Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis joined me this morning:

Audio:

08-25hhs-desantis

Transcript:

HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. Good morning, Governor.

RD: Good morning, Hugh. How are you doing?

HH: I am great. I want to begin, I want to cover a lot with you – the Congressional map, education, prosecutors, but yesterday, Joe Biden gave away maybe $300 billion dollars to people. I’ll bet you paid off some student debt when you served in the Navy deployed with the SEALs to Iraq. You were a JAG. What did you make of this announcement yesterday, because my listeners do not like this?

RD: Oh, I thought it was terrible. One, it’s unconstitutional, which is obviously something important. I don’t think that that’s something Biden cares about, but he doesn’t have the authority to do this. Two, you’re going to be having farmers, people that have their own small businesses, waitresses, they’re going to be on the hook to pay the student loan of somebody who got a PhD in gender studies? I mean, give me a break. So yes, people should obviously pay back their loans, but then the fact that you’re putting this on the backs of working Americans who may have made different choices with regards to their education, or, like you said, and most people have done, have paid off their debts. And so I think a lot of people who have paid off education debts right now feel like chumps, because they did the right thing. And now, Biden’s coming in with this. It’ll also exacerbate the inflation problems that we’re seeing right now. And it’s not just people like me saying that. You have Obama economists saying that this is going to fuel more inflation. So I think it’s a policy disaster, but I also do think it’s a political disaster, because I just don’t think it sits well with the vast majority of people in this country.

HH: I agree with that. Now Governor, you mentioned Constitutional. The Constitutional authority to draw the maps for Congressional districts resides with the state legislature and the governor. And you took that over. And thanks to that, the Republicans are almost certainly going to gain back the majority, because you went head to head with the Democrats in the Illinois and Massachusetts, and wherever they drew district lines, to make them competitive for their party. I am very glad you did that. Are you getting any blowback or applause on that?

RD: Well, we actually didn’t do it for that reason. The issue that we had was we had unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in the map that was being proposed. And there was a district drawn from rural Gadsden County west of Tallahassee zigzagging all the way to the north side of Jacksonville, which is about 200 miles away. And we believe that that violated the federal Constitution. Now the state legislature initially thought that Florida’s Constitution mandated that. And so we thought it was very important that we follow the federal Constitution, so we rejected that map for that reason. We redrew it, and so now it’ll be challenged legally not for this election but going forward. But really, the issue is going to be that racial gerrymandering. You know, in Florida, we have provisions in our state Constitution that limits how you’re able to draw maps. And so you’re not, so those maps were not done with party in mind. They were done by people who were basically just following the contours of Florida’s Constitution. But it is that issue of racial gerrymandering, and I think that you know, you draw districts that represent the community, but don’t go 200 miles and try to apportion people based on the color of their skin.

HH: Now Governor, you’ve made some appointments to the Florida Supreme Court. All of us remember the year 2000 when I called it the Yo Ho Court, the pirates. Who do you look for when you put justices on the Florida Supreme Court?

RD: Well, you’re exactly right on the 2000 court. And that court really dominated Florida politics for 25 years. And so when I became governor, it was a 4-3 liberal majority. But fortunately, three of the four liberals reached mandatory retirement age, so I was able to backfill them with conservative justices. And so we now have a 6-1 conservative majority. I’ve actually made 5 appointments because, actually, 6 appointments now…

HH: Wow.

RD: …because two of my appointments got fleeted up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals under President Donald Trump. So what I do is I convene a group of people that I trust – some people in Florida, some people outside of the state who you would know who I’m not going to say, because you know, it’s private. But and then they put these candidates through the wringer. So they will go into a room and you’ll have six or seven pretty big legal conservative heavyweights, and they have to answer questions. And I’m not there for that, but then I get debriefed by them, and then I’ll sit and do interviews with each individual candidate. But basically, what we’re looking for, do you understand the proper role of the court in the Constitutional system, exercise neither judgment but not will. Are you willing to apply the law even when it’s difficult? And so I’m somebody, I disagree with obviously judicial activism, but sometimes, Hugh, you’re called upon to enforce the Constitution in ways that’ll be consequential. And that’s not activism if that’s the proper interpretation of the Constitution. I think some people on the conservative side are just judicial minimalists where they don’t ever want to do anything, and they just defer. And we just want the accurate understanding of the Constitution to take hold. And then three, just understand that if you’re doing that, you are going to get hit by the media. You’re going to get hit by law professors. And we want people like Justice Thomas who will just stand strong and never, never bend to any of those pressures.

HH: It’s a great record. I wish every Republican, well, I’ll make sure every Republican hears that. That’s what they’ve got to do. Now I want to talk about education. In the Washington Post yesterday, I wrote a column saying education is the secret sauce for Republicans in the election ahead. Some people don’t believe that, but you embraced it. How did you do on Tuesday in the school board elections in which you intervened?

RD: So we did 30 different candidates that we endorsed and gave support. 25 of them won the primaries. And we were in some conservative areas that had school boards that were way out of step with the voters there. And then we were also in tougher terrain, because we think it’s important that people are doing the right thing. But in Florida, under our state Constitution, school board elections are non-partisan. And so what that has meant over the years is that the special interests and the unions will back a candidate in these red counties. They’ll dress them up as if they represent conservative values. But then when they get on the board, they’re basically doing, you know, left-wing things. And so we said okay, we want to make sure Republican voters in particular know who’s the candidate that’s standing there that doesn’t want schools to be used as tools of indoctrination, that believes in the basic values of the community, and believe that parents have an important role in that. So we were able to highlight a lot of that. And so we ended up flipping seats in places like Miami-Dade County, Sarasota, Hillsborough, Duval County, very important parts of our state. And now what you have, Hugh, and this has been building for the last year and a half, but what you have is there’s a lot of Republican voters that actually are engaged in school board races. And it’s not just parents, because I think other Republicans who maybe have kids that have already grown up and are gone with the school system, they just understand how important this is. And so I think the fact that first of all we had schools open and that we were standing with parents all throughout COVID to make sure that their kids had opportunity, gave us a lot of credibility to then go into these communities and say hey, here’s a candidate that’s going to stand for the policies that you wanted to see over the last year and a half.

HH: Governor, every time I bring up the ideological agendas that have seeped into high school and elementary schools, I hear from my left-wing friends in the media, oh, CRT is not taught in the schools. I point them to Liberals of TikTok, and they say that’s simply the amplification of a few outliers. In fact, that ideology is everywhere. How do you respond when lefties say hey, CRT is just graduate level stuff, it’s got nothing to do with teaching?

RD: Well, it’s true. There aren’t courses named CRT. What it is, it’s a pedagogy that is used to infuse normal academic subjects. So for example, teaching history, the New York Times 1619 Project instructs teachers to teach that the American Revolution was fought to defend slavery. Now that’s false. We know why the American Revolution was fought. They wrote pamphlets about it. They debated it. And they laid down a lot of markers that have really changed the course of human history, and quite frankly, made sure that slavery’s days were numbered, because they actually said our rights come from God, we’re all created equal. So how could you justify something like that at that point? So when you see that, you know they’re trying to advance an agenda. When you have different things in schools where they will treat kids differently on the basis of their skin color and say one skin color is an oppressor, one’s an oppressed, yeah, that may not be under the course titled CRT, but it’s the same type of outlook and way to teach other subjects. Also, on the gender ideology, there are absolutely school districts around the country that have guidance in place about teachers saying to very young kids, hey, you may have been born in a boy’s body, but maybe you’re not really a boy. So that is absolutely going on throughout the country. And quite frankly, we wouldn’t have gotten the media on the left to be so upset with our Parents Rights in Education if it wasn’t going on, because if it’s not going on, then why would you care about it? So it is going on, and they just need to honest about that. And they also retreat. They’ll say, Hugh, they’ll say oh, it’s not happening, but then if it’s happening, it’s not a big deal and that we should just not worry about it. Well, I mean, you’ve got to pick your position here.

HH: Yeah, they go with ‘it’s not my dog, it didn’t bit you, besides, you kicked it first’ reply. Governor, before I move to Charlie Crist, and he’s decided to throw in with the Soros un-prosectors, this morning, Rishi Sunak, who wants to be prime minister, he’s not going to be prime minister, said it was a mistake during the lockdowns in Great Britain to trust the scientists so much, to cede power to them. Obviously, you did not do that. Is it encouraging to find conservatives in Great Britain admitting that they made that mistake?

RD: I think it’s essential that that happen, and I just went back to Eisenhower’s farewell address where in addition to warning about the military industrial complex, he said you know, as scientific research becomes melded with government policy, there’s a danger that public policy itself could be captive to what he termed a scientific technological elite. And he rejected that, because he said a statesman has got to consider that, but you also have all these other factors that you need to harmonize. And so you see things like Fauci saying oh, there’s no lasting damage from these school closures. Give me a break. I mean, I can tell you, because I’ve had families move to Florida just for that issue, and there was a myopic focus on one respiratory pathogen to the exclusion of everything else which is very, very damaging, but then there was also mitigations applied that were not capable of doing what they said. I mean, the fact of the matter is by the time we got into April of 2020, it was pretty clear that this thing had already spread enough. You weren’t going to be able to eradicate it through lockdown policies. And I think the dangerous thing is very few people in the public health establishment have been willing to acknowledge those mistakes. And that just means that we could potentially repeat some of those mistakes sometime in the future.

HH: Last question, Governor DeSantis. You have been gifted with Charlie Crist as an opponent in your reelection campaign. He began his campaign by embracing Andrew Warren, the prosecutor you rightly suspended. What do you make about that? I think Americans are sick of prosecutors who don’t prosecute.

RD: Well, the defund the police movement was very damaging, but Hugh, I think if you look at the body toll and the crime that has happened from these Soros-backed prosecutors who just decide they’re not going to prosecute laws they don’t like, I think it’s probably even exceeded that. It’s been very, very damaging. It has really torn at the fabric of society in a lot of these communities, and so no, a prosecutor’s not a law unto himself. You take an oath to faithfully apply the law. And Florida, under Article IV, Section 7 of our state Constitution, the governor has the authority to suspend people who are not following the law, so that’s what we did. But I think this is part and parcel of Charlie Crist’s latest identity, which is that he said he wants to relocate funding away from police. He’s taken votes in Congress that are more consistent with the defund movement, then pro-law enforcement. And now, he’s embracing these Soros prosecutors, which obviously will be very detrimental for our society. And the interesting thing is when we announced the suspension of Andrew Warren, I had all three sheriffs, his county sheriff and then two neighboring county sheriffs, and I had the former Tampa police chief all standing up there with me saying what a lousy job he’s doing because he’s not enforcing the law. And so the law enforcement community understood the stakes of having somebody in that position that is not faithfully enforcing the law.

HH: Well, good luck on the campaign. Keep coming back, Governor DeSantis. We cover Florida. I’m glad you joined us, and good luck in the election campaign ahead.

RD: Thanks. God bless.

HH: You, too.

End of interview.