DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on The Mark Levin Show: "As Commander in Chief, we're going to rip all the politicization and all the Biden agenda out of the military."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Ron DeSantis spoke with Mark Levin on The Mark Levin Show. See the highlights below.

Listen to the full interview HERE.

On woke ideologies corrupting the military:

"They're letting the institution be corrupted with social experimentation and woke ideology. Mark, I joined after 9/11. I had opportunities, I was a blue-collar kid growing up, minimum wage jobs, my parents worked hard, but I never really made any money. I was kind of in a position to make some money. 9/11 happened so I was like, you know what, I've got to serve. So, I volunteered to serve, volunteered, served in Iraq, I did some other stuff. And you get a sense of pride, being able to wear that flag on your uniform, being able to wear the cloth of your country serving alongside fellow patriots, I think a lot of veterans feel that way. Yet now, for the first time in my life, veterans come up to me all the time and they say, 'I don't know if I'd want my kids or grandkids joining today's military, because of all the stuff that's going on.' Recruiting is at a post-Vietnam low. When I was in Fallujah, in the height of the Iraq war, we still had people willing to join the Marines and the Army knowing they would get sent to Iraq, and they were still willing to serve. Now, it's very difficult to get people to serve, they have driven off a lot of good warriors. Partially with this- I also think the vaccine mandates really hurt the military because it was totally unscientific and unjustifiable. So, they lost good people from that. Now you're in a situation- how are we going to be able to deter China from dominating the world, if we don't have a fighting force that has high morale, and that is really focused on the mission. So, we're going to be doing an announcement on what we're going to be doing to combat that very soon. But at the end of the day, day one as Commander in Chief, we're going to rip all the politicization and all the Biden agenda out of the military, and we're going to restore it to its proper function and morale will increase, and recruiting will increase as a result of that."

On appointing a new director to the FBI:

"I've said very clearly since day one that I launched my campaign for president January 20, 2025, as soon as I get sworn in, there will be a new director of the FBI. This is insane, what's been going on. I saw it, I thought it was disgraceful. So, we clearly need new leadership there. I mean, we need to clean house far beyond that. But that has got to be one every presidential candidate acknowledges: he's failed, and we need to have somebody new in there. I've said that from day one."

On protecting parents' rights:

"These parents are sending their kids to school in parts of the country and their kids are being indoctrinated. You have first graders being told that they may be born in the wrong body, and they may be a different gender. You have places in Florida- we actually, part of the reason we did our Parents' Rights in Education, you know, we had a girl who went to school, and administrators and teachers 'transitioned her' behind her mother's back. Her mother became a friend of ours, and she became an activist for this bill. So, this is just outrageous. That violates the rights of parents. That violates the freedom that Americans have to raise their kids with the values that they see fit. Schools serve an important purpose: private schools, charter schools and school districts, but they do not supersede the rights of parents. I think when you say that you're just not going to do it and let the indoctrination continue. You cannot have a healthy economy if you allow the education system to be corrupted with no push back."

On securing the border:

"We're going to be very tough on the border, we're going to finally put this issue to bed once and for all. And that includes empowering both the Border Patrol and military to use deadly force at the border against these drug cartels that are killing Americans by the tens of thousands. They try to break into this country with fentanyl, they're going to end up stone cold dead… We obviously have situations where states like California are providing benefits to illegal aliens. In Florida, we don't do that. In fact, we just said no out of state licenses are recognized. We don't issue those licenses in Florida, and we've really gotten strong on that to try to protect our population, but you're not a country without borders. You've got to have borders. And I think some of this is there are business interests out there that just want to import cheap foreign workers to be able to undercut the wages of Americans, and I don't think that that's good policy for the United States."