DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on the Jordan Peterson Podcast

"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."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla – Ron DeSantis joined Jordan Peterson for an interview on his podcast. The highlights are below.

Watch the full interview HERE.

On campaigning in Iowa and his historic ground game:

What I've also noticed is, we've spent a lot of time in these early states, particularly Iowa, which is the first contest, Iowa caucus...you do get good information flow with the local media. And that's the thing, you could be in an area, you get a couple hundred people to come see you and that's important. And when they come see us, we're able to shake their hand, answer their questions--we win them over. But you know, it's whatever the media is then putting out to the community that's really what's going to be more influential. So, we've gotten in and we've done a lot of that, and I think that 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 got to show up at night on a weeknight, and you got to be there for two or three hours. And so 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.

On being a good leader and an effective executive:

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. So, there are things, 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 you've got to 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 of 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... you just have to take the necessary action to correct that. Sometimes you 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 get your sensor in private. I don't believe in throwing people under the bus, I think they got to know that you're going to have their back.

On how he developed his political philosophy from the Founding Fathers:

I thought like an Ivy League school, everyone's 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. When I got there, it was a rude awakening. You're in the classroom, a lot of aggressive leftism, so what I gravitated towards was real good history, Western civilization, but with an emphasis on the founding of America, because I think that there was a lot of the Western tradition that fit into what the founding fathers did, both during the American Revolution and when they created and ratified the US Constitution. So, I started studying all those key sources. I became very well read in things like the Federalist Papers. I read the Madison's diary about the Constitutional Convention pamphlets during the American Revolution. So, for me, in current terms of developing a conservative philosophy, it really started in in those really core philosophical, enduring truths that mark the founding of the United States of America. And 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, really mattered. I was not doing ideological studies. I wasn't doing some of the Flim Flam 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.

On the left-wing elites he encountered in college:

When I look back at Yale, I was playing baseball and 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, you know, if I can make six or seven bucks here or there, I would do it. And I can get people to come. And it just, it turns out that by most of what was animated there, the people that were in kind of my socio-economic sphere, tended to be much more patriotic, 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 and a lot of inherited wealth. And I don't know if this is their way to just rebel, but there was definitely a very wealthy tilt towards the people that were on the far left. And maybe that was my first introduction to kind of left-wing elites that 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.

On the proper role of government:

But man, the entrenched elite class, they do very, very well. And they live very high on the hog. And 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 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 everyday gaslight the public, saying how good things are with the economy when people are falling further and further behind. They want people to act like that they should be thankful for what's going on, even though we know it's not. So, part of it is making sure power is exercised in accordance with the Constitution, which it is not right now.

On what he'll do on day one to combat the bureaucracy:

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 that need to be ready. Two, go to all the executive actions you're going to take, executive orders reversing the previous, that's got to be ready. And then the legislative roadmaps got to be ready with the key members of Congress. And day one, you just got to go. Now you have a lot of leverage that you can use under Article Two of the Constitution, visa vie 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. But 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.

On why schools should be educating, not indoctrinating:

We've said no to things like critical race theory and gender ideology. That is not the appropriate thing to be doing in particularly elementary school. 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 US citizenship test and test their civic knowledge. But what we understood is like, 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 and 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 to talk about the intellectual roots of America, what went into the American Revolution, constitution. So 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 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 if you gave us a republic or a monarchy. His response was a Republic, if you can keep it. Because they understood these things don't run on autopilot. The citizenry has to be engaged in protecting and preserving freedom.