Josh Rauh (00:01):
Well, good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the Hoover Institution for today's special event. My name is Josh Rauh. I am a senior fellow here and chairman of the Fiscal Policy Initiative and the State and Local Government Initiative here at the Hoover Institution.
(00:14)
Here at Hoover, we conduct evidence-based research that illustrates how individual liberty, private enterprise, and limited government improves the human condition, safeguards peace, and limits government intrusion into the lives of individuals. As such, it's a great honor for me to introduce our guests for this afternoon's fireside chat. Our director, former National Security Advisor, and the 66th Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis.
(00:42)
Governor DeSantis has spent the entirety of his adult life serving this country and the people of Florida. From the COVID-19 pandemic to his policies on education, immigration, and technology, his decisions have shaped not just Florida policy, but the national conversation as well. A self-described native Floridian with blue-collar roots, he was elected as Florida's 46th governor in 2018. From 2013 to 2018, he served in the US Congress, representing Florida's sixth congressional district. Prior to politics, Governor DeSantis worked his way through Yale University… I'm also an alum. Where he was captain of the varsity baseball team. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. While in law school he earned a commission in the US Navy as a JAG officer, and later deployed to Iraq in support of the SEAL Mission in Fallujah and Ramadi.
(01:35)
Since Governor DeSantis took office in 2018, Florida has tripled the savings rate in the state's rainy-day fund, and retired half, 50% of its taxpayer-supported debt. Surely that contributes to explaining why Florida has a AAA bond credit rating, better than the US federal government's AA-. Given that the federal government spends more on interest than on national defense, and as I'm fond of pointing out, interest payments could easily rise to over 40% of all non-social security tax receipts over the next 10 years and possibly much more, I'd say Governor DeSantis is setting a terrific example for our leaders in Washington.
(02:11)
We are truly honored to have you here, Governor DeSantis, join us here today for an in-depth discussion on governance policy and the principles guiding your leadership. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Director Condoleezza Rice and Governor Ron DeSantis.
Condoleezza Rice (02:27):
Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And Governor, I'm going to ask you to start by introducing some very special guests among us.
Ron DeSantis (02:36):
Yeah. We have our wonderful first lady of Florida, my wife Casey is here. And we've actually brought our daughter, Madison in third grade, Mason in second grade. We do have our kindergartner here. She's with our babysitter because I don't know if she could sit through this discussion without causing… But they are, full disclosure, very big Florida State fans, and so they're going to be at the football game with us tomorrow night.
Condoleezza Rice (03:06):
Yes, thank you. Toward the end I may ask the governor about intercollegiate athletics, but I will not ask him for a prediction on tomorrow night's game. Governor, I want to start, we sit here at the Hoover Institution and as Josh mentioned, our founder, Herbert Hoover, who was of course President of the United States at one point, believed very much in the power of private enterprise, the power of individual liberty, and the power of limited government. And we are, as a country, about to celebrate our 250th anniversary for the revolution that led to the United States of America.
(03:53)
We had some work to do before we would become the country that we are now. But I'd like you to reflect, as you did in your State of the State, on some of the bedrock principles that have made the United States what it is. How you think about it as a governor, because of course the founding fathers were devoted to federalism. As a matter of fact, the Reserve powers clause left to the states everything that was not reserved to the federal government.
(04:22)
I've often said Governor, that they put the federal government in a swamp between Maryland and Virginia, and then they moved back to the state houses where they thought things would really happen. But can you talk a little bit about the foundations of this nation, and how you find inspiration from it as governor?
Ron DeSantis (04:40):
Sure. Well, it's interesting. we're really leaning into America 250 in Florida, so I've got counties named after founding fathers. So I'm air dropping a Franklin statute into Franklin County. We just did, I got Jefferson there in Jefferson County. I've got a great George Washington statute in the state capitol. Some of these other states have mothballed their stuff so I'm buying Alexander Hamilton at a discount and putting him at [inaudible 00:05:06].
(05:06)
So we're really leaning in, but I think we're doing it because I think it's an important time to reflect, one, just what a monumental event in human history it was. I mean, our founding fathers, they wrote, "We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." They were not just, when they signed the Declaration of Independence, popping off on social media like we would do today with no consequence. No, when they signed that document, they knew the penalty for failure was death.
(05:30)
These were people that were very successful in the colonies, but they believed that an important principle was at stake. Can we actually have a society in which our rights are endowed by our Creator, and then we loan power to the government to protect those pre-existing rights? Can we have the rule of law triumph over the rule of individual men? Can you have a society in which government's power is limited? Or are we forever, as human beings, destined to live under various forms of despotism?
(05:59)
Because they had studied the history of every republic in the history of the world, and the only thing that really united all those experiences was that every one of them had failed. So they really believe it fell to us as Americans to determine these questions once and for all. Can you govern yourselves? And when Benjamin Franklin walked out of the Constitutional Convention the decade after they signed the Declaration, he was asked, "Did you give us a republic or a monarchy?" And his answer was instructive because [inaudible 00:06:26] a republic if you can keep it.
(06:28)
Because they understood you could have the best constitution in the world, you could have the best Declaration of Independence in the world. These things don't run on autopilot, they require every generation of Americans to defend these principles, to apply those principles faithfully, to defend freedom. Sometimes even putting on the cloth of your country and risking your life, and even giving the last full measure of devotion for service this country.
(06:51)
So everything we're doing, when I do, that's a backdrop of how I conceive of my role. Yes, if a hurricane comes, we have to deal with it. If we want policy, school choice, reduced taxes, whatever, we deal with it. But in the broad sweep, we're showing, yes, we can govern ourselves effectively in the state of Florida. And I think the fact that so many people have moved to Florida since I've been governor, so many businesses and adjusted income have moved in, is a testament that people have voted with their feet and they've responded positively. Yes, these individual policies matter, but in the larger thing, I think we strive to be faithful to the ideals that the founders established.
Condoleezza Rice (07:30):
Do you want to talk a little bit about some of those numbers in terms of those who have moved to Florida? A lot of my friends have, so-
Ron DeSantis (07:37):
This is just true. If you look in the last six years, we've had more adjusted gross income move into Florida than has ever moved into an American state over a similar period of time, adjusted for inflation even, in the entire history of the United States of America. And if you compare us, Texas is number two, Texas is very successful, we're three or four times Texas in terms of that.
(08:04)
Now, some of that are individuals who've done well, some of it's businesses moving in. These are things that are… I don't go recruit business. Once COVID was going on and we were open, "Hey governor, I want to come move my business. I just wanted you to know that." I'm like, "Okay, fine," but I'm not having to go do it. It's a natural thing because people know that they can be successful, but it's not by accident.
(08:27)
You talk about fiscal responsibility. Florida's budget right now is less than the budget we had last year, and last year's budget was less than the budget we had the year before that. How many other states are actually doing that? But yet I can click off, we're doing record infrastructure investment, record environmental spending, and Everglades restoration, record teacher salary increases from the state. We've done all things, but in the context of yes, eliminating half of the state's debt… 180 years, all the debt the state's racked up, we've eliminated half of it. We've reduced taxes by many billion.
(09:06)
We don't have an income tax and we never will, so you don't have to even file a tax return in Florida. We like it that way. So we've gotten all those right, and the thing about it is they say it's laboratories of democracy. We've got 50 states. It's a free country. Communications mobility are unlike anything the founders would've ever dreamed of. People can vote with their feet very easily, and they have done that by voting in favor of the free state of Florida.
Condoleezza Rice (09:35):
Talk a little bit… You've been talking about the growth. I think you said there were how many people in Florida when you became governor and there are now…
Ron DeSantis (09:42):
Yeah, I mean, we were 21 plus million and now we're 23 plus million. I think we're about 23 and a half million right now, so that's just in a six or seven year period.
Condoleezza Rice (09:54):
And still when you have that kind of explosive growth, and that's pretty explosive, there must be some hard parts of it too, some downsides of it. Do people get a little worried about the nature of their communities? Is there NIMBY in Florida?
Ron DeSantis (10:12):
Well first just the political thing. when I got elected in '18, they didn't tell you the margin. It was not a big margin. Florida was a one point state. For a decade every major race was basically one point statewide. We go back 20, 25 years, we were the number one swing state in the country. Bush versus Gore, 2000, 536 votes in the entire state of Florida.
(10:36)
And so I get in and we start to see the migration pick up, and then COVID really supercharged it. And so my supporters are like, "Well, wait a minute. You won by 35,000 votes. Now I've got, what? We're going to bring in 150,000 from New York? That's going to tip it in the other direction." And oh my gosh, when the California license plates started showing up, let me tell you, people were freaking out because no one had ever seen a California license plate in Florida before. And all of a sudden they're like, "Okay, wait a minute. Are we importing Berkeley into Tampa or something?"
(11:10)
But what ended up happening was the people that were coming, were coming for the reason, they didn't like the quality of life, the governance where they were overwhelming. This is an interesting stat. If you look at all 49 other states since I've been governor, and you look at the people that have moved from each of those states to Florida, all 49, Vermont, New York, California, Illinois, more Republicans have moved to Florida than Democrats have moved to Florida. And so our state, which was a swing state, we went from a one-point state to a few years later, I got re-elected by the biggest margin that any Republican's ever been elected in a governor's race in the entire state's history, a million and a half vote margin, 20 point. And then now we had more D's than R's when I got elected, now we've got 1.3 million more registered R's than D's. So just the political thing there was concerned about that, from that.
(12:03)
But then just the practical, I mean the reality is, is it can get crowded. And we have some communities, it's like, okay, this housing development goes up, and then it's like, "Okay, this, that, what about traffic? What about all these other things?" So I poured seven, 8 billion from our surplus into accelerating projects. So we had projects in the queue for the 2030s that I got started last year, let's say, it'll be done 5, 10, 15 years ahead of schedule, which is great. But that's just to keep up with what's going on. We've had to build a lot more schools.
(12:40)
So there's positive, but then there are challenges. I will say most of the people that have moved since I've been governor are people that are not consuming a lot of services, per se. They come in and they're taxpayers, and so clearly from a financial, it's a net benefit. But we basically had a decade's worth of growth in a three-year period, right? So yeah, I mean there are challenges that come with that, no question.
Condoleezza Rice (13:07):
Yeah. You mentioned the call on social services and the like. You have tried to do some things to decrease the dependency of the average Floridian on government services. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because this whole question of how one gets to fiscal responsibility, a lot of it is around entitlements.
Ron DeSantis (13:28):
We had an approach, and my wife really deserves credit for spearheading it, to means-tested welfare. That, okay, a bureaucrat interfacing with somebody in need does not have a great track record of actually lifting that person in need up to a pathway to be self-sufficient, independent and successful. I'm not saying it's never happened, but most of what happens, it's just human nature, it creates a culture of dependency. We said, "Look, we've got a lot of resources exterior to government in Florida, our churches, our synagogues, our
Ron DeSantis (14:00):
Our businesses, our charities, even individual volunteers, we want to enlist them to be able to help people in need. And so my wife created an initiative called Hope Florida, where when you go in, and we started with child welfare, that bureaucrat is no longer just trying to get you on government program. That person is now a navigator that's helping you navigate all the resources that are available exterior to government. And we have something called a care portal we use. So if a single mom comes in, she got evicted from an apartment and she's got two kids under five and she needs a place to stay, the bureaucracy is probably not going to be able to solve that. But you know what, a church will. And they will come and help. So we've been able to do that and integrate that across state governments. And the net result is, and this has only been going on for the last couple of years, 33,000 people no longer have dependency on welfare programs, and it's saved the state over a hundred million dollars.
(14:58)
Now, we didn't cut any entitlement to benefit. People still can go in and use those, but we've provided other resources. But I think these other resources are much more focused on getting these folks up on their feet and putting them on a pathway to self-sufficiency.
Condoleezza Rice (15:16):
Well, a couple of other things that the average citizen cares about, education and healthcare. So let's start with healthcare. Really tough in this country to think about how to deal with healthcare. Can you talk a little bit about how you see the issues of healthcare, issues of insurance? I know you've tried to work on drug pricing with pharma. Talk a little bit about that. One of the things that's happening is states are experimenting in ways that the federal government cannot.
Ron DeSantis (15:45):
Yeah, look, I mean, well one, a lot of the problems are federal. It's just the reality. I mean, they've gotten so intertwined with this. We have a medical industrial complex, kind of what Eisenhower warned about with defense. That has happened too. But that has happened with insurance and the hospital systems and all these other things. And so we have somewhat limited ability to really make an impact here. So a couple of things. One, we did do the pharmacy benefit manager thing, so we were able to squeeze out savings by exposing some of that for folks. Two, if you want something to be cheaper, you have to have price signals. Right? I mean a market, if imagine I want to take the kids to In-N-Out Burger, since we don't have that in Florida, if they didn't tell you how much a double- double costs, what are you going to do? If it's $30, then I'm not taking them.
(16:35)
And so you need to have that, and that's how a market works. No one knows how much this stuff costs with respect to medical. So we did a price transparency reform. They have to put the prices up. So if you're in Tampa, one side of town, a hip replacement is X, other side of town, it's Y. And so that's helpful. The problem is if it's all third-party payer, what do you care as the patient? If it's just insurance is going to pay for it, then choosing the cheaper one doesn't make sense. So what we did with our state employees, we did something called shared savings. So you have the transparency and if they opt for a more cost-effective way, then they get rebated in the lower premiums. So it saved the state taxpayers millions and millions of dollars. It's obviously saved the employees money out of pocket. We've done that.
(17:22)
We have not applied that a mandate for the state. So there may be some companies that are doing it on their own, maybe some employers are negotiating that. But we've tried to do it. I think that what we want and what the federal government really won't allow is most people, particularly under 50, what they really need is a catastrophic plan that's affordable, where then they can pay whatever they're doing out of a health savings account. Most people, outside of paying insurance premiums, are not paying a lot for medical on a routine basis. I mean, I know in the Navy they told me to take something, I would do it, but other than that, I never did. And so that's where you got to get to. I think what the federal government does, it makes it very difficult and the bigger government gets, the more intertwined it gets.
(18:08)
That facilitates what we've seen with the consolidation, where the hospitals will hire all the physicians. Private practice, medical practice is becoming a lost art compared to what it was when I was a kid. First of all, I don't think that that's a good way to incentivize great people to want to be in medicine. I think 50 years ago you looked at that career probably more lucrative and fulfilling than what you have to deal with now. And there are some very good doctors who've been 30, 40 years, who tell young people now, "Hey, I'm not sure I would do it because of having to deal with all this stuff." It's like, did you sign up to help treat people and cure people or to be some type of a bureaucrat hogging the machine where you're having to deal with a bunch of red tape? So I think most of the problems with healthcare are because of what they've done in Washington DC over many, many years.
Condoleezza Rice (18:58):
Yeah. Well, let's move on to education. We have a national crisis in education, and every state is affected by it. When we get the NAEP scores, they're not good. When we look at the standing of American students vis-a-vis most of the world, most of the developed world, they're not good. When we think about what COVID did in, what's called now, learning loss from COVID, your schools were open relatively soon. But for the country as a whole, we may be losing a whole generation of kids who are never going to quite catch up. But you have been in Florida at the lead edge of education reform, school choice, but also education reform more broadly with the Teacher's Bill of Rights. And so can you talk a little bit about the education space?
Ron DeSantis (19:49):
Oh yeah. So we've done a lot. So one, just in terms of the classroom experience, we got rid of the smartphones in the classroom. It's been very important.
Condoleezza Rice (19:58):
Was that a revolution? I mean, did that cause a revolution?
Ron DeSantis (20:00):
So it's interesting. I was one of the first to really push this, and I think the New York Times said that was an example of fascism to take away the phone. Now everyone's doing it right? I think they even said they want to do it in California now. So, yes. So part of it is the students, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the last decade hasn't been great because I think a lot of this, with being on text, social media and all that stuff. So we've done that, but I think it's also good for teachers. Who wants to dedicate their life to sitting in front of a group of kids that all have their face buried in the phone? And so our Teacher's Bill of Rights was basically like, "You have a right to be there where the kids are paying attention, where they're not distracted by these devices. You also have a right to have an orderly classroom, and if somebody is disruptive, you have a right to discipline the students."
(20:52)
And so I think that's important because we want teaching to be something that people wants to do. We have tackled this issue of these school unions, these teacher unions. And when I was doing COVID, I said every kid needs to be in school in person. And the teacher union sued me and they tried to keep the kids out. This is May or June of 2020, very early on in COVID, and we won that. But they literally would do these demonstrations where they're bringing coffins and putting the coffins in front of our Florida Department of Education building. COVID, like these kids were at very low risk for COVID. And so it was all just hysteria, but they did not want those kids in the classroom.
(21:34)
And I think that helped really turn public opinion against these teacher unions. And the reality is, anytime you have something like that in a school, it can create, the incentives aren't aligned because a union is going to defend its members. So if there's a conflict between what's best for the members and what's best for the students, they are duty-bound to prefer the member's interests over the student interest. So that's always been a problem. But I think what's happened in more recent years is these unions have become very partisan and they've really tried to impose a political agenda. You go look at the National Education Association, American Federal teacher, look at their national conferences. Some of the resolutions they are adopting have nothing to do with education. It's like validating every far left, whatever the flavor of the day is, they're doing it. Well, that's not their role to indoctrinate. The goal is to educate.
(22:28)
So we beat them on COVID. We beat them by doing universal school choice. So in Florida, the money follows the student. You can go to your local public school. A lot of times in the school district, you have choice to go anywhere else in your county in that system. You can go to a charter school, which is public, but not run by the school district or influenced by the school unions. Or you can do private scholarship. And so we're the most robust in the country on that. We're proud of that. But we also did something because what we saw is a lot of these teachers, a lot of them weren't even political, but they didn't want their money going. Most of the dues, they go to political activism. So we did paycheck protection for teacher union dues, no automatic deduction of dues.
(23:13)
So if they want to write a check and hand it, then that's up to them. And in Florida, our constitution actually has school unions in the constitution. Because quite frankly, I don't think that you should have them period, but it is what it is. So we did that reform and guess what? The number of teachers signing up has plummeted. And so now in major areas like Miami and the school unions are going to be decertified. So that has really shifted power to parents and to students away from the school unions. And I mean, me looking at California from afar, when I was growing up, and certainly before that, post-World War II, California was probably the best schools in the country, certainly top five. Like year after year for decades, California was. Now they're typically ranked in the bottom five. And how does that happen? And I think it's because the California Teacher Union runs this state.
(24:12)
They dictate who gets elected. They dictate policy. They dictate all that. And I think the results have been really disastrous. Final thing I'll say we've done on K-12, which I think is important, is when I was going to school guidance counselors, everyone, "You got to go to college, you got to get that four-year degree, otherwise you're not going to be successful in this world." And that was well-intentioned, but it wasn't true. I think it's great to have great universities. I mean, there are people, parents that would sacrifice a lot to have their kid be able to go to school like Stanford. We've got some great universities in Florida that we're very proud of and they serve an important purpose. But that's not attending a four-year traditional brick. And Ivy University is not the only way that you can be successful. And for many people it's not the best way.
(24:59)
So we've expanded technical education, vocational education, we've doubled apprenticeships. Now you go to the Space coast of Florida, we're graduating students who know about aviation and stuff, and they're going out from high school, working for Elon Musk at SpaceX. We've got folks that go and work in other parts of those industries. So what happens is no debt and really gain full employment if you have the right skills. And I also think it's like, as you look at what is artificial intelligence going to do the workforce, there's a lot of people that say, "Oh, it's going to take so many millions of jobs. We're going to have to put everyone on universal basic income even." Which I don't think necessarily would be healthy for society. But if you look at where people are projecting those job losses, it's going to be someone who was in accounting or some of these other things.
(25:52)
Honestly, I think a lot of the skilled labor, I think you probably will be using AI to enhance what they're already doing. So it may not be as big of a problem for them. It may even enhance a lot of what they're doing. So I think having those pathways, and not saying you have to do one or the other, but just letting people know, "If you go in one of these pathways, you're not any less than somebody that went to a four-year university." Especially if that person goes to a four-year university, takes out a hundred thousand dollars in loans and ends up with a degree in zombie studies, that doesn't make them better than you. Okay.
Condoleezza Rice (26:28):
Zombie studies. I'm not sure we have that at Stanford, but I'll check. So now let me touch the third rail, which is universities. A number of us are tenured professors, just so you know. But let's talk a little bit about higher education.
(26:45)
There's no doubt that universities have a lot to atone for. I would be the first to say that over the last several years we went through a period of time in which I don't think we had viewpoint diversity in our universities, in which I don't think that we were sufficiently protective of free speech, in which perhaps there was a kind of orthodoxy. But there are some who worry that we're now swinging the other way, that if we're not careful, we're just going to end up with an orthodoxy on the other side there. You couldn't say certain things in 2022, but now you can't say other things in 2026. How do you think about it? The University of Florida in Florida has been kind of ground zero for some of these issues. You've got a really great new president that many people admire, including myself. But how do you balance this issue of making sure that we're teaching critical thinking, not teaching our students what to think, but teaching them how to think?
Ron DeSantis (27:47):
Well, I think the Wall Street Journal referred to the University of Florida as the Harvard for the Unwoke a couple of years ago. And I took a lot of pride in that because, so the orthodoxy
Ron DeSantis (28:00):
… see that we've seen for quite a while, but I think it was really when you saw the October 7th aftermath, what was happening at the Columbias and some of these other places, I think it opened up a lot of people's eyes. That's not the way, obviously, a university should be functioning, and part of it was just the disorder, how that was impacting other students. You can go out and sing from the rooftops whatever you want, but you can't threaten a student. You can't block a faculty member because they're Jewish from going into their classroom. You can't just disrupt and shout down. So that's conduct. And I think they've let the inmates run the asylum for a long time. So a lot of people saw that, like, what is going on?
(28:44)
I can tell you in Florida, you can say what you want, but your conduct, you will be held accountable for your conduct. You don't have a right to commandeer the lawn at the university for your political agenda. And when you try to do that… They tried to do it at Florida State, they turned the sprinklers on and they were gone in 10 minutes. And so it didn't work out there. But you don't have a right to do that. You don't have a right to scream and not let somebody talk on that.
(29:12)
And when after October 7th, I was telling the group earlier, people said, "Man, you're really lucky you didn't have any of those problems in Florida's universities." I was like, "Well, it's not really luck." I was like, "Everybody that's running a state university in Florida knows that if they were to allow that to happen on their campuses, they would no longer be running a state university in Florida. We wouldn't tolerate it." So I think from that, I think it's done a lot to damage, particularly elite education with some of the stuff that's gone on.
(29:39)
But just from, I think a lot of the orthodoxy is counterproductive. You don't want to be graduating students who never have their assumptions challenged, who are able to just kind of parrot the party line, regardless of what side. You want people to be able to think critically. That's one of the reasons why we've done a lot of speech and debate now in Florida's… in our high schools. We have a massive program now. We didn't used to have that. Because if you have to stand up and make an argument on something, you can't just be buried in your phone, you can't just… No, you got to get up, you got to try to persuade people.
(30:15)
I think that's important, but I think it's even better if you're told you have to argue the other side of that issue. So maybe you're somebody that hates firearms. You think the Second Amendment's not good. No, you got to argue in favor of the Second Amendment and why that's important in a republic. Then you got to get outside your comfort zone and you have to do that. So I want to see a wide variety of viewpoints. I want to see people's orthodoxies challenged. That's what really we're doing at the University of Florida or in our Florida State University system. But I think the reality is the muscle memory has gone in one direction on the left for so, so long that we got to consciously try to figure out how are you going to be able to do things.
(30:56)
So you have Hoover here, which is obviously very famous and has been well regarded for a long time. We've started things like in Florida International we have the Adam Smith Center. Miami's the gateway to the Americas, pretty much any center-right, former head of state in the western hemisphere has gone and spoken there. Talking about economic freedom, talking about the rule of law, really been great for students. We have a small public liberal arts college, public liberal arts college in Sarasota called New College. I got elected, I had someone say they wanted to talk to me about New College and I didn't know what it was. I was like, "Why do we need a New College? We've got enough colleges." "No, it's this place in Sarasota." Well, it was like a Marxist commune. I mean left of the left, no grades. The test scores had gone down. It was supposed to be our top honors college.
(31:46)
So I put conservative reformers on the board. They did things like eliminate some of the woke studies stuff that they were doing and said, you know what? We're going to be focused on the classical mission of a university. But you know what they do? They bring in people to have big debates. They bring in conservative speakers to debate liberal speakers. We've had some very famous people on both sides of these issues come in and now go to New College and are doing it. And now the enrollment has swelled, the test scores have gone up. And honestly, it's like if that's your cup of tea, as a parent, I know there's like Hillsdale, some of these others, would you rather be in Michigan in January or Sarasota in January visiting your kid? So it's really good.
(32:28)
And at University of Florida we have the Hamilton Center for Civic Leadership and basically we want to be good stewards of the values that have built Western civilization. That should not be a lost art. That should be something that's central. It's not really Republican or Democrat, and it shouldn't even be left or right, because this is the foundation that has made the United States successful, that has made the western world successful and we should embrace those values and those things.
(32:58)
There's nothing new under the sun. The values that our founding fathers put forward to found this country, they didn't just make them up, this is born out of really conscientious study of the sweep of history. They drew from religion. They drew from enlightening thinking. They drew from a lot of different things. But I believe that those principles were not time limited, I think they're enduring. And I think they're just as relevant today as they were then. Now you have to apply them maybe differently, different circumstances. You got to make sure you're faithfully applying them, but they are just as relevant.
(33:32)
So that's what I want. I want our universities to be a place where the western tradition is upheld, where people can debate these really significant things. And yes, focus on… I mean, obviously you guys are doing a lot of really important stuff and then science and technology, we work really hard. Our engineering stuff has gone up, all this stuff. We have one of the NVIDIA supercomputers at University of Florida, one of the founders is alum. He did it like six years ago when the stock price was a little less than it has gotten to. So we have that.
(34:02)
So we embrace that, but it's got to be rigorous and I believe there's right answers, right? We do not want to be in a situation where truth is relative because it's not. So I think we're doing it right in Florida. We've had to push in a different direction. And I think sometimes that ruffles feathers in academia. But, honestly, I think a lot of what we're doing used to be just what everyone thought you would get on university campuses.
Condoleezza Rice (34:31):
So you mentioned Hamilton, and he actually is my favorite founding father, kind of questionable lineage coming from the Caribbean, maybe America's first immigrant.
Ron DeSantis (34:43):
Well, John Adams called him, it was a derisive name, he said he was the bastard son of a Scotch [inaudible 00:34:49]
Condoleezza Rice (34:48):
Exactly. Exactly. Says a little bit about who we are as Americans that you could have Hamilton and the supercilious Adams in the same body. But I do want to talk about immigration because we are a country of immigrants. We are made better by the fact that people have come from all over the world to be a part of us, believing where you came from didn't matter, what you want to do when you get here matters. And you've been pretty tough on immigration. I think everybody understands what was happening at the southern border.
(35:23)
Can you talk a little bit about how one messages now the immigration narrative of America at a time when sometimes the pictures are of a different approach to, clearly, illegal immigration? But I go around the world and people are worried, is America still a place that you're going to be welcome if you want to come, if you want to be a part of this great experiment?
Ron DeSantis (35:48):
Yeah, so it's interesting. When I first became governor, very close race, we have probably the most diverse state in many respects. If you look at ethnically, regionally, I mean, I know California, there's a couple others, but we're certainly up there. And one of the things I did was, okay, I'm law and order I want to do… We're not going to allow sanctuary cities. Because I think what's… and you see it now, how bad… They think that they can be immune from federal laws that are on the books. I said that's not happening in Florida.
(36:18)
So I did it and people said, "You're making a big political mistake. The Latino voters are going to revolt against you. They're going to hate it." And first of all, I didn't believe that, but I also knew as a leader, I got to just do what's right for the state and I'm willing to take hits if I have to.
(36:33)
So we did it. We did it, oh, supposedly controversy. The media, they would try to pull it, right, and every single time they pulled it, the number one demographic in Florida that supported what we did were the Hispanic Floridians. They wanted to make sure that the rule of law was upheld. So I never bought into the idea that somehow if you do immigration enforcement, that somehow that was going to alienate. Because honestly, when Biden opened the border, it was those border towns that suffered more than anybody. I mean, just absolutely overwhelmed.
(37:09)
So I think we went from a situation where you were supposed to assimilate and the immigration was supposed to be beneficial to the American people into one where the border was open, I think, to fulfill a political agenda of the far left. I don't even know how much Biden even knew that was going on, but to do what they were doing, knowing… And another thing, we would have, when Biden was president, I sent people to the border to help. It wasn't as successful as we'd hoped because the Feds control so much, and so then we'd have. And then we paid for transport, including Martha's Vineyard, which got news, right, because obviously you do that.
(37:53)
Most of it were people from Venezuela. So I was running for re-election. So I'm down in Doral, which is where we have most of the Venezuelan media. It's like, " Oh, the Venezuelans are to be so mad." So I'm walking the streets out there, and these people are like, "You the man, Governor," because they saw Maduro trying to send people from jails and send people from prison to there. So the whole notion that somehow people that are Latino want illegal immigration, I'm telling you that is not true at all. And so the situation is, okay, he had the border open. Are we just supposed to say that the laws don't matter anymore?
(38:28)
And it can't be a one-way ratchet. I wanted to do more when Biden was, and the courts would say, "No, no, no. It's a federal responsibility. You can't interfere." But how is it okay for the reverse when the federal government wants to enforce the laws, but then California can just opt out? LA can just opt out? It doesn't work as a matter of the rule of law. And so I think that… and we did the thing. So basically we did this thing in the Everglades because we have an airport there, and so people can come and the feds flying out. Oh, they were so upset about this, but the DHS said, "We don't have enough places to process people. We need to do this. Can you help us?" So we did. "They'll reimburse you." So we did it.
(39:11)
And the media, and I'm touring this before they go in. And I'm like, they've got this, that the other thing, way, way more stuff than you would expect. And I'm like, "You're really doing all this? How much is this going to cost?" And they're like, "Listen, Governor, we want to make sure. We don't want the media to be able to attack us and saying we're mistreating people." I said, "They are going to do that no matter what. Trust me, they will." And that's what they did. And so I've been there, I knew it was fine.
(39:39)
But I didn't really go out because, honestly, if people think somehow maybe it serves as a deterrent, I don't know. But the people that have gone through there, these are people by and large that already been ordered through our system to be deported, right? So how come as a US citizen, if a court orders you to pay… You have to do it right? How come they wouldn't have to do it? So that, and then you had a lot of people with criminal records.
(40:01)
So I think the enforcement stuff as things that we've done has been beneficial. I think it upholds the rule of law. And I also think it's just a situation is we have limited housing supply, we have limited services, schools, all this stuff. It does impact the communities when you have open borders. Now, in terms of the broader question, why are you doing the immigration? Is it a foreigner has a right to come? Some of these people say that they're entitled. I reject that. No foreigner has a right. Just as… Imagine if I went to France and said I have a right to be in France and work. No, and they would laugh at you, right? And so we're not citizens of the world. We're Americans, and that needs to mean something.
(40:45)
I don't think mass immigration… We can't just reproduce Mogadishu in the United States. That's not going to work. What Europe has done shows you the wrong way to do immigration. We have in a situation where if there's situations where that can help the American people, we're the best place in town. We have an ability to leverage that. But I think the way it's been applied, particularly with Biden, and to a certain extent, Obama, to be honest with you, has not been conducive to assimilation and has not been geared towards helping the American people do better.
(41:22)
And I kind of felt like most of American history, it was always about what's going to be best for the people that are already here. I think President Trump is trying to reformulate that. I think the media is going to attack, they're going to demagogue and we'll see how it all plays out. But making sure we're upholding the rule of law, making sure that our citizenship really means something and making sure that we're incentivizing people to do it the right way, I do think are important.
Condoleezza Rice (41:47):
Well, thank you. I would ask you, not for a prediction for Saturday night, but I will ask you the following. How do you feel about the Seminoles?
Ron DeSantis (00:00):
Ron DeSantis (42:01):
Mason, so-
Condoleezza Rice (42:02):
I see Mason standing up here. Mason's a big Seminole fan.
Ron DeSantis (42:07):
I got elected governor in 2018. He was nine months old. Madison was two years old. Our youngest wasn't even born yet, so they know Tallahassee and they've grown up being there. My wife and I were not Seminoles or anyone else. I played baseball for Yale, as they mentioned. My wife did equestrian at College of Charleston in South Carolina, and so we were there and as governor, I want them to do well, but these kids would go to games and so they became very rabid. Two years ago, Florida State was undefeated and it was like, wow. Then the next year they went from no losses in the regular season to two wins. This kid was at every one of those home games. He was the only one in America in November of 2024 that was excited about playing Charleston Southern or whatever.
(42:57)
He was very excited. They beat Alabama to start the season and it was like, oh man, we're off to the races. This is going to be great. He was very excited. His sisters were very excited. They won a couple other more modest games. Then they go to Virginia on the road and lose. Lose to Miami at home and then lost to Pitt at home. Yes, you weren't there, but they lost to Pitt, so now we're here in Stanford and it's great to be with you, but we're going to go to the game. He's going to be rooting very hard, but I'll tell you, and I know Stanford hasn't had a great year, but this is important for Florida State and the trajectory of the program. Do you want to come give a prediction real quick? Come on up here. All right. I don't want not only who's going to win, but I want to score, Florida State versus Stanford tomorrow night, game time 7:30 Pacific, who's going to win and by how much?
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Well, first of all, I want to talk about Ethan Page.
Ron DeSantis (43:49):
No, no, no.
Condoleezza Rice (43:53):
Well, he knows his football.
Ron DeSantis (43:54):
Go ahead.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
28/21 Florida State.
Ron DeSantis (43:58):
Okay, you can take that to the bank. Good job, buddy.
Condoleezza Rice (44:01):
You know what? I'll take it. Yes.
Ron DeSantis (44:07):
He does his predictions and we'll post them on our social media sometimes. College football playoff, I don't know how many games total are there, but he got all but two of the whole playoff correct. And the ones he got wrong, he picks with his heart sometimes and now with his head, and he knew Ohio State was going to beat Notre Dame, but he picked Notre Dame because he likes Notre Dame better.
Condoleezza Rice (44:28):
Well, as a Domer, I appreciate that. All right, we have a couple of questions from some of our students for the governor, so let's see. Darius, where are you? Good.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Hi. Over here.
Condoleezza Rice (44:41):
And so Darius, tell us what you're studying.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
I'm studying international relations. I'm a sophomore, Governor. My question is, I'm from Singapore and I've been watching geopolitics current affairs really closely. My question is, how do you see the US's role in the Indo-Pacific when countries may be suspicious of China but do not want to choose between the US and China?
Ron DeSantis (45:04):
Well, I think we have an important role in the Indo-Pacific. I think the Indo-Pacific is the premier theater right now for US international relations, precisely because China is the closest thing we've had to a true peer competitor. If you look at the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a peer competitor in terms of nuclear arsenal, but if you compare their economy to ours, it was in like a different galaxy. China's economy is much more in line with ours. They haven't surpassed us yet and I think they got a lot of economic problems, don't get me wrong. But they are a peer competitor and I think we have an opportunity to project strong power in the Indo-Pacific, that will deter China from doing things that would be adverse to us interest. I do think countries naturally, if they see a strong hand and they see someone they can depend on, they're going to be more natural to want to be aligned with us.
(45:55)
But I also think economically you can strategically disassociate from some of the supply chains from China, but then you have opportunities to build stronger economic ties with some of the other countries and the region and then also just setting the stage politically. China is going to have a lot of problems. They got big demographic problems because of really bad policies that they imposed on the population. They've got a lot of debt problems. They have basically state-directed capitalism and so they're going to end up having problems. They're going back and forth with the Trump administration and I think we have the upper hand, America, in terms of the economy, vis-a-vis them. But I think the one thing they have is, Xi basically has a higher threshold for pain because the only thing he cares about is keeping himself and the CCP in power. If people suffer, that really isn't a big deal.
(46:44)
He only cares about it insofar as it would weaken his grip on power, so that's going to continue to be an issue in terms of the economic, but I definitely think in terms of our military, that is the number one theater for us.
Condoleezza Rice (47:00):
Thank you. Malik.
Speaker 3 (47:04):
Good afternoon Governor. Thank you for being here. I'm Malik. I'm a freshman. I'm studying economics and international relations. As we mentioned earlier, the United States is facing a K-to-12 education crisis. Under your leadership, Florida has maintained really high rankings in education and as mentioned earlier, your administration has devoted a lot of energy towards education reform. However, it's not just a state issue, it's a national issue. And Secretary Rice has said that it's a civil rights issue of our time and possibly one of our nation's greatest national security threats. Yet despite education ranking as a top concern for the majority of voters in polling, it's rarely discussed prominently in national politics. For instance, in the last year's two presidential debates it wasn't even mentioned once. In your view, what do you believe it will take to make much-needed education reform a true priority for political leaders on both sides of the aisle?
Ron DeSantis (47:54):
Great question. Well one just Florida, so I talked a little about school choice, but listen to this. I mentioned charter schools, so these are public schools not run by school districts. The schools have no entitlement to a student, like it's only if parents choose to send their kids to the charter school. We have about 400,000 kids in Florida that are in charter schools, and that's more than the K-12 population of a number of states in this country. If our charter population, which is lower income than average student in Florida, a higher percentage of both African-American and Latino than the average school in Florida, if that were its own state, it would rank top five in America for student achievement. And so people can succeed, but the parents need to be able to have options to be able to put them in programs that make sense. And there has to be incentives for the people that are running a charter school, private school or a school district to innovate so that you're attracting folks. And so we've shown that the school choice does work. And guess what?
(48:56)
As we have done more school choice, our school districts have had to innovate because they're battling for students. And so we've created I think positive incentives. Now, federally the one thing I think… I think the Department of Education, no mandates just get out of our hair as a governor, that's my posture. The one thing they did and it's not going to be through the Department of Education, is they have this school choice tax credit program now nationally. I believe education's local and state. I don't want the federal government involved in it, but on this one I'm actually supportive of it because you're never going to get school choice in Chicago. You're never going to get school choice in San Francisco. You're never going to get in some of these places, most likely because of the school unions. And so this is going over the top rope basically offering these scholarships. And I think what it'll be is a corporation can check off some of their income tax. It goes into a fund.
(49:58)
I'll tell you, you do 10, 15 billion a year, which you could raise easily through the checkoff, you would be able to do, I think it's about 100,000 kids for every billion. You're talking about hundreds of thousands, millions of kids maybe depending on how much across this country. I think that can potentially be very positive. They got to make sure they administer it properly. I think it's going to be done through the Treasury, but it's been something that I've been supportive of for a long time, so stay tuned on that. They got to make sure parents know about it. They got to make sure that it's missing in Florida. All the parents know now about… Ours is called Step Up for Students is the one that runs. I want Step Up, I want Step Up. They'll ask every private school, "Do you take Step Up? Do you take Step Up?" We have some elite private schools that don't take the scholarships and that's basically, I think it's more of an elitism that they're trying to do.
(50:49)
It's a demographic play but most, 95%, take our scholarships. I think you're going to see new schools come up in places like Chicago because they have a guaranteed source of funding that has nothing to do with the local government or the state government or the teacher union. And I think it could potentially be very due, so on a national, you got to be careful with the federal government. But on that one, I think that's an appropriate way to use tax system.
Condoleezza Rice (51:18):
Thank you. Aston.
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Hi there, Governor. Good afternoon. My name is Aston. I'm a sophomore here, studying political science. You spoke of the Constitution's founding and the constitution grants the federal government the right to wage war to negotiate with foreign powers and so on, so what role do you think states and governors will have in addressing current or future national security issues, especially given their international implications? Thank you.
Ron DeSantis (51:41):
Well, that's a great question. Obviously the chief executive commander-in-chief has so much power when it comes to foreign affairs and the conducting of foreign affairs. The Congress obviously has ways that they can constrain that or further that, but the President really has huge, huge sway there. We don't have as much at the state level, although there are some things you can do, so for example, there's a lot of concern about the CCP buying up farmland and things that could have really significant impacts. We banned the CCP from buying any land near anything critical in Florida, no farmland, no land near military bases, none of that. That's been very positive for us and it also applies to the Venezuelan regime and other hostile, but I think China was the one that was really doing that. And then we've also done a lot to police what some of these questionable regimes are doing in our universities.
(52:43)
We want transparency. We don't want this stuff happening where it's all opaque and it allows for negative influence on there, so that was really something that's been pathbreaking. And it's sad, you will see in different universities around this country, you'll see people that end up getting brought up on charges for foreign espionage and foreign influence. And so we've really worked hard to stop that in the state of Florida, so I think we have roles. I think it can be impactful, but it is not going to be a substitute for the federal governments and where the constitution vests. But I will also say this, when I first became governor, I was not necessarily that hot on traveling to foreign countries. I think we did my first four years as governor, I think we did one trade mission in four years and I started to do some more.
(53:33)
And I will tell you, showing up, being able to meet with the Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister of Japan, some of these folks that we've been able to do, it has definitely helped put Florida on the map. We get a lot of business interest, we get a lot of interest of folks from a variety of these countries wanting us to go back, wanting to bring a delegation to our state. Because you think about it, it's like if you say to me like, oh, Japan, I think Tokyo, but there's a lot more. When you say United States to some of these folks, they think New York, California, those are usually the two that they think of. Now they're starting to think more about Florida. And part of that is us going and doing the diplomacy and the business development that we've been able to do.
(54:17)
And so now we've done Japan, Korea, Israel, UK, France, Ireland, Italy, and we're working on Argentina and maybe Brazil and a lot of those folks that we've gone to, want us to go back. And I am sure Connie knows more than anyone having these personal relationships, it does make a difference. It's not all just… People get to know you. If you can articulate things about your state, about the opportunities for them firsthand, that's really, really powerful to be able to do, so I'm a big believer in actually having those personal relationships in a way that I don't think I fully appreciated that the day I became governor.
Condoleezza Rice (55:02):
Well, thank you very much. And Governor, thank you for spending the time with us. You're welcome here anytime. I also want to thank you, the audience, for being here, and I really want to encourage you to come to the game tomorrow night. You might notice that we're not quite sold out in the same way that Seminole Stadium is, so please do come. And Governor, we may be cheering for different teams and Mason and I are clearly going to be cheering for different teams, but ultimately we are part of the same team, which is the United States of America. And thank you for everything that you do, not just to serve the state of Florida, but to serve our great country. Thank you.
Ron DeSantis (55:44):
Thank you as well. Thanks so much. Great to see you guys.