Governor Ron DeSantis and The Free State of Florida

- He's been governor for more than seven years now. And during that time, more Americans have moved into his state than into any other state in the country. I'm here in the Governor's mansion in Tallahassee to see if I can figure out why. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida on Uncommon Knowledge. Now, welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson, the 46th governor of the state of Florida. Ronald Dion DeSantis grew up in Dunedin, just north of Clearwater. He studied history at Yale where he was captain of the varsity baseball team. A successor to George HW Bush in that position, earned his law degree from Harvard and then served as a lawyer in the Navy deploying to Iraq, elected to Congress. In 2012, Ron DeSantis served three terms in the house. In 2018, he was elected to his first term as governor of Florida. By four-tenths of 1% of 1.4 years later, governor DeSantis was reelected by almost 20 points. Since Florida limits his governors to two terms, Ron DeSantis is now in his final year. Governor, thanks for the invitation to join you here.

- Oh, welcome to Florida. You know, it's interesting the, when I was growing up, I never would see a California license plate in Florida. I mean, California's the place everyone wanted to go to.

- Yes.

- Then I get into my term and things start happening. We start seeing these California license plates and because the state was so competitive, as you alluded to one point, races were the norm in this state.

- Yes. - Through 2018, my supporters were like, governor, these California people, they're gonna turn us blue. And actually was the opposite. These were people who were coming to Florida going all the way across the continent because they saw our policies reflect the values that they felt that the governing class in California didn't. And so, you know, people thought Berkeley was coming to Florida, and in reality, these were people that were probably reaganites back in the day.

- It pains me to hear all that because it's so true and I know it from my personal experience, the number of friends. Alright, we'll we'll get to that later. Here's the first question. I have a research assistant who like you as a Yale grad, and he pulled together a packet of materials for me for this interview. And on top he left a note, and here's his note, I'm quoting him. I've noticed that Republican governors tend to divide into two camps, squishy pseudo conservatives who are fairly low drama, but competent administrators and conservative activists who are terrible administrators. DeSantis has managed to be both a genuine conservative and a competent administrator. Ask him how?

- Well, I mean you, when you get elected to be the chief executive, it's different than being a senator or a congressman. Right. You know, you can do your little agendas, you can even be a bozo at times. People don't really depend on you when the going gets tough and, and here in Florida it's a lot of things that happen. But one of the things are natural disasters and hurricanes, and these are things that you have to be prepared. We, we did that a lot in my first year as governor. We didn't have a hurricane thank, thank, thank God, but we used those same leadership insights when COVID hit and we were applying that. Yeah. And so this was something that, that I was very keen on doing. And if you think about it, yeah, you know, we can sit here and have a debate about, you know, education policy. Oh, school choice. And a lot of people appreciate that, but there's a lot of people don't have kids in school. That's not something they care about. But when there's, when disaster strikes, if there's a category five hurricane, that's the one time that people wanna make sure you know that you're there. The governor is up to, that may be the only time they even care who the governor is, right. But those moments, and so we always thought from the beginning, this is, this is the job, you gotta do it. And yes, I have a lot philosophical agenda, I have a lot of policy I wanna move. But being able to do that, and then also just in terms of just the nuts and bolts, it's like when I got in to now, we've almost quadrupled the state's rainy day fund. I don't care if you're conservative or liberal, that is a good thing, right? If you take all the debt that Florida's accumulated, it's 181 year history, just since I've been governor, we've retired more than half of it. Again, Republican democrat, that's a good thing. So those things about good governance, having the state be solid, that is important. And I think it actually sets the stage to be able to do some of the philosophically conservative

- Things. I see. But I think it's so competence first

- In certain sense. I think. I think it's separate from those things and they're, but they're not mutually exclusive. And you can do both. And you know, one day I'm out there fighting woke and then the next day I'm doing some good government thing. But that's, that's what the job calls for.

- Okay. So actually, can I take just a moment to talk to you about how you do the job? We're sitting in the, here, in the governor's mansion, and I noticed there are little kids' toys around. There's a puppy out in the yard. You actually do live here. You have three kids. The ages are nine, seven, and five. Nine, seven and five. Okay. So you have three little kids. You actually live in the governor's mansion. But I was talking to some of your staff about the way Tallahassee works. Tallahassee is way up in the northern northwestern corner of the state of Florida. And the population centers and the business growth, what people think of in California, what they think of as Florida is happening down in Miami on one side and over a Tampa on the other side. And so what I've been told by your staff is the legislators come to town and then on weekends they clear out. Now there are some state capitals where a governor can get a lot of work done by schmoozing. There are a lot of dinners that take place and there are a lot of, there's a few drinking sessions and you don't have that. Your legislators come to town and then they're go, how do you actually do the job? How do you get to know your legislators? How do you persuade them? How do you get them to move the legislation? How does it work in this town?

- Well, I think part of it, I mean, you know, we have developed good relationships over the years. I've also worked with people that quite frankly, I didn't care for. I think what it is for us is bottom up, it's a very big state. The average legislatures here is known by probably 1% of the population. Right. They're just not known.

- Right.

- The governor's the one that's known. So when there's issues, all the issues we've tackled, I put that on the agenda. I go public, I'll travel the state, and then the voters, they tell their representatives, Hey, you better be supporting the governor on that. You know, I wanna see, I wanna see that you better be doing it. It's different than some of these other states where it's smaller and, and maybe some of these legislators can get known better. You really can't. Here, Florida is very tough to get known. The threshold for getting known is extremely high. And really the governor has a huge advantage in that because I'm the only one. The Republican voters really know very well. They don't know these people. So if there's ever a situation where they're crossed with the governor, go back home to their voters, the voters are like, wait a minute, why aren't you supporting the governor? And that's just a structural advantage I think that you have in a big state.

- So that's why you're on the road. A, I mean, within the state, you're on the road constantly.

- We're on the road all the time. And now part of that is, I think it helps us move the agenda and carry messages. Right. But it also just helps me be in tune with what's going on. I don't really believe in polling. I don't poll personally, I just, I just don't. But I can learn a lot. Like if I'm at a gas station and people just start coming up to me and talking to me, and if I start hearing the same thing in Fort Lauderdale and in Orlando and in Pensacola, well then I know, you know, there's something that I need to be. Yeah. And you gotta do that. So, so that's really for me is, is being out there talking to people that aren't part of the political class. It's not orchestrated. People just come up, I'll show up and, and show up someplace, grab a bite to eat, whatever. Just start talking to people. It's important, especially in a big state. And especially with the capital being so far removed from most of the other places.

- Okay. You, you mentioned a moment, a bit of this a moment ago, but the budget, let give me just a moment to set this up. Revenues, you became governor of a state that never had a personal income tax. And you proceeded to cut taxes from a very low base in the first place. You eliminated the business rent tax, you created a number of tax holidays, including, this is very famous in this state, I'm told there's an August back to school holiday with no taxes on clothing and school supplies. And yet during your tenure, state revenues have increased by more than 50%. Spending the state budget during your tenure has increased 40%. There was each of your last two budgets, as I understand it, is smaller than the one before. You're kind of scaling back from COVID expenditures, but still, you haven't starved the state, the state bureaucracy. And you get revenues up 50% and spending up 40%. And you do that year in and year out. And you just, as you said, you retire half the state's debt and you almost quadruple the so-called rainy day fund. Governor, I am a Californian. And this story brings tears to my eyes.

- Well, it's interesting, the one, one of the,

- How did you do this? Truly

- One of the tax, so you know, yeah. So we don't have income tax. We got rid of the business rent tax. So we do these like sales tax holidays, right? Yes. We did second amendment, all that Well, one of the things we did a couple years ago was no tax on any baby item, diapers, wipes, you know that. So I go and I, and I sign, I sign the bill, I do an event and I come back home and I tell my wife, who at that time, our third and youngest was just out of diapers. And I told her, I was like, we did the tax, no tax on baby items. And she just looked at me and said, why didn't you do that your first year as governor? We would've saved a lot of money. So it is, so you live and you learn. So yes. So we do that, you know, and it's interesting, our spending. So we have either the lowest or second, lowest per capita spend in the country, depends on how you calculate it. We also just had a lot of that spending is reflected in population growth. We gotta build more schools when people come, build more roads. And then there was inflation. I mean there were major projects and initiatives. I did that. Then I had to add more money to also, some of the big things we're doing are not recurring expenses. For example, I'm doing the big Everglades restoration, the biggest environmental restoration

- In the

- History of the United States. And that's a one time capital

- Outlay.

- It's well over many years, but we're now at the point, I think after this year, you're gonna start to see those outlays go down. We have great support from the Trump administration, so we're accelerating there. Some of the infrastructure we did to get ahead of all the population growth, you know, some of that may go down. So these are not like California. It's just like, Hey, yeah, let's create entitlements for illegal aliens and stuff. So not only is that not a good way to spend money, but then you create entitlements. You're locked in. A lot of the spending is not locked in in Florida. It's things that have major critical needs for the state. We're tackling it. And then we have room to spare. But it's a difference. What California and New York do is they, they overtax overregulated, it hemorrhages business people change their behavior. Some people move, some people shelter income. So then they end up in, in a bigger hole. So they double down. And it's kind of a vicious cycle. I think we have a, a cycle of harmony where we're lowering taxes. We have a limited footprint of government. We have the lowest per capita number of state workers in the country as well. We're returning money to taxpayers doing things. And that means the economy expands. I think the economy was a trillion, a little more than a trillion when I came in. It's now 1.85 trillion Florida's GDP. It's like a 70 plus percent growth. So, so we're benefiting from that. And people know that they have a good environment in which to live, work, and do

- Business. So, so can I just ask you a question about political culture? When you were, let's say, when you were an undergraduate at Yale or when you were a, a law student at Harvard. At that, that period, California was still competitive. It wasn't all that long ago that Texas, Texas elect elected a state, a democrat to a statewide office. Lloyd Benson to the Senate in 1988, I think. So we're talking about within living memory, fading memory, but living memory, the whole country was much more competitive than it was now. And for sure, the state of Cal of Florida was competitive. When you became governor seven years ago, there was more registered democrats in the state of Florida than Republicans. That has flipped. So how do now there are positive cycles and negative cycles. Texas is now a red state. Ohio has become a red state, Florida is now a red state. At the same time New York gone, Illinois, gone California. Although it pings me to say so gone. How, how do these cultures, how did you do it? How did Florida do it? And what lessons are there for the rest of the nation?

- But I think you framed it well because I remember being in the Navy and I got orders to go to Coronado, California at the Amfi base,

- San Diego in those days, that was, that was Reagan's

- Country. This was about 20 years ago, maybe a little less than that. And you know, I get there, first of all, I was a Florida guy. I show up to the bachelor officer quarters, I'm like, where's the air conditioning? Like you don't need air conditioning here, just open the window. So I do. And I'm like, there's no screen, like there's no bugs here to, so it's like, it's so fresh, so nice. Right on the Pacific Ocean. I remember getting back from the Iraq deployment and just feeling that air. And I thought to myself, you know, I don't like taxes, but I understand why people would pay a little bit more in taxes to live in California. Yes. Because it's so nice. But I kind of feel like California, they've just, they've indulged more leftists tropes and they've just gone down this road to where now those people who kind of shrug their shoulders said, yeah, it's kind of the weather tax. You just pay to live in paradise. They've just fed up. 'cause they have homeless here. They have this problems with that. Well I think in Florida's interesting, because we were a one point state, we had 300,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. When I got elected. Look at the decade that led up to that 2010 governor's race decided by one point 2012 presidential. One point. Yeah. 2014 Governor one point 2016, president Donald Trump. One point I was less than one point. And so a lot of people said, listen, very delicate political balance, you're walking a tightrope here. Don't go too far here or there, whatever. My, I didn't, I rejected that because one, I got elected to lead. I didn't get elected to follow. But I just believe if you lead in bold colors, not pale pastels, as President Reagan said, that you will attract support when you deliver positive results. And so a lot of it was, we have shifted dramatically because of the results. And so negative 300,000 Republicans when I took office today, we're up by 1.4 million registrations. Now some of that is the migration for sure. Right. In all 49 other states, if you look at 'em individually, since I've been governor and look at who's moved to Florida, all 49 Republicans outnumbered Democrat, Vermont. More Republicans have moved to Florida, California more Republicans than Democrats. So the migration, you're

- Ruining the rest of the country.

- That's, well, here's the thing though, that doesn't account for that big of a shift. I mean part of it is, you know, we had Miami-Dade that when 30 points blew in 2016, I'm winning it by double digits in 2022. Those folks there, we had people three times more likely to go from Democrat to Republican than the opposite direction. So there was an internal realignment as well. Right, right. And so, you know, there's never been one state that's been this dramatic as what Florida has been, but I would argue that there hasn't been a state that's had results this dramatic. And so I think it's good.

- Okay. Before we leave the budget property taxes and your last state of which was your last state of the union of state of the state address in January, you proposed, this is breathtaking again as a California brings tears to my eyes. You proposed eliminating the property tax on primary residences, not reducing it, taking it to zero. Alright. As best I can tell, property taxes on residences makes, makes up about a third of the state's income on all property taxes. Just under $19 billion. Including

- Local, local government. Though none of this

- Is state revenue local. This is all

- Local. Yep.

- So that includes 8 billion for schools. So where, where the schools gonna make up that revenue. First of all, how serious are you? This thing has to, does the legislature has both houses of the legislature have to approve, put

- It on the

- Ballot, put it on the ballot, need

- 60% to vote. And the reason is it's a, it's a local government taxing issue. We can't do it through legislation either. But here's, here's just

- The numbers. You're not just trolling,

- Just no. Okay, here, here are the numbers. When I took office, again, this is all local revenue. They took in 32 billion for property taxes. That's commercial, primary residence, not all of the 32. Today it's 60 billion, seven years later. On current trajectory in three or four years, it's gonna be 83 billion. So what we've said is the homestead is a third of the total revenue. And look, I will provide money to backfill in these initial days. But it's kind of like when California did prop 13, they were saying the sky was gonna fall. You had a two or three year transition and then guess what? The revenue started going up. So what I think will happen is, yes, we're not gonna let them increase spending. They shouldn't, you can't go from 32 to 60 billion in seven years. It's just not sustainable. The non-residential, the non-primary, the, the Airbnbs, that revenue's gonna continue to go up. The values are going up. I'm fine if they tax an Airbnb and some of that stuff. But your primary residence is there. Now will it, will we be able to do all of it in in one day? Will it take some time to phase in? We may do it, but it is doable and we're running studies now we're gonna come out with all this 'cause they're gonna be debating this later in year. So we are serious about it. Because here's the thing, people talk about the crunch of the cost of living. Well, state government can't control the cost of groceries. There's certain things in Florida that we've done reforms to like insurance, which has helped the market and it's important. But ultimately we don't set that price. Tax is all about government. You can control how much you tax or how much you don't tax. So the best way we can make this state affordable for people is to do the property tax. And I know it can be done because did we not have schools in 2019? Did we not have law enforcement? Of course we did. Even if you say adjust for inflation, adjust for population growth, even throw a couple percent on there, they would've gone to like 45 billion, not 60 billion. So people are paying too much in property tax here. I think it's hurt the ability of young people to afford homes. And just imagine what you could do in a state where you actually own your own home, that the government's never gonna be able to come and take it away from you. That is the free state of Florida.

- You're telling me that if I leave California, I get no income tax and no property tax. Listen, I need about a third of an acre. That's all. Could you keep your eye open? Unbelievable. Alright, COVID, let's go back to COVID because this is when Ron DeSantis becomes a national figure. In my judgment. I have to do a quick recap. I'll keep it quick. March, 2020, the World Health Organization declares COVID, a pandemic. American states begin issuing stay-at-home orders and broad shutdowns of schools and workplaces. California issues, a statewide shutdown order on March 19th, the durations of the shutdowns vary. There's some variation from state to state, but almost the entire country remains locked down until mid to late 2020, with the exception of Florida. You closed your schools for a few months in the spring of 2020, and then you reopened them for the beginning of the new school year in that September. And by that same month of September, almost every business in Florida was open and operating at full capacity. Florida reopened months, months before the rest of the country. You have an older population down here. These were people who must have felt threatened and frightened. What did, what did you think you were doing?

- Well, if you remember, a lot of those early decisions were very unpopular at the time. Not with the media, but even with like Republican voters. I mean obviously we had your own people. I mean, we had a Republican administration at the time. Fauci was part of that task force from Trump, 45. And you know, he would come down and attack me personally for doing, 'cause I mean the schools was interesting 'cause they were on spring break and they're like, all right, let's just give it two weeks, you know, the 15 days. And so I start agitating, I'm like, these kids need to get back. And my commissioner of education's like, oh my gosh, people are going crazy. And he's like, well, all they have is the test and all this, and you've already suspended that for the year. So whatever. But I mean, even doing, when we did the June order to say all schools must be open, oh, you would've thought that we were executing puppies on live tv. The outcry, the negative, and it just was what it was. But I had to be in a situation where I had people in Washington telling me this. I had some of these physicians, you know, the establishment physicians saying this. I had the media all saying, they were all saying the same thing, then would get the data. And the data wasn't following what they were saying. And so I'm in a situation with saying like, wait a minute, you know, people have a right to, to live their lives. People have a right to do business and, and make and, and be an employee and and go to school and all this. So we gotta find a way forward. So basically we did it. We had really big blow blowback for like the first three or four months. Anything we did just major blowback. And then I think what happened was as the months went on, people were like, well, Florida's doing this. Why can't we do it? Maybe telling that in New York or in Illinois, all these places, they would come down. We would've people that would do business and they were both from the same state like Illinois, they would fly to Florida, have the business meetings and dinner, and then fly back because they couldn't do some of those things. But it was an example of there was hysteria, there was a narrative. And man, if you descended from that narrative, they came down hard on you. And so I was just in a situation where people were telling me, you're done. You're making huge mistakes here. They're killing you. You're not gonna get reelected all that. And look, I didn't know if that was true, but isn't that what you want in a leader? That when the chips are down, when the narrative is there, when everyone's saying this, that I'm looking out for someone that doesn't have a voice. If I can't do that, you know, then what good am I? And then obviously I ended up being vindicated. Nobody in Florida will admit they oppose me on schools. No one will admit me a admit that I, you know, I used to have Republican local officials attack me because they were, they were trying to do the mass stuff. And I said, no, I, I did a pardon for every local ordinance, COVID ordinance that anyone violated, you know, during those first few months because I just thought it exceeded their authority. Now they will all say that they did that, but there were only a handful. I mean, Jay Bachar at Stanford was

- One, I have a, I have a JI have a Jay Bachar story for you. Okay. Jay and I were best buddies and in fact we would both sneak around the campus. But there was a long period of time at Stanford when we were supposed to be, we weren't supposed to be going into our offices. And I had a secret knock for Jay's door. One of these days. I give Jay the secret knock and he tells me that he's just gotten off the phone with the governor of Florida and that the governor of Florida. And he had spoken for almost three hours. And that the governor of Florida, who was a man, Jay had no idea who you were, he had just picked up the phone because he, and hello, it's the governor of Florida. First time he'd ever spoken to you, were frankly ever heard of you. But that this politician in Florida knew the literature on COVID better than almost any of Jay's colleagues at Stanford Medical School. He was totally blown away. So I tell you that story, and I have to admit, in preparing for this interview, I thought to myself, I knew that you and Jay Jay, who's now director of the National Institutes of Health, we should say, and Jay who also opposed the shutdowns, and Jay, who was one of the signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for limited protection for populations most at risk, but leaving the rest of us free to go to school, do business and so forth. And I thought, oh, right, the Great Barrington Declaration gave Ron DeSantis cover. But you enacted your policies before, before the Great Barrington Declaration Yeah. Was published.

- Yeah.

- Now was, well who you got Jay Bachar saying, yeah, you're doing the right thing. Who else, where do you, where do you get,

- There was only a handful. I mean, Jay was one. We had Martin Caldo from Harvard, Scott Atlas, who the White House eventually brought in and he came down, right. And he would do events and Sinatra Gupta from Oxford, there was a handful. And, and I would start, like, as I started going down this road making these decisions, people like, this guy's crazy. So I started doing events with them and sometimes Zoom, sometimes this and, and if you watch

- It, which it was YouTube yanked us wasn't

- Exactly, so, so we were tell that story. So we were getting censored. Yeah. So I had, so Florida was open, everything was, was going, you know, that and, and the other states were still doing this other stuff. But this is probably six months into it. Our kids were all in school, whatever. But you know, the local school districts in Florida, many of them were doing mask mandates. So I eventually got the authority through a parent's bill of rights to override that. I did not have that at that moment. So I'm asking them, should a kindergartner be wearing a mask eight days or, or eight hours a day? And they're like, there's no scientific basis to have a Kindergar J and

- Martin Koor.

- All them. All them. Yeah, they're, which is true because if you think about it, even if you believe that cloth works against COVID, these are kids, they're snot, they're doing all this. It's just, it doesn't work. Right, right, right. It's not good for their development. Google, YouTube took that video down. These are very eminent people and like fine, you can disagree with it. But to take a sound. And they would do the same thing when they were, when when Jay and some of the others were criticizing the, the lockdown policies, Facebook was taking things down. And so it was this, this real serious effort to just impose a narrative. And I tell people this, I think it's true. I've run campaigns, I've been governor, I've made all these decisions, whatever, I've been attacked six ways from Sunday. You name it, you total all the incoming I've received in my entire career and compare it to what I got during COVID. I got more during COVID because it was international. The hysteria was so big. I think a lot of these people eventually realized they screwed up and they didn't want to have a counter example like Florida that would lead people to, to see that they screwed up. So we took a lot, Jay took a lot. These guys take a lot. And here's the thing, it's like, you know, if we can't have open debate, nothing has impacted the society more since I've been alive than COVID policy. 'cause it impacts everybody, right? Right. I can do the best education reform that impacts some, I could do the best tax reform, it impacts some, this impacted everyone. We can't have free debate. I can't bring in eminent scientists to talk about, you know, liberating kids from mass. So it was really a dark time in this country. And there were a few people who were willing to shine a light through that darkness. And Jay was one of them.

- You had read up on the literature and understood it so well that you impressed Jay about charia. I'm afraid, although this pains me even more, I have to give a certain degree of credit to the Yale education.

- Well, I'll tell you though, I mean, just think about it. These are really significant decisions. Like yes, they were being pushed down from the higher ups on the governors, no question. It wasn't like they were just coming up with this. But it's like, don't you owe it to those people? Like if you give me a chart saying I'm gonna run outta hospital beds in a week, and it turns out I've got thousands of available beds, don't you think? I mean, you owe it to the people to be getting the facts and be crunching this data. And so I spent a lot of time doing it anytime I get my hands on stuff. But it's like, you know, I had nowhere, I had nobody in Florida really that was backing any, that's why I'm going to Stanford, right? They finding these people. But I just felt I really owed it. I mean, like, you know, people were doing this, no one was willing to say anything at the time. They didn't wanna speak up. But I was just like, you know, is this really the right thing to do? And then it was, okay, we just need two weeks. Which, you know, we didn't, in in hindsight, we should have just let it ride, but, and done some, some maybe some smaller help for elderly. But then it was like, well, we're gotta extend it. And then it's like, well, when, when not, and Fauci is like, well, when there's no more infections or deaths then we can, well that obviously that, that ca that that completely ruins the society at that point. So I just felt like I owed it and we did it. And, and, and if I hadn't have done that, I wouldn't have had I think the, the strength to, to, to go against the machine.

- Okay. Education, A couple of quotations here. This one is from the Wall Street Journal, June of last year. And they're talking about your school reforms. And the article notes that for the first time in state history, more than half of Florida School school children were attending schools chosen by their parents. Not simply going to the neighborhood school to which they were assigned. Quote, that's one happy result of Governor r DeSantis work to expand education savings account, which the state opened to any student regardless of income in 2023. Close quote. Now here's Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association. The teacher's union wipe that smile off your face. Governor

- I know what's cove.

- The bill signed by Governor DeSantis and he's referring to this 2023 universal voucher legislation. The bill quote will drain billions of taxpayer dollars away from neighborhood public schools. Close quote. Well, okay. It has drained money away from public schools to the extent that parents are saying, Nope, I want my kids to go here instead. So how, how do you answer Andrew Spar? How do you answer the argument that that piece of legislation, it's open to the education opportunities for kids in Florida, but oh gee, public schools were a great thing in this country and you've damaged it.

- Well, so we actually, my first year as governor of 2019, we did the family empowerment scholarship and it expanded our school choice. We didn't have enough in it to really make it universal, but that was really, we were taking state dollars and telling the parent, you direct the dollars, send it to the school district if you want, or send it to a neighborhood private school. And we also have charter schools and all that. And then we kept expanding it and then we went full universal with the account. So that was kind of just the cherry on top. But we had been doing this for many, many years now at the same time when I came in I said, you know, look, I'm a public school kid. A lot of people in Florida would choose to go to their neighborhood school. I did. It was just the way, it was the best thing for me. So I want the school districts to do good. You know, there's some vein of the school choice movement who see these horrible inner city schools and they're just like, shut it all down, whatever. I, I was like, I think it's, let's create a competitive environment. But I'd like to see school districts do well. So what have we done? I've done more for public teacher salaries than anybody in the history of Florida. We just did $1.38 billion in current year budget. And it's for charter teachers too, but the school districts. And they do. And they can only use it for teacher salaries because what happens is these unions, you send money down to the, to the school districts, they're gonna use that to benefit whoever can give them more political power. And in fact, we've sent money down saying only for teacher salaries. The unions will block the salary increases from going into effect. 'cause they use it as a bargaining chip to get more things done on the other side. So their view is they view education as what can benefit them and the adults in the system and the bureaucracy. I don't care about the bureaucracy, I want the education to work for the kids money following the student's. Good. But here's the thing, and this is undeniable. Our school districts have performed better in the competitive choice era. There's just no question about it. The

- Public schools have performed better. Yes. The public

- Schools, the school districts and that 50% number, mind you, that's not just all private scholarships. Some of it is the 300,000. We have unchartered schools, which are public schools but not controlled by the school districts. And by the way, not influenced by the teacher unions. But the school districts now have choice programs. So I grew up in Dunedin, Florida. I had Dunedin High School, there may have been one or two magnet schools and it was a, this is a county not as a million people, maybe not quite then now I could go to pretty much any school in Pinellas County as a result. And that's something that's pretty widespread throughout the state of Florida. Miami-Dade County, 70% of students do not go to their neighborhood public school. Now many of them do go to public schools. Some of 'em are charter, some of 'em within the school district. So the parent has never had more power to be able to direct the education and upbringing of their kids than they do in the state of Florida in 2026. And that's a good thing.

- And what about test results? Can you demonstrate that the kids are getting better education, that the kids are better in one way or another?

- Not only that. So what, when I came in we had one end of year high stakes test and there were some, you know, the unions hated it 'cause they just don't want measurement. But I had some conservatives that are like, well you know, here's the problem. Kid doesn't do well on the test, he's on summer vacation. So how are you gonna remediate? So we actually that with progress monitoring. So we do assessments throughout the school year. So we do three first assessment, guess what? The parent is given the results. The teacher, if they need to remediate they do, then you do the second one in there. So we've been able to see in the progress monitoring era is the improvement throughout the school year in these various subjects. And I think it's, it's accountability, it's measuring it, but it's doing it in a way where you can actually have remediation.

- Okay. Healthcare in a conversation out at Hoover with Condi Rice, my boss, the director of the Hoover Institution, this is a couple of months ago you said we, we in the United States we have an, I'm quoting you, we have a medical industrial complex. So we in the state have a limited ability to make a real impact here in healthcare. Explain what you meant by that.

- Well, so if you look at like health insurance is so expensive, right? You know, there are things we can do on the margins. Like our state employees, we have something called shared savings. So we require the publication of the cost of these things from the companies and then if they choose a cheaper option, they get rebates through that. Got it. But that's part of it. You know, that's the state program. We haven't mandated that for the society as a whole. I mean it's, you know, it's what's the proper role of government there? But the reality is we run into Obamacare, we run into all these things where the federal government and this massive sprawling apparatus that's been created around healthcare basically blocks you from doing a lot of stuff we tried to do with prescription drugs. We said, let me buy the drugs from Canada. It's the same drug, I get it cheaper. President Trump approved that. We, we started doing that. And first of all, I had people from Canada coming, they were really scared that we were gonna buy all their stuff. But basically, I mean pharma, they dropped the hammer on that and, and it never really happened. And so there's just a lot federally that's taken over that I think limits the states on terms of the cost of medical care and the insurance. Now there are things that we've done in terms of like medical freedom and things like that, that I think are, that have been good, that have been popular. But in terms of why is healthcare so expensive, we've helped on the margins. But I think ultimately it's a Washington problem.

- Got it. Got it. Where woke goes to die, this is Governor Rhonda Sandis. This is celebrating your victory on election day in 2022. And by the way, it is just worth repeating that four years earlier you had won by less than half of one point and four years later you won by more than 19 points. And here is what you said,

- We fight the woke in the legislature, we fight the woke in the schools, we fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.

- Okay, lemme ask you a little bit about this because we, we, we opened by talking about this distinction between competent governance and it turns out you're all in favor of that. And in fact there's a certain sense in which you put that first build confidence among your population that you will give them competent governance. But you are also a very dedicated conservative. And I'd like to turn to that. Now, here's one example. DeSantis versus Disney as the legislature was considering the parental rights and education bill. The so, so-called, what was it? What did they say? Don't say gay Bill Disney came out against it. You signed the bill into law and then you signed legislation dissolving several special administrative districts that the Disney world had relied on for years. Governor Ron DeSantis at the time, quote quote, you're very quotable. If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong God. Alright, now it's a complicated story. Disney sues the state. The state sues Disney takes two years to work it all out. And in March, 2024, Disney of Florida settle. A very common take on that dispute today. Is it accomplished nothing. Disney is still running the central part of the state. Disney's still running Disney World, you are still running the state governor. What was all of that about? But if I understand you, it mattered.

- So here's the thing. How successful of a, of a state and communities can we have, if they're teaching first graders that they were born in the wrong body or their gender was a choice when they go to school, it's just totally inappropriate. It's also just not true to say, you know, Sally, well you're not really a girl. Maybe you're, it's not. So to me it was something that was inappropriate for schools. It was obviously people were trying to put an agenda in. We stepped in and made clear. That's not gonna happen in Florida. Disney obviously opposed it, but just them opposing understand. No one's ever gone against Disney in Florida. I mean they're the 800 pound gorilla. So the fact that

- Second biggest employer in the state, I think after,

- Yeah, after

- Publix, right?

- So the fact that they signed the fact that I signed it, a lot of people thought that I was gonna have to find a way to kill it because of that. Then Disney though came out and I think made a big mistake. They said, you know, we're gonna use our resources to go against this bill in the courts, get it overturned into legislature. Do you know what they have a right to do that. Although I'm not sure what their fiduciary obligations of their shareholders that was the right thing to do. But they did. But it was a situation where no one at that point had ever gotten any blowback from conservatives in corporate America. All they were cared about is placating the woke mob. They just, you know, they don't want controversy, many of them. So just do that. We can go as far left on this stuff as we, we want. What, what's the conservative gonna do? They're all for corporations doing whatever they want. And so for me, I saw they, so it wasn't just, they had, they relied on, they controlled the local government and it was a historical aberration that caused this over many decades to get to that point. But they ran the government, they literally would tax the businesses that would there and then use it for their, for their own stuff. So they had a, an amazing Our Deal. Universal didn't have the same deal. SeaWorld didn't have the same deal. So my position was, look, you have a right to wage war against the state, our parents, our kids, but I am not gonna subsidize that and we're gonna take away that special subsidy. And so we were meeting for special session in the legislature 'cause they had to do the redistricting and you know, I talked to the speaker a couple days before. I was like, why don't you add the Disney thing? And so no one knew it was coming. All their lobbyists were, you know, on the Mediterranean, you know, you know, enjoying like a cruise around the Ian Islands and all this stuff. So, so we did it and we took it. And so what happened is, well what happened is we won, let's just be clear, we never lost any lawsuits. We control with my state control board, we control that. And a lot of people said, well if you take the control and that board cut taxes for all those other businesses that have been getting taxed. So they're all very happy. And people said, well, Disney's gonna leave Florida. You know, look, if they want to take Space Mountain to Columbus, Ohio, they can do it. I don't think that's gonna happen. So what are they doing now? They're investing $18 billion because they know Florida placed a good business. I kept them in business during COVID. They were closed in California.

- They were - All those cast members were. We had jobs. And it's interesting, when they started protesting the legislation, there were massive protests in Burbank. They tried to do it in Orlando. Very few people participated in that. A lot of those employees didn't like what Disney was doing as well. But here's the thing, why I think it's important. Up to that point, there was never any counter response from the right on corporate wokeness. And it's not just on this issue. They were doing ESG, they were, they were trying to impose an agenda on society through business power. And so as a conservative, it's like, wait a minute, I don't think that agenda is good. So am I just supposed to sit there and say, well, you know, since corporations are doing it, what that's what a corporatist Republican would do. But that wasn't what I needed to do to protect the Fed. Now from that point on, a lot of these companies thought twice there were CEOs that could go to their board and say, I don't want to end up like what happened in Florida. And so they didn't end up going and and genuflecting to the woke mob. So I do think it had a positive impact on how corporate executives viewed these fights. And you know, look, I told the guy from Disney stay out of this. Like they'll get mad at you for 48 hours and they'll move on to the next outrage. And I tell other companies, 'cause other things happen too. I say if you, if you genia pluck, they know they got you and they're gonna come back at you. They're gonna, if you tell 'em to go fly a kite, they'll pitch a fit. They may protest, they may send out a nasty press release, but you know what? They'll know they can't move you and they're gonna move on to the next target.

- Okay, another couple of examples here on the woke stuff. You supported the board of education's decision that Florida would not offer an African American studies AP course in its high schools. And here's what you've got for that. The NAACP quote, the State of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color. Another example, new college since 2001, new college has been the state's liberal arts honors college part of the state system. You accused New College of trendy ideology and in 2023 you used your appointment power to install new trustees. The new trustees fired the president, abolished the gender studies program and rescinded tenure for a number of the faculty. And here's what that bought you, the American Association of University Professors quote, what DeSantis has done at new college ranks among the most. You got that smile on your face again, what DeSantis has done at new college ranks among the most egregious assaults on academic freedom in recent memory. And the A A UP published a report entitled The Case of New College, A Blueprint for Political Overreach Close Quote. Okay, so here we are. You are in your final year as governor and here's the argument that you'll hear even among some of your supporters. Why the heck does R DeSantis care if high school kids wanna study AP African-American studies, let 'em what differences it make New college, the place had under a thousand students

- Funded by the taxpayers there. So well,

- Yes, but course

- Cited. What difference does

- It

- Make? You cited that it's supposed to be whatcha picking

- Fights with

- These people for for it's supposed to be our top honors college, right? They had very, you're still fighting over very low enrollment. It was basically like a marxist com unit. It was beatnik, it was all that, which look, if that's what you want, it's fine. Different strokes for different folks. Go to Berkeley, go to some of these other places. The state of Florida, I don't want our tax dollars to fund that because it wasn't providing a benefit to the public or to the individual students or whatever. So we wanted to orient it around a classical liberal arts model like Hillsdale, like some of these places where you have rigor, where you're focusing on the classics of Western civilization. That's why they eliminated DEI, gender studies, all these other things. But what has the result been? The the, and you know, there were some turmoil. Look, a lot of kids we told like look, you join under the old model, you should be able to transfer somebody else. Some of these professors. Yeah, like no hard feelings. Now we also brought in a lot of professors that agreed with it and now we've attracted a lot of students. So the enrollment has spiked and now the test scores are back on the upswing. And you now have a place and we've put a lot of money into it. The facilities, no one's ever done more for that place than me. If you look at all the money we've done. 'cause I think it can be something that's good. And you know, some of these things conservatives always complain about higher education, right? And they'll stomp and they'll do, but what are they doing to change it? And you can't just say, well I'm gonna point this person or I'm gonna do this. Like there's a whole architecture that develops, well a college that has, you know, 600 kids, that's something you can move. It didn't like moving an aircraft carrier. It's like moving quickly. So you've seen huge momentum there with that. But the thing is, when you're dealing with the education, the left has controlled this for, for a long time. Conservatives complained about it. You know, I'm really one of the first guys that actually done something about it. An example, we have the Hamilton Center at University of Florida. Huge. So basically, I mean I think

- You better explain, take a moment to explain this.

- I mean people that would watch your show would know there's things like, like at Princeton, Robbie George has the James Madison Center, which really started this and you really shouldn't have to have these centers, but it's basically like, like Western sieve. It's good. We want people to know the classics and the founding of America and all these things. So we created the Hamilton Center at University of Florida. But the problem is, is if you do that and then just staff it with the existing faculty, you're not getting that change in perspective. So we pass lead legislative reforms, two things. All tenured professors must undergo review every five years and can be terminated for poor performance to the president of the University of Florida. He can go to Princeton and he can get which, which he did the best Civil War scholar, one of the best in America, offer him tenure. The board can approve tenure. We don't let the faculty block those decisions because they will use an ideological litmus test as academia is right now, if you're openly conservative, openly classical even, you're gonna have a hard time getting tenure at these places. You either gotta pretend you're something that you're not or you're just not gonna get it. And so now they've brought in people from Princeton, from Harvard, from Oxford, Chicago, Stanford, all all,

- All in Gainesville, Florida.

- All in Gainesville, Florida. And I'm going there and I'm doing the groundbreaking, I'm meeting these people and you have some people that are eminent like, like a guy from Harvard Hankins, he's been there 40 years. He came Alan Gellow from Princeton. Amazing. Just then you got these young people, I thought they were students, they're like in their thirties, very young. They're gonna build the career there at the University of Florida. If I had the old rules, it would've taken 75 years to do what we've been able to do in three years. And so, you know, do you want to change these institutions or not? And we're doing the do and just on the AP real quick, we're not opposed to them taking tests. But that test was hyper ideological. And so we took a stand of them smuggling ideology, you know, into an AP test. And so it was what the college board was doing that we objected to, not that students would've an

- Opportunity.

- Got to study it. Got

- It. Okay. A few last questions, drawing back from specific policies here. Let me ask you about Florida, what you've done in Florida, the extent to which this is a model for the rest of the country. The so special interest versus the general interest. Gimme a moment to set this up. The lady economist Milton Friedman, quote, government actions often provide substantial benefits to a few the interest groups while imposing small costs on many. The way to elected it is to collect groups of say two or 3% of your constituents, each of which is strongly interested in one special issue that hardly concerns the rest. Put together enough such groups and you will have a 51% majority. And you could argue that Franklin Roosevelt invents this as a central, central aspect of democratic politics, capital de democratic party politics. And it remains a central part of American governance now for seven, eight decades. And that is not the way you have governed here in Florida. Some groups no doubt do support you more than others. But school choice, you took on the teachers unions, you took on the special interest in favor of the general interest, paying down debt, keeping the budget under control. How do you keep a budget under control when we all know that the job of a governor is to listen to people all day long, come in and say, governor, we need budget discipline. But this one program over here, this is an ex. And somehow or other you have done this. And as far as I can tell, that's actually a big deal.

- Oh, I have something special in Florida as a governor that the president does. And it's a line item veto authority. So when I became governor of the record for line item vetoes in one budget year was Jeb Bush. He had done 800 million. I ended up getting to 3.3 billion in one one year. And I've totally done about 10 billion in budget

- And did all your line item vetoes. They were all sustained.

- Everyone was sustained except the one time I vetoed money for the legislature. They did, they made a mistake on that. They're gonna actually, you know, some of these legislators are gonna get hit on that going forward 'cause they did that last year. But, but yeah, so they're, they're sustained, but even if they're not, it's the right thing to do. But if you think about it, we've paid down half the debt. Where did that money come from? I mean, basically what I line item vetoed, right? So you're taking, and not that the spending, some of it was inappropriate. Some of it was like, oh, it may be nice to have, but you can't, some of it, you can't be all things to all people. If I do it for this city, I gotta do it for here or whatever. But none of it was necessary, right? Because like the state's doing well, we've now paid down the debt. When you pay down the debt, it saves on principle 'cause we get the bonds cheaper, but then it saves on interest. So we've saved over a billion dollars on interest costs and that number's gonna go up, you know, as we continue with the debt repayment program. So, you know, you just gotta make these choices. People aren't always happy, you know, you upset this group or that group. But I do believe good governance and producing results, like when you get the people behind you, it doesn't matter what the interest group says at that point. I mean, you're gonna be able to be successful.

- Okay. So that leads to another sort of big, big, big picture question. And that's the question of identity politics. And again, if you, if you don't mind giving just a moment to set this up for the last quarter of a century or longer, one of the great questions about American democracy was whether Americans would continue to vote as individuals or whether they would begin to vote more and more as members of racial or ethnic groups. All the white people vote one way. All the black people vote another way. All the brown people vote. And in that case, you're not conducting elections, you're conducting census counts, essentially. And I, it seems to me that more than any other state, maybe I'm being, maybe I'm missing, but at least right up there, Florida has defied identity politics again and again. So Florida has been getting less and less white. Today the state is only about half white. But at the same time that the state has been getting less white, it is becoming less liberal, which is exactly the opposite of the dynamic. We would all have been led to expect as a result of identity politics. 2020 presidential election voted eight points to the right of the country. Florida did in Miami-Dade County, non non-Hispanic whites make up only about 14% of the population. But in 2024, Miami-Dade went for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris by 11 points. So you have, in this state, it's not just the old fashioned white people who are voting Republican. You've got Hispanics of every striping description. You've got African Americans, you have somehow or other got people voting their interests. They want low taxes, they want good government. They over identity politics. Now how the heck does the rest of the country do that? That's a big deal.

- Well, I think it's because we've drawn a sharp contrast with the left and the sharper that contrast is on the philosophy and the ideology and the policy. The less important, you know, some of these more superficial characteristics would be, we also don't buy into the conventional wisdom. For example, I got in very close race, evenly divided the state. And I started to go against like illegal immigration. We banned sanctuary cities and people, it was very controversial because, you know, the Republican voters were all for it. Some of our members were squishy, oh, we're gonna lose Hispanic votes, whatever. And first of all, I didn't think that was true, but I was like, we gotta do the right thing. And the media was like, oh, look at this guy. He gets in, he's already alienating every single time they would pull it and I don't pull it. But every single time they would the Hispanic, Hispanic Floridians approved of banning sanctuary cities more than any other single group. And so we were told that somehow they wanted open borders just 'cause they were Hispanic. In reality, they probably had more negative impacts from illegal immigration than the average Floridian. And so they were all about doing this. They've all been all about making sure, you know, that we're enforcing the law. So I, I just think sometimes these political consultants make these assumptions, politicians make these assumptions about what this group will do or not. And you know, I'll tell you too, my reelection, I did better than with African Americans and Republicans had typically done, but, you know, my job approval with them in terms of all the polling that was being done at the time was even higher than what I got. And the Delta was basically they were Democrats and they just stayed home. They didn't vote. They, they're not Republicans, but they didn't feel that they needed to go vote against me because they acknowledged that we had delivered results. And so sometimes you convert people to your side, sometimes you just can make the opposition, you know, lose some of the teeth that they have. And I think we were able to do both of those.

- By the way, so I, I have to mention this argument because one argument would be, wait a minute, wait a minute. You've got Cubans who fled for Castro. You've got Venezuelans who fled Chavez. And then, and so you know what? You're lucky you've got the one state in the country where the Hispanics are conservative.

- Well, I would say this, one of the reasons people were saying Florida was gonna go blue, like right when I was getting elected Yep. Was because of the Puerto Rican migration from Hurricane Maria aftermath. Right. And you know, Puerto Ricans are US citizens, it's not a state, but they can come and go as they want, just like someone from New Jersey could move down here. And so they're moving into central Florida and people are saying that is gonna turn the state blue. And in truth, in 2018, I lost Puerto Ricans by 20 points. Fast forward to 2022, I'm the first Republican to win Puerto Ricans outright. And so I don't think it's that simple. I do think that helps that the more I'm drawing a contrast with the left and painting them at for what they are to be basically in line with more mar Marxist type thinking, that obviously is gonna be kryptonite with, with Democrats, with those voters for sure. I mean that is it, but you have to draw the contrast I think when you're, when you're squishy. When you're more mushy, well then somebody that really has that background of understanding communism, all this stuff, they don't necessarily see the difference. I say what you want, I painted the difference. There was a huge difference between me and our Republicans and what the left was offering.

- Okay. Which brings me to this, the future of the Republican party. By the way, I'm not going to ask you if you intend to run for president, but if you would like to, if you want to indicate by pulling an ear lobe, I'll, I'll take, I'll take that as a yes. But the Republican party today, we've got the protectionists and free traders, foreign policy interventionists and foreign policy isolationists, limited government conservatives, big spending conservatives. You sound to me like a pretty direct, I mean, when I was a kid, I worked for Ronald Reagan. You sound to me like a Ronald Reagan conservative, pretty direct representation of that kind of conservatism. And the argument is that MAGA is different, that Donald Trump has done something different to the Republican party. Where do you see, let's put it this way, Donald Trump will leave office in three years, five years from now. What's the Republican party going to look like?

- Well, I think it's up for grabs. I mean, I think, oh, you do? Yeah. I mean I think, I think, I think President Reagan was, you know, he was leading more of an ideological movement. I think President Trump, you know, he has a unique persona. He has a unique, as an individual, there's really never been any, nobody ever got elected without ever having been in any government role. And, and they're not military. And he got elected when people said he couldn't, obviously he went through a lot. People are like, there's no chance he can run again. And he does and he wins. And so he's got a floor of support that I think is, is pretty unique. But I think because it's really about Trump, the individual as opposed to if you've substituted someone else saying the exact same things, a lot of those people wouldn't turn out. I mean, they are turning out for Trump. He's got a very strong brand. So that's why you have people that have much different views. They, they tie themselves to, to, to President Trump. Well, obviously, you know, beyond that, there's not anybody that's gonna be able to match him in terms of his brand, his persona. So then the question is, is, okay, well what does the party stand for? What are the underlying principles that we're doing? You know, and Trump and I and I, you know, know him well and work with him all the time, you know, he's got very good instincts. But he has said publicly, he doesn't consider himself to be a conservative, that he's more of a common sense guy. I think he considers himself to be more pragmatic. And so he takes those, whereas like, you know, with, with like a Reagan, like he, he had like kind of limitations on how far he would go because he had such strong ideology. So the question is, is kind of what happens next. One thing I think that's influenced this, we have a very weird, and I think screwy media environment now on the right you have these algorithms that are pushing things on social media that, you know, even five years ago, you know, weren't as prevalent. You have monetization of some of these voices where they're doing it. So there's a lot of incentives to kind of try to upset the Apple card as best you can create dissension in the ranks. But the way I view it is this, you have a party in the Democrats, you know, they're on the left. They're, they're pursuing policies that will fail. We know that, you know, it's up for us, especially in the year 2, 2 50 of our country. We need to be rooted in those, those founding principles. You know, people say, oh well they had horse and buggy, then we've got Waymo and we've got I ai, what is that? And the reality is, is the circumstances may change, but the underlying principles are enduring. The founding fathers correctly diagnosed human nature and its flaws. They correctly diagnose the need to have limitations on government. They correctly diagnose the need to have the rule of law prevail. So all of that stuff that they did is the reason why this country has been able to be successful. There's nothing new. The sun, the key is as a statesman, is to apply those principles in ways that are relevant and are gonna be good for the people that you represent. But you can't just toss those principles to the side because those are the only principles that have ever been proven to work.

- Alright, couple of last questions here. You are a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law School. You know, by now you could be running the Miami office of Gibson Dunn or White and Case you could be, you could have been by now one of the big real estate guys in this state. You could be living in Coral Gables or Palm Beach. Here you are in Tallahassee, and I look this up, I don't mean to embarrass you, but it's public information. You're making a little under $150,000 a year. What are you doing?

- Well, it's interesting. So, you know, you mentioned the education. So I mean, I was a blue collar kid, public school kid. You know, I go to Yale, big, big time culture shock. I had never, I didn't know colleges were liberal then. So I kind of got that in the, you know, what

- Class were you in? Yale

- 2001. The TUR centennial er. Okay. So I did that. And so then I did did law school. I'm in the jag officer of the Navy, I'm doing Iraq, I'm doing all this stuff, you know, great service. Then I started running for Congress. Well, they, they liked the picture of me in the Republican primary. They like the picture of me in the naval uniform. You know, my wife's very attractive, whatever Harvard, Yale's tough in a Republican primary. And then what I would tell 'em is this, and this is the truth. How many people do you know that have gone through both Harvard and Yale and come out more conservative than when I went in? I'm one of 'em, one of the only few. So we were able to do it, but I just remember being commissioned, you know, 'cause I was commissioned when I was in law school and people were like, you're doing Milit. Like, they just couldn't believe that you would do it because, you know, there's 550 students in the classes at Harvard Law School. We would have 2,500 employers every hedge fund in America, private equity law firm, you name it, you know, they're there, they're trying to recruit. I mean, you really have opportunities to do a lot. And so, but I, you know, I I just felt that the world did change. I think back, growing up in the eighties and nineties, it was a great time to be a kid, especially we win the Cold War. The nineties were amazing. And then the world changed on nine 11. So I felt that I needed to be part of that. And it was just kind of a sense of duty. Then I get into to, to congress and the, the first thing I did was decline the pension and stop doing any stock trade. So I have not traded a stock since I've been in elected office. It's actually pretty good at, I didn't have a lot of capital, but I was able to do so. I've not done that. And so that's obviously made it difficult compared to not difficult, but different than what a lot of members of Congress are doing. I mean, I look at people like Pelosi and some of these people outperforming Warren Buffet. It's like, I didn't do that. I didn't participate in that because for me it was just about, about serving. And like, I'm a pretty simple guy. If I have an opportunity to lead and make a difference, I gotta do that. And I, and I think like, you know, me being governor during COVID where I, I don't know what someone else would've done, but I can tell you the pressure I was under, I think most politicians would've made different choices. I think some of the fights we took on to the success of the state and the benefit of the people, I think a lot of people wouldn't have done that. So it's, you know, I think God put me in this position to be able to make a difference. And I can say from the time I came in to the time we went out, you went through some of the metrics I talked, there's many more we can talk about. You know, we've made a difference. We weren't just biting time, sitting here just enjoying the trappings, you know, of the office and having people come and kiss your butt. Because the reality is, most of the people that do that, the day you're out of office, they aren't gonna give a damn about you. So it's all about the impact you leave on the people you represent. Okay.

- So you, you still have months to go, but you are in your final year. What does come next? Have you thought about that? I mean, it is clear from listening to you. You love the job, you love politics, you love policy. You're a thoughtful, dedicated, determined conservative. You love having a chance to make a difference. You know, how real estate or or becoming a corporate lawyer is just not gonna scratch that itch, governor, I don't think,

- Well, we'll see what happens. I mean, I think one is, you know, you, you gotta you gotta run through the tape. I mean, I've got a lot of important issues that are due. So I get asked a lot, what are you gonna do? You know, I had these people come into the office, gave me this great, great memento, and they were like, oh, we're, we're so sad you're going. I'm like, guys, I got another year left. Like, I got more, there's more meat on the bone, more, we're gonna do it, don't worry. So, so you gotta do that and you know, we'll see, you know, we'll, we'll see kind of what comes down the pike. But I also just think it's kind of presumptuous for me to be like, you know, trying to like maneuver in terms of I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. I'm, I'm here, you know, we got a lot, a lot more I want to do. We'll go all the way through, you know, January of 2027 and, and be very strong.

- Okay. Last question then. You majored in history at Yale. I've heard you say that you, you like statues. You've got a, a statue of George Washington here in Tallahassee, and you've made sure there are statues in each of the Florida counties named after founder Franklin Hamilton, Madison Monroe. So let me, as we come up on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, last question, let's take Jefferson County, which is just east of us here in Tallahassee, and imagine a kid, a junior or senior in Jefferson High School in Monticello, which is the county seat. What would you say to a 17 or 18-year-old kid growing up in this, with it growing state of Florida that would persuade him that what Thomas Jefferson wrote 250 years ago still matters?

- Well, look, I mean, when you're talking about how to create a foundation for a free society, you gotta think deeply about, about human beings, human nature, the source of your rights. You know, up until the American Revolution, people just assume that the rights, you know, went from God to the king and that the king would parcel out rights. So your rights were derivative of government. Jefferson turned that on its head and said, no, we're endowed by our creator with certain rights. The role of government is to protect the rights. And that, you know, sometimes I'll hear young people say, first Amendment grants me the right for free speech. I'm gonna say, oh, no, no, no. First Amendment doesn't grant you anything. The First Amendment was, was crafted to protect rights that our founding fathers believe, and I believe you possess as a matter of natural, right, because you were born an individual on this, on God's green Earth. So those are the principles. And it's interesting because, you know, as we're going through two 50, I'm doing these, these events. I think we're like the only state that's doing it. I mean, you know, it's interesting, the blue states are taking down the statutes. So I'm getting 'em at a discount. I'm getting Madison at half price. We put 'em up. We're doing, I'm also doing, I did Reagan down at Oh, you did, people that have exemplified the, found the founding principles. I did. Frederick Douglas at St. Augustine. Fantastic. He did a big speech. I'm doing Calvin Coolidge in Polk County. That was his last public address as president was dedicating Bach Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida. So we're gonna do that in the spring and all these other things. And, and so, so I just, I think it's great. I, I think it's all this to be able to do, you know, but the reality is, is a republic, if you can keep, it was what Franklin said when we walked outta the convention. They knew you could have the best constitution, the best Declaration of Independence. They are not going to run on autopilot. They require that 17-year-old. When you become voting and you're a citizen in, in some capacity, maybe just by being productive, maybe you put on the uniform and join the military. Maybe you run for office. But if people aren't willing to step up and keep it, then our founding fathers believe that it ultimately would fail. Every other republic up to this point had failed. And they didn't think it would be any different for America unless we took this seriously to what, you know, president Reagan said, one generation away from extinction. It's not passed along in the bloodstream. And I just think it's important for young people to know. But one of the reasons I want to do America two 50, the way we've done it is I do want them to think about these first principles about where our rights come from. What is the proper role of government? And if we had a better understanding of that, I think we'd have less division in American society on political lines. I think part of the reason is like you're talking past each other. We're just on different sheets of music about what we expect the government to be and government to do. I think our founding fathers had it right. They didn't answer every question. But if we take that basic outlook and apply that to the issues before us, I think we'll be successful.

- Brenda Sadis, 46 Governor of the great state of Florida, thank you.

- Thank you

- For uncommon knowledge, the Hoover Institution and Fox Nation. I'm Peter Robinson.