WHEN: Friday, October 6, 2023
WHERE: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis that aired during CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (M-F, 6AM-9AM ET) today, Friday, October 6. Following is a link to video on CNBC.com:
All references must be sourced to CNBC.
JOE KERNEN: Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is moving about a third of his campaign staff to Iowa as he tries to gain momentum against former President Trump. Joining us now on that and the GOP chaos in the House this week is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Welcome Governor. It’s been long time I have wanted to have you on the show. It’s good to see you.
GOV. RON DESANTIS: Good morning. How you doing?
KERNEN: We’re doing good. I wanted to, with that intro, I guess we’ll talk about those things. What I really do want to get to, though, is whether you believe that some of the successes you’ve had in Florida, both economically and I mean, a lot of other successes, whether that’s possible to do that on a national level. That’s what I think sometimes it’s hard to imagine. But I want to hear you tell me that you can in a second, but, and I’m sure you don’t watch Drudge or don’t look at Drudge. But the headline today is Ron downloads on Don, a biggest attack yet. So, you did step it up in recent days in terms of directly taking on the current leader for the race, for the nomination, Donald Trump, former President Trump.
DESANTIS: Well, Joe, on this weekend in Iowa, he said with his famous promise that he made in 2016, he was going to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it. We all remember that. And he said, well, there was no legal mechanism for me to do that. I couldn’t have Mexico pay for it. You can’t just ask them for money for a wall. And so, that was basically a central promise. So, that to me was something that I was taken aback by. But the thing is, you actually could have Mexico pay for it. Yeah, they’re not just going to cut you a check. You impose fees on remittances from people that are sending money back to Mexico and other countries. And he was advised that he could have done that, and he didn’t do it. So, I think, ultimately, the choice for Republicans is, do we want somebody who is going to produce the leadership and results that will turn this country around? You ask, is Florida’s success replicable nationally? Of course it is. What they have in D.C. is theatrics. It’s performative, but it doesn’t actually produce results for people. In Florida, I’m a leader. I’m not an entertainer. I’m not running a soap opera down here. I make promises to people and then, I use the authority that I have, and I work with the legislature to deliver the promises. And so, the results speak for themselves. While they have added massive amounts to the debt, I’ve paid down 25 percent of our state’s total debt just since I’ve been governor, over the last four and a half years. We’ve cut taxes. We’ve run surpluses. We’re ranked number one by your network for economy of all 50 states, number one in education by U.S. News and World Report. We’ve taken on big issues like school choice. We’ve gone after ESG. We’ve even reformed higher education. So, it’s really about leadership. But the leadership has to be focused on producing results. Politics and governance is not a show. And what we’ve seen in Washington over the last week, to me is a show. I don’t see the results that they’re delivering even though they all ran saying they were going to do these great things in 2022.
KERNEN: Governor, the, we’ve heard that governors make better presidents. We’ve always heard that because they’ve been a CEO of a state. But, given the events of the past week, you can see that a president in an environment like that, with a divided Congress, and with so much tribalism and so much partisanship, it’s hard for anyone to get in. I just don’t see how you could repeat sort of, I’m not saying you’re an autocrat in Florida, but I don’t see how you could have the same ability to get things that you want done, done on a national level. It just, I don’t, you can make the case and you could do it. But I don’t see how you can.
DESANTIS: Well, here is how you can do it. Well, a couple of things. One, the current president is missing an action. I mean, Joe Biden is not exercising leadership. He is not working hard. He obviously lacks energy in the, I’ll be much different President, will be energetic. We will be out there. But I also understand the authorities of the office. I know how to use leverage. And then, I also know how do you actually get this stuff in for a landing? So, for example, all the things we’re talking about now, we’re thinking of an eye towards January 20th, 2025. How do you get it done? Budget reconciliation in the Senate, Biden used that to do his agenda. We’re going to use that for our agenda. So, we’re not just out there flailing around. We have a plan to get it done. And what I’d say this in Florida, when I got elected, Florida was viewed as the most significant closely divided state. Most of the races were one-point races, governor races, presidential races. I came in with a narrow margin, and we ended up turning that into a 20-point victory. We brought people together. Yes, the far left, we fought and we beat the far left. But I think that’s what we need to do nationally. But I do think that there is a strong majority of this country that wants a restoration of sanity. They want to see government focus on their needs and not the needs of the people in D.C. And that’s what I’ll represent, and it’ll be a bottom-up movement. I mean, you remember, President Reagan, he had a Democratic House his entire eight years, and he was able to do a lot of great things. It wasn’t necessarily because they were backslapped, and I know people talk about that. It was because Reagan appealed to the constituents of these members—
KERNEN: Right.
DESANTIS: And these constituents said, guys, it’s time to get some stuff done. So, 2024 is our time to get stuff done.
KERNEN: I guess, Governor, the other thing is what might work locally in Florida might not work nationally either, and I’m thinking about the fight with Disney and all the ramifications from that. Some people tie some of your difficulty in getting more traction in your campaign to what worked in Florida. And obviously, I think you got a lot of support with the action that you took in that regard in Florida. But that might not be something that works nationally. And you’ve heard it from both Republicans and Democrats, why are you messing with Corporate America, I mean, a corporation, usually a Republican or a conservative, would be loath to get involved with the workings of a private company. And then, Democrats don’t like it, because they think you’re anti-LGBTQ or so, you’ve gotten it from both sides. As a result, you’re trailing Trump by like, I don’t know, how many points, 30 or 40 points.
DESANTIS: Well, here is the thing. I don’t think that’s the reason, but corporations used to not try to get involved in imposing agendas on society. The idea that a corporation would fight against a parent’s rights bill, that a corporation would want to have kindergarten students taught that they can change genders or that their gender is a choice, it’s outrageous that they got involved in that. I’m the parent of a six, five and a three-year-old. I think I speak for a lot of parents, not just Republicans, Independents, and Democrat parents. We want school to be focused on the basics. We don’t want this stuff injected, particularly in the elementary schools. So, it was an important fight to have. We won the fight decisively. But I would also point out, Disney had an obnoxious set of corporate welfare benefits. That is not good policy nationally. What we want is, we want clear rules, and we want people to be able to compete. But it is wrong to pick one favorite company and give them extraordinary privileges. And that was a legacy of Florida for many decades, and it evolved in something I think that wasn’t meant to be. But what we’ve done in Florida is we have a level playing field now. Universal, SeaWorld lives under the same laws that Disney does. That was not the case for many decades. So, we were right on the substance with parent’s rights. We were right to fight back against them trying to inject sexuality in the elementary schools. But we’re also right on the economics of having the same rules apply to everyone. One company shouldn’t be exempt from rules that apply to everybody else.
BECKY QUICK: Hey, Governor. The Wall Street Journal editorial board took you to task about a week ago on the situation of Ukraine. They accuse you of ducking and covering when it comes to Ukraine, and they did this based on your answer in the last debate on stage. Just clarifying what you would do when it comes to Ukraine. I know you said that you would not give a blank check. They say that’s a red herring because no one is offering one. They also say you’d be, you would bring peace, but they want to know would that happen at the expense of caving to Vladimir Putin’s demands? Do you want to clarify your position on Ukraine what you would do?
DESANTIS: First of all, they have done, they have done a blank check. When you’re having U.S. tax dollars fund the pensions and salaries of Ukrainian bureaucrats, when you have U.S. tax dollars that are funding small businesses in Ukraine, subsidizing agriculture, that is a blank check, especially when we have so many problems here in the United States. Our border, our own border, is a total and complete disaster. And yet, the elites in D.C., they don’t care about that. They are not taking action to stop that and to defend our own country. So, what I pointed out is exactly the case. I think it’s in our interest that this come to an end in a way that is going to have a sustainable peace where we’re not having wars breakout in Europe. I don’t think you do it in a way that benefits an aggressor, of course. But I also think that the D.C. people have not articulated what the concrete victory looks like. They talk about you just need to keep doing this. If you look at our foreign policy over the last 20, 25 years, and I was part of this as a naval officer in Iraq in 2007-2008, during that whole time, we have murky missions where there is not clear cut criteria for victory, and then it ends up dragging on and on. And so, we’ve done a lot of money over there. And I think there’s a lot of people in the Congress who are now saying, you’ve got to define the mission for us clearly so that we know what we’re doing. And that’s been my position from really day one. I know they, on the editorial board, they would fund this indefinitely, and they just have a different view. My view is everything we do should be based on America’s interests. And if you tell me that funding the pension of Ukrainian bureaucrat is in America’s interest, I don’t see how you can sell that to American taxpayers.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Governor, I wanted to return to the way you think about the role of the government and policy as it relates to business, and specifically just speak to the Disney issue again in maybe a different way, which is this. I think there is a fair debate. I think probably everybody would agree there is a fair debate about whether Disney should or shouldn’t get the tax benefits that were given to it in the 1960s in the State of Florida. The issue is the timing and the relationship with which you pursued undoing those tax benefits, the corporate welfare you talk about, as it relates to their decision to publicly, effectively go, get on the other side, if you will, of the bill that you were involved in. And you said very specifically to the American conservatives, and this is Bradley Devlin and many others in interviews, that the timing was completely related. And so, that’s why people look at this and say, this is retribution. What do you say to that?
DESANTIS: So, I missed you on the last part. I’ve cut out, but I get the general gist of it. So, here is the deal. Yes, they opposed the bill. That’s fine. I honestly I don’t think that that’s consistent with their fiduciary obligation to their shareholders. I think they’ve really hurt their company by pursuing a political agenda and a whole host of reasons. But they also after that said that they were going to try to get the bill repealed, and get it struck down in the courts. Now, do they have a right to do that? Of course. But we are not obligated to subsidize their attacks against state policy, and they were getting massive subsidies, which were not justified in and of themselves. But it’s doubly problematic when they then weaponized those subsidies against the state of Florida and against our parents and against our kids. And I think it was an issue where this had long been something that was not publicly justifiable, but they had a lot of power with the Florida legislature over the years. They really called the shots. And then, what happened was, when they got into this, and then they said they were going to try to get the bill repealed, that really caused their support in the legislature to evaporate. So, a lot of the legislators are like, yes, this is not something that could go forward. But what I would say on this in terms of the overall role of government, that situation, I don’t think there is another situation similar in the entire United States where one company was given basically control of its own government in Central Florida. The larger issue, I think is, how much is Corporate America going to be trying to exercise quasi-public power? And we see that through things like ESG, with some of the big asset managers, also some of the major corporations. My view is that policy should be set by people that we elect. And to have a bunch of Wall Street banks get together and say they’re not going to finance somebody who is running a gun store or things like that, well, that’s changing policy in ways that are not accountable to the electorate.
KERNEN: Governor—
DESANTIS: So, I think that there should be protections for people.
KERNEN: We got about a minute left. That’s the only reason I’m cutting you off. I want to get to this point. So, the latest strategy, maybe go to Iowa, and it’s, every candidate in the race, former President Trump looms large, and I don’t know what his base is. So, you’re all left with trying to not alienate necessarily 35 percent or whatever number you want to use of the Republican base. You can’t really alienate them because you need them to support you. But you need to differentiate or distinguish yourself from President Trump. I mean, Hillary Clinton just said something like, maybe that cult needs, go to some re-education training or something just to get out of the Trump cult, but you see what you’re up against and how difficult it is.
DESANTIS: Yes.
KERNEN: Do you—
DESANTIS: But I don’t, I reject that. I mean, look, these are patriotic Americans. They want to see the country do well.
KERNEN: How do you keep them though if you attack President Trump? You’ve had trouble walking that fine line between really attacking him and not wanting to alienate his supporters.
DESANTIS: There is a lot of differences. These are all, this is all fair game. These folks get it. They want to see the country do well. Some people will be with Trump no matter what. But I think the bulk of the people are people that appreciate what he did. They also understand that he has got limitations in terms of his electability. He is going to be a, he would be a lame duck on day one. If he could even get elected, I think he’d have major problems with personnel. And of course, he didn’t deliver on his core promises to drain the swamp–
KERNEN: Governor—
DESANTIS: Or to have Mexico pay for the border wall or to eliminate the debt. He added 7.8 trillion to the debt. So, that’s all fair game. We’re going to be able to make that case.
KERNEN: Great.
DESANTIS: And I’ve delivered on these policies—
KERNEN: OK.
DESANTIS: Better than anybody.
KERNEN: We got a, you know what’s coming up in about eight seconds? We got these jobs numbers. That’s the only reason I’m cutting it, cutting out for you now.
DESANTIS: No worries.
KERNEN: Great. Please come back. Thank you, Governor.
