Florida Governor Ron DeSantis discussed on Sunday how his anti-woke agenda is helping Florida to thrive. Questions still surround if he will run for president in the 2024 election.
DeSantis joined “Sunday Morning Futures” to talk about how he has led the effort to counter the Democrats’ far-left ideology in “all arteries of society”.
“I think we have to recognize the left is trying to impose its agenda through all of our arteries in society, including corporate America. And so part of my job to protect the freedoms of my citizens is to ensure that the left not able to impose their agenda on them through corporate America, through bureaucracy, through universities,” DeSantis told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
“The fight with Disney was really about who governs the state of Florida,” he continued. “I think they thought for 60 years they called the shots. Well, there’s a new sheriff in town, and we call the shots, and we made that very clear.”
DeSantis signed legislation last month, HB 9B, which renamed the Reedy Creek Improvement District, where Disney World is located, to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District that may only have term-limited members who are not recent employees or have been contracted by Disney in the past three years.
The measure also revoked Disney’s exemption from the Florida building code, Florida fire prevention code, and state regulatory reviews.
However, DeSantis suggested that Florida’s success is not only from just reigning in Disney.
He also credited the state’s crime policies for enticing investment across the state as more and more people move to Florida.
The population in Florida has been growing. Data released by the Census Bureau last month showed that Florida’s population grew to 22,244,823 between 2021 and 2022, an increase of 1.9% in one year.
This was the first time since 1957 that Florida was the state with the largest population increase.
DeSantis has also embarked on a pro-police tour across a series of Democrat-run cities. He is showing his support for law enforcement and analysts indicate that he is preparing for a 2024 campaign announcement.
“Yes, we have lower taxes, yes, we’re a law and order state, and you see disorder around the country, but the dramatic difference in approach between a New York and an Illinois or California and Florida, we really just started getting more wealth, more investment and the state really took off,” DeSantis said.
“My view when we say we’re the free state of Florida, yes, we want to prevent you from being overtaxed, and we don’t have an income tax, make sure you don’t have to deal with these ridiculous COVID restrictions, which Biden is still clinging to, trying to keep Novak Djokovic out of the country, so that’s important,” he continued.
DeSantis has not publicly confirmed if he will be running for president in 2024, but reportedly he has said privately that he will be.
The governor visited Iowa on Friday.
My job as a leader is to put the interests of the people I represent and their jobs over my own interests in keeping my own job,” DeSantis told Bartiromo. “And so if there’s short-term political pain and ultimately, if it doesn’t work out for me politically, that’s fine, but you had to do the right thing.”
“And I think the fact that we did that was part of the reason why we boom so much,” he said.
