DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on the Mark Levin Show

"Somebody like Nikki Haley, she's running away from her record as governor, because her main task as governor was to recruit investment from the Chinese Communist Party into South Carolina."

Des Moines, IA - Ron DeSantis today joined the Mark Levin Show live. The highlights are below.

Listen to part one here and part two here.

On the key contrasts between him and Nikki Haley:

My view was, when I sat down at the desk in the state capitol, when I first took office as governor, I looked around the office and I said, 'I don't know what SOB is going to succeed me, but they're not going to have anything to do because I'm taking all the meat off the bone. I'm not going to waste any time. I'm going to get all this stuff I promised done.' And I've done that. Everything I promised I would do, I have delivered on, and these are very consequential things. As you mentioned, I think somebody like Nikki Haley, she's running away from her record as governor, because her main task as governor was to recruit investment from the Chinese Communist Party into South Carolina. She was the number one ranked governor at bringing in China into her state when she was governor. And she actually, South Carolina gave away land to the CCP, five miles away from a military base for them to do a business venture there. And that was very consistent. She went to China with the World Economic Forum back in the day, she took other junkets there. And this was something-- she wrote a love letter to the ambassador when she was governor, saying what a great friend China was. So that's just, that's very consistent. That was her worldview. That was what she did. Now, she's trying to say she's a completely different person on all that and she's trying to run away from it. She's also never gotten involved in a fight, and actually fought on behalf of conservatives and won. I mean, for example, we've done things in Florida, like protect girls and women from having boys and men go into their bathrooms and locker rooms. When she was governor of South Carolina, she killed a bill that was being proposed that would have provided those protections. And so this is just a pattern with kind of how she does things. She doesn't stand up when it matters, and is basically catering to the more liberal Republican donor class.

On the strong pro-Israel legislation he signed today:

We've always had, since I've been governor, strong sanctions against Iran. But in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, we looked and said, 'Clearly, these attacks would not have happened, had Biden not relieved sanctions and allowed the oil sales to Iran. Any money they get they're going to plow into terrorism, so is there more that we can do from the state perspective?' And look, we're one state, but if Florida were its own country, we'd be the 13th biggest economy in the world. So we do carry some weight. So we worked with the legislature to do a special session of the legislature, expanded the sanctions in every direction we could to try to choke off any money going from Florida to Iran in any way that we could think of creatively, and I hope other states will do the same. Obviously, Biden should be doing way more at the federal level. He can choke off money going into the regime if he wanted to, but he has this delusion that somehow they're going to end up doing a deal with Iran. Now, we also did the protection, additional funding -- and we've been doing this since I've been governor -- protecting Jewish day schools. In the aftermath of the October 7th attack, we had a state resources dispatched to all Jewish areas of interest -- synagogues, Jewish state schools, museums -- to guard against anybody that wanted to try to attack those institutions. And then what I've done at the University is we have the Students for Justice for Palestine, which has allied itself with Hamas, and so we've delisted them. We're fighting with the universities; we're going to win that. But they don't have a right to be a student group at our universities and get tax dollars if they're allied with Hamas. It's a terrorist group, and we can't provide material support to terrorism.

On why he is not beholden to anyone:

I think a lot of these guys expect you to just bend the knee because it's a big powerful corporation. I will not do that. I'm not going to subcontract out my leadership to a woke corporation based in Burbank, California. So we stood up, we fought back, and we won that battle. And I definitely think a lot of them do not like that. So, but here's the thing, leadership's just about doing what you think is right, for the right reason. Let the chips fall where they may. These donors, fine, they can support who they want. But what I find is over the long term, people do gravitate to leadership and when they see that you're willing to follow true north, there's a lot of support out there. So do not try to twist yourself into a pretzel, just to please some of these guys.