An Interview with Governor DeSantis

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This is the Victor Davis-Hansen podcast, and I'm going alone today.

Jack Fowler and Sammy Wink aren't with us because we have a special guest, Governor Ron DeSantis,

a candidate for the Republican nomination for the 2024 election.

And I'm going to get right into it.

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And we're right back with Governor DeSantis.

Governor, so nice to have you.

I'm so happy you could come on and talk to our audience.

Yeah, I'm excited to do it.

And thanks for all the good work you've been doing and continue to do.

Well, thank you.

You've done such a wonderful job in Florida that sometimes we don't appreciate some of the things you've been doing as far as this current crisis.

And everybody's attention is now focused on

the

impending Israeli response to Hamas on the ground and sort of the ambiguous attitude.

And that's the euphemism of our administration.

But before you can explain what your take on it is,

what happened?

I know that

you've sent a flight, flights plural, to the Middle East, to Israel, to bring back people, not just from Florida, but who were available.

And now you've also clamped down on these Palestinian pro-Hamas

student groups that are openly sided with Hamas.

What was that about?

What can you tell us about that?

Well, when October 7th happened and we saw the barbarity of it, I knew instinctively this was going to have an impact on Florida.

We just have so many people that go back and forth to Israel, people that have friends, family.

And I didn't know what exactly it would mean for Florida, but I knew we were going to need to be called upon to do something.

And so sure enough, you had a lot of people from Florida who were over there visiting friends, visiting family, who were basically stranded.

The Biden administration wasn't helping.

No help from the embassy, no help from the State Department.

So I did an executive order.

We scrambled our emergency management resources.

We sent over planes to bring people, mostly Florinians, but not all Florinians because we're all Americans and there were people in dire straits.

And we brought those flights back to Florida.

So we've now done close to 700 people that have been rescued from the war zone.

And Victor, the first flight that came in, my wife and I were at Tampa airport to meet them, 271 people, 91 children.

And so, you know, you hear, you hear the stories and we knew it was horrific.

But then when you see the families coming down with these little kids and their dogs and all this stuff, and you're just like, and one of the mothers said to me, she said, she pointed to her six-year-old daughter, she's like, my daughter just kept saying, I don't want to see these, hear these rockets anymore.

I'm sick of the rockets.

I want Florida.

We got to get back to Florida.

So we were able to make that happen.

And the Biden administration basically decided, well, okay, we'll help people get out of Israel, but we're going to dump you in Greece and then we're going to send you a bill for it.

Well, I'm just thinking to myself, if you come across this border illegally, they will not charge you when they fly you all over the country.

They will put you up in hotels.

They're not charging the illegal alien, but yet our own citizens

fleeing a kind of once-in-a-generation type of

conflict, they are going to get the bills sent to them.

And this is a government that doesn't care about spending money and all these other things.

So it's an example of not looking out for your people and putting Americans last.

And Florida, we put Floridians and Americans first.

But we were also able to do is as you bring people back, when the flights go to get more people, we've been able to bring a lot of donated supplies to Israel.

And then we've even helped with things that we've had the wherewithal to do, like some of the drones that IDF requested.

We've transported some of the drones from Florida to Israel.

So we've worked very closely with the Israeli government.

Now, on the campuses,

I will say, if you looked at how Harvard administration responded, Penn, some of these others, it was just horrendous how they did.

If you looked at like the University of Florida's president's statement and some of our other universities, it was a much different posture.

I mean, they were very clear in terms of

this was terrorism, this is wrong, there's no moral equivalent.

Very clear that they weren't going to let Jewish students, just people just take pot shots at them because they're Jewish.

And so I was proud that our universities stepped up and handled it.

I think the way we would want universities to handle it.

And probably even 20, 30 years ago, as liberal as some of them were then, I would not have seen at places like Harvard or Yale, somebody go out and actually make common cause with Hamas terrorists when the blood isn't even dry off these Israeli civilians yet.

That's what we saw.

So in Florida, our chancellor of our university system and our board of governors, the Students for Justice for Palestine, they have said by their own admission, they're not just advocates or cheerleading on Hamas.

They are part of this movement.

They have said that publicly.

And you can say what you want in the United States, but you can't provide any type of support for terrorism.

And when they say that they're one and the same with Hamas, that is unacceptable to be on our college campuses.

And so those groups are going to be deactivated in the state university system.

If you were president and you...

Would you, and because we have federal laws that are commiserate,

they're similar to Florida's about active participation or support for a government-declared terrorist.

Would you do that nationwide or would you be able to or would you want to?

If we had the wherewithal legally, I would definitely do it.

Yes, I mean, this idea that somehow we should be welcoming on our universities groups that are siding with Hamas, a terrorist organization, is absurd.

And as much as I don't like the far left's anti-Israel stances, you can have a debate about Middle East politics and what America, how America's relationship should be to Israel or any other country.

But when you cross that line and you say that somehow your group is one and the same with this brutal terrorist group, for us to just turn a blind eye into that, it's like, what, are we just going to commit national suicide and just allow our own destruction as a people?

No, I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to defend

the American public.

What do you think is behind this ambiguity on the part of the Biden administration?

On the one hand,

they say that they're fully some support of Israel and its right to rectify this horrible massacre and death squads that went into Israel.

But on the other hand, we're giving $100 million that is fungible and probably end up in part at least in the hands of Hamas.

Anthony Blinken said that he wanted to lower flags

half-mask, even though the story about the hospital hospital was false.

We've had Joe Biden saying that it's the old adage, you can't suit straight in response to the Islamic Jihad rocket that hit this parking lot and caused all of this Middle East protest,

as if if they had just not

fallen short that rocket, but had hit the intended target of killing Jewish citizens in Israel, it would have been fine with it, I guess.

But what is behind all this, do you think?

What's happened to this country?

Or

what are the forces that are forcing biden or is it his own volition why can't we just become unambiguous because it almost sounds like we're we're parallel with or in conjunction with the un's stance that we had a terrible uh rant by mr guteros the other day about the whole history supposedly of colonialism in the middle east and we have the eu and we have

what what's this in what's behind all this administration you think

i think it's a combination of ideology They have, you know, Biden sitting atop a Democratic Party where the activist base in their party is very much anti-Israel,

where they believe all the anti-Israel canards.

They think that somehow, I mean, this whole idea that Israel is a colonial power, I mean, Jews had that land in biblical times.

I mean, before Islam even existed.

I mean, it's just ridiculous.

1948, there was a partition plan put forward.

Israel accepted it.

The Jews accepted it.

The Arabs rejected it.

They went to war and they lost that war.

Then they were going to attack them in 67.

Israel preempted that and they won the six-day war.

And then the Arabs invaded in 73 on Yom Kippur.

Israel won that.

And then they've dealt with all these intifadas throughout the year.

But Israel has offered there to be a Palestinian Arab state.

And I would say made concessions, which were unwise because it would have hurt their ability to defend themselves.

But they were still willing to do that.

But throughout all of that, Palestinian Arabs have rejected because for them, the goal is not their own state.

It's the eradication of the Jewish state.

That is what they want to do.

When these students are out protesting from the river to the sea, so-called Palestine will be free.

They're basically saying they want a second Holocaust.

And so you see that energy.

on the left.

And so I think Biden, when he first got into politics, he probably was 100% pro-Israel.

Most people were in the Democratic Party then.

But now he's got this activist base.

But I do think some of that is fueled by ignorance.

I mean, when you're saying that Israel is somehow the colonial power, that's just ridiculous.

And

so interesting.

These left-wingers, they never say any of the majority Muslim countries where Muslims conquered any of this territory.

And somehow they would ever have to get it.

That's that.

It's like once they get it, they get to keep it.

So it is ideological, it's ignorant, but ultimately, it's damaging to our nation's security.

I tell people in Florida, if we had rockets being fired from the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale, do you think we would allow that for one?

I mean, we would go crazy to do whatever we could to just totally annihilate that threat of happening.

Well, Israel's lived under these rockets for how many years?

Now you have this brutal massacre.

Are they just supposed to sit there and have a ceasefire knowing that these Hamas butchers, they would butcher every single Israeli if they could.

That's their ultimate goal.

So, we need to have moral clarity on this.

Israel has every right to defend itself to the hilt, and that means eliminating Hamas as a threat entirely, which, yes, it means you're going to have to go into God.

They'll have to go into Gaza, they'll have to uproot the tunnels, they're going to have to take out all the terrorist infrastructure.

But that's another thing, Victor, that these college campuses and the far left act like the Gazans are suffering under, quote, occupation.

But Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

They forcibly removed Israeli citizens from there.

It was a very traumatic event, but the idea was let the Gazans do kind of what they wanted.

It's actually a very nice stretch of coastline.

Did the people of Gaza try to make the most of that and maybe create like a Singapore on the Mediterranean?

No, they elected Hamas.

And when people say in the media, oh, well, not every Gazan likes Hamas.

Yeah, maybe not.

But, you know, a lot of them were cheering on October 7th when this happened, and that's just what we're dealing with here.

And so I think the administration to send $100 million

in, quote, humanitarian aid, knowing that will be commandeered by Hamas, just how quick they are to send that money there, how slow they are to do things to support our own people, like our border and all these other issues, it is ideology.

This is kind of leftism run amok, I fear.

you've been really trying to focus a lot of the country's attention on the the looming and probably existential threat of china and some people have criticized you and said why is ron de santis talking about china when we have this middle east problem but china has now sent six warships there and it's almost as if

I think what you're saying is that China is kind of wanting to replay the role of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, where it has all of these patrons.

it's the patron, excuse me, and they have all these clients and they want to sponsor unrest that they think hurts our allies and our interests and us.

And so can you make that argument that China is integrally involved in all of these tensions, but even in the Middle East where it relies so heavily on oil and it's not extraneous to the issue of Middle East security and particular Israel?

Not at all.

And Iran has sold China huge amounts of oil.

So China is sending money to Iran.

Of course, Iran uses those profits to fund terrorism.

China is also buying a lot of gas from Russia.

They're supporting Russia's ambitions in Eastern Europe.

So all this stuff ultimately goes back where China is playing a role.

in empowering these belligerent actors.

And China is also, I think, a threat for those reasons, but also taking a step back, their economy is close to a peer economy of ours.

You know, I don't think they've caught us yet, but on current paths, it's possible that they will in a decade.

Some people say maybe even less than that.

Their military may not be a peer with us now, but they're gaining and they have the second most powerful military in the country.

During the Cold War, we had a decisive economic advantage against the Soviet Union.

Even during World War II, the Allies had an economic advantage over the Axis powers.

We're now going into, after kind of the post-Cold War era, then we had the era of terrorism where America viewed terrorism as kind of its significant threat, but there were no great power rivalries.

Well, we're now going into an era where we're back to having a great power rivalry with a country that is going to compete with us, I think, more significantly than some of our rivals have in the past.

And the problem, I think, is, is you have so many people in the United States who've adopted policies and supported policies that have empowered China's rise.

Remember, they promised with the most favored nation and the World Trade Organization that China would become more democratic, that it would give us a framework to enforce support for intellectual property rights, that China wouldn't dump

goods here, that it would basically help America manufacture because we'd sell to China.

None of that stuff has ended up being the case.

You now have Xi Jinping, the most ambitious, ideologically ambitious Chinese leader since Mao.

They have ambitions, of course, with Taiwan, ambitions to break out of the first chain, first island chain in the Indo-Pacific and dominate that region.

And if they're able to do that and dominate the commerce in the Pacific, that will have an impact on every single American.

And you already see the impact they have on our society.

If a Wall Street executive says something a little off color about China, they got to come out and grovel.

NBA, front office, somebody in the front office, NBA says something about human rights.

All of a sudden, these players are filming these videos saying how much they respect China.

So they already exert power over our country in ways that are not healthy.

And I think this decade is really going to be the decisive decade.

We've got to deny their ability to realize their ambition in the Indo-Pacific, which requires more hard military power, which I will support.

We're actually going to lay this out later this week.

It does require us to reevaluate this economic relationship and to not be dependent on China for so many important things.

And then it requires us to take seriously their power within the United States of America.

I mean, for example, in Florida, I've signed land banning China from buying land in the state of Florida.

We don't want them buying farmland, some of these other things.

So I think it's going to be a whole of society approach that's going to be necessary so that we remain the world's preeminent power.

And it's not just so we beat our chest and anything like that.

It's American freedom will be eroded if if the 21st century becomes a Chinese century.

Well, you know,

I want to move just a second to Ukraine.

You've been pretty clear that you want to give Ukraine the wherewithal to defend itself from this invasion, but not

the

encouragement or the ability to conduct

preemptive or strikes inside Mother Russia for various reasons.

But if you look at your support for Israel and for defense spending and NATO and the ability, I think, for Ukraine to defend itself, but not to widen the war.

Why

some people, I saw the Wall Street Journal and you have too,

they're trying to label you in isolationists, but you're not an intervention.

What would you describe your worldview if you were to come up with a phrase?

What's an encompassing idea?

Is it no better friend, no

worse enemy?

Is it don't tread on me?

Is it Jack?

So what it is view that you have that

sets the bicoastal bipartisan establishment kind of crazy?

But on the other hand, it's not an isolationist either.

What would you call it?

And maybe you could articulate just for the listeners.

I just think it's so intellectually lazy to say, you know, if you're not

a neoliberal or neoconservative hyper-interventionist, that therefore you're an isolationist.

I mean, give me a break.

I mean, how ridiculous is that?

So yes, I think it's saying the purpose of our foreign relations is to defend the American people, to make sure we're preserving freedom here at home.

The idea that you can cut yourself off from the rest of the world when someone can push a button and send a communication halfway around the globe in half a second is ridiculous.

Of course, you're going to be dealing with other countries, and we want to have productive relations.

And yes, our allies, we will be no better friend to them.

But the people that cross us,

we will defend our country and we will do it vigorously.

And

they will know that they ought not do that.

But I think if you look at where we gone wrong in the last, in the kind of the post-Cold War era, and I think it's when we've launched missions having to do with more abstractions like that, you know, we're going to, everyone in the Middle East wants to live in a Jeffersonian style democracy.

Well, no.

You know, that's not true.

I think we have to focus on concrete interests that we're trying to advance, economic security,

security, freedom in the United States,

supporting allies, all those things.

But we've gone astray when we do things like the Obama-Hillary Libya intervention.

Half-confed.

They go in and they're intervening in a very hand-handed way.

I served on active duty in Iraq during that conflict.

And What we now have is you have basically an Iranian client state.

The idea that they wanted an American-style democracy, if you spend a little time on the ground, that just wasn't true.

Their view of freedom was not our view of freedom.

They viewed freedom as living under Islamic law, living under Sharia law.

So I think that the DC foreign policy elite, they've stubbed their toes so many times that the proper approach to the world is one through American strength, absolutely.

But it cannot go get mired into some of the George W.

Bush kind of quote freedom agenda, where we were going to to do a lot of intervention to promote, you know, more esoteric concepts when applied to some of these other areas.

And I'd say the same thing with the neoliberal left.

You know, they're hyper interventionist when it's not obvious that it's in our interest.

They want to try to be, quote, humanitarian, and that just doesn't work.

But the notion that somehow somebody like me who actually has served in these conflicts, I was on House Foreign Affairs for six years, we got involved in all these issues, but I think we did it in a way that we've been vindicated.

And I think if you look at what I did back then, I'm the same guy today as I was.

We're going to have a strong America.

We're going to deter conflict.

We're going to ensure that we're identifying the appropriate threats, but we're also going to exercise prudence in how we're wielding American power.

And we're not going to get us bogged down in conflict that ultimately drain our resources for no concrete objective achieved.

You know, Ukraine is

such a mess, It's turning into a Verdun, and there's somewhere between 700 and 800,000 dead and wounded.

And this decisive

border,

it's an existential fight.

It's an irredentist effort by Putin.

But nevertheless, the areas that are in the most dispute are the Donbass and Crimea.

And as you've pointed out, they've got a long history.

that's very complex, at least for Americans to understand.

And we've had people where I work, Stephen Kotkin gave a plan, a suggested plan that we could have those two places, those two disputed areas adjudicated, maybe by NATO coming.

How do we defend Ukraine from Soviet, from Russian aggression, but avoid a theater war and stop this growing alliance between Russia?

and Iran and China.

Is there any way out of it?

How can you, what would you do when

basically Ukraine says to to us, we need a blank check.

And we say, well, we want you to defend yourself, but your blank check may mean hitting fuel dumps or supply roads or troop congregations in Russia.

And that's something that that's a bridge too far for us, given the nuclear threat from Russia.

Or where are you on all of that?

It's a mess, but nobody seems to have an articulate, clear vision of what we need to do.

And I don't think this administration does.

Well, clearly, to do, I mean, a blank check is totally out of the question.

I mean, that's true generally when you're doing these things, but with a Biden administration to give them a blank check where they can't even articulate a basic strategy about what they're trying to achieve.

When you look at how much money has been sent to do things like pay the salaries of Ukrainian bureaucrats, pay pensions for Ukrainian bureaucrats.

I mean, some of the money that's been sent over there,

not even related to military at all.

I think American taxpayers look at that and they're like, okay, you know, give me a break.

And then also the Europeans doing their fair share.

Now, some of the European countries have stepped up, but you have many others who have not.

And NATO, what's the kind of the rationale for NATO going forward?

Clearly, there's not an agreement among our NATO allies about the threat posed by China.

Some of them agree with us.

Some of them don't agree with us.

So if that's not going to be a role for them, then security of Europe is basically basically the primary function.

Okay.

Well, then everyone needs to be doing the 2%, 2.5% of GDP for their defense.

We should not have free riders.

We are in a situation where we just cannot provide blanket security worldwide like maybe we could have done 25 years ago.

The European theater is important, but if that's done at the expense of the Indo-Pacific, we're giving China basically a green light to be able to dominate that region.

So I wouldn't want to do that.

One thing I do know is

Biden's Green New Deal is going to make it so that Russia is going to have more money flowing in from the energy.

It's going to be good for China.

It's going to be good for Iran.

One of the things I would do on day one, we're going to open up all domestic energy production,

federal lands, Alaska, Keystone Pipeline.

I'd like to run other pipelines.

I'd want to export more

LNG.

It will be good to lower people's gas prices.

It'll be good for our economy, but it will be good for our national security.

And it can really help weaken a country like Russia, who relies so heavily on that.

And if Biden's not willing to do that, he's basically funding both sides of the conflict.

He's funding both sides of

the Hamas-Israel conflict with the quote-humanitarian.

He's funding Iran, not just with the $6 billion, but with the relief on sanctions that he did when he came into office.

Iran is providing Russia with all the drone capability that they're using to fight the Ukrainians.

So you have to use leverage

as a president to be able to condition things in the way so that it's most favorable to U.S.

interests.

But I think ultimately our interest in this is we don't want wars breaking out out of Europe.

We don't want to see a wider war develop.

We want Ukraine to retain its sovereignty.

along terms that are not a boon to Russia, where they're not being rewarded for their aggression.

But Biden has not sketched out any vision about how this thing comes in for a landing.

And I think when you have conflicts where there's no clear resolution in sight,

that creates some added danger about how these things could potentially spiral.

Clearly, it is not in our interest right now to have the United States directly enmeshed.

in a war against Russia.

And I do think that there are some people in DC, maybe even in both parties,

who maybe they won't say it before the presidential election, but I think there's some that would want American troops to be in there to fight Russia.

I would not do that.

I think that that would be, I don't think that would be in our interest at all.

No, I don't think it would either.

We have about six minutes.

What specifically, so we have this border that was always semi-porous, and finally, in 2020,

maybe 2019-20, we began to close it under Trump.

But would you, we've had 8 million illegal entries, and of course,

the blue states didn't really care till governors like you in Texas sent people to show them the consequences of their own ideology.

But do you have a multi-step plan of, say, finishing the wall, or would you deport the 8 million that have come in?

That's kind of a D-word.

Everybody's afraid to say, well, if you come in illegally, we can't deport you.

You're here.

What plan did you have to we can get back to an assimilationist integrating uh civic education for immigrants stop the illegal immigration and its tracks and go back to a legal merocratic measured type of immigration specifically yeah i mean i i would do i mean i'm pretty much everything you said i mean one is

We'll declare it a national emergency on day one.

That'll free up resources.

I'll send the military there.

We'll stop the invasion.

We're not going to allow the asylum claims.

We'll do remain in Mexico.

We will build the wall.

I will actually have Mexico pay for the wall.

Now, Mexico is not just going to cough up money, but what you do, the way to realize that promise from Trump in 2016 is to impose fees on the remittances that people send back to Mexico and Central America and all over the world.

You'd raise billions, even a small fee, you'd raise billions of dollars.

We would be able to construct the wall.

We will do that.

People that come, I've said, I've pledged that everyone that's come in under Biden, we are going to send back.

We will deport.

You have to do that.

If you're not willing to do that, you're never ultimately going to get the situation under control.

And the amount of people that have come from hostile countries, China, Russia, Iran, other parts of the Middle East, it's been a lot of people.

There are people on the terror watch list that have come in.

So you absolutely have to do that.

And we will do that.

We'll lean in against the Mexican drug cartels, treating them as akin to foreign terrorist organizations, authorizing the use of force.

When they're breaking into our country with the fentanyl, I'm just going to take care of them.

That will change their behavior, but they're killing a lot of our people.

But on the broader question of kind of, okay, let's say we solve that entirely and illegal immigration is zero.

What does it mean?

Like, how do you conceive of immigration policy?

And to me, it's immigration policy is not a foreigner has a right to come here.

No foreigner has a right to come.

In fact, I've said with these foreign students, if they're Tiran Hamas, I'd cancel their visa and send them back.

And some people howled about that, but if you look at American law, you have every right to do that.

It's a privilege for them to come.

So when you're bringing people in legally, how does that benefit the American people?

I mean, I think that has really got to be front and center.

And coming in with people who, I think it's got to be more individualized, who will assimilate,

who will really gravitate towards our core principles.

To me, that's non-negotiable.

I came out against, because you you have AOC and some of these people on the far left wanting to bring in hundreds of thousands of refugees, Palestinian Arabs from the Gaza Strip.

And I said, absolutely not.

We are not doing refugees there.

And people said, well,

they're not everyone likes Hamas.

They're not all terrorists.

Well, first of all, they elected Hamas.

But yes, I agree.

They're not all terrorists.

But all of them are taught as young kids to hate Jews.

to want to destroy Israel, that Israel has no right to exist and all these things.

And so importing that to our country, that would increase anti-Jewish sentiment here, increase anti-Americanism.

Why would we want to do that?

Of course, we're not going to do that.

And it's not always politically correct to say, but we've got to stop the political correctness.

Because if you look at what Europe's done over the last generation with their legal immigration policies, they are killing themselves with political correctness.

I mean, they've imported a lot of people.

who aren't trying to live like Europeans, but are trying to bring their cultures and to change Europe to look more like like where they came from.

And that's created a lot of problems in those societies.

So it's got to be focused more on assimilation.

I think it's got to be more individualized.

I think mass migration of any kind, legal or illegal, I don't think works.

And I think you see the experience in Europe can show you that.

Well,

I couldn't agree more.

We have 50 million people who were not born in the United States that are residing, many of them on green cards, many of them wonderful citizens.

And here in California, 27% of the population was not born.

And it seems, don't you think it just requires a massive effort at civic education?

If we're going to have immigrants, we've got to suggest to them that our core principles have to be, you left your country, and our assumption is you came for a different paradigm.

And why would you want to replicate what you left and reject?

what you went for.

So we're going do you have a kind of a holistic plan of civic education that we can get back to having the confidence to teach the Constitution and our customs and tradition?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, in Florida, we've made it a big deal.

So, when you graduate high school, you actually take a citizenship style exam.

And we haven't said you can't graduate if you don't do well on it yet, because we want to get enough data over a few years to see.

We started off poor, we're doing a little bit better now.

But what we did is we've created a course for teachers.

They get a $3,000 bonus.

It's a 50-hour course with lectures about the true history of our country.

I mean, British common law, Judeo-Christian tradition, the Enlightenment, all these things that a lot of times you will not now learn in a university setting because they're more interested in ideological studies.

So they get a $3,000 bonus.

We have professors from Hillsdale College, people from Heritage who have done it.

And the teachers have loved it.

because

it's not ideological, it's just the truth.

And these are very powerful ideas.

so i think we need to do that nationwide something like the 1776 project but put more meat on the bones for that because if we're just graduating people who are complete blank slates and it's not just people that are immigrating even our natural born if they are not have some foundation about what it means to be an american uh you know this whole experiment is going to go off the rails and when i see polling and what some of the some of the stuff that people put out, you got to take a grain of salt.

But I mean, you know, you will see some data out there that the vast majority of people under the age of 22 who are students believe that the founding fathers were somehow villains.

And I'm thinking to myself, you know, these guys, they risked their lives, fortune, and sacred honor to be able to do this.

They were, they had pretty good lives.

They created first the Declaration of the Constitution, which were basically frameworks.

to have the freest society in the history of mankind.

They knew they didn't solve every problem right away.

They knew there were issues that had to be dealt with.

But man, to view them as

villains, our country just will not be able to survive if that does.

So I'll be, as a president, I'll be somebody that will speak out from the bully pulpit about appreciating American history and about appreciating our founders, all the way through people like Lincoln and other people in the 20th century that were great leaders.

Because if we're going to sit here and act like somehow they're the problem, and then you turn around and you march with students for justice for Palestine.

I mean, that can't be the case where the founders are villains and somehow you're saying that to wipe Israel off the map.

But yet a lot of times it's the same people.

One of the things, though, a final point I'll make is in Florida, we've worked on our universities to say they are not going to be indoctrination centers.

The left does not control, have a right to control.

either K-12 education or higher education.

And we've done more in any other state to reclaim those institutions from the left and their ability to indoctrinate.

And I think conservatives have to fight at the institutional level because you can win a superficial policy debate.

I'm not saying that those aren't important, but ultimately, if the left is controlling every single institution in this country that matters, they're going to win in the long haul.

And in Florida, one of the reasons why people have gravitated is they see us fighting on all these fronts.

Parents know if they come to their school and this indoctrination is there that they actually have rights as parents to blow the whistle and to have it corrected so that we have traditional education.

Well, thank you.

And our half hour is up.

We've covered everything from the Middle East to Hezbollah, Hamas, Ukraine, our border, civic education, governor's efforts to get people out of the war zone to clamp down on support for Hamas.

I haven't had a...

a more jam-packed half hour in a long time on this podcast.

So I really want to thank you, Governor DeSantis, and I hope our listeners learned a lot because it was very informative.

Much appreciated.

Okay, thanks for having me.

We'll do it again sometime.

I hope so.

And with that, this is Victor Hansen wrapping it up for the Victor Davis-Hansen podcast.

Thank you very much.