Ep 150 ｜ Ron DeSantis vs. Everyone： The Governor Who BROKE the Media ｜ Ron DeSantis ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
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Summary
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a conservative firebrand. He fights for parental rights and personal freedoms, fights for a border crisis, and has an A+ from the NRA. He s 36 years younger than Joe Biden, and 36 years older than any other governor in the country.
Transcript
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I can't wait for you. I can't wait for the next next hour. The New York magazine said if today's
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were elected president, he would kill democracy slowly and methodically. He is deeply authoritarian.
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Wow. Esquire said, dear America, run. Do not walk away from this dangerous man.
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The Washington Post said that he is creating a paradise of authoritarianism.
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Joy Reid, I mean, she wanted some scraps on the table here. She got involved. She accused him of,
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yes, racism and child abuse. 60 Minutes accused him of corruption and racism. The Atlantic accused
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him of being anti-freedom. Business Insider called him a very dangerous individual. ABC's chief
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legal correspondent called him a fascist and a bigot. LA Times accused him of being homophobic,
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using homophobic tactics that were right out of Russia's authoritarian playbook. Vanity Fair,
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excuse the language here, Vanity Fair called him a smug asshole. The New York Times has called him a
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racist and radioactive Republican. He's been compared to, now this is weird, Hitler and described as Donald
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Trump, but worse. I didn't think it could get worse. That's what they told us. It has. These are all
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lies. In reality, our next guest is the man who faced off with Disney and won. He defends corporate
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wokeism and ESG. He fights against it every day. He fights for parental rights and personal freedoms.
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During COVID-19 lockdowns, he kept schools open and businesses running. He blocked county and
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municipal COVID-19 fines. He fought vaccine passports, mask mandates, school closures.
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As blue states collapsed, today's guest has maintained one of the strongest economies
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in the world, with job outgrowth outpacing the national rate. He has shown more attention to
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the border crisis than Biden has. He has an A-plus from the NRA. He's 36 years younger than Joe Biden.
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Please welcome today's podcast guest, Governor Ron DeSantis. Are you unhappy with your progressive
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Governor, how are you, sir? I'm doing good. How are you doing? It's great. Thank you for being
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a part of the podcast. I appreciate it. I'm happy to do it. I've been watching you now. I'm sitting
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here in Texas, and I've been watching you for a while, and my only complaint is that you're in
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Florida and not Texas. Governor Abbott is, I think he's doing a fine job, but you seem to be leading the
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way. You're at the, I think, I expressed it earlier this week as you are hitting all of the right things,
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and you're doing it at the right speed. And it's a little breathtaking if you're on the left, because
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I don't think I've ever seen anyone correct course as fast as you are. Can you keep that up?
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Glenn, when you get elected, as I did, I actually sat at the desk I'm sitting at right now, my first
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day as governor, and I looked around the desk and I said, you know, I don't know what SOB is going to
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succeed me in this office, but they're not going to have any meat left on the bone. I'm just going to
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take it off. I've been given an opportunity to lead. I've been given an opportunity to use the
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authority vested in me under the Florida Constitution. And if I see ways to make a difference, I'm not going
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to sit here and take 20 polls. In fact, I haven't taken a poll since I've been governor. I'm going
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to know what I believe and have faith that if I lead the way and show a strong vision, implement that
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vision and we get good results and the people of Florida are going to have my back. And that's
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exactly what's happened. So as a casual observer, how much of what you do is through executive order
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and how much is through legislature? We do a lot through the legislature. We've had,
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I've now had four legislative sessions under our belt. There's been no governor in the history
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of Florida that's been able to work with the legislature to generate as much as we've been
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able to do. Now, during COVID, a lot of what I was doing was executive orders to rein in local
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governments, for example, provide protection for people to work and businesses to be open.
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We did use an emergency order to make sure kids were in school in summer of 2020. And we were creative
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about how we use those authorities. And it obviously worked out very well for us. But if you look at
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most of the stuff that we've done, take critical race theory, for example, yes, through our board of
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education at the state, we did ban it through effectively an executive function. However,
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in order to really make that effective, you need to codify that in the legislature and you need the
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legislature to provide parents with the recourse to make sure those standards are followed. So we did
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a Stop Woke Act, we called it. It's Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act that provides
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protections for parents in K-12, also for employees, because the corporations are trying to shove the CRT
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down their throats, too, to be able to vindicate their rights. And so if a school district departs from our
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state standards, parents can now go in and sue the school district to be able to enforce compliance. And so you
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can't do it all just through executive action. You need the legislature to do it. And so we've been
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able to do really, really big reforms. Now, there are certain things that I do that are not legislative
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in nature that are in the state constitution. So, for example, my first week in office, it was almost
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a year after the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. And I became friends with a lot
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of the victims' parents over the course of that year. And the thing that they were so frustrated
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about is no one had been held accountable. They passed the buck on this guy. Everyone knew when
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the shooting happened exactly who it was, exactly. They were not surprised, but yet no one was held
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accountable. So I removed the sheriff of Broward County that first week. And that was the first
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time they had had any accountability. But I have authority under Florida's constitution to suspend
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these elected officials at the county level. They are not subject to impeachment under our constitution.
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The governor serves as kind of the way to ensure that they're following their duties.
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And if I suspend you, yeah, you have the right to contest that in front of the Senate in Florida.
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But if the Senate agrees with me, then you are gone. And that's exactly what happened
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with the sheriff of Broward. And then, of course, more recently, we just did the thing with the
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Tampa prosecutor for similar reasons, that he was not following his duty. Now, he's going to have an
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opportunity to contest that in front of the Florida Senate. But if the Florida Senate agrees with me,
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then he's going to continue to be out of office. Well, I will tell you that it was interesting to me.
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I think it was. Oh, I don't remember who wrote it. It was somebody on the left. And they wrote that
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you are an absolute dictator for doing that because you just want him to enforce the I think they even
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use the word dictates or policies that you choose. And that's not what he was doing.
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Right. No. And he had. And what happened was I had my legal office here undertake a review of all
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of our state attorneys. We've got 20. Most places call them district attorneys in Florida. They're
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considered state attorneys. And I said, you see this pathogen across the country of these prosecutors
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nullifying the law. And as bad as the defund the police movement's been, Glenn, I think these
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prosecutors have been equally, if not more detrimental to the society. Because when these
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prosecutors get in, the community becomes hollowed out with crime. That's what's happening in Los
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Angeles. That's what happened in San Francisco. So they did a review over many, many months. And it
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all came back to this guy in Tampa. Law enforcement hated the guy. But he had signed multiple letters
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saying he was not going to enforce certain laws. And then he had policies in his own office that were
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called presumptive non-prosecution. Well, Glenn, when the legislature passes a law, they're presuming
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that you're following it, not presuming that you're not following it. So he basically says, well,
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I'm not going to enforce the law. Maybe in a special circumstance I will, but otherwise I'm just going
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to take a pass. So for all those reasons, he was not satisfying his duty under the Florida
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Constitution. So we acted pursuant to an express provision of the Constitution. He now has the
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ability to contest that in front of the Florida Senate. But Glenn, put yourself in his shoes.
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Would you want to be arguing in front of a legislative body that whatever they enact into
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law is not binding on you, that you're a law to yourself? I don't think he's going to get a very
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favorable reception from there, but he has every right to do it. See, this is the problem. And I'd love
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for you to spend just a minute talking about the importance of this. We pass laws. That's different
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than edicts. I even think it's different than what the administration is doing through all of the
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departments. We pass laws, and that's what our elected officials are for. And then no one is held
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to any kind of standard. No one is held and has to pay for their crimes at the highest of levels.
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And you're getting this attitude from the general public. The bad ones are just saying,
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I'm just going to do whatever I want. The good ones are becoming extraordinarily disillusioned,
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and they feel under attack at the same time from the government and the crimes in the community.
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So I think what we've seen is when the progressives talk about, you know, they want to,
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quote, protect democracy, they don't have any allegiance to any particular institution or the
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rule of law. What they have allegiance to is leftist ideology. So if any institution in society
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is advancing leftist ideology, then that's what democracy means. But if an elected official like
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me is standing up against that, then all of a sudden they consider that a threat to democracy. So it's
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totally results oriented. They don't care about the rule of law for itself. And so you end up with
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situations where prosecutors are nullifying laws. You end up in situations in Washington, D.C., Glenn,
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right now, if you are in that jury box and you are somebody that is opposed to the swamp, they are
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going to tie you up and they are going to nail you to that wall. But if you're somebody that's part of
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that swamp, it doesn't matter if you're if they have you dead to rights, they're going to let you walk,
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just like they let that Russia collusion hoax or walk a couple of months ago. So the standards of
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justice are different. And basically, I think it's driven by a progressive impulse that the ends
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justify the means. We are, you know, George Washington said what makes us different is we
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are a nation of laws and not of men. We are truly a nation of men now, where just depends on whose side
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you're on and who's in charge. We can't just like the executive orders. We can't we can't do things
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through fiat because the country keeps swinging so far back and forth. We we have to stop and and start
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to follow our Constitution and the actual laws. How long can this last before this pendulum just snaps?
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Well, I think the good thing is, is at the local level, you are seeing a reaction against these prosecutors
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basically putting themselves above the law. I mean, imagine someone got recalled in San Francisco. I know I
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thought that was possible. Although I will note, Glenn, if you look at that vote on that recall, the wealthy,
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mostly white people voted to keep him in power. Right. Because they don't bear the brunt of his bad policies.
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It's all about woke virtue signaling to them. But you get down on the working class levels in San
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Francisco. They all voted to kick this guy out because they were having to pay the price for it.
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So I think the vast, vast majority of the public recognizes that rogue prosecutors are a threat to
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public safety and ultimately a threat to individual freedom. Now, on the federal level, I think what you've
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had developed, and you know this better than anyone, many, many decades, you have an administrative
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state that stands as a fourth branch of government. And the problem, I think, for Republicans is, is that
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when Democrats win, the bureaucracy tends to want to do what the Democrats want to do anyways.
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Well, when Republicans win, it's like the Democrats still control the machinery of government. I mean,
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we saw it with Donald Trump, where they weaponized some of these agencies to try to kneecap his presidency.
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But we've also seen them in prior years frustrate basic conservative policy. And so I think that
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bureaucracy, how much it's grown, the power, the lack of accountability. And, you know, Congress is
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to blame for a lot of this because they've advocated their responsibility. They have the power of the
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person. They will not use it. IRS agents, they're going to do give me a break. You could defund that
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crap easy if the Republicans take control. Do you think they will? I wouldn't bet on them actually doing
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that. So you have the tools under the Constitution. It's just, you know, politicians
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would rather they don't want to make waves. They don't want to get into a confrontation where they
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could potentially lose an election. And so that's why they don't use the tools that they have. But
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the founders were smart. The body closest to the people, the House of Representatives controls the
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purse strings. And we can come and have a red wave and we can send people there on that mission.
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And the question is, are they going to actually heed that? Or are they going to try to get this
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that are maybe running for governor, running for Congress, Senate. Talk to those people because you,
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I don't know what it is, and I want to get into this a little later. You have the courage,
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and courage is a muscle. And if, unless you exercise it, it gets weaker and weaker. And I'm
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guessing that your courage is getting stronger and stronger as you exercise. Talk to the people
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who are going in. What makes, what makes you different than, than the regular run of the mill
00:17:24.540
GOP that we can't trust? What is it that they need to have? Well, look, I think, I think two things
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in respect to governors, because the governor really is different than somebody going up into
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the Congress. And the governor, you got to be a leader. If you're not going to lead, you're just
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not going to be effective. So what I did when I got elected, I had my transition team give me
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just a notebook filled with all the powers that the governor has constitutionally, statutorily,
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customary powers that governors have wielded, what your relationship to local government is,
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such as suspending these elected officials. So I had an agenda. I had a lot of things I wanted to do,
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but I also recognize this is a constitutional system with checks and balances. You better have
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a strategy for how you're going to be able to navigate those different pressure points and make
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sure you're using the leverage that you have. So I would just tell people, be very, very conscientious
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of what you can do on your own, what you need legislative buy-in for, because when you are saying you're
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going to do things and then you fall on your face, the voters get frustrated with that. And I think
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with me, I deliver on what I said, and it's not because I'm the only one willing to do it. I think
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part of it is I have a strategy about how to get it done. Now, in terms of the courage thing, what I
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will tell folks is, so the great example for me is the summer of 2020 with COVID. You know, we get a
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COVID wave in Florida. They're telling me to shut down the state. We had our schools going to reopen.
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And everyone's saying it's a disaster. They were accusing me of wanting to kill all these kids.
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I was getting hammered day in and day out. I knew what the right thing to do was. And I just made the
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decision that whatever, however the political chips fall, I am totally fine with that. I would rather
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have stood up for the jobs and education of the people I represent than try to salvage my own hide or
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my own job. And at that point, no one knew politically how it would turn out for me. But I think what's
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happened is when people see you're willing to stand up for them when it's not easy,
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man, they will have your back. They'll come out in droves to support you. So in the moment,
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sometimes it feels like, you know, the world's coming down on you. You're getting hit from the
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left and the press and everything. But in reality, there are so many people who are just good,
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God-fearing, hardworking people who are watching that and they're seeing you. And if they see you
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stand and take the arrows for them, man, they're going to be with you for good.
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Yeah, I think that's the secret of Donald Trump as well. He just continued to take the arrows and
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he was, you know, doing it for the American people, as he says. Let me switch subjects to one of my
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favorite subjects, ESG and the Great Reset. I'd like you to define, if you can, fascism because
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you're called a fascist all the time. And I don't think the press knows what a fascist is
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because ESG and the Great Reset, that is the definition without the concentration camps of fascism.
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Well, the melding of corporate power and government power has traditionally been what
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fascism has been defined as. And I think the problem with ESG is they're trying to do a lot
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through the economy, which I disagree with, but what they cannot get through, through the ballot box.
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And so in some respects, it's government subcontracting out the ruling class ideology
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to titans of industry. And so you have these massive corporations essentially exercising public
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power. I mean, Glenn, if you have the top Wall Street banks that collude to say, we're not going
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to finance a gun manufacturer, we're not going to finance a company involved in border security,
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they have enough power where they're effectively altering the policy of the country. And that is
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not a healthy thing. That is changing policy outside the normal constitutional process.
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And so I think it's healthier for a society to have businesses focusing on doing their core missions,
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but not leveraging their economic power to try to advance a partisan political agenda.
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So have you, has your treasurer divested from places like BlackRock? How are you fighting it in
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Florida? So we got all our proxy rights back. So when I became governor, BlackRock was voting Florida's
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proxy rights. So we have all our proxy rights back. The next board of administration meeting-
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Hang on, explain that for the average person so they know how powerful that is and what that means.
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So when you own stock, you have the ability to vote as shareholders. Now an individual,
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even people that are very wealthy, likely aren't going to own enough to make a huge difference,
00:22:06.160
but a state of Florida with almost a $200 billion pension, you know, that's some significant voting
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rights. And then if you pull those with other red states, you're talking about really making an
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impact. The default was these asset managers were just voting those shares. So they were voting those
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accordance to their political preferences. So we took those back. We do not allow them to vote our
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shares. We're going to be implementing a rule on August 23rd with our state board of administration,
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which is saying you're not allowed to do ESG. That's going to set us up in the next legislative
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session to codify that in statute. And so it's going to make a big splash because we're a big
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pension system. And some of these businesses are going to have to choose between going down the ESG
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rabbit hole or being able to be invested with the state of Florida. And I think what you're going to
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see is a lot of other states also get on this bandwagon. What I'd like to see is them all do
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statutory changes that puts the wall up against ESG. But then us vote our shares together,
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because if we pulled our voting rights together, we would be able to counteract what California and
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New York and a lot of these other a lot of these other pension plans are doing.
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Talk to me about the S and the G. I see some states going after the E to protect energy,
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but I am continually frustrated by the states not taking a stand on the S and the G, which is going
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to affect not only the companies, but the individuals as well. You can be a parent outspoken,
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and you'll get a low S score and it will hurt you.
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Yeah, look, I think, I mean, just think about what they've done with S and G and major high
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profile things in the United States in the last couple of years. The Georgia voting law,
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you had all these major corporations in Georgia come out and compare voter ID to the second coming
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of Jim Crow, where people were denied the right to vote at all based on their skin color.
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And you'd have Delta, Coke, they're all issuing these statements. And then what ended up happening?
00:24:08.460
They just had their primary in May, made a massive increase in voter turnout. Give me a break.
00:24:14.880
And of course, when Disney brought us on the parents' rights and education bill, this is their social
00:24:20.740
agenda that they're trying to basically impose on society. So they opposed our law, which was trying
00:24:27.700
to keep out sexuality and gender ideology from elementary school and making sure that parents
00:24:34.700
were informed about what was going on with their student. For example, Glenn, there were some
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schools in Florida that they were changing, quote unquote, the gender of a student without the
00:24:44.380
parent even knowing about it. First of all, they shouldn't be doing that anyways. But to do that
00:24:47.860
behind the parents' back, that's not what we believe is a fact. But Disney thought that that was bad
00:24:52.940
legislation. So they came out. And here's the thing, from the shareholder perspective, if you look from
00:24:58.540
the time Disney came out against this to now, they've lost massive market cap way above and beyond what
00:25:04.800
the market has gone down as a whole. So they've gone even more. And I think they alienated a lot of
00:25:10.180
folks. And so it raises the issue of, OK, ESG is not good for our economy. It's not good to have major
00:25:18.320
economic power trying to impose these basically leftist agendas. But just from a fiduciary duty
00:25:24.580
perspective, a CEO getting involved in this stuff is not following the best interests of the
00:25:30.680
shareholders. So there's a lot of people that have Disney stock and their pension plans and 401k who
00:25:36.200
were hurt by what Disney did to oppose our parents' rights law. And you are an attorney that went to
00:25:42.600
Yale and Harvard, a good attorney. You were a JAG officer. It strikes me, being a nobody, not knowing
00:25:50.000
the law, that there is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen at some point.
00:25:56.000
I think that's going to happen. I think that's inevitable because I think that you can't define,
00:26:01.260
and that's actually one of the things that we're doing, Glenn, in Florida, is we're defining
00:26:05.480
fiduciary duty in a way that excludes this stuff to say, well, you know, if we do ESG 100 years from
00:26:12.080
now, it's going to be better. No, no, no, no, no. It's what is doing the best for the shareholder.
00:26:16.640
And so making sure that that fiduciary duty definition is what the traditional definition
00:26:22.280
was is really important. And as long as that definition is upheld, then they clearly are
00:26:27.900
violating their fiduciary duty because they're going off on all these tangents. And oh, by the way,
00:26:32.580
these ESG dominated funds have performed poorly. They perform worse than funds that are not doing that.
00:26:39.340
BlackRock came out today and said, expect bad returns for the next 10 years. No, thank you.
00:26:45.180
No, thank you. Let me let me stay on this for just a second. There was a study, in fact,
00:26:53.740
a couple of studies that came out of Europe that I saw just last week, maybe a couple of weeks ago
00:26:58.780
from England, the National Institute of Health. You also have Sweden and Finland. And there was
00:27:07.520
another country that have done studies now on the effects of changing children's gender. And they
00:27:14.760
have now outlawed it and said only in the most extreme cases can anything be done because they're
00:27:23.640
finding all kinds of evidence that it is, it's a society is changing and it is now a popular thing
00:27:32.440
and it is affecting mainly girls. We are seeing an attack on our children and especially on our
00:27:42.100
girls. You just banned this kind of gender treatment. And again, you're called, you're called
00:27:49.880
a monster for it. Why did you, why did you ban this? Well, I think it's interesting, Glenn,
00:27:56.220
if you look over the last couple of years with COVID as well, these European countries, you know,
00:28:00.940
they're basically secular, more liberal democracies than we are. But yet the medical profession has
00:28:07.560
not been kind of taken over by ideology and partisanship the way it has in the United States.
00:28:13.480
So if you looked at Sweden and some of these countries, how they handled COVID, it was evidence
00:28:17.520
based. And you see the same thing with this. They did go down the road of trying to do, and they'll
00:28:23.360
call it gender affirming care, but you're giving people, very young kids, puberty blockers,
00:28:28.400
you're doing sex change operations that are irreversible on them. And what they found was
00:28:33.520
like, this was very, very damaging. Over 80% of the dysphoria that young people have resolves itself
00:28:40.960
by the time they get older. Why would you disfigure these kids knowing the harm that that could do in
00:28:47.260
the future? And so the science on this is incredibly weak to justify being able to do it. And yet we have
00:28:55.420
people testifying at our board of medicine hearing who went through these procedures and regret it
00:29:02.040
and talk about how damaging it's been. And so our view is in the state of Florida, if you're 14 years
00:29:07.980
old, you cannot go and get a tattoo in the state of Florida. Why should you be able to go in the left
00:29:15.180
wants you to be able to do this without parent permission? Why would you be able to go take your
00:29:20.260
perhaps have someone take your private parts away? It just doesn't make sense. And it's not
00:29:25.300
justified by the science. And so we put a lot of science in showed what the studies showed. And
00:29:31.480
particularly in Europe, they're following the science in the United States, it's being driven
00:29:36.820
by ideology. So here we are putting our foot down. I think woke medicine is a huge threat to to to our
00:29:44.060
social well being, because people are not going to trust these people going forward. You go back even
00:29:49.180
five years ago, someone had an MD by their name, I instinctively gave them respect. I'm like, man,
00:29:55.740
you graduate from medical school. Now a lot of the medical education is going woke. Ideology
00:30:00.860
is really dominating. We saw it all throughout COVID. And you see it in this issue. And it's really,
00:30:06.180
really damaging a lot of people. And I've said, we think they may be able to anyways, but we're going
00:30:10.520
to make sure in our law that people that have undergone this, if they get older, and they have big time
00:30:15.360
problems, they should be able to sue these physicians for damages, because these physicians
00:30:21.920
Man, I read testimonials from people every day, every day, been reading them for the last two
00:30:28.820
years, I've never received so many letters, and testimonials from anything I've ever advertised.
00:30:35.100
And I think that's because when you have pain, like I had pain, and you have gotten to the place
00:30:40.660
where you just don't have any hope anymore. You're like, nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to
00:30:44.280
work. This is it. This is the rest of my life. When somebody says, try this. And it's simple,
00:30:52.000
like Relief Factor. The first thing is, it's not going to work, because I've tried everything else
00:30:56.340
that is so simple, it's not going to work. My wife made me try Relief Factor for three weeks.
00:31:02.480
And I was stubborn and really said, well, maybe working a little bit. But after I stopped taking it,
00:31:08.680
three weeks after the three week quick start, because I thought, well, let's see if it's really
00:31:12.620
working. My pain came back full force. And it's remarkable. It's changed my life. That's why
00:31:18.780
people write those testimonials and tell me what their experience was. Because it's life changing,
00:31:23.500
you get your you get your life back. I want you to go to relieffactor.com. That's relieffactor.com.
00:31:29.000
Try the quick starts 1995 70% of the people who try it go on to order more. It's relieffactor.com.
00:31:35.960
The thing that is puzzling to me, and maybe it's just they win either way. They are doing so much
00:31:45.300
damage to these institutions. As you said, medicine has really no credibility. Pharmaceutical
00:31:53.100
companies no longer have any credibility. The government, the courts, everything has lost its
00:31:59.500
credibility. That's one of the things that they are looking for. They want that trust in this system
00:32:06.720
to be destroyed. So we have to build something new. Is it their is it their arrogance that is driving
00:32:15.580
this? Is it they they they just are hell bent on destroying it? Or do they know something we don't
00:32:23.320
know? Because they're not acting like rational human beings at all on any of this? Well, I think
00:32:29.320
it's two things. I mean, I think there's a lot of people that are very militant. And I think that
00:32:32.760
they view our society as being basically illegitimate in many respects. That's why you see things like the
00:32:39.800
1619 project trying to say that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery. I mean,
00:32:45.160
that's just factually false. Correct. We know the pamphlets, what they wrote. We know why they did it.
00:32:50.040
But they're doing that to try to say, you know what, this country right from the very beginning
00:32:55.380
was bad. And I think they want that with all these institutions now to do it. So I do think that
00:33:01.640
there's that impulse. But I think there's a lot of these people involved in these fields that just
00:33:06.180
don't have the courage to step up and say this is wrong. Because if you speak out, man, they will
00:33:11.640
bring down a ton of bricks on you. And we saw that with COVID, where a lot of these physicians would
00:33:16.920
privately tell me, yeah, you're right about the lockdowns not working. You're right about kids
00:33:22.000
needing to be in school. You're right about the masks not working. You're right about the vaxes,
00:33:26.360
all this. But they wouldn't say it publicly because they would face a lot of professional harm. And so
00:33:31.780
they've created, I think it's a minority of people, but it almost goes unquestioned and unchallenged
00:33:38.000
because the people that are willing to stick their neck out, man, they get hit and they get hit hard.
00:33:42.860
And if you think about some of the people during COVID who are willing to speak out, people like
00:33:46.400
Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, Martin Kaldor from Harvard, Sinatra Gupta from Oxford, they were right
00:33:52.720
on all these things. But man, they took a lot of fire in the process. So what is it going to take
00:33:58.760
to get the average? Because once the average person, Stolos Nietzsche said in his letter to the Russians,
00:34:06.420
all we have to do is stop giving it power. All we have to do is say no. But that's really hard to
00:34:15.340
do. Not as hard as it was for them, but it is hard to do. What is it going to take to flip the direction?
00:34:25.840
Or has it already been flipped? I think it's really changing. I mean, just think about the media
00:34:31.900
media and how conservatives now approach the media. If I'm not getting attacked by corporate media,
00:34:38.260
then I don't think I'm doing my job right. I don't think I'm doing my job right. They expect me to get
00:34:44.640
smeared by CNN and NBC. And if that's not happening, then they wonder. And if all of a sudden CNN started
00:34:51.580
to say good things about me, a lot of our voters would be like, man, what are you doing that I don't
00:34:56.360
know about this? I don't I don't know why they're saying that for you. So the corporate press
00:35:00.100
basically over half the country doesn't believe a word they say anymore. And so their power to
00:35:05.860
shape the narrative is much diminished from even just a few years ago. And I think you're going to
00:35:11.280
see that as well with how Americans respond to the medical establishment in the future. They're
00:35:16.500
watching this stuff in terms of a sex change operation on a 12 year old. They know instinctively
00:35:22.140
that that is wrong. Same thing with how they view teacher unions. You know, teachers unions for a long
00:35:28.080
time in this country got enormous respect from the public, even a lot of Republican voters because
00:35:33.360
they were representing teachers gave them the benefit of the doubt. Well, now they've seen they tried to
00:35:37.700
lock the kids out of school indefinitely. They see different types of ideology they're trying to do.
00:35:43.160
And so they don't trust anymore. And the parents now want more of an involvement. So I think it's been
00:35:47.500
a massive overreach on part of the woke left. I think people are reacting. I don't think it happened
00:35:53.000
just overnight. But I definitely think we're on a pathway where a strong majority of the public
00:35:58.720
is basically telling these people, who the hell do you think you are?
00:36:02.420
Well, the other side of that is we just passed a climate bill and a inflation reduction bill
00:36:08.580
that is neither of those things. The most disturbing thing is the 87,000 CIA agents. It's not CIA. I'm
00:36:18.620
sorry, IRS agents. The numbers are staggering. We don't have that many billionaires to sift through
00:36:26.520
their garbage to find out if they're cheating on taxes. I believe this is first in line, I think,
00:36:33.060
are going to be our farmers. But the average person will get it to it. It goes to, you know,
00:36:40.160
in seven years, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy. We are intentionally being impoverished.
00:36:46.020
And there was actually an amendment when they were debating this in the Senate to say,
00:36:51.160
OK, you can't use any of these IRS agents if someone makes below 400,000 and every Democrat
00:36:56.440
voted that down. And the reason is simple, because that's where they're going to be focusing most of
00:37:01.000
the fire. Billionaires hire people. They hire high-priced lawyers and accountants. What they're
00:37:07.420
doing is they're using the loopholes that Congress has put in there over the years to the best of their
00:37:12.940
benefit. So going after, quote, the billionaires, they're going to have a fleet of lawyers and
00:37:17.520
accountants that are going to be able to defend them. They're going to go after the mom and pop.
00:37:21.540
They're going to go after the small business person, the independent contractor, the Uber driver.
00:37:26.400
And they are going to focus on basically parts of the country that don't support what the regime is
00:37:31.900
trying to do. So I think it's so outrageous, Glenn, that I do think it's going to backfire big time
00:37:37.400
on them politically. The Republican Congress, if we do get House and Senate, which we do,
00:37:42.540
they must defund all of those IRS agents. That is a total travesty.
00:37:47.740
I wonder if we have the backbone in the Republican Party, but I certainly hope so. I mean, I was at CPAC
00:37:56.020
last weekend, and the biggest applause line that I saw in Donald Trump's speech was abolish
00:38:03.860
the Department of Ed. And I think there's a lot of these agencies. I mean, we have to clean out
00:38:11.240
the FBI. I don't know how you we don't need a great reset, but we do need do need to reboot the
00:38:18.320
system and restore its original factory settings. And think about where we are with some of this.
00:38:25.060
I mean, you know, 10 years ago, if you had asked me about Department of Education, EPA, IRS,
00:38:29.460
I would add a negative view. But if you had asked me about DOD or FBI or some of those,
00:38:35.160
I would, because, you know, I was in the military. I've worked with some of these people. I would
00:38:38.640
have said, no, those are good. I can't think of an agency that is performing in, you know,
00:38:45.780
to the benefit of the American people. DOD. I take my son to watch Top Gun Maverick, right?
00:38:51.240
And you're proud of seeing the pilots and all that. Then in real life, what's the Navy doing?
00:38:56.380
They're focusing on pronouns and all these other things. This woke garbage while China's laughing
00:39:01.780
at us. The FBI, what they're targeting parents going to school board meetings, doing basically
00:39:07.820
hoax investigations, whether it's the Russia hoax or whether it's the Michigan kidnapping hoax.
00:39:13.940
This is an agency that's totally lost its way. And then, of course, NIH, CDC, FDA, you telling me
00:39:21.620
they need to be fumigated as much as anybody after how they perform over COVID. And so I think that
00:39:27.700
this bureaucracy is in such need of a total overhaul. You need to fumigate. And we could do it
00:39:34.800
with Republican majorities, at least start and get a lot done. But it's going to be tough. The swamp's
00:39:41.020
going to fight back against them. And the question is, do they have the courage to stand there and stand
00:39:45.220
for us? Because I can tell you, I do not feel as an American represented by this bureaucracy.
00:39:51.680
I feel that this bureaucracy is working against me.
00:39:54.360
Oh, in many levels. This bureaucracy is beginning to scare me. The power that they are
00:40:01.520
gathering. And it's clear they are. I mean, if you just look at the map of where audits are already
00:40:10.580
happening, a lot of them are happening in Florida. A lot of them are happening. Most of them are
00:40:15.260
happening in red states. They're not happening in New York. Well, that's where a lot of those
00:40:19.020
billionaires, well, at least used to live. No, I think you're right. I mean, I think and that's
00:40:25.340
the thing. It's when Reagan was what came on the scene, it was just, you know, the government was
00:40:29.460
clunky. It was too big. It was holding us back. But I think the difference between Reagan's time when
00:40:35.140
when he said government is the problem versus now is just the government. These agencies have been
00:40:39.520
weaponized to to go after people who dissent from the narrative and who dissent from the regime.
00:40:45.140
And that makes them much, much more of a threat to freedom than in Reagan's day.
00:40:49.400
And I think we have a fourth branch of government now. I think we have the intelligence agencies.
00:40:55.820
I think the intelligence agencies are working against they're working for themselves. It feels like
00:41:02.600
and against the American people. Do you agree with that?
00:41:06.160
They have no accountability. And as somebody who was in Congress during the Russia collusion hoax,
00:41:12.380
you know, a lot of those elements were fueling a completely false narrative that basically upended
00:41:19.280
our politics and in many ways kneecap the Trump administration. And that was all based on a lie.
00:41:25.940
And it was a lie that was mobilized because they didn't like who won the 2016 election. And so
00:41:30.900
we, the American people are supposed to govern, not some unelected bureaucracy that is operating
00:41:37.760
in secret. But I do think that the way they work with the media to do these narratives based on
00:41:44.260
classified information has been very destructive to our politics, particularly over the last five
00:41:50.580
Okay. We've been celebrating now Roe versus Wade, that it has been overturned with great joy for a
00:41:57.400
while. It is still remarkable that after 63 million babies that we have finally stopped it, but it's not
00:42:08.160
stopped, you know, nationwide by any stretch. And it's really never going to stop until we change
00:42:13.440
people's hearts. The way to change people's hearts, especially moms, when they come in, they get an
00:42:18.940
ultrasound. This is why the state of New York is against our pre-born centers because they,
00:42:26.080
they, A, don't call the baby a fetus. Look it up. What's the Latin definition? But they also give
00:42:34.660
an ultrasound. 80% chance the mom says, oh, wait a minute, that is a child. I can't, no, I won't. I want
00:42:42.820
to keep my child. We have been working with pre-born centers now all across the country to try to
00:42:48.920
save 50,000 babies by the end of the year and you can help. But now we're doing double time because
00:42:56.500
they have to, they have to outfit these pre-born centers with safety protocols because they're
00:43:02.760
coming under attack. I can't imagine the fear you might have if you were working at one of these
00:43:09.320
centers. Please help us save babies and keep pre-born centers safe so they can continue their
00:43:15.860
life-saving work. Donate whatever you can. A buck helps. A thousand bucks helps as well.
00:43:22.000
Whatever you can do. Donate dial, donate at a pound two 50 and say the keyword baby. That's pound
00:43:29.860
two 50 keyword baby or go to pre-born.com slash Glenn. That's pre-born.com slash Glenn.
00:43:37.220
I read a article in Vanity Fair this morning that was hysterical about your new civics where they say
00:43:45.460
that Thomas Jefferson absolutely raped his slaves. That's not true. Even the, even the best work on
00:43:52.900
this says maybe with Sally Hemings, maybe, but very doubtful. They tried to say that you're dismissing
00:44:01.380
slavery by pointing out that we were a small member. There was slavery that was happening in
00:44:08.620
the Western hemisphere that was far worse. Brazil, far worse than the United States. That doesn't
00:44:14.340
lessen it, does it? No, not at all. It's basically it's accurate history, Glenn. I mean, the fact of
00:44:20.560
the matter is, and this is what Abraham Lincoln thought. This is what Frederick Douglass thought when
00:44:24.780
they were having these debates around the time of the civil war. They said, Hey, this had been something
00:44:29.060
that had been in the colonies for 150 years. The founders laid down principles that were the first
00:44:34.660
principles to ever call slavery into question. The, that was the ammunition that abolitionists
00:44:39.840
later used that Martin Luther King invoked when he was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the
00:44:44.800
sixties. And so the country was founded, uh, for this birth of freedom and they created a constitution,
00:44:50.980
which they honestly believed would set slavery, uh, to, to basically fade away. Now that didn't end up
00:44:57.680
happening, we fought a great civil war over it, but I think the left tries to portray American history
00:45:02.740
as it being founded because of slavery and that this was something that, you know, the founders
00:45:07.940
were really holding up about what their, the country was about. Actually, a lot of them were embarrassed
00:45:12.380
that this was something that was there. Even people like Washington who owned slaves, freed slaves.
00:45:17.800
Jefferson would always, you know, he agonized about slavery and I know he participated in it,
00:45:22.260
but he recognized that it was wrong. So intellectually you had very few of the revolutionary
00:45:26.980
generation make a compelling positive case for slavery. What these people though are doing on
00:45:32.560
the left, they're basically taking the position Stephen Douglas took when he debated Lincoln in 1858.
00:45:38.960
I mean, Douglas was saying, Hey, no, the slavery, uh, the constitution is about slavery. He supported
00:45:43.660
the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln was on the other side of that. He said, this was a country conceived in
00:45:48.780
liberty. It doesn't happen overnight. This is a fight that you have to keep fighting. Uh, but that's what
00:45:54.260
he believes. So we're teaching the accurate history and we're basically teaching it from the perspective
00:45:59.600
of a Lincoln or a Frederick Douglas rather than a Stephen Douglas. Um, people ask me all the time.
00:46:06.560
They ask me and I, I barely know you. Um, but, uh, they'll come up to me and say, what, what, what is it
00:46:12.920
do you think, uh, drives him? And I've said, well, I think one of his biggest assets is his wife, uh,
00:46:20.720
and, um, and her philosophy. She knows freedom very, very well, by the way, how is she?
00:46:28.460
She's, she's doing really, really well. So thanks for asking.
00:46:31.180
You bet. Please say hello to her. Um, what is it that drives you? What is it that,
00:46:35.680
because when we first saw you come into Congress and maybe it was just the time you just didn't
00:46:42.640
have the, you know, COVID you, you, the window of time, it's your window of time. Now, what is it
00:46:50.260
that drives you? Where was your turning point? Well, look, I think in elected office, I mean,
00:46:55.840
as Congress, you're one of four 35. And so I think I had a lot of great ideas. I just didn't have the
00:47:00.380
capacity to implement those ideas at the time as governor, the buck stops with you. And I think
00:47:05.660
people either are grabbing some leaders gravitate towards that. They want to be making these
00:47:10.680
decisions. Some people don't like that. And they'd rather be one of four 35 where the spotlight isn't
00:47:16.300
on them. But, you know, from a very young age, growing up playing baseball and eventually going
00:47:20.620
into the Navy and doing all this stuff. What I always just understood is there's a lot in life you
00:47:25.480
can't control. The one thing I can control is when I wake up in the morning and I look in the mirror,
00:47:30.400
am I getting all out of the talent that God gave me or not? Am I working hard to reach my full
00:47:37.160
potential or not? And so when you're playing sports, you're making sure that you're practicing,
00:47:41.920
doing what you need to do to improve there. As a governor, I look in the mirror and say,
00:47:46.820
what else could I be doing, you know, to, to, to make life better for the people that I represent?
00:47:51.640
So one of the reasons we're on offense on a lot of this stuff is because I just have that sense of
00:47:56.380
urgency of wanting to be able to use my time to get things done. And I will say when my wife was
00:48:02.780
diagnosed with breast cancer last year, it does put some things into perspective because you're
00:48:07.820
just going on, you know, we're, you know, relatively, I'm still the youngest governor in
00:48:11.340
the country. Our kids are now five, four, and two. Wow. We haven't had a family that young in the
00:48:16.320
governor's mansion since the 1800s in Florida. So you kind of just do that. And then to see something
00:48:20.960
like that happen. And you're like, wow, you know, you never know what tomorrow will bring.
00:48:25.720
And every day is a gift and do whatever you can in the here and now, and just make the most of the
00:48:32.000
opportunity. And so I do think people look, even a lot of my critics will acknowledge that I have
00:48:38.480
energy. Hamilton said energy and the executive is the leading characteristic of good governor.
00:48:43.220
You know, we are an energetic executive and we're out there making things happen. And obviously the
00:48:49.000
state has responded very positively and we've done, done really well under my tenure and we're
00:48:53.700
going to just keep going. Last question for you. Cause I want to keep you on time on your busy day.
00:48:59.040
Everybody has tried to pit you against Donald Trump. Everybody is speculating whether you would
00:49:04.100
run. I'm not going to ask you that question. The worst, here's the question. The worst thing that
00:49:08.340
could happen to the right and the constitution, the constitutional Republicans is for there to be a
00:49:18.760
scene where you two were eating one another. Um, and, and Donald Trump is very good at, uh, isolating
00:49:28.420
his, uh, his opposition. How's your relationship with him? And is it, is it possible? Are you guys
00:49:40.180
working together? And I'm not talking about an election, but do you have a good working relationship
00:49:45.500
with him? Look, I think a lot of that is, I mean, first of all, when he was president, uh, he, he was
00:49:51.140
great for Florida, very accessible, really helped us with a lot of things that I can tell you having
00:49:56.100
Biden for a year and a half has been a disaster for Florida and he tries to do whatever he can to
00:50:01.580
throw sand in the gears here. But I think a lot of that's just the media. I think the media, they know
00:50:06.520
the Democrats are going to have a rough 22. And so they want to try to figure out ways to try to trip
00:50:11.980
the Republicans up. And so just because I've become well known now as governor, they think that
00:50:17.500
they're trying to do that. So what I'm doing is just focusing on, on beating the left. And we're
00:50:22.740
excited about the opportunities in Florida. You know, I'm not only doing my election, which is very
00:50:26.960
important. Uh, I'm helping our legislative candidates. We may have a super majority in the Florida
00:50:32.140
legislature veto proof after this election. And I've also endorsed now 30 school board candidates.
00:50:38.460
A lot of people used to forget about these races and they're nonpartisan races, but the union will
00:50:44.020
support usually a liberal activist. We have to have candidates that represent our values. And so
00:50:49.060
we've not only endorsed, you know, we've put in, we've put in a lot of money to help them get across
00:50:54.160
the finish line. And so I think we got to understand, like people can try to do this or that, but at the
00:50:59.100
end of the day, to me, you know, the threats to our freedom are coming from the left. There's of course
00:51:04.840
establishment Republicans. There's other stuff that we can talk about within our own tent. But I think
00:51:09.960
the focus now really needs to be, uh, beating back the left. We've done that more than anybody has. I
00:51:15.500
think in the country, in the state of Florida, that's one of the reasons why people are flocking
00:51:18.820
here. Um, in record numbers, because they realize in some of these other states that have gone woke,
00:51:23.540
something's wrong. Something's wrong when criminals are allowed to run wild in the streets.
00:51:28.080
Something's wrong when our kids are subjected to indoctrination. Something's wrong, uh, when
00:51:33.600
hardworking people are locked down and not allowed to earn a living. And so we've really been, I think,
00:51:37.900
the refuge, uh, from a lot of that, but it's, um, you know, it has nothing to do with any of these other
00:51:43.040
things that talk about, I know people love to just gossip and talk, but I can tell you, like focusing on
00:51:49.620
these future things when we have so much on our plate now, that's just never the way I think. And so that's
00:51:54.840
just not the road I go down. Governor DeSantis, I have to say, um, that you have given me and,
00:52:00.480
and I would imagine millions of Americans hope you, um, we are in a, we're at the crossroads
00:52:06.480
of our country. Um, we can very well lose it at this point. Um, we're not going to win it through
00:52:12.260
fighting, arguing, calling each other names. We're going to, we're going to save it by having, uh,
00:52:18.980
uh, intelligent people who are not afraid to speak the truth. And you
00:52:24.660
have done that very effectively without getting, um, greasy or dirty. And I'm one American that
00:52:32.180
would like to sincerely thank you for the way you are running Florida and the hope that you are
00:52:37.620
giving all of us that, yeah, decent people still exist and we can really actually find people to
00:52:44.660
run, to run things in our interest. So thank you. Thanks Glenn. It's an honor to be with you.
00:52:54.660
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