk about it a lot, is your motivation as a dad.
00:27:00.140You and your wife being motivated to fight for the things that you do and against the things that you do because you have three little ones.
00:27:06.820I have two little ones right around the same age.
00:27:09.440And most of the people listening to this podcast are moms.
00:27:12.660And so they're very sympathetic to that.
00:27:14.160Can you talk about that a little bit more, just how having children and seeing the face of the future, the investment that you have in the future kind of motivates how you govern?
00:27:23.980Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things my wife and I will think about is when we were growing up, it seems like there were less hostile influences around.
00:27:33.640I mean, you know, you didn't have these devices.
00:27:35.380You didn't have, you know, YouTube, all these other things.
00:27:37.860And these kids know how to grab this stuff and put things on.
00:27:42.120And so we have to do all kinds of parental controls.
00:27:44.400I mean, it's just they're like one step ahead of us.
00:27:46.840And they're very and our kids are six, four and two.
00:27:49.520And so you can't just put on a Disney program anymore and be satisfied that it's going to be good.
00:27:56.260You've got to worry about what type of messaging they're trying to do.
00:28:02.120And so I think I think it's challenging for a lot of parents.
00:28:04.820And the last thing that we want to see in Florida is parents feel that they can't send their kid to school like I did when I was growing up
00:28:13.820because they're worried about the kids coming back with having an agenda shoved down their throats.
00:28:19.800And so we are we've really empowered parents in Florida.
00:28:25.280But I just think it's something that we want the family to be the ones who are imposed, who are inculcating the values.
00:28:34.760You know, schools are important, but you don't want a school to be negating what the parents are doing in some in terms of some of these these basic things.
00:28:43.820And it plays in beyond just kind of the curriculum, the parents rights in education.
00:28:49.600One of the things was there not that this is an issue with our family, but, you know, there were some schools in Florida that were, quote, changing the gender of these students.
00:28:59.460Right. And without the parents even knowing.
00:29:01.760And if you think about it, like, how is it the school's right to go in there and supersede the parents and take such a drastic measure?
00:29:10.660But yet there's some elements in our society to think that parents just need to be butting out of their of their kids lives.
00:29:17.780We're the ones that are responsible for for the upbringing.
00:29:21.200So we have not only a right, we have a duty to be involved in this.
00:29:25.600And so if if other parents in our situation, you know, feel like Florida is a good place to raise the kids, that means a lot to us.
00:29:35.120Both of us. Obviously, we're doing it for for our family as well.
00:29:39.120But really just believe it's something that is very meaningful.
00:29:43.200And I'll tell you, the migration of Florida, we've always had people moving down.
00:29:47.000A lot of people retire to Florida, as you know, but since covid in particular and since I've been governor in particular, more families have moved than ever before.
00:29:56.800And a lot of it is because of our approach to education and our willingness to stand up against things like the gender ideology and the woke agenda.
00:30:05.100Well, I want to honor your time, but there's a couple more quick things.
00:30:08.100I want to make sure that I get you to talk about the fatherhood initiative, because I've heard of this.
00:30:13.960I've heard the first lady explained this so eloquently and so well, an event that we did together a few months ago.
00:30:19.160But I want to hear you talk about the fatherhood initiative and what it is, because I think it's really unique and could be really effective.
00:30:27.780Well, when I became governor, we would do we provided some money to a group called All Pro Dads, which is run by former NFL coach Tony Dungy.
00:30:36.180And Tony tells the story that when he became the head coach at Tampa, he went to a prison to minister to the prisoners.
00:30:44.440And he said, you know, after doing that, I noticed the reason they weren't the reason they were in prison was not because they were poor, their race or any of that.
00:30:53.540He said the reason they were in prison is because none of them had a dad in the house.
00:30:57.080They did not have a father figure that that could keep them on the straight and narrow and that could good look after them.
00:31:05.000And so he said, we got to do something about it.
00:31:06.940And so those types of programs where you're fostering fatherhood opportunities, you're promoting fatherhood in the community can make a huge, huge difference in the future of so many communities throughout the state of Florida.
00:31:23.080So our father initiative formalizes the relationship that the state has with so many of these these great groups.
00:31:29.720We in Florida are different than many states that we work with our faith based community and we're proud to do that.
00:31:36.980And we work with churches and we work with synagogues.
00:31:40.780So we've put money behind it to have programs to get the fathers back into the lives of the kids.
00:31:48.460And I think, you know, if you look, it is kind of the stable two parent household is is the minority.
00:31:55.980I don't think it's even the majority in terms of in terms of the kids that are being born nowadays.
00:32:00.420And if we can just change that and have fathers be more involved, some of it is they some of these guys need to take responsibility and some of them don't do that.
00:32:09.080And so there's a whole host of factors.
00:32:10.480But if we can get the fathers back in in a really big way and that's just standard, you're going to see a lot of other problems disappear.
00:33:01.140And then some of the fights that we had to do to be able to keep Florida free and really make Florida a leader.
00:33:07.480And I think there's a lot of implications for what other states can do.
00:33:11.520And some states have done some of the stuff Florida's done.
00:33:14.100And I do think that there's implications nationally.
00:33:17.160One of the things we did, and you mentioned Disney, you mentioned taking on the gender ideology.
00:33:24.020You mentioned some of the stuff we stood up against the elites in COVID is the reality is right now in our country, entrenched progressive elites are a big, big problem.
00:33:35.640But they control so many institutions that if you really want to have a thriving state, you've got to fight these people and you've got to beat these people.
00:33:45.040And I think in Florida, we've shown that we've been able to succeed against a lot of really powerful institutions.
00:33:52.500And we've been able to prove a lot of the naysayers wrong.
00:33:55.420So it doesn't have to be this way in terms of some of the problems we see in other states or around the country.