DeSantis Campaigns for Re-Election in Florida Transcript

I believe the purpose of schools is to provide a foundation just of the basic educational subjects that we all learn growing up and that it’s important. That’s not what Biden and his minions think. They want our school systems to be indoctrination factories. They want to use those schools to impose their ideology and their worldview on a lot of unsuspecting young kids, who are very impressionable. So in Florida, we’ve drawn a line in the sand on that. Our schools are there to educate, not to indoctrinate. And that’s how it’s going to be.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron.

And that means that we have done things, like banned critical race theory in our K-12 schools. We’re going to treat people as individuals, not as members of groups, judge them on the content of character, not color of skin. And we are not going to be teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other, with your tax dollars.

(01:17)
We’re going to make sure that we do a better job, and we have since I’ve been governor, of teaching kids about American civics, about our constitution, about our natural rights, about what it means to be an American. All very, very important to have that foundation. And part of the way we do that is, not only to get the constitution in the classrooms, to promote civics, which we have done in a big way, but also, provide instruction on countries that are much different than ours and let them do the comparison. So I’ve signed legislation, every November 7th in Florida is going to be a day for the whole state as a whole to reflect, but kids in school to learn about the victims of communist regimes. We’re going to teach the truth.

(02:09)
We’re going to teach the truth. You have a hundred million dead at the hands of Marxist Leninist regimes, since the dawn of the 20th century. And as much as we think the Berlin Wall fell, that somehow these ideas fell with it, it’s not true. You see Marxism in our own hemisphere, in many of these countries, unfortunately. So we need to give them the truth about that. And I think, if they have an objective presentation of this, they’re going to thank God that they were born in the United States of America. We also, as parents, and my wife and I, we have a five, a four, and a two year old at home. And they give us our money’s worth. Of course, our first lady is Superwoman, so she’s able to do a lot.

(03:12)
She cut a commercial for me. Did you guys see her commercial? And she was planning on what she was going to do and she had it written out. And she said, “I need you to review this. I want to make sure you’re okay with it.” And I’m like, “No, I’m not going to do that.” She’s like, “Why?” I’m like, “Because it’s not about me. It’s not about anyone on the campaign. This is about what you think you want to say. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s good or not. If it’s coming from the heart, that’s what people want. So you do it. I trust you and I think you’re going to do a really good job.” So what she did was…

(03:47)
When they do the commercials and they do these commercials, you have all this, you have cameras, you have all these people milling around. And I’m very finicky about it, because I’m like, “If you want me to shoot a commercial, be ready to shoot when I get there. I don’t want to sit there and hurry up and wait for an hour.” But there’s a lot that goes into it. So she kicked everyone out of the room. It was just the camera man and her. She threw the script away and just spoke from the heart into the camera. And that’s why it was so effective, because it was genuine and it came…

(04:17)
And it was very authentic. So my wife and I, we have our hands full, but part of it is just, as parents of young kids now, it’s difficult. Because there’s so many of these influences out there. And I just think you should be able to go to school, watch cartoons, just play, without there always being some agenda someone’s trying to shove down their throat. So what’s so hard about that? And so, we were able to sign a bill, Parents’ Rights in Education, which said, honestly, this is not a big deal, but the media made it a big deal. We’re not going to be jamming things, like woke gender ideology, in elementary school. You’re not going to have that. It’s inappropriate.

(05:03)
It’s inappropriate to teach some first grader that they may have been born in the wrong body. It’s inappropriate to teach a nine year old that they were born a girl, but maybe, they really should identify as a boy. That’s wrong. And even five years ago, no one would’ve thought that was anything even possible that that could happen. And yet, it is happening in other parts of this country. Don’t let the media tell you differently. It is happening. That’s why you have parents in places like Dearborn, Michigan. You have Arab American parents, that are protesting what they’re jamming into the school system. So that’s going on in this country. In Florida, they’re going to reach a dead end here. We’re not going to let that happen.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Ron.

You’re welcome. Not everyone thanked me for that though. There was a lot of people on the left, in the media, that were upset. And the left even tried to pressure, and successfully pressured, big corporations to come out and oppose our Parents’ Rights bill. And they even got one, that, if you’re familiar with central Florida, you may have heard of this company. And so, they got Disney to come out against it. And look, it’s fine, but you’re demagoging it and all this other stuff. So it’s fine. But people were saying, “Disney’s the 800 pound gorilla. If they, at the left, gets Disney to oppose the bill, then that’s going to be really serious pressure. The governor’s going to have to stand down on this. There’s just no way it’s going to go.” Well, I have news for them. We run the state of Florida, not a corporation in California.

(06:55)
So we signed the bill and it’s all good. And we were happy to do it. And of course, of course, we’re not going to back down. Give me a break. So if we do that, so we do it. But then, they say, “After we sign the bill, it’s our mission to see that the bill is repealed and parents’ rights are revoked in Florida.” And I’m thinking, “Are you kidding me? First of all, you’re a company that markets to families with young kids. And now, you’re going against families with young kids. Very, very weird.” And that was Burbank, California values. That was not Florida values. I can tell you that. So they did that and I said, “You know what? I’m kind of getting tired of these woke companies with this nonsense, but at the same time, they can do what they do.

(07:46)
However, you don’t have a right to force us to subsidize activism.” And the reality was, Disney has had massive preferential treatment and subsidy from the state of Florida, going back to the 1960s. They have their own government in central Florida. They’re exempt from laws that their competitors have to follow, and they get major tax breaks from this arrangement. And so, what we said is, “Okay, you’re going to take those positions. Those do not represent the values of this state. And while you’re free to do that, you are not free to have yourself put on a pedestal by the state of Florida.” And so, we worked with the legislature and we acted. And so, now, because we did, Disney is no longer going to have its own government in the state of Florida. They’re going to live under the same laws as everybody else in the state of Florida. And they’re going to pay their fair share of taxes in the state of Florida.

(08:52)
But it raises the issue of this woke mind virus and what it’s doing to cause corporations to indulge in ridiculous positions. The fact that we see what’s going on in some of the schools around the country. And we even had to do legislation in Florida, which I was proud to do. But the fact that we had to do it, we had to do legislation to protect women’s sports in the state of Florida. So you have a guy competing on the men’s team for three years, then switching to the women’s and then, wins the Women’s National Championship? Come on.

(09:32)
And that took away opportunities from women athletes. The number two in that race was actually from Florida. She should have won the National Championship in 500 yard freestyle. So it’s wrong to take away opportunities. And I have a five year old daughter, four year old son, and a two year old daughter. And they’re very good athletes. I don’t know. Whatever they want to do, they can do. But if they do want to do athletics, they should be able to compete with fairness and with integrity, and not have somebody, who’s a biological male, competing against the women. And so, we signed legislation to make sure that that was the law in the state of Florida. Some of the companies were moaning about that too. And NCAA was threatening not to do events in states that protected women’s sports. And all I said is like, “I will call that bluff every day of the week. We’re going to go and do what we got to do.”

(10:32)
But it’s sad, because the sports is one thing. And then, you also have now, and this was something, I don’t think, 10 years ago, you would’ve seen very much of this. But they’re trying to do with these young, these are teenagers, sex change operations. And what they call it is gender affirming care. But that’s not what it is. They’re really trying to change somebody’s physiology, and they will do double mastectomies for teenage girls. They will castrate young boys. They will do puberty blockers, and they try to sanitize it with these euphemisms. But the reality is, that is what is going on throughout this country. And so, the thing is is these are kids that go through a lot at that age. Most of the dysphoria that youth experience resolves itself by the time they’re adults. So why are you permanently disfiguring these kids? And what’s happened was Florida said, “We think this is wrong.”

(11:32)
We started a process with the medical to say, and we have adults who went through these operations as kids who were supporting us. And they’re saying, “I was pushed into doing this and I regret it. I regret doing it. And now, I have lost some part of who I am, because of this.” And so, what it is is it’s wokeness run a muck. It’s wokeness, infecting medical practice. This is not evidence based medicine. This is ideological based medicine. And so, what we’re doing in the state of Florida is our Board of Medicine has issued a rule. You cannot perform the sex change operations on minors in the state of Florida or you’ll lose your license.

(12:25)
But it raises the larger issue of wokeness in society. What you see with wokeness is driving people to take down statues of Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, trying to rewrite our history. You have wokeness, driving people to try to convince us that men can get pregnant. That is happening and it’s not accurate, but they’re trying to convince it. So they want you to basically suspend your own reason and judgment and just march in lockstep with their ideological vision. And that will destroy this country, if we let that take hold across these institutions, more than it has.

(13:03)
And in Florida, not only are we preventing, working against it, taking hold, places that it is, we’re pushing back against it to get it out. And I really want the state of Florida, because I think part of being a free person is that you’re free from having oppressive ideologies imposed on you. You’re free from any type of institution, trying to force you to believe that two plus two equals five. And so, the state of Florida, we are not going to tolerate that. We’re going to stand up for the truth. We’re going to stand up for the core principles that made this country great. And our state is the state, where woke goes to die.