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Podcast Host
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Ron DeSantis
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Interviewer
Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the real Florida man, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, everybody. All right, so I said to the gov at dinner, said, gov, what are the chances that I can get you to have some tequila on stage in front of a thousand friends? He said, do you have whiskey? Will McAllen 12 do? Will that do? Will that be all right? All right, all right.
Ron DeSantis
I'm not somebody that's out drinking very, you know, I've got, like, family. I got all this stuff. Occasionally, you know, my choice would be the scotch, which is fine. And I've learned all that. I've also learned a lot about cigars because we have so many good. All the great companies are headquartered here. I'm actually on the of Cigar Aficionado for this episode, so if you want to go buy that. We did a good interview. It's good. But so I got. So this would be it. Well, which is fine. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, you know, I was doing an event in Lexington, Kentucky, one time. Great spot, great people, and we're doing the stuff, and I'm doing my shtick. I'm answering the questions. Everything's gone. And then we're like, all right, break. Oh, governor, you want a drink? And I'm like, yeah, just give me a scotch on the rocks. And everyone was quiet, and they all looked at me, and one's like, governor, we drink Kentucky bourbon in Lexington. Point taken. Big mistake. Okay, here we go.
Interviewer
All right. Well, cheers, Florida, man. So that right there, that really is why I wanted to do this show, because I wanted you guys to maybe get a little window into knowing the governor the way I've gotten to know him a little bit and what he just told you about Cigar Aficionado. We're sitting at dinner every. You know, we had a bunch of people there.
Podcast Host
Everyone's asking him, policy, policy, policy. And he's like, guys, guys, I was
Interviewer
on Sakar Aficionado, please. So, gov, all right, you got a little time left. Everyone in this room knows it's been a success. What else do you wanted? Yeah, What else? What else, my friend?
Ron DeSantis
You know, it's interesting how I travel the state, you know, I show up at Wawa and all these places. People talk, and it's good because you get to learn unfiltered from people. But it's just as kind of 20, 26 came in, I started to get people, oh, we don't want to lose you. Oh, so good. It's like almost like I'm like, guys, I'm still here. I still got, you know, I got a Runway. I'm going to run through the tape. And I kind of feel like Churchill. There was a Churchill vignette. He was past prime minister. He was being honored by the Women's Temperance Society of London. And the president, the club said, you know, Mr. Prime Minister, we admire your statesmanship, but we disapprove of your drinking habits. And she's like, there was in a room like this, she's like, if you added up all the brandy and wine and champagne that you have drank throughout your whole life. It would go 3/4 of this entire ballroom. Churchill, you know, advanced in age, looked up, saw some space above and said, well, so much to do and so little time to do it. So we're running through the tape. We got a lot of stuff going on. We are. I started talking about property tax about a year and a half ago. And. In my view, and part of it was, that's the best thing we can do to help people with affordability. I wish I could control the price of gas or the price of groceries, but government can't do that. But the tax, local governments do we have a constitutional mechanism to do it. So we started looking at the numbers and it was in 2019 to now, local governments have taxed people 32 billion then and 60 billion now. And the thing is, is yes, we've had pop growth, yes, we've had inflation, but not enough to double the amount of tax. And so we looked at it and said, okay, how do we do this? And, you know, we have this homestead system in Florida. If you're a resident, you could claim a homestead. It's a big benefit. We could eliminate all tax on homestead and they would still have 35% more revenue than they had seven years ago. And so for me, I'm like, that's a vision that I wanna see. I would love for you to own your home and it not be used as a piggy bank for government. So we did it. And basically I worked on this. We were working on it for many months. And we had a great thing that would have phased out the homestead taxes entirely. We provided money for local governments with our surplus. We did a lot. It was well thought out. Work with the Senate in Florida on it, and they were acceptable. I didn't have a relationship with the Florida House. We've got a speaker who basically is against everything I'm for, and it hasn't worked out well, but for him, but it is what it is. He took that position, so we didn't do it. So we. We called the special session a couple weeks ago. I unveiled it and basically the House wouldn't pass it. So they ended up passing something else, which is good, it will be a tax cut. But it's not as ambitious as I had hoped. And I kind of was telling David dinner. It kind of reminds me of the scene in Back to the Future where Marty is playing Johnny B. Goode at the Enchantment under the Sea dance. And he starts doing it and, you know, this is 1955. People start to kind of really dig it. And they're hopping. Then he goes into this, like, Eddie Van Halen guitar riff, like stringing. He's on the ground, like heavy metal stuff. And by the time he's done, everyone's just quiet and they're just looking like, what the hell?
Commercial Narrator
And.
Ron DeSantis
And he goes up to the microphone, he's like, that may be a little bit too much for you, but your kids are going to love it. And so I kind of feel like the vision that I staked out, I don't know that the legislature was quite ready for it. I think it's compelling. I think Florida is one of the only states where this is possible because we have so much of our tax base are people that aren't even residents here. We should take advantage of that and help our residents. So there is going to be on the ballot the biggest property tax reduction in the history of the state. So you guys will be able to do that. Not the same thing exactly that I had been advocating for and had been talking to people about. But I can tell you, had we not raised it a year and a half ago, the chance that anything would have been on the ballot would have been zero. So that's something that the voters may pass. My proposal would have passed. We researched it, we did a lot. But there is gonna need to be a bill that implement this November, December, at the end of the year. And we gotta get that right and gotta make sure. But I mean, imagine we have no income tax at the state level. Obviously we do have sales tax, but, you know, our sales tax is 6%, California's is 8 or 9%, and they have income tax, all this other stuff. And we exempt the consumers, the core things that you need then to rein in local governments and say you have this property that has constitutional protection. There would be no state in the country that could touch Florida for freedom if we're able to pull that off.
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Interviewer
Wayfair.
Ron DeSantis
Every style, every home.
Interviewer
What would you say has been the biggest challenge in the last five or so years? Really? Since COVID started in that Florida had this crazy influx of people. I think it's about 2.3 million people in about five years. It's extraordinary. It's the highest net in of any state. What were the challenges that were presented to you around that?
Ron DeSantis
Well, you know, people on the one hand, I think, and this is true with kind of a lot of people I run into in Florida, on the one hand, there's a sense of pride that Florida is the place that people go to for sanity and freedom. When they fed up with Chicago, they go to Naples. And when they're fed up with New York City, they go to Miami. When they're fed up with San Francisco, they come. And so part of it is that shows that we're doing some things right. But on the other hand, it's like we have all these people. It's a lot to process. And I definitely think there's a lot of folks out there that were just concerned about the pace of it. And they would tell me, governor, stop bringing people in. And I remind them, I'm not bringing anybody in. American citizens, you guys can go wherever you want to go. Because if I did control it, I probably would have some say. There may be some I wouldn't let you know, but that's not the way it works. It's a free country. People vote with their feet. So being able to respond to that is not something that's easy. One just on infrastructure. Fortunately, we were on a big surplus, so I took about seven or eight billion dollars from that, and we did infrastructure road projects that weren't scheduled to even start until next decade. We started them and we're going to deliver them 10 years ahead of schedule in most times. But that's just kind of to keep your head above water, right? In terms of housing, people that had a home in 2019 worth $350,000 in many parts of the state, that's now worth 700 or 800. Well, they say it is. I mean, look, I think the market, I think it goes up and sometimes goes down, right? But for younger people to be able to afford, especially in a high national inflation environment, that's not the easiest thing. That's one of the reasons I gravitated to property tax reform, because I want people to be able to afford their first home. And imagine you being able to afford your first home. You buy a home for $350,000 and you're not having to pay several thousand dollars to the government every year. That's a huge thing for families. So there's been a Lot of positives for it. I mean, our economy's grown from 1.1 trillion to 1.85 trillion just in my tenure as governor. So that's about a 70, 75% increase in Florida's economy very short period of time. If you look at the income that has moved into Florida since I've been governor, that's more income, adjusted for inflation than has ever moved into any American state in the history of the republic. And it's not even close. So there's benefits to that, but then there's also challenges. So I think we've done a good job trying to manage that, trying to accommodate it, and there's been a lot of positives for it. But there are absolutely issues also environment. I mean, people need housing, right? You have to increase the supply. But at the same time, you don't want the state to be a concrete jungle. You want to preserve some of the great spaces. And so we did the Florida Wildlife corridor from down in, like, Naples all the way up the spine of the state. We've put hundreds of thousands of additional acres into conservation. We've done things to be able to ensure agriculture, land stays in agriculture and doesn't end up with housing development. And so those that required some funds, that required some legislative action. But all in all, I think we've done a really good job on doing that. But yeah, I mean, those are. They're good problems to have because the state's doing well, but they are definitely challenges.
Interviewer
Are you ever worried that post. Ron DeSantis Florida will be a victim of its own success and that people will get, you know, they'll get fat on all the goodness and that will end up bringing back a lot of the ideas that have been purged from this place.
Ron DeSantis
So I'm not one to worry. I mean, it is what it is, right? I mean, voters make decisions, they put whoever they want in. But I will say this. We had the last year and a half, you know, we've had a Florida House of Representatives that their number one thing was to try to oppose me. Nobody voted for that. Nobody even knows who a lot of these people are, right? So why were they doing that? Well, the leadership, they were kowtowing to people outside of the system who don't have Florida's best interests at heart. Certainly didn't want to see me do well for a variety of reasons. And so if a state that went from a 1 point state to a 20 point state, from bear majorities to super majorities, all from 300,000 more Democrats, when I got elected in 18 to now 1.5 million more registered Republicans. No one has seen anything like that. But if the response to that is to try to throw sand in the gears of what's been successful, that is not a good sign. I think Florida has a challenge because these guys go up to Tallahassee. It's so far removed. A lot of times people don't follow what's going on up there, and there is, I think, some negative incentives. So I just. I think that you may not see a continuation of what I've done. I'm not saying you're gonna see radically left, but when you have super majorities, what happens is people that have more liberal ideas know they can't get elected as a D. So then they become part of Republican. Right. Because if you win the primary, you will get elected in most parts of the state. Now, just by having the R by your name. Didn't used to be that way, but that's how it is now. So I think some of these people have figured that out. And so how conservative is this gonna be in the future? I don't know. Is there danger that we kind of go off in a more corporatist direction or some of the things that I think voters have rejected over the years? I definitely think that there's a danger that that happens. But ultimately, when voters hold these people accountable, things tend to work out. One of the things that I think's happened and look, I mean, not to say it's all. But I led from. From the time I got in, I was pushing, I was leading, I was pushing the envelope. I was taking the incoming. We didn't really need to have pressure groups because I was out doing it. And so I think what's happened is that's what people have kind of gotten used to. You don't need to necessarily come to the governor's mansion and protest because to do property, I'm out there doing it. Right. You didn't need to come do that for redistricting map. I called the special session and we got it done.
Interviewer
Well,
Ron DeSantis
I do think it's helpful to have folks that are holding their elected officials accountable. So we just need to make sure that we rediscover. But when you have super majority, when you have this, the ideological, I think lines can blur a little bit. And to me, RD is not as important as what are you actually standing for underneath that label? We stood for bold colors, not pale pastels. We went took on the corporatists. I mean, I ran on Everglades Against Big Sugar and won. I ran and fought Big Pharma and won. We fought the Medical industrial complex during COVID and we won. We beat the DEI cartel. We're the first state to eliminate that and we won. And so those are things that you get out of your. It's not comfortable if you just don't want to make waves. Right. But that's ultimately, I think, what it takes. So we've shown. But here's the thing. When I got in, it was a one point state. People said, hey man, I know you're strong, I know you're conservative, but you got to be careful. Florida's a 50 50. You don't want to upset the apple cart. And that was. I understood that advice, but ultimately I rejected it. And what we showed is when you do do bold colors, when you're leading, when you're getting out in front and delivering results, not only is that more conservative, it's also better politics. Not always immediately. Certainly during COVID I got killed for a long time. But ultimately when people see the success, they go. You've never seen a 1.8 million voter registration shift in a state in the history of the United States of America in a four, a six year period, eight year period. It just doesn't happen. And it didn't happen because, oh, we have good voter registration or we did that. No, it was organic. It was people that were Miami, a lot of people switched, people moving here, all this other stuff. But it was all based on leading and delivering results. And that's a formula that will work in Florida in the future and in other states.
Podcast Host
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Interviewer
This is a slight sidebar, but sign of the times gov. I think a little of that static we're getting, I think it's from your aura ring. Something's going on there. I really think that's what's happening.
Ron DeSantis
You know, my wife got me this. And it's funny because, you know, I'll like, you know, like, run on the treadmill and it's like, okay, you did okay. I walk 18 holes of golf. This thing is the happiest thing in the world. It loves that. And then, like, it hates my sleep. He says I don't sleep enough because, you know, I fall asleep at midnight, wake up at six kind of deal. And it just doesn't like that, says your sleep's not deep enough and all this stuff. So I kind of have a love hate relationship with this thing.
Interviewer
Yeah, I think we all do. Well, I think I know the answer to this question, but you just mentioned some of the big fights that you chose when you went all in on fighting Disney. I mean, you're not like most of these other politicians. You're not worth a gajillion dollars. You're still at the beginning of your career in a lot of respects. Was there any moment as the entire machine was crashing around you that you're going to, you know, I am going against basically one of the biggest corporations in the world, and they're throwing everything at me and mainstream media. Was there any moment that you were like, wow, maybe I bit off too much?
Ron DeSantis
No. And the reason just is people weren't talking about it at the time it kind of came out last. You know, my wife and I actually got married at Disney. Wasn't my idea. Her family was big into it. They've got a very beautiful chapel right there. So it's not like. And I just told her when she said that's what they wanted to do, I said, listen, you know, I'll back what you want to do, but I do not want to see Mickey showing up with any. I was like, I want it to be traditional. And it was. It was great. But anyways, it wasn't like I was coming at it from a negative position on Disney. And during COVID no one did more to help save Disney and Universal and that by having the parks open here when they were closed in California for over a year. So. And I always. I had a good relationship, but, you know, this was the issue. You know, we were talking about, like, these young kids and the education and the agenda. We just wanted to have school be school. We wanted kids to be kids. And so we felt very strongly about that. But the then CEO called me, was like, oh, man, I'm getting a lot of stuff. And he was complaining about the legislation. I said, that's not in the legislation. I was like, you can't go by narrative. You got to go by fax. I was like, but here's what my advice to you is. Stay out of it. You're gonna take Flack for 48 hours, it'll pass, it'll sign it, and then everyone will forget about it in two weeks. And I think that was the right advice. And they chose to come out to try to do that. And, you know, for me, I was just like, you know, I had already been through the COVID wringer, and so the COVID was more intense than anything. So Disney, I was like, I'm not worried about this. And so I'm like, I gotta do what's right. Yeah, they always win these political fights in Florida, but we'll be okay. And so we signed the legislation. They made a big mistake because after the bill was signed, they should have just walked away. And what they said is, you know, we're going to do everything in our company's power, which is very significant, you know, to repeal the law, strike it down in court. And they listed all these things. And I'm just like, you know, I mean, first of all, I don't think that's their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. It should be to earn returns for their shareholders, not try to fight Florida on our education policy. But nevertheless. But they happen to be the beneficiaries of this antiquated but very useful for them system where they were given control of this local government. So we're here in Miami Dade County. You know, you got the county government, you got that Disney had its own government and basically would run it, and massive tax benefits, massive competitive advantage. Not good policy. I understand why they did it to lure Disney there. In the 60s, they were supposed to build homes, and then there would be voters there who would elect people. And that didn't end up happening. It just was controlled by Disney. So we said, all right, you can come after us, but we are not going to subsidize you attacking our policy. And so we yanked the local government away from them, put it under state receivership. And we're better off as a result of that because my board members cut taxes for all the local businesses. Disney's now pitching in, paying their fair share, all this stuff. And guess what? People said that they were gonna leave Florida, go, you're gonna see space Mountain on I75 going to Columbus, Ohio, or something like that. No, didn't happen. In fact, they're investing $18 billion into their parks in central Florida. So it was the Right thing to do. And I'll tell you apart from that particular skirmish, this was 2022, I think that was peak woke in this country and there were corporate wokeness was totally out of control. So you had some of the biggest companies on the planet like BlackRock and some of these, they were pushing this ESG agenda. They were pushing DEI, really, really bad policies. They couldn't enact those policies in legislatures, but they're trying to use corporate power to be able to impose that on society anyways. And up to that point, I think a lot of the people in business, they weren't necessarily on board with that agenda, but it was the path of least resistance. If they didn't do DEI or they didn't do esg, they'd have the left come, the activists would protest them and that if they did it, the right never said anything. So I was the first one on the right to actually show some of the corporations, you know, you want to do your job and stick to your businesses, fine. But you're getting in our arena. If you're pushing left and you're trying to impose this on our society, I'm fighting back and we're going to win. And right then and there, when we had that fight, a lot of these corporate execs were able to go to their board of directors and say, listen, I know you want dei, I know you want, but I don't want to be the next Disney. I don't want to end up happen what happened in Florida. So that was the turning point to defeating corporate wokeness.
Interviewer
All right, let's shift for our remaining 10 minutes and do some more of the fun stuff. We're going to swap the mic real quick.
Podcast Host
Thank you.
Interviewer
What's been the most fun for you doing this whole thing? I know you mostly want to talk baseball. If we were really, if you were doing your happiest, what could I do for an hour? It would probably be playing baseball. And you were a hell of a player. What you tell me about it now?
Ron DeSantis
I was golf because, you know, I played in the congressional baseball game back when I was a, you know, I was a three term U.S. congressman. I've totally recovered from that experience. Very clear thinking, no problem. But you know, I was, you know, in my, I was 33 when I got elect 34. I had played baseball through college and so these guys like oh, we got a player and you know, I could still hit and everything. But when you're not used to like sprinting to first like you would do, it's just Kind of fast twitch, and that's how you do so, like. But golf is easy because I can go out there and do it and not. But I'll tell you, being able to travel the state, it's really unique place. We have probably five different regions that could be their own separate states. Miami Dade, very unique part of the United States. We've got all these different places. So to be able to go see all that, see how beautiful the state is, meet so many people over the years, has been really fun. Now, it's interesting, when you get elected governor, you're kind of. I mean, I had been in the Congress, but, you know, you just treated like a normal person. Then you get elected, you walk out your hotel room, and the security's on you. And so you have a security detail, and then you go. You give the speech. They walk you back to your hotel room, they take you back to your house. I go, jaw. We were in Ponte Vedra Beach. I go for a run the next morning, and I got SUVs following me. And it's like, kind of like. So you're just in a kind of a bubble. And so there's negatives on that, but one positive is we hosted two Super Bowls in Florida since I was governor. And when you have the. No, we did. Miami Hard Rock hosted Chiefs and 49ers, and then Tampa hosted when Tom Brady and the Bucs beat the Chiefs to win. I'm a Bucks fan, so that was a big one.
Interviewer
But.
Ron DeSantis
And this is true for a lot of these big events, when you have kind of the detail, man, they pull you right into the stadium and you just get out and go. And so, like, as a sports fan, that's like the one thing you have. The lack of privacy. There's all this. But that was really good. But we've been able to do a lot of great stuff in terms of. We've had great events. We've had two Super Bowls. We had the college national championship here. I was here when they started F1. We work with the Dolphins and Steven Ross on that. That's been a big success. The Daytona 500 is a great event. We do that. We host a lot of great golf tournaments, spring training for baseball, World Baseball Classic in Miami. That's been phenomenal. And to be able to take my kids to some of that stuff, you know, has been a lot of fun. So, yeah, I mean, look, I'm at the end of the day. I mean, I grew up playing baseball. You know, I'm now a big. Big into golf. You know, I like watching football, although I kind of feel with the nil, the college game has been less interesting to me, although I'm the vice chairman of President Trump's NIL Reform Commission. And we met. We were doing that. We had Nick Saban, all these great people, and they do have legislation advancing in the Senate. And I actually think we're gonna get something done that is going to reform the whole college sports scene and get us back on kilter so that we're in a better spot. But that's been a big deal. And I'll tell you, I had not watched the NBA for a while, but I have watched now. This series has been pretty good. Although I will confess, I turned it off when the knicks were down 20 in the third quarter. That was a mistake. So, yeah, my kids are big into sports. My daughters do track and soccer and some of that. My son does baseball, golf. He likes football a lot. So I was playing with him this past weekend, and he's on the green and two on a par five. Now we tee him up close. He's in. Just got out of second grade, and he's. He's on. He's putting from 15ft away. I was like, do you want me to pull the flag? He's like, no. So he hits this putt. I mean, just bending right in. And it hit the flag stick and got rejected. It would have gone in had he not had the flag stick in. So now I said, mason, you realize why the pros take the flagstick out? Because you're more likely to get rejected than have it help you on a putt like that. So now every time we get on the green. Take it out, dad. Take it out, dad. So we do.
Interviewer
All right, gov, we got time for one more. And I suspect you know what the question will be. They know what the question will be, too.
Ron DeSantis
Probably a question I only get asked 500 times.
Interviewer
All right, so I'll try to frame it slightly differently. Then you ran for president. I was very, very vocal and proud to support you. And what I wanted was what you had been talking about so much in the state was that this was the blueprint and how you could scale it across America if America could become Florida. Now, ultimately, obviously, you didn't become president. In my world, we got the president we needed and we got the governor we needed right here in Florida, and it's all good. I think it worked out just fine. So what's next?
Ron DeSantis
Well, look, I mean, I'm definitely running through the tape here. We're going to get every piece of meat off the bone we can. I don't believe in just kind of, you know, gliding. I want to continue to work and find different things to do. You know, we'll see. I mean, look, I think what we've shown in Florida, and I think we've done a better job here than any Republican in the country in my lifetime is doing this, is identifying the pathologies of the left, isolating that and defeating the left. And institution after institution on issue after issue. Because ultimately, I would love to have Kumbay. When I was growing up, I didn't know who was a Republican or Democrat. The problem is now the left, they become so militant. It isn't like you can just, like, do a deal and like, we're gonna be good. Like, they don't believe in the foundations of this country. So you've gotta win that battle. And so just for example, in Florida, see, people don't even care about this in terms of media. Cause it's more about superficial things. But I signed legislation providing for the decertification of these partisan teacher unions. Now they own California, they own New York. What have the results been? They're pursuing a leftist agenda. So we made the decision. We're not gonna let them control the K through 12 education system in Florida. On higher education, we have a law that I signed, the legislature passed at my request. All tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be terminated for poor performance. We always complain about how liberal higher education is, how they're pushing an agenda. But you actually gotta change and you gotta do something about it to be able to do. We obviously had the fight with Disney. We beat Fauci, we did all those other things. So I think that the issues that we're gonna face going forward is we kind of slept for, you know, 15, 20 years on the right. And the left took control of so many of these institutions throughout American life and I think polluted them. Florida, we've recaptured that. They used to say, when William F. Buckley founded National Review, he said, our job is to stand, to thwart history and yell, stop the left's advances. The problem with that today is the left has already succeeded in a lot of stuff. So if you're just saying, stop, no more leftism, that is not sufficient. You need to recapture this ground. You need to roll back leftism and make sure that we have a free society. So that, I think, is what we've been able to do very, very well. I think that there's gonna be one of the things I'M concerned about watching. And President Trump, he's not coming down to Florida as much now that we're in the summer, but when he's here, I see him frequently, play golf with him, all this stuff. And, you know, I think he's been frustrated with Congress. I've been frustrated with Congress. What's gonna end up happening is all these executive orders. You know, if you do have a Democrat and you might. We're a divided country, let's just be clear. Doesn't take much swing either way. They're gonna reverse all those. Congress hasn't codified that policy, so the border policy could be reversed by a president coming in going forward. So we've shown in the Florida to do big change, be bold, but do things that are gonna stick. It's not just because I'm governor that's gonna be there even after I'm governor and for many, many years after. So we've gotta get. We've gotta understand that on a national basis and make sure that we're able to do big things. So we'll run through the tape here. We'll see in the future. Like, look, I'm in my mid-40s. Who knows what life will. Will hold in the future. I have a lot of people that want me to do a lot of different things, but I think I owe it to the voters. Just run through the tape here. We'll come out on the other side. I'm kind of looking forward to having a little bit of civilian again after doing. I mean, it's been an honor for sure, and we've gotten a lot done, but, you know, to just be able to kind of do things in the private sector or whatever for a little bit. So there's a lot of good stuff going on. But I will tell you that when I do make next moves, probably you'll be in line to be one of the people that we come on and talk about it with.
Interviewer
Okay, I'll take it. My man. Guys, give it up for the real Florida man, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, everybody.
Episode: Disney Exec Phone Call Details Revealed & the Next Threat to Conservatives | Ron DeSantis
Host: Dave Rubin
Guest: Governor Ron DeSantis
In this insightful and candid episode, Dave Rubin sits down for a live conversation with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The discussion delves into DeSantis’ signature policies, challenges around tax reform, Florida’s transformation during his tenure, the “war” with Disney, and the evolving threats and opportunities for conservatives. True to the show’s style, the conversation combines policy deep-dives with personal anecdotes and humor, offering both a blueprint for “the Florida Model” and lessons for the future of conservative governance in America.
True to both The Rubin Report and Ron DeSantis, the conversation is direct, unapologetic, and imbued with humor and personal insight. DeSantis blends self-deprecating anecdotes with confident policy explanations, aiming to inspire conservatives beyond Florida while sounding an alert about future threats from inside and outside the movement.
Summary prepared for listeners seeking for a thorough, speaker-voiced recap of the entire episode – skipping ads, banter, and non-content sections.