Remarks at the California GOP Fall Convention in Anaheim

Thank you! Thanks so much! God bless y'all. Great to be in Southern California. Thanks so much. Thank you, thank you. Well, it's great to be here. I didn't know if I was even allowed. I'm a little close to Disneyland. I didn't know if they'd let me come to this, it's okay. It's okay.

We're excited to be here. We don't need teleprompters. We don't need any notes. We'll just let her rip and have a good time. We just got a taste of Southern California traffic. I did an interview for Bill Maher's show, and I guess it's somewhere in Hollywood. And we drove from there to here. And I don't know how many miles it was, but it took us about two hours to get here. So, we saw the bumper to bumper, and we were able to do that, which is I know a lot of people in Southern California have to deal with it. Of course, we had the debate in Simi Valley, the Reagan Library, on Wednesday. My wife and I, we got into town in southern California on Sunday night, and we went to Coronado and did an event at the VFW. And that was my intro to California. I was born and raised in Florida. I had never spent time in California in any meaningful way. And I was a naval officer and got orders to report to Naval amphibious base Coronado for Naval Special Warfare group one in preparation for deployment to Iraq.

So I get to Coronado, and I'm very green. And I show up and check into the bachelor officer quarters. And being a Floridian, the first thing I looked for was the air conditioning. And they said there is no air conditioning, just open your window. You don't need it. So I opened the window, and there was no screen on the window, which in Florida, we have bugs. They're like 'no, there's no bugs, you just do it.' So you open it up, you're there, and I'm like, man, I could get used to this. This is a really, really, really nice part of the world.

So we did the training, everything, deployed. And then we -- I'll never forget, after being in Iraq, not the best place in the world in terms of a lot of things, but being in that desert, and then landing at Naval Air Station, North Island on Coronado, and then getting off that C-5, and just having the freshness of the Pacific Ocean there hitting you. And man, like, I felt so pleased to be an American. And then the next morning, I'm out running on the beach outside the Hotel Del Coronado, doing all this stuff, just soaking it in.

So I have very fond memories of California, but particularly that part of California. And truth be told, growing up in Florida, I never remember seeing a single California license plate in my life. I never met anybody who had moved from California to Florida. Well, fast forward 15 years later, and I become governor, and all of a sudden we see a sea of California license plates in the state of Florida.

Now, mind you, Florida, before I got elected, Florida had always been viewed as a one-point state. You know, Democrat, Republican, I think from 2010 through '18, the governor and presidential races were all decided by one point. I understand that one of my residents was here earlier saying that he turned Florida red. All I will say is, Ronald Reagan made the point, there's no limit to what you can do when you don't care who gets the credit. I just wish if he was the one that turned Florida red, that he wouldn't have turned Georgia and Arizona blue because that's not been good for us at all.

But so it had always been one point. So, when you see California license plates, a lot of my supporters thought, uh oh, they're going to vote like they vote in California. And it's going to turn Florida blue, and we're not going to be able to have a good state anymore. And there was a lot of fear. But I'll tell you, I started meeting these people, and they would tell me why they moved. And you don't pick up and move from Southern California to Florida because of the weather. Like we got good weather most of the year. Summers aren't as good. You got good weather; you don't do that. You don't leave your friends and family behind and go thousands of miles just on a whim. These were people that were doing it because they were seeking to live in a free state that respected their rights and where they could thrive.

And we can sit here and -- I think most of you know, we're scheduled to have a little tussle with your governor on Fox News on November 30th. Now look, all I can tell you is -- and I know, like, you know, he'll pull out statistics and this and that. And I can pull out statistics, like for example, just today, Florida got ranked number one for education, freedom by the American Legislative Exchange Council. I can go all day with stuff like that. But you know, all you really have to do, you can take all the stats, you can take all that, you can just put it by the wayside, you can just ask the question, how are people actually voting with their feet? Because you can have a corporate media outlet try to trash Florida and try to put lipstick on a pig with regard to California. Of course they're going to do that; that's their agenda, their partisan agenda, but all you have to do is when people have to make decisions about themselves, about their families, about their freedom, how are they behaving? And people are leaving -- for the first time in the history of California -- people are leaving, on net, the state of California.

Where's the number one destination that people are leaving these failed blue states are going to? The Free State of Florida.

So we're going to be able to -- we'll be able to have those debates. But you know, to me, the debate about what state is governed better, Florida or California, that debate has already been answered by people voting with their feet. I think that debate is useful because California is really the petri dish for American liberalism and American leftism. And what Biden is doing are things that California was doing many years ago. What California is doing now is likely what a second Biden term would do or God forbid, Kamala Harris, or God forbid, Newsom himself. Who knows, right? That's what they would do.

So the country, our country, is in a state of decline -- economic decline, cultural decline, military decline. The California model represents more American decline. The Florida model represents a way for us to reverse American decline and represents a way to have an American revival. And that's ultimately the choice that people are going to have to make. This is our time for choosing. President Reagan said, in his day, that his generation of Americans had a rendezvous with destiny. Well, we have a rendezvous with destiny because freedom is at risk, more so today than in any time in my adult lifetime. And we're going to be able to make the choice about whether we want to continue on the decline. We also can make the choice as Republicans, are we going to be satisfied with just managing the decline a little bit better than the Democrats? I can tell you I reject managed decline. I want reversal of the decline. And we'll do that.

So we'll be able to hash all that out. And I think it'll be fun. But what, really, we need to do, and I think what we've shown in Florida is, the Republican Party in recent years has been very long on rhetoric, very long on sending you emails asking you for money, very long on all these other things, but by and large, has been short on results. And ultimately, the only reason we should be in this room -- the only reason you should be donating your time, energy or money -- is to produce results that are good for your community, your state, and for your country. And in Florida, we have produced results that are second to none.

I get out there and get to debate on this Simi Valley and we did the other ones. And I listen, and it's fine, like, like people say, things that, I think, they think you want to hear. And that's better saying the wrong things. Don't get me wrong. But I'm the only guy on that stage that's actually delivered on every single issue that we're talking about as Republicans.

You want to talk about the economy and the budget? We know that the inflation that we're suffering under is the result of borrowing, printing, and spending by members of Congress in both parties, across two administrations over the last three and a half years, that sunk trillions and trillions of dollars into the economy, paying people not to work, doing all this other stuff. Of course, you are going to get inflation when that happens. And that is why we're in the mess. What have we done in Florida? We cut taxes by billions of dollars. We ran big budget surpluses. And since I've been governor in 2019, we've paid down 25% of our state's total outstanding debt that it accumulated its entire history as a state. So we're showing you how it's done.

You look at things, you know, we were talking about education. They're saying, well, should people be doing school choice? Yeah, we should do school choice. Yes, yes, yes. We did school choice in the state of Florida, we have universal school choice. Every parent in Florida has a right to send their kid to the school of their choosing -- maybe a private school, maybe a charter school, maybe a public school within the school district; the sky's the limit. And since we've embraced that, where does Florida rank in education? Well, we just got ranked number one by US News and World Report.

We just got ranked number -- our University of Florida just got ranked the 15th best university overall in America, including being the top ranked public university in America. No one would have thought that was possible 20, 25 years ago. I just need their football team to start doing a little bit better, and we'll be doing really well. So we've done school choice.

You want to talk about parents rights? Everyone says how important it is. We enacted the parents bill of rights in the state of Florida. Parents have the right to direct the education and upbringing of their kids. And that means you, as a parent, have a right to know what is being taught in your child's school; curriculum transparency. And unfortunately, they're trying to jam things like pornographic materials in front of very young kids. That is wrong, and in Florida, we put a stop to it. Now the media will say, and the left will say, that if a parent objects to a book in fourth grade that is pornographic and you remove that book from the fourth grade library, they'll claim that that's quote banning the book. First of all, in Florida, there's nothing banned. You as an adult can knock yourself out with that adult material. Just don't do it to the kids. Leave our kids alone.

You can go read Hunter Biden's laptop for all I care if you want to donate material, but just don't bring it to kids. So they'll do it, and they say, oh, it's banned. So what I did to ferret them out, and to smoke them out, we did a press conference about six or seven months ago titled exposing the book ban hoax. And instead of me going to the podium and talking about it, before I stepped up, before any of the parents stepped up, we just played on the video screen the images of the books that the parents had objected to. The news stations who were covering that press conference had to cut their feeds because they said it was too graphic to put on the air. Well, if it's too graphic for the six o'clock news, how is it okay for a 10 year old school child?

We complain, as Republicans, about schools and universities trying to indoctrinate kids. Yet in Florida, we put a stop to it. We eliminated critical race theory from our K through 12 schools. We prohibited the use of gender ideology in our schools, particularly in the elementary schools. And yes, we had to stand up to the media on that, we had to stand up to the left on that, we even had to stand up to a company in Central Florida that's pretty well known that you guys know about here in Southern California called Disney. But you know, it's wrong to tell a second grader that their gender is a choice. It's not true, and it's inappropriate. And we will stand up when it's tough. When the media is bearing down on us, I will stand up. When the left is bearing down on us, I will stand up. When the most powerful company in the history of Florida is bearing down on us, I will stand up because it is the right thing to do to stand up for the well being of our kids. And I will do battle with anybody that seeks to rob them of their innocence.

You want to talk about crime? We see crime -- just since Casey and I have been in Southern California, we've run into like six or seven people that have gotten mugged. And they're telling the stories about getting mugged because people in California, these district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles, they get elected usually with funding from people like George Soros, and they decide that they are progressive, and they don't agree with all the laws passed. And so they let the inmates run the asylum. And it puts the people of their communities at risk. crime goes up, and the quality of life becomes destroyed. In Florida, when we had two prosecutors, Tampa and Orlando, that got elected with Soros funding, they said or did not enforce the law as they took an oath to do, I didn't talk about it. I removed them from their posts. They are gone.

When BLM were was ransacking cities in the summer of 2020, I wasn't just sending social media messages saying law and order, I ensured law and order in the state of Florida. We called up the National Guard. We had state law enforcement ready. We were not going to let cities burned down in the state of Florida. And you know what? They didn't burn down in the state of Florida. And that's what should be done nationwide.

We rejected the idea that we would attack police or defund the men and women in law enforcement. In fact, not only did we not defund, we now gave -- we give $5,000 signing bonuses to any police officer who we recruit from out of state. I was talking to a police chief in Southern California, I asked him how are things going. He's like, they're going good, but all my police officers want to move to your state. Well, that's because they're treated well. And guess what? Florida's crime rate is not like LA or San Francisco or Chicago; Florida's crime rates at a 50-year low. That's what you call taking care of business.

We talk about things like the Communist Party of China in the debate the other night. We didn't just talk about it in Florida, we're the only state, I think in America, we have banned the purchase of land by the Chinese Communist Party in the state of Florida. We need to do that nationwide.

We sometimes talk about things like the ESG movement, which is trying to take over our economy. Asset managers at places like Blackrock want to use your money, want to use pension money from teachers and police officers to be able to advance their ideological agenda. We didn't just complain about it in Florida, we kneecapped ESG in Florida. We banned ESG from our pension funds. I took $2 billion away from Blackrock who had managed $2 billion in our pension funds. That's gone. We eliminated the use of social credit scores and financing. And we told the credit rating agencies, you can't use ESG criteria in rating our municipal bonds. And guess what? ESG is now on the defense because of what Florida is doing. That is what you call action. That is what you call getting results.

And oh, by the way, they're now talking in DC with the Federal Reserve about imposing a central bank digital currency. We're on offense on that too. First of all, central bank digital currency, what they want to do is eliminate cash, eliminate crypto currency, and make this central bank digital dollar the sole way that you can participate in the economy. Why would they want to do that? Are they just trying to be friends with you? Are they just trying to make your life a little easier? No, they want to be able to control, they want to be able to impose a social credit score, social credit system on there. And you've got guys at places like the World Economic Forum that are bragging about how it would allow them to target disfavored purchases because they don't want you purchasing firearms. They don't want you purchasing a lot of gasoline. They want to be able to have the means to shut you off.

So there's things that government will do that they'll dress up in benevolent ways that's kind of like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Central Bank Digital Currency is not that. It's a wolf showing up as a wolf. They're coming after your freedom. And so, in the state of Florida, we told that, we saw what the Fed's thinking about doing, so we passed legislation banning the use of central bank digital currency in the state of Florida, we're not going to let them get a foothold, and we're not going to let them take away your financial privacy.

We talk about having an equal opportunity society where people aren't divvied up into different racial groups. But we're the first state to actually eliminate so called DEI, from our public universities. We're not going to treat people and shoehorn them into different ethnic groups, we're going to treat people as individuals, we're going to treat them based on merit. And this whole DEI, they say it's diversity, equity and inclusion, the way it's practice, it's discrimination, exclusion and indoctrination and has no place in our public universities.

So on on issue after issue, we don't chirp, we don't virtue signal, we act and we deliver. And you want to know why Florida has gone from being a state that was determined by one point to now being a state where a guy like me could win the greatest Republican governor victory in the history of the state winning by 20 points. It's because people respond to leadership. It's because we've had people that have moved from other states, because they support the values that we represent. But even more importantly, we have people in places like Miami, who used to be Democrats used to be independents, who have now switched to become Republicans because of what we've done. In fact, in my election in November, Miami Dade County is our most populous county, 2.8 million people. And in 2016, Hillary Clinton won that county by 30 percentage points. It was a big time blue County. I want it by double digits in November. So this can happen and that's what we need to do.

So the question is, is how do we move forward nationally as a party because the Florida success story, I can point you to a couple other examples in the country where we've had strong Republican leadership, Iowa, for example, under Governor Reynolds, Georgia, Texas, there have been some good ones, don't get me wrong. But our party's lost more than it's won over these last three election cycles. And the Democrats are cleaning our clock in Washington, and in so many other areas. And so we need to try a different way going forward, we need to try a way that you're going to actually be able to win a big victory. But then more important than that, everything you say you're going to do, you got to get up there on day one, you got to be ready to go, you got to be focused, you got to be discipline, you got to know it's not about you. It's about achieving the larger goal, and you got to get to work and you can't stop and you need to do it for two terms to make sure it all sticks. When I was at President Reagan's library, one of the things I think was remarkable is he's really the last president we've had that served, yes, he served for two terms, but his legacy has extended way, way beyond those two terms. His achievements, really marked 20, 25 years of this country and some of the things that we were able to accomplish. That's what you get when you have somebody that can serve to strong terms to be able to turn the country around. So what does that look like? I was, in getting ready for this debate, I started looking at some of the President Reagan's speeches and some of his writings. Just to kind of get myself in the frame of mind. I actually thought they may ask a question about Reagan's legacy. They didn't they were asking, I don't know what they were asking, but that's okay. You know, you wrote you, you know, I just roll with the punches. I'm there, I'll handle whatever they throw at me. But so I started doing it. And I read his farewell address. And he talked about a lot of the things that they were able to accomplish. Of course, he was on the brink, which we may not have known right at that time, but he was on the brink of seeing the Berlin wall fall down later that year in 1989. And really marking probably the greatest achievement that a president has had in the last 50 years, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. So he's reflecting on the successes, reflecting on that. And it occurred to me that that's a great way to think about a campaign right now going forward. What do I want to be able to say to you looking into the camera in January of the year 2033, after serving two terms, and being able to address the people on my way out the door, hopefully handing it off to a worthy successor. And I think what I would want to say is a number of things. One, we will be able to say that we have restored the American dream in this country. People that work hard can get ahead again, government is going to get off your back. We're not going to let the bureaucrats run our society, we're not going to let the left politicize our economy and deny you the chance to make the most of your God given ability. We will also be able to say that our country has reclaimed and restored its national sovereignty because we will have a border that is airtight, that is secure, and is not allowing Mexican drug cartels to poison people throughout this fruited plain. And this is not something, look addiction is a tough thing. We've actually in Florida have a program, we're the only state in the country, I believe in the last year that seen a decline in overdose deaths because of how we've tried to go and help people. But the thing about the fentanyl is, it's getting people who are not addicted to drugs, who maybe try one pill at one point in time, and if that pill is laced with fentanyl, that could be the end of their lives. And there's mothers across this country, not just in border towns who have lost kids, because what is going on. One of the reasons we'll have our sovereignty restored is yes, I will change the policy, we're not going to let people in. Yes, I will do the border wall because I think it's important. But I will be willing to use my powers as commander in chief to use deadly force against the Mexican drug cartels, they're killing our people, it's time we leave them stone cold dead at the border. We'll also be able to say that our country remains the world's leading superpower, that our military is strong, and that we will have successfully fended off the threat posed by Communist China. This decade is going to be decisive and to how we navigate that confrontation. Under current course, under President Biden, we are probably going to end up getting in a war with China that we would lose. That's not going to happen when I'm president. And we'll be able to look back eight years hence saying we did it right. We'll also be able to say that the school systems in this country are dedicated to educating our kids and no longer indoctrinating our kids.

We'll be able to say that the rights of parents are universally respected throughout this country. We're not going to have things like in California, where they're going after the rights of parents, even tried to pass a bill recently, to take away custody of a kid from a parent, if the parent did not indulge transgenderism with the kid. So you see the direction society is going, we will stop that we will reverse and we will make sure that parents are empowered. And as part of having a good education system, we will have an emphasis that each and every student understands the founding principles of this country is taught to appreciate the Constitution and as a great grasp of what it means to be an American. Because we've had so many people that have fought hard for us.

We will also be able to look back and say that from coast to coast, we are a country where criminals are held responsible for their misconduct and that the inmates are no longer running the asylum. And that's from the most conservative city to the most liberal city, everywhere is going to have law and order and people will be safer as a result.

And then finally, we'll be able to say that together we restored the original understanding of our Constitution. We will have a limited government that works alongside us. We will not have an unaccountable bureaucracy that's been weaponized against us. I look at these agencies like the Department of Justice, like the FBI, like the IRS. You know, we have a government, they can't tell you how many tanks they left in Afghanistan. They can't tell you where the money they've sent to Ukraine has gone they can't tell you how many people are coming across our border illegally. I can't even tell you how cocaine got into the White House. But yet if you make a $601 transaction, the IRS is going to be on your case and they are going to be policing you. That is unacceptable. We will have restored this government to its rightful owners, we the American people.

And we have no choice but to make sure we get all this done. My wife and I, and my wife is here the First Lady of Florida, many of you got to meet her. She is, I'm a little biased, but I do think this is true of all 50 states, she's America's greatest First Lady, and we appreciate everything that she does. So we have at home, we have a six, five, and three year old. And so first grade, kindergarten, and pre k three. So we're very sensitive about what's going to happen in this next generation, because it's going to impact them, it's going to impact some of your kids, your grandkids. And we run the risk on our current course, being the first generation of Americans that are leaving to our children and grandchildren an America that's less prosperous, and less free than the one we inherited. And that would not be doing justice to our kids and grandkids, we will not have been doing our part as Americans, and I'm motivated to get in the fight because of that reality, but I'm also motivated, because I have an appreciation for the people that have come before us. When I used to fly up to Washington DC, there was a particular route that the plane could take, going into Reagan National Airport, and it will take you flush parallel to the National Mall. So if you looked out the left side of the plane, you saw sweeping up close views of the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, Washington Monument, all the other monuments, and then perched on top of the hill, in the not too distant yonder, the beautiful US Capitol building. And you think to yourself, you know, all that stuff really symbolizes the principles and the ideals that make our country unique and it fills you with a sense of pride of being an American. And I can tell you, a lot of the tourists would really get excited about it. And so it made you feel good. But what I noticed after doing that a few times, was looking out the left side of the plane, while those monuments were spectacular, while those monuments, were nice to see, those were not the greatest monuments to our country, because if you looked out the right side of the plane, you looked over the Potomac River, you saw a lot of small nondescript monuments orderly arranged over the rolling hills of a place called Arlington National Cemetery. And it occurred to me then, and I believe now, you can have the best constitution in the world, you can have the best Declaration of Independence in the world, these things do not run on autopilot. They require each generation of Americans when tested, to step up and to defend freedom. And yes, in certain instances, to put on a uniform, to risk your life and indeed give that last full measure of devotion in service to the greater cause. We are not doing justice to their sacrifices and their memories. If we allow this country to continue its descent, we have responsibility to step up, we have responsibility to fight back. And we have responsibility to reverse this country's decline and give this country a new birth of freedom. So now's the time to do it. The time for excuses is over, we are not going to get a mulligan on the 2024 election. I don't want to be in a situation where it's recriminations and the Democrats get in again, and they end up doing even greater damage. Just think about the damage they have done, when they had 50 senators and 2021, barely had a majority in the House and they were able to do all this damage. Yet when we have majorities. Republicans don't do squat with the majorities. How do we keep letting this happen?

So we all got to do our part. And here's the thing, the way our society functions now is, when you stand up for what's right, when you're exercising leadership, you could be a governor, you could be a presidential candidate, you could be running for city council, you could just be a concerned citizen, you could be a mom going to school board meeting, if you're standing up for what's right and you're exercising leadership that is not cost free. People will come after you. The left will come after you. The media will come after you. I'm actually a little disappointed. I didn't see any protesters out for me today. Where did the protesters go? We had them six months ago when I was here. I had them in other parts of California since I've been here. But they will come after you. And so the question is, you know, it's always easier just kind of retreat back and your little safety comfort zone, to not want to get out there, to not have to put up with it. Because it can be nasty. It can be tough. But you know, if people were willing to put on a uniform and give their life for us in years past, that is the least we can do, to step up and fight back when freedom is under attack.

Let's resolve to take the next year, year and a half to ensure that in every corner of this country, we are bringing a message of hope. We are bringing a message of renewal and we are bringing a message of freedom to every citizen in every jurisdiction in this land and I don't care if it's someplace that is dark red, like we've made most of Florida or if it's in the heart of sand Francisco, we have got to carry the message and we've got to do what's right. So I can just tell you this. I'm not backing down. We've got a country to save. Let's get the job done. God bless you all. And thank you so much. We appreciate you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. November 30, we'll see the debate. Thank you. Thanks so much.