00:00:40.000His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:49.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:00.000Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
00:01:09.000Leadership is so hard to find in today's America.
00:01:14.000Florida is a blueprint, or you could say it's a red print for the rest of the nation.
00:01:21.000Whether it be holding Disney to a transparent standard, getting rid of critical race theory, not mandating the vaccine, functioning schools, not just functioning schools, but flourishing schools, a booming economy, incredible achievements across the board on educational issues, anti-crime bills that are being passed to actually hold criminals accountable.
00:02:13.000So Governor, tell us about your new book.
00:02:17.000Well, The Courage to Be Free is answering the question, kind of, how did Florida become the focus of freedom in the country and even around the world, people that will have come over the last few years?
00:02:28.000And we lay out one, our approach to leadership and then a lot of the issues that we tackled and then the results that we were able to produce.
00:02:51.000You got to be careful about what you're doing.
00:02:54.000And I rejected that advice because my view was I may have gotten 50% of the vote, but I earned 100% of the executive power.
00:03:02.000And I intend to use it to be able to advance the best interests of Florida and to fulfill the promises I made to the people that elected me.
00:03:09.000So we studied all the different constitutional provisions in Florida, statutory.
00:03:14.000So I had a keen sense of the pressure points, how the governor can act unilaterally.
00:03:39.000We also said, we're going to lead by conviction.
00:03:42.000I never took a poll because the poll's not important about what people think initially.
00:03:47.000What's important is if you set the vision and produce results, you can get people to join your side.
00:03:54.000And then finally, we said we're going to lead on offense because so many Republicans sit back and they let the media define the terms of the debate.
00:04:03.000They get take pot shots from the media.
00:04:05.000And what I did is, I'm going out there.
00:04:09.000I'm going to be leading on all these issues.
00:04:10.000And I think it makes it very difficult for them to hit you properly.
00:04:15.000And really, it's like the best defense is sometimes a good offense.
00:04:18.000So we did all those things, took on all the issues, and then we ended up winning not by 32,000 votes, but 1.5 million votes.
00:04:26.000We took a state that had a decade until I became governor of one point races, whether it's president or governor, and we turned it into a nearly 20-point win that took every Democrat out of statewide office.
00:04:40.000We have 100% Republicans in statewide office in Florida for the first time since Reconstruction.
00:04:45.000We have super majorities now in the Florida legislature, and we won 29 of 34 school board races that we got involved in.
00:04:54.000And so this was not just me that had success.
00:05:16.000And not just on the state level, but members of Congress, Ana Paulina Luna benefited from that.
00:05:21.000I do not think that there would have been a Republican majority if it wasn't A, for your courage to stand up on the bad maps that were first offered to say, hey, we just want fairness.
00:05:31.000And then B, actually the red wave that occurred in Florida.
00:05:35.000But that's an incredible transformation from 32,000 votes to 1.3 million votes.
00:05:40.000Republicans are kind of going through a soul-searching moment.
00:05:43.000If you were to just offer a public vision, which is what your book is about, the courage to be free, what should Republicans learn from Florida's success where other states floundered and had lackluster and mediocre results in the midterms?
00:05:57.000Well, one of the themes of the book, particularly early on before I became governor, was just how kind of the entrenched D.C. Republican Party was just out of touch with our voter base.
00:06:08.000And it left a lot of them disappointed and left a lot of them demoralized.
00:06:13.000And so I think what we did in Florida is the people that are our core supporters, when you tell them you're going to do something, follow through and do it.
00:06:22.000And when they see you doing and delivering on what you say you're going to do, man, they got your back.
00:06:28.000They're going to be flocking to the polls.
00:06:31.000And so you really have got to be able to do that.
00:06:33.000Now, you also do that in a way that wins the argument with kind of independence and the middle of the electorate.
00:06:40.000And we want independence in Florida by 18 points.
00:06:43.000And so whether it was COVID, whether it was education, crime, all these things, we decisively won the argument.
00:06:50.000But, you know, what we also ended up doing is we demoralized the Democrat base because, you know, some of their voters had to acknowledge Florida's doing okay.
00:07:00.000And so it's not that a lot of them came and voted for me, you know, but some of them just stayed home because they knew that what the Democrats were offering, you know, wasn't better.
00:07:10.000But I think the root of it is, you know, some of these entrenched DC-centric, whether it's consultants or other type of stuff, they're typically going to give you bad advice.
00:07:20.000And the fact that I didn't take a single poll in four years and went from winning by 32,000 to 1.5 million should tell you that following that advice is usually not necessary.
00:07:41.000Do you have a council of people around you?
00:07:43.000I'm just curious because if it's not then public polls, you know, something is dictating, or is it just like, hey, I'm going to do the right thing and we're going to just keep fighting?
00:07:53.000Well, I think it's a combination of things.
00:08:00.000And so you look at things like our fight with Disney on parents' rights in education.
00:08:04.000I'm obviously judging this stuff based on being a governor, but I'm also a dad.
00:08:08.000And I've got two, four, six, a four, and a two-year-old at home.
00:08:12.000And I'm sensitive to some of the influences that we can see in some of these schools around the country.
00:08:18.000I think it's wrong that a parent would have to worry about.
00:08:21.000some of the stuff like gender ideology be in their kids' second grade classroom.
00:08:26.000So some of it's just personal experience.
00:08:28.000Some of it is like, I have a foundation of what I vision for a free society based on understanding our constitutional tradition.
00:08:36.000Now, I think one of the differences now between maybe even 20 years ago, but certainly when someone like President Reagan came on the scene in 1980 is that, yes, government is a problem, particularly the federal administrative state and the weaponized bureaucracies, but you also have a woke agenda being pursued by big corporations, universities, all these other institutions in society.
00:08:59.000And so my view is the free state of Florida means, at least in part, that we're going to protect your freedom from having the pathologies of the left imposed on you, whether it be through legislation or whether it be through kind of this extra constitutional power that seems to be wielded.
00:09:17.000And then finally, and this was really important during COVID, you know, I dig in there and kind of take the data in or read the different things that I need to read so that I'm able to make decisions.
00:09:29.000I think that you do have good people that are around you that can provide you that, but I don't think that that's a substitute for you kind of grappling with it yourself and then asking the tough questions.
00:09:42.000You've been one of the few courageous leaders on a state level to actually understand how big corporations and government get in bed together.
00:09:51.000This is something that is a new development in the conservative movement because typically, especially, yes, sometimes in Florida, kind of representing, you know, the big chamber of commerce, you don't care about that.
00:10:01.000Just tell us a little bit about the Disney thing, what you learned in that entire chapter and how that could be applied to conservatism more broadly across the country.
00:10:10.000Well, I think Florida, when I became governor, you know, was really driven by the chamber's agenda.
00:10:16.000And, you know, some of this stuff was positive, like, you know, better legal climate, what have you.
00:10:21.000But I think I've really changed that to where, yes, just because you're a corporation and you're, quote, private, you know, if you're going to try to be exercising public power, you know, we're going to take that very seriously and we're going to fight back, particularly when it's injurious to education and our children.
00:10:38.000And so the Disney thing was a situation where, yes, they were getting involved in trying to tank a bill that was very important to a lot of parents.
00:10:46.000Yes, they were advocating things in Burbank about their programming and sexualizing their programming, which as a parent I found very, very problematic.
00:10:55.000But they're doing that while getting subsidies from the state of Florida.
00:11:00.000They had their own government given to them in the 1960s.
00:11:03.000And so they were exempt from laws, had big tax breaks, were able to do all kinds of things that no other individual or company can do in Florida.
00:11:13.000So we had to make the decision, okay, how can they do that and have all that and then turn around and use the subsidies to advocate against us.
00:11:39.000Florida was a narrowly Republican state and it is now overwhelmingly conservative across the board, thanks to the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis.
00:12:06.000So the need to provide the truth as girls and women are contemplating what to do about their pregnancy is greater now than ever before.
00:12:13.000Ultrasounds save babies because ultrasounds give the truth at a time everyone else is saying it's not just a baby, it's just a clump of cells.
00:12:21.000When you introduce a girl to her baby by providing an ultrasound, you are giving her the truth at the most important time of her life.
00:12:28.000And more than 85% of the time, she will choose life.
00:12:32.000You don't have to make a lot of noise to make a big difference for life.
00:12:34.000Just give an ultrasound at preborn.org to be a hero for life.
00:12:52.000So, Governor, your blueprint in Florida has amazing success, and you contrast that with what Governor Newsom has and has not done in California.
00:14:02.000We started to see it when I became governor, particularly in response to the California and Newsome COVID policies.
00:14:09.000You start seeing California license plates in Florida.
00:14:11.000I can tell you a lot of Florida voters freaked out because they're thinking about, oh my gosh, what are these Californians going to do in terms of their voting?
00:14:18.000Well, it turned out a lot of them were people that think more like us who just had enough.
00:14:23.000And yes, part of it was the lockdowns where he's locking down his people, his businesses, then he's going and eating without a mask at the French laundry.
00:14:33.000And a lot of people got upset about that.
00:16:12.000They're getting less and they have less people than Florida.
00:16:15.000Going into 2024, Governor, I think the story of the contrast between states is a winning message that can maybe heal the country and also make Republicans victorious.
00:16:28.000Well, I mean, if you look at the New York governor's race in 2022, I mean, Lee Zeldon came was like a seven-point spread in a state that has, I think, three times more Democrats than Republicans.
00:16:39.000And honestly, if you took all the Republicans that moved to Florida over the last four years and let them vote for Zelda, it would have been even closer.
00:16:46.000And so that's telling me that, yeah, you have the woke left and you have some people that are just never going to see the light.
00:16:53.000But, you know, you've got a lot of people who have voted for Democrats in the past who realize we can't let the criminals run the streets.
00:17:02.000We can't have children in school being told that they were born in the wrong body.
00:17:08.000We can't have these draconian COVID mandates.
00:17:11.000And even today, you have universities in blue states that are forcing the college students to get booster shots.
00:17:18.000After all we know, they're still doing that.
00:17:20.000And so I think we probably have a better opportunity than we've ever had, maybe since 1980, to get people to vote for our side who've not necessarily done that in the past.
00:17:32.000Part of it is I think we have records of success.