The Ron DeSantis You've Never Met | Presidential Candidate and Florida Governor | EP 402

And it's natural for human beings to want to be liked by those that surround them. But if Washington likes you as a Republican Attorney General, that means you're not representing a threat to the current order of things. So part of what I look for is to find people that understand there's going to be blowback when they're doing the right thing and are going to be happy to kind of wear that as a badge of honor.

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I had the privilege of talking today to Governor Ron DeSantis, who's running for president on the Republican slate. I tried to tilt the discussion more towards the personal. My impression with Governor DeSantis is that he's established himself already as a credible policy advocate and a credible administrator, and that's no small deal. He is also someone who’s willing and able to take the flak associated with making difficult political decisions. But I had the sense that I didn't really know him personally, and I believe that that's a sense that's shared by many people. So a lot of what we did with the conversation today was to get to know Governor DeSantis at a personal level, and so I hope that all of you who are watching and listening find that useful and interesting as I did.

So Governor DeSantis, we met—I think it was probably more than a year ago—at the governor's mansion. Now, we had bumped into each other a couple of times at some different speaking events, but never really had a chance to sit down and talk. We got to know each other a little bit over breakfast. I was struck by how welcoming the event was and how conversational our discussion became quite rapidly. I thought I might walk down that road a little bit farther today.

You've established a good reputation, or perhaps a stellar reputation, already on the policy side and with regards to general administrative competence. But it's my sense, at least to some degree, that people don't know you as well as they might, and that goes for me as well. I thought we might try to redress that today. That's what I'm going to aim at, and we'll take forays off into the philosophical and political direction from that, but that's where we'll focus.

So the first thing I'd like to know, and to share with everyone who's watching and listening, is where did you grow up? What was your upbringing like?

So I grew up most of my youth in a town called Dunedin, Florida, which is on the west coast of Florida in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area. I was actually born in Jacksonville. My mother was a nurse, my father worked for Neilsen TV ratings, which at that time you actually had to install the Neilsen devices on the boxes of the Neilsen families. So that was his job. It took us from Jacksonville to Orlando, and then by the time I was in first grade, I ended up in Dunedin, Florida.

My folks were just working-class folks. My dad is from Western Pennsylvania; his father worked in the steel mills in Aliquippa. Then my mom was from Northeastern Ohio, Youngstown, which is also a very blue-collar area. So that was kind of how I was growing up. I was someone that was very involved in baseball all the way through college, but certainly as a youth it was something that I did pretty religiously. We went to church every Sunday, and then as I started to get older, I started working part-time jobs to be able to make ends meet.

So it was a good upbringing. No one would have predicted, probably, when I showed up at first grade in Dunedin, Florida, that I would have gotten elected governor of the state in 30 years. But it just shows you, I think this country still has a lot to offer, even though we've got a lot of problems. I was somebody that was able to work hard and really get ahead from that place in West Central Florida.

How big is the town you grew up in, Dunedin?

You know, at the time I would say it was probably about 30,000 or so. It's grown since then. When I was a kid, it was a lot of strip malls. Now they've got a nice downtown area, a lot of restaurants; there's a lot of life for it. So it's a very cute little place. Of course, they do have coast on the Gulf of Mexico as well. One of the things that we have is the connection to Canada because Dunedin is the spring training home of the Toronto Blue Jays. So growing up as a kid, once it got to spring training in February in Dunedin, you would see a lot of Ontario license plates around because the baseball fans would come down. Canadians would come down, and the Blue Jays' facilities were all owned by the city of Dunedin.

So as a kid growing up playing baseball, we would use all the Blue Jays stuff since it was owned by the city. My high school team, our home field was the spring training stadium that the Toronto Blue Jays played in when they were doing spring training in Dunedin. That was kind of a unique thing to have, but the connection between Dunedin and the Toronto Blue Jays was something that was a really big deal for the city and a really big deal for a lot of us growing up at the time.

Yeah, well, Canadians are pretty fond of Florida, all things considered. It's a great alternative to freezing to death in the dark fundamentally.

And so you said something interesting when you were talking about yourself in first grade. You said that no one would have predicted, for example, that you might grow up to become governor. You came from a working-class background; it's a relatively small town. But that's a striking thing to say, too. What were you like when you were a little kid, do you think? And when did whatever promise you did manifest start to show itself?

Well, what drove me was the athletics. I mean, primarily baseball, but I started to like all sports as I got older, and that was the thing that we did. By the time I was 12, my Little League team, Dunedin National, made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania—one of four American teams in the entire country to make it there. They have a stadium and everything; it’s kind of the big time for Little League baseball, and that put us on the map there. We had a great high school program.

When it came time for me to get recruited for college, I was a good student, and so I was getting recruited by places including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Baseball really took me, and I had never been to New England in my life, so baseball is really what brought me to New England. When I ended up going to Yale, I would have done baseball for as long as I could have. Actually, all through college, I was the baseball captain my senior year at Yale. I would have played as long as I could, but being a big league player is tough. My goal at that point was to stay in baseball, maybe more on the business side, in the front office.

But then when 9/11 happened, that’s when I ended up commissioning in the Navy, and I kind of took a different course at that time. But growing up as a kid, it was really about playing sports and doing that. I had a lot of kids growing up with me who were really involved in it. We had a lot of good programs, particularly on the baseball side, so it was fun. I kind of just took it for granted, but now that I've gotten older and I've been around the block a little bit, you know, not every community necessarily offers those opportunities to the kids, and so we were really fortunate that we had a lot of opportunities to play.

So what position did you play on your baseball team?

So by the time I was in high school and college, I was an outfielder. In Little League, I was one of the three starting pitchers on our World Series team, and then I would play the infield when I wasn't pitching. But the one thing I could do is I could hit a fastball. If you threw a fastball 95 miles an hour, I could hit the fastball. As they started to be able to throw 86, 87 mph sliders and change-ups, that makes it a little bit more difficult, but I was a dead-red hitter. If you threw me the heat, I could hit it.

So you look back on your life when you were young, especially on the athletic side, obviously with a fair bit of appreciation. You said you took it for granted then. So I have two questions about that: What do you think it was about you, or was there something in particular about you that made you an effective team player? Because people who are athletically successful have to be skilled in the mechanics of the sport, obviously, but to really reach a profound level of success, you have to be a good team player as well. You have to be someone who helps the other players on your team develop and so forth.

And then I'm also curious on the developmental side, so I'm wondering what you brought to the team and also what being engaged in those team enterprises for so long actually did for you.

Well, baseball is an interesting sport because it's both—the team is paramount. I mean, you can't—it's not an individual sport at all, but at the same time, when you're up at the plate, you know, that's just you. No one can swing the bat for you. You either hit the ball or you don't. It's an individual enterprise in terms of every time you get to the plate four times a game or however much you do, you've got to make it happen.

But just because you make it happen, there's a larger thing. You could be a great hitter; you need good pitching, you need defense, you need all those things. So it’s an interesting combination of individual achievement but really needing to have the supporting cast and the teammates to be able to do it. I did learn that at a pretty early age, and I do think, kind of like my job as an executive now, I understand that I can have the vision, I can make these great decisions, but ultimately you need a supporting cast around you who's going to implement all this stuff. You can't just do it by yourself.

So we have people—when we're fighting some of the COVID insanity, I have a Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, who carries this out, and he's a leader and all that stuff. When we respond to things like hurricanes, yeah, I can say we're going to rebuild a bridge in three days, but I've got to have the agencies that are going to be nimble and going to be able to do it. So I definitely think I learned that.

I think what I brought was just—I was a hard worker. I was somebody that really wanted to be out there a lot. I enjoyed it; I enjoyed the camaraderie, I enjoyed the competition. I remember thinking when we went to the World Series when I was 12, we pretty much did baseball every single day in the summer all the way through the World Series. Sometimes it was because we practiced a lot as a team, but even if we didn't have practice, a lot of us would just be out there and we would be playing on our own. I was always one of those guys. I would be one of the first to practice; I would be one of the last to leave. I just really enjoyed it, and I really enjoyed putting the work in.

I believe that when you put the work in in a sport like baseball, that you do see the dividends, and that's something I've carried with me throughout my life. When you work hard, when you're prepared, when you know your stuff, you're going to be able to do better than if you're just out there expecting things to happen for you.

Yeah, well, there are two things I've noticed about political leaders or cultural leaders for that matter who are genuine. So, you know, politics, media, entertainment, and actually maybe medicine as well, in general, tends to attract a disproportionate number of people who tilt towards narcissism. People are born with their traits—personality somewhat intact, and every different combination of personality traits provides people with certain advantages and certain disadvantages or temptations.

If you're going to be on the political landscape, you have to be extroverted generally speaking. One of the things that extroversion, especially in combination with less agreeableness, tilts people towards is a kind of narcissism. So there's a lot of people in the political domain, media, entertainment, as I said, who are in the public eye who tilt towards narcissism. But the great leaders that I've seen are people who are very good at listening, who are very good at building teams, and who might balance their ambition with conscientiousness.

Now it seems to me very clear that you're a conscientious person because you stress hard work continually and you also say that you enjoy it. Those are hallmarks of someone who's conscientious, and that's a very good trait personality predictor of long-term success. It's the best predictor after general intelligence. But the team-building thing really interests me because that's something that's crucial—the ability to build a team and to provide opportunity to people and to give them responsibility instead of keeping everything for yourself is definitely one of the things that distinguishes narcissistic people from genuine leaders.

I've seen political leaders who are confident enough to surround themselves with people who are even more competent than them, which is a risk because if you shine—if you surround yourself with people whose lights shine brighter than yours, at least under some circumstances, then that brings with it the risk that you're going to seem rather dim in comparison. So I'm curious about the mechanics of how you go about building a team, how you've done that in Florida, and what you think you might bring to bear if you were in Washington.

I read a fair bit about Donald Trump's early years—in his first year in office—and it was definitely the case that it was hard for him to build a functional team. Now, I don't think he really expected to become president, you know, so a lot of that was thrown at him or dumped on him, although he obviously put his hat in the ring. But I'm very curious about how you go about building a team because obviously building a team on the federal level is an unbelievably difficult job, and if it's not done right, then, well, all hell's going to break loose.

Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, my view is what Ronald Reagan said: There’s no limit to what we can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit. So I’m not out to get credit. I think when you deliver results, I hope that the other people get credit. I don’t need the credit, and in fact, when things don’t go as well, one of the things a leader has to do is say, "Okay, I’m responsible for that."

There are times, and I think you can’t be a really good leader if you try to micromanage anything. I mean, you've got to set the vision, set expectations, and give people the opportunity to do it without you picking at them, and that’s the only way I think you can really do well. The flip side to that, though, is that sometimes when you delegate like that, the job doesn’t get done, and people may do things that are not in line with the vision. So what you just have to be able to do is you just have to take the necessary action to correct that. Sometimes you’ve got to replace personnel, sometimes just internal course correction.

But I think it’s important that you praise the people that are working for you in public, and you center in private. I don’t believe people—they know that you’re going to have their back, and that’s part of what we…I think there are certain things leadership generally, and particularly in government as an executive, and then I think there are certain things that, given the moment that we’re in, coming at it from a conservative perspective—what does that mean in terms of building a team?

Because I do think it’s different how I would build the team in Washington versus how Biden or Obama or the left would. Because when you’re going into a place like D.C., the hostility is there for anyone that wants to be a change agent. They don’t want to change the order of things there. They’ve accumulated a lot of power; they’re really invested in the status quo. So if you take an agency like the Department of Justice, and you want an attorney general—any attorney general on the conservative side that’s going to go in there and actually clean house, Washington is not going to like you. You are going to get hit by the media; you’re going to get smeared by The Washington Post and The New York Times.

So you just have to understand that, and what about your internal makeup? What is your internal makeup? Are you somebody that realizes that’s positive feedback, that you must be over the target? Or are you somebody that wants to be liked by official Washington? It’s natural for human beings to want to be liked by those that surround them. But if Washington likes you as a Republican attorney general, that means you’re not representing a threat to the current order of things. So part of what I look for is to find people that understand there’s going to be blowback when they’re doing the right thing and are going to be happy to kind of wear that as a badge of honor.

I mean, our Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, he came from UCLA, had a great tenure, a great life, but he was a COVID critic of the narrative, and he got marginalized there. I brought him on to Florida and said, "Listen, you do exactly what you’re doing, but just understand they’re going to come at you. Are you going to be able to handle it?" He’s like, "Yep, I get it." And to his credit, he wears it as a badge of honor. But if you’re willing—if you’re concerned about how the media is going to treat you in some of these key positions, if that’s something that motivates you, you’re going to trim your sails, and you’re not going to get the job done.

So I think just understanding how the media plays a role in distorting how our government operates, when you're building the team, you really got to have that intestinal fortitude in those key positions.

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So how are you able to resist the temptation to be liked, and how do you tolerate the stress that comes with the attacks that are inevitably going to amount? Some of them are reasonable, and some of them not so reasonable. I mean, I've thought about a political career from time to time, but I've always... well, I haven't chosen to go down that route for a variety of reasons. It doesn't necessarily seem to me where I would be most effective, but I also have a certain doubt about my willingness or ability to handle the constant stream of attacks that characterize a political career.

I'm curious about how those sorts of attacks do affect you. I mean, one of the cardinal personality traits is neuroticism, and that's the proclivity to experience negative emotion. It's a stress tolerance dimension. I'm not exactly sure that I have the capacity to tolerate stress in the manner that might be delivered on the political front.

Now, you've certainly taken your fair share of heat, and you said that you're trying to surround yourself with people who are capable of tolerating that and who are also not necessarily looking to be liked. So how do you manage that on the personal side of things? How do you, what would you say, buttress yourself and reinforce yourself, you know, say with regard to your family relationships and your friendships, maybe your business relationships for that matter, so that you have people around you that help you withstand the storm?

Well, part of it I think is that I just personally don't really care to read about me or watch anyone on TV, even when it's good. It's just not something that I'm interested in. I'm much more interested in other things. I don’t need to be hearing about me. I mean, there are times when I'll get something nice written or I'll be, "Oh, did you see this?" and this and I'm like, "No." I’m just not fishing for compliments either.

But I just know it goes with the territory. It's just something that you're going to do, especially when you take on certain sacred cows. You can just guarantee—and you just see it, for example, this is a relatively small example—but, I’ve been watching what’s going on in D.C. with the Fed and this whole idea of a central bank digital currency. I think that that’s very dangerous, so I did an announcement in Florida this past year. I said, “Okay, in Florida, we’re not going to recognize that.”

Because if the Fed does it unilaterally, I don’t even know if they have the authority to do that. I started to say, “Well, it’ll violate your privacy; they want to get rid of cash, crypto, all this stuff.” And it was all true. Then, literally within days, The Washington Post, The New York Times, all the usual suspects, they start having a spasm, and they’re going at me. “Oh, he’s peddling conspiracy theories,” all this stuff.

And so I viewed that as I must have hit a nerve. They would not all be doing this in unison; this is something that these guys want. So I’m standing in the way. It's kind of like in the military. You take the most flak when you’re over the target. They don’t tend to go after people on the right who are not a threat to them. If you’re just sitting there and taking up space, they kind of leave you alone. It's only when you’re making a difference and you’re leading that they really care.

So I just know going in, if you are going to stand for the things that I think need to be done in this state and throughout the country, you are going to face blowback. You just have to understand that. You’ve got to have a thick skin, and I know it just goes with the territory. You know how some people are going to react no matter what, and that's just the way it is. So you don’t let it get to you.

I don’t appreciate necessarily if they, you know, go after like my wife or things like that, but she’s very tough too, and she’s just like, "Look, I get it; I understand." She’s very effective on the campaign trail, so they try to nick her as much as they can. But that’s just where we are as a society. The good news is I think most people get that.

I think most of the attacks fall flat because they understand this is just part of the process. In Florida, we’re a good example because, as governor, I got attacked more than any governor in the country, and yet I won the biggest victory that any Republican has ever won in the history of the state in a governor’s race in 2022. So what that tells me is there’s a lot of garbage that gets circulated out there, but the public knows a lot of what goes on in the media is deceitful.

One way or another, when you’re just out there standing for and speaking the truth, I do think it permeates through the fog of deceit that our society has become mired in.

Right. Well, it is an interesting reversal to view the most vicious attacks as indications that you’re actually on the right track. I mean, obviously, that isn’t an unerring take on the issue, right? Instead of being concerned about the fact that you’re drawing negative attention and taking that personally, you said that you’re using it as an indication that you’ve actually struck to the core of something that matters, and that’s actually a positive sign rather than something that’s negative.

So that’s a useful thing to have in your back pocket. So, let me ask you a little bit—let's go back again to your early life. I’m very curious—always curious—in regard to the people that I talk to, how their interests develop. Now you stressed a fair bit—you stressed your athletic interests a fair bit, and we talked already about the influence that had on the way that you conduct yourself and how you build teams. But I’m curious too: would you say that your interests are primarily political and pragmatic, or are they more philosophical and metaphysical with regards to your conservatism?

Because conservatives can be very pragmatic and detail-oriented, but they can also take a more philosophical tack, and I’m curious about which side of that you might place yourself. And then also, on where your intellectual and political interests, how did they first make themselves manifest when you were a young person?

Well, I think it's interesting because clearly when you’re actually in a position of executive authority, you know, you have to have a certain level of pragmatism. Because there’s different things that come up, and you’ve got to be able to improvise with new situations. Now you bring to that, I think ideally, a solid philosophical foundation that you’re able to parse things through.

But for me, so when I got to college, for example, I didn’t even know colleges were liberal at the time, and especially like a place like Yale. I guess I thought, like an Ivy League school, everyone was going to be wearing like a suit and tie and everything. I thought it was actually going to be more conservative in terms of that.

Well, I got there; it was a rude awakening. You’re in the classroom with a lot of aggressive leftism. So what I gravitated towards was a really good history of Western civilization, but I think with an emphasis on the founding of America. Because I think that there is a lot of the Western tradition that fed into what the founding fathers did both during the American Revolution and when they created and ratified the U.S. Constitution.

So I started studying all those key sources. I became very well-read in things like The Federalist Papers. I read Madison’s diary about the Constitutional Convention, pamphlets during the American Revolution. So for me, in terms of developing a conservative philosophy, it really started in those core philosophical, enduring truths that mark the founding of the United States of America. I think that’s something I developed throughout college.

I joke to people and say—because when I’m speaking in front of conservative audiences, the fact that I graduated from Yale and Harvard Law School is not necessarily a good thing on its face, given how liberal those universities are. But what I tell people is I’m one of the few people that got through both Yale and Harvard and came out more conservative than when I went in. That’s not easy to do, but I think part of it is because I was gravitating towards things that I think really mattered. I wasn’t doing ideological studies; I wasn’t doing some of the flimflam that you see in modern academia.

I was doing things that represented— I was learning about ideas that have really stood the test of time.

What did you study specifically at Yale?

History.

History. And then at Harvard, you studied law?

Okay, so now you came from a working-class background, and I grew up in a small town in Northern Alberta—in a working-class background. When I was young, 14, 15, I got attracted to more left ideas, I would say, especially because of people I met, I suppose, who were deeply involved in the labor movement. At that time in Canada, particularly in my home province, most of the people who were on the political left were actually involved in the labor movement and genuinely involved.

I mean, there was, you know, the fair share of narcissists on the left then as there is now, but a lot of the people, especially in leadership positions, had gone through the working-class ranks and had been labor leaders. What I’m asking you is because you grew up in a working-class environment, and it seems to me that you could have easily tilted toward the more socialist left as a consequence of being part of the working class, let’s say, and being surrounded by that, or being embedded in that environment. But you said that when you went to Yale, you tilted even more strongly in a conservative direction.

What was it about conservatism in particular that attracted you, and also enabled you to develop and defend your beliefs while you were in these Ivy League, fundamentally liberal leftist institutions?

Well, part of it was just a rebellion against the real militant leftism that I experienced on campus. I had never experienced that before. I mean, for example, growing up, I didn’t know who was a Republican or a Democrat. It didn’t really matter. I mean, people believed in our country; they were patriotic; they were God-fearing. So you kind of had like a core set of values that were in common that were different from partisan allegiances.

So then I get to Yale, and one of Yale’s mottos is “for God, for country, and for Yale.” Well, I get up there, and they were not very hospitable to God or any type of religious faith, even though it was founded in 1701 because Harvard was too liberal with its theology. That’s how Yale was founded; they had totally walked away from any of that. And then for “country,” they would mostly bash the United States. You’d hear people blaming America for this or that, and there was a view of communism and Marxism that was very favorable.

I’m just thinking to myself, you know, there was a 100 million-person body count because of Marxism-Leninism in the 20th century, and yet that’s something that they’re just papering over. So I just found the whole thing to be very unappetizing. I was patriotic, I was God-fearing, and I may not have necessarily had a firm political philosophy, but that definitely pushed me away from that. I’m like, you know what, I don’t know what I am, but I’m definitely not that for sure.

And then I think just when you’re studying ideas that really matter, I mean some of these ideas that mark the founding of the United States are really infectious ideas about liberty, about the proper role of government, written constitutions. And those are things—okay, that’s my foundation, that’s what I think matters.

Then how do you apply that more in terms of contemporary? I’m like, well look, this is the philosophical tradition that we’re supposed to want to conserve in terms of being conservatives—that the founding fathers on the big things got right—we’re supposed to want to preserve that and preserve freedom. So by the time I graduated, there was no chance that I was ever going to end up on the political left. But it’s interesting when I look back at Yale—I was playing baseball, I had a lot of friends playing sports; I was also working a lot of part-time jobs, anything I could do just to help make ends meet.

By the time I graduated, I was considered the most employable kid at Yale because anytime someone needed anything—if I could make six or seven bucks here or there, I would do it, and I could get people to come. It just turns out that by most of what’s animated there, the people that were in kind of my socioeconomic sphere tended to be much more patriotic, tended to be—and I don’t know if I viewed it this way at the time—but tended to probably be more conservative.

Whereas a lot of the anti-Americanism and the militant leftism tended to be driven by a lot of the trust fund kids, kids that had grown up in a lot of inherited wealth. I don’t know if this is their way to just rebel, but there was definitely a very wealthy tilt toward the people that were on the far left, and maybe that was my first introduction to kind of left-wing elites that are advocating these things now. They didn’t always want to live by what they were advocating, but they did strongly advocate for those left-wing positions.

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Yeah, well, one of the things that I noticed about the more activist types at, because I taught at Harvard for a while at the Ivy League institutions, was that there was a sense of wanting to have too much. Like, it was just too much for me to see when I went to Boston that you had young people who were simultaneously in a position to place themselves among the eventual elite of the country—which is what's really laying at your feet once you're in an institution like Harvard or Yale—and who also wanted to accrue all the moral benefit of being allied with the oppressed.

You know? I thought, "Geez, you’re really asking for a bit too much here," because on the one hand, you’re already clearly part of what’s going to be the ruling elite, and that’s especially true if you also come from a wealthy background, and you want all the moral virtue that accrues to someone who’s simultaneously oppressed or a so-called ally of the oppressed.

The hypocrisy in that I found extraordinarily grating, and I mean, that's continued to this day. What do you think that the founding principles of the United States have to offer to working-class people as an alternative to the utopian vision put forward by the radical leftists? I mean, hypothetically, communism and these terrible systems that emerged in the 20th century were aimed at the working class, right? “Workers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains.”

Well, it turns out the chains you’re going to be put in by the radical leftists are a lot thicker than the ones you abandoned, but we could leave that aside for the moment. Why do you think that you found the principles on which the U.S. was founded more attractive, and particularly what makes them more attractive and useful to people who are genuinely of a working-class derivation?

Well, look, there’s a limited role for government to play, and there’s a limited role for ruling elites. I think when you look at things like communism, you’re right—the chains are even thicker for the working class—but man, the entrenched elite class—they do very, very well, and they live very high on the hog.

You saw that, I think, when we understand what role government has played in holding people back. A more limited government provides more opportunity. I mean, some of that is just what’s the proper scope and power of the federal government, for example. Now you have a movement through the bureaucracy—not even legislated by Congress—to force everyone to buy an electric vehicle. Well, if you’re somebody that is a truck driver or a plumber making a pretty good living, do you really want that type of vehicle?

How much more is that going to cost you? All these other things, that seems to not be much of an issue for the people driving these policies. They have their agenda, and they basically want people to be thankful that they’re able to participate with that agenda even though it’s making them worse off. That’s part of why you see the White House press secretary every day gaslighting the public, saying how good things are with the economy when people are falling further and further behind.

They want people to act like they should be thankful for what’s going on, even though we know it’s not. Part of it is making sure power is exercised in accordance with the Constitution, which it is not right now. You have a bureaucracy that is untethered to the original understanding of the Constitution. A lot of the most important things that affect people’s lives are done not by members of Congress, who you can hire and fire during election season, but by unelected bureaucrats.

So I think that’s a problem. The second thing is just there’s a limit to what central planning can do. We saw the Great Society and the War on Poverty in the 1960s, where they said, “Look, if we just have these smart people in these government bureaus, we put money into it, they’re going to be able to eliminate poverty in this country, and this will be just a great social triumph.”

Well, what ended up happening was they ended up creating a culture of dependency. They made it more difficult for people to rise out of those circumstances, and they facilitated dysfunction that we’re still living with to this very day. So I think it’s just a skepticism of government being able to do all these things to change and mold society in the way they do, and also a skepticism about government power being exercised in big ways by unelected bureaucrats.

I was talking to a European friend of mine yesterday, and she pointed out that now in Europe, essentially 55% of what people earn goes to taxation. I thought, “Well, that’s very interesting because really what it means is that people have given up 55% of the opportunity that presents itself to them in life to the machinations of the people who are taking their money.”

Now, it’s more than half of what they make. Now, on the one hand, you might say, “Well, that’s a good deal because look at all the things that the state does for you.” But on the other hand, you might say, “Well, every single thing the state hypothetically does for you is power, responsibility, and opportunity that has been taken away from you that you can no longer exercise yourself locally.”

So that takes a fair bit of the meaning out of your life, right? I mean, if it’s on you to do things properly, then that gives you something genuine and worthwhile to do. If that’s handed down to you from the top down, then you’re in an infantile and dependent condition. You talked about a culture of dependency, and that actually hollows you out.

So as the state becomes more tyrannical, people become more slavish, and that’s very hard on them existentially too because it deprives them of meaning. I’m very curious, though: you know, if you look at the situation historically—this is how it appears to me—people who promote limited government in principle, and who want to devolve responsibility back to local citizenry in keeping with their abilities, go to Washington, but the bloody government keeps growing hand over fist, regardless.

It doesn’t really—if you look at the historical data, it doesn’t really seem to matter that much whether it’s the Republicans or the Democrats in control; the state just grows and grows and grows and grows at 3 to 5% a year, and no one seems to be able to trim it back. So have you had any success in doing so at the local level in Florida?

And what have you learned, apart from the fact that you have to take flak if you’re going to attempt it? What have you learned about how the proclivity of gigantic organizations to keep growing can be managed?

Well, we’ve eliminated two agencies since I’ve been governor, and our cost per state employee is the lowest in the country per capita. We have either the lowest or close to the lowest number of state employees per capita anywhere in the United States. It’s interesting because when the people flee New York to come to Florida, one of the first things they tell me is, “New York’s budget, by the way, we have millions of more people than New York state does.”

Now New York’s budget is twice the size of Florida’s budget, and yet the people that move from New York to Florida will tell me how much better the services are in Florida. It’s easier to get a driver’s license, better roads, all these other things. So it is just a fact that a lot of the government is just not necessary to actually perform the core functions.

In Florida, we’ve actually— even though we’ve cut taxes, we’ve run surpluses, we’ve paid down almost 25% of our state’s debt. Now we’re proud of that, but I understand the power is much more entrenched in Washington, D.C. I think it is the case, and I think you’re right that it’s grown regardless. But if you think about it, we’ve probably had one administration since the Great Society who actually wanted to reduce government: Ronald Reagan.

He had some success in restraining domestic, but it was tough. I don’t think we’ve really had very many administrations that have wanted to curb the size, and part of it is because when you’re at the helm of it, you know, you can wield some of that power, and I think that’s attractive to people. But I would be one that would say we have both too big a government in size and maybe even more importantly, too much government in scope.

So even if you cut the government by 50% of the employees, if the government would still be getting involved in things through the regulatory state that are far beyond the current scope, that would still be a problem. I think you’ve got to tackle both. What you need to do is when you get in there, day one, you have to have all the personnel ready to go for ratification, confirmation in the Senate. That’s hundreds and hundreds of people. On day one, they need to be ready to go.

Two, all the executive actions you’re going to take, executive orders reversing the previous, that’s got to be ready. Then the legislative roadmap’s got to be ready with the key members of Congress, and day one you’ve just got to go. Now you have a lot of leverage that you can use under Article II of the Constitution vis-à-vis the bureaucracy. There’ll be a lot of things that we’re going to do. We’ve previewed some of it; we may do a larger rollout here in the next few weeks.

Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of authority and leverage that presidents have not used in the past that we would use both to limit the scope and to downsize the government.

So let me ask you some specific questions, and then I'll close with some general questions. You said that you reduced two departments—eliminated two departments—in Florida, and I was curious earlier when we were talking about managerial strategies how you go about trimming and firing.

I mean, these people whose livelihood you’re planning to eradicate have devoted their lives to their service to their country—that's one way of thinking about it—and it’s a very difficult thing to handle, decreasing the size of an organization. So how do you justify that morally, let’s say, and how do you go about it practically so that it’s actually implementable and works? I mean, obviously, you haven’t got enough kickback in Florida to have had the government shut down by widespread strikes, for example, or rebellions at the administrative level.

So how have you managed that, and what makes you think it could scale?

Well, I think Florida, we’ve just been fortunate because it’s actually been hard to keep people to want to be working in the government because we have a good economy—2.8% unemployment. People have opportunities. A lot of times in some of these agencies, people are making a sacrifice to be able to serve. Some of them, particularly at the higher levels, could probably make more money in the private sector.

So we were very confident that there would be opportunities in the State of Florida that really I don’t think was as significant of a driving factor. Then you do have sometimes when you—so for example, I’ve said federally to get rid of the Department of Energy. It’s not been effective all that. Now, there are functions in that department that were being done before the department was established in the late 70s, and would still need to be done. Some of those, like for example with nuclear, used to be under defense.

Sometimes when you’re reducing a bureaucracy or eliminating a bureaucracy, there may be some functions—for example, the Commerce Department—we’ve said, let’s get rid of that, but you have to do the census and there are certain things you have to do. So some of that will be to reassign; others will just be to eliminate.

But yes, we— in fact, if you think about some of the things that we’ve had to do in Florida, I’ve had—because our prisons, it was hard to get people to serve as prison guards. It’s not a great job; the pay was too low. They could make more working at Walmart or some of these other places. So we actually did a big concerted effort to be able to give bonuses, higher pay for corrections officers, and we’ve been able to do that pretty well, but we still have more ways to go just because there’s a lot of opportunities in the economy right now in the State of Florida because our state’s growing.

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Let’s talk about the Department of Education now. You—I’m obviously extremely interested in educational reform. I mean, I’ve been shocked, for example, I was shocked as a professor at the University of Toronto to find out that my second-year students who’d gone through 14 years of public education basically were entirely ignorant about everything that happened in the Soviet Union and Mao’s China throughout the entire course of the 20th century.

I know that you’ve put in place mandates, for example, for that sort of education to be provided, but you’ve also been very interested in educational reform, so I’m curious about what’s motivating that and what consequences that might have for your actions on the federal level.

Well, what we’ve done in Florida, I mean, we’ve had to really fight Biden because they want to use federal power to coerce us to do things we don’t want to do. For example, we have women’s sports in Florida; biological men are not permitted to compete in that. It’s not fair to the women athletes, and Biden threatened to withhold school lunch money for poor kids just because we were protecting women’s sports. So they go after whatever they can. I’m going to get the federal government off the back of the states.

We’d like to just eliminate that department entirely, but at a minimum, if Congress won’t do that, I will certainly be able to just peel back all the—really, it’s not the proper role for the federal government to be getting involved in this stuff. Now what we’ve done in Florida is say, “Okay, the state of Florida clearly education is a very important state interest. We fund a lot of the education.”

We clearly have the authority to provide protections for the rights of parents. So for example, you have a right to know what curriculum is being used in your kids’ schools. Unfortunately, there are pornographic materials that are getting put into education. Now parents in Florida can blow the whistle, and that can be removed. We've also done universal school choice so that parents can choose to make the best choice for their kid, regardless of their income—that’s private, that’s charter, that’s public, you name it, we do it.

Our test scores have gone up as a result of that because I think students are in good spots. We’ve also said no to things like critical race theory and gender ideology—that is not the appropriate thing to be doing in particularly elementary school—and we focus on the core academic subjects.

We’ve also made a big push to have more American civics in the classroom, and part of that is the graduating students now take a test that’s modeled after the U.S. citizenship test that tests their civic knowledge. But what we understood is, yeah, I can say they have to know the Federalist Papers, they have to know the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, all this stuff, and that’s great. But you also need teachers that really believe in this and are passionate about it.

So we created a program for teachers. They get a $3,000 bonus if they go through. It’s a 50-hour course, and we got professors from like Hillsdale College. We got people from the Heritage Foundation to come talk about the intellectual roots of America, what went into the American Revolution, the Constitution.

They’re learning about the Enlightenment, Judeo-Christian tradition, British common law—I mean everything you can think of they’re learning about. And it’s been really, really good to be able to do that. I think we have a responsibility to graduate students that have a foundation in what it means to be a citizen of a republic. If you’re just graduating blank slates, well that’s how you lose freedom. When our founders created the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin walked out of the convention in Philadelphia when it was over. He was asked, “Did you give us a republic or a monarchy?”

His response was, “A republic, if you can keep it.” They understood these things don’t run on autopilot; the citizenry has to be engaged in protecting and preserving freedom.

So that’s kind of K-12. Now, on higher education, we’ve also leaned in, and our view is that publicly funded universities should meet the mission that Florida wants for its taxpayers. For us, we want rigorous academic programs; we want to prepare students to be good citizens; we want the pursuit of truth.

We don’t want the university to be hijacked to focus on ideological indoctrination, so we’ve done things at like New College in Sarasota, where I appointed seven conservatives to a small liberal arts college. They’ve now taken that more of a direction like Hillsdale College in Michigan, and the applications are booming because there’s a hunger to have academics focused more on the meat and potatoes of what academics used to be rather than a political agenda.

We’re doing the same thing like the University of Florida. We now have a Hamilton Center for Public Policy, where you’re bringing in professors that don’t align with leftist orthodoxy who are able to present more of, I think, a balanced take on things and give students access to views that are not necessarily the politically correct approved views that mark academia.

So that’s been really exciting too, but my view is these are all of our institutions. They’re not the hobby horse of the political left, and they need to reflect what the state’s mission and interests are with respect to academics.

So I’m going to ask you a couple of questions to close. If you would, the first is: what challenges you’ve had, what have you done right and wrong on the campaign trail, what challenges do you have ahead of you on the campaign trail, what are you hoping for with regards to your campaign over the next year?

And then more specifically, what are you hoping to accomplish with your forthcoming debate with Gavin Newsom, the governor of California?

Well, I think it’s actually—they’re kind of related. I mean, I think that, you know, in a presidential campaign, a lot of this is trying to generate information flow to the voters, and in a nationwide thing, things like the corporate media, unfortunately, matter more than maybe in a statewide election.

Even a state as big as Florida, I really could dominate the discourse as governor. I could go to the markets—I was in these local markets and do that. When you're talking about a presidential campaign, I mean, it’s just day after day, the media churn narratives, and so we knew from the day I won reelection in ’22 that I was a marked man. We knew they were coming after me; we knew they did not want me to be the nominee. That wasn’t necessarily surprising.

But I do think that doing what you can to get into that flow in ways that are going to be present for voters is really, really important, and I think we’ve done a better job of that more recently in the last few months than we did in the first month or two of the campaign. That’s kind of the thing with Newsom. He said he wanted to debate me. Hannah, he asked me to do it. Some people said, “Well, Newsom, we know he wants to run, but he’s not actually running, so why even give him that platform?”

And my view is this is going to give me 90 minutes on national television to be able to articulate why conservative policies have worked in Florida and why they can work nationally in contrast to the failure of California and how Biden is failing and how more of that would lead to an acceleration of the country’s decline. So that’s going to give me a good opportunity to reach these voters in ways that will be meaningful, so that’s just— that’s different in a presidential than would be in these other campaigns.

You just do—I think as you go through, you have to navigate that. Now, I do think if you’re out of a primary context, the liberal media attacking you, I think does help you with Republican voters. They’ll get defensive when you’re the nominee; they’ll say, “Wait a minute, they’re coming after our guy.” There is a rally-around-the-flag effect because conservatives just have no trust in the corporate media at this point, so you do have that in the primary.

It’s a little bit different in terms of how all that shakes out. But definitely, I would say that just the role that media plays in being able to get in the information flow is a really, really significant thing. And of course, there are some people that can dominate that in ways that other candidates can’t.

So you said that your strategy has shifted to some degree in the last few months and that you think it’s become more effective, so maybe you could elaborate on that a little bit.

So what we’ve done, really, I think, you know, probably since the end of the summer is get involved in as many different media opportunities as possible. I didn’t really do a lot of the corporate media as governor because I didn’t really need to, and I knew they were just trying to distort everything. We now do that. I mean, I’ve done liberal shows; I’ve gone on all that stuff, and we’re going to continue to do that.

I think you just get better churn when you’re doing it. What I’ve also, though, noticed is we’ve spent a lot of time in these early states, particularly Iowa, which is the first contest, the Iowa caucus. When you’re on the ground there—and we visited 98 of 99 counties; I’ll finish the 99th this coming weekend—you do get good information flow with the local media. And that’s the thing. It’s like you could be in an area, you get a couple hundred people to come see you, and that’s important. When they come see us, we’re able to shake their hand, answer their questions; we win them over.

But you know, whatever the media is then putting out to the community, that’s what’s going to be more influential, so we’ve gotten in and we’ve done a lot of that. I think that’s been effective, and we’ve been able to really build a big, big base of support in Iowa, and when you’re in a caucus situation, it’s going to be cold; you've got to show up at night on a weeknight, and you’ve got to be there for two or three hours.

That takes a commitment. It’s not just mailing in a ballot, so generating the type of people that are really true believers that you know are going to show up is key, and we’ve created a really good base of support there.

Well, Governor, I know you’re on a tight schedule and we have to wrap this up. There are endless numbers of other questions I would like to ask you. I guess the last thing I would like to know from you, I suppose, is what makes you think that you, among the Republican contenders, are in the best position to be put forward as the Republican candidate for the next presidential election?

A few reasons. One, I have a demonstrated record of fighting for people. We’ve had a lot of Republicans over the years that basically just cave at the first sign of opposition to the media. But I’m also somebody that when I fight, I win these battles. Yes, I won the election; we won a historic victory in Florida. We’d be able to beat Biden nationally without question.

But winning on all the policy fights... it’s one thing to have a slogan about something, but you actually have to bring it in for a landing. Everything I talk about is done with an eye to how I would actually get it done—whether it’s stopping the border invasion, whether it’s reducing the bureaucracy and taming the deep state, whether it’s getting energy production at maximum capacity. All these things are things that we’re thinking about.

And the final thing is, we really need a leader. You need leadership, and that’s what we’ve demonstrated. Leadership is about doing the right thing when it’s not easy. When the wind’s at your back, that’s not really a test. When you have the wind in your face, when people are coming at you, are you going to stand for what’s right? Articulate that vision that people can rally around? Or are you going to kind of scurry off into your little cubby and hope that you don’t get hit with any incoming?

I have a demonstrated record of leadership, so people can know that with me as the candidate for the Republicans, when I get in there January 20th, 2025, we’re going to get all of this done, and we’re going to have two terms to do it, and the country is going to be in a much better position. Winning the election is important, but then delivering on the promises—that is the missing ingredient. That’s what we need to get done, and that’s what I represent.

Well, thank you very much for your time today, sir. It’s much appreciated. It was a pleasure to get to know you a bit more. With any luck, we’ll have another opportunity to talk at some point during your campaign, and best of luck on the trail!

They should have you host one of the debates. I think it would be more informative. I think you’d ask a lot of good questions.

Maybe we’ll see if we could get something done.

Yeah, well, that would be a remarkable opportunity and a genuine privilege, so I’d certainly be up for that.

Anyways, thank you very much for your time; I know you’re on a tight schedule. I’m going to let you go. I want to thank everybody who’s watching and listening. This is a very important upcoming presidential election, and it’s necessary to spend the time required to inform yourself about the candidates and about the issues at hand because it’s a crucial election.

So thank you to the Daily Wire Plus team for making this possible and for the camera crew here in Scottsdale. Thanks once again, Governor DeSantis, for your time today. It’s much appreciated.

Thank you. Take care.

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