Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 763 | Governor Ron DeSantis on the LGBTQ Lobby, DEI, and Fatherhood

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV

Starting point is 00:00:36 or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Maybe the most maligned man in the media today consistently at the center of the most important culture wars using his power as the governor of the state of Florida to push for policies that swung the state from purple to red in just four years. Governor Ron DeSantis is here with me today to talk about some of the latest media myths about his moves as the leader of his state, his governing philosophy, and how fatherhood influences the fights that he takes on. Also, yes, I will ask him the million dollar question that all of you are wondering about, but you will not want to miss everything that he has to say first. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com.

Starting point is 00:01:22 use promo code Allie at checkout for a discount. That's good ranchers.com code Alley. Governor DeSantis, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. My husband and I were just in Miami last week celebrating my birthday. We actually got the worst sunburns of our life. Other than that, it was a great experience. When we were there, I think this was our first time visiting, walking around. You didn't get the sense that it's necessarily a conservative haven.

Starting point is 00:01:59 Beautiful city. not necessarily conservative haven. And yet, in the last election, you won by 11 points. Hillary won by 29 points in 2016. So just tell me, tell me your reaction to that and tell me why you think that shift happened so quickly. Well, look, I think part of it is we were able to produce a lot of great results. I mean, especially during COVID, I was the one that really had to come in and say, you know, these businesses cannot be shut down by local government.

Starting point is 00:02:26 People need to be in school. And a lot of the families appreciate that. A lot of the workers appreciated that. A lot of the small business folks really appreciated that. But then we've also stood for really strong policies with respect to education. Parents' rights. Big, big deal. I mean, this is a 70% Latino county, and they believe parents should be involved in the education.

Starting point is 00:02:48 They believe that indoctrination in the schools is a problem. Some of the people that left from Cuba knew how that government operated. And so they're very sensitive to some of those things. So I think just across the board, we produced really good results. But then you've also have had migration patterns where, especially during COVID, people that wanted to be in a free state, so many people came to Florida. And Miami was a really top destination for a lot of those folks. And so I think they came to Florida for a reason and they wanted to see the state continue to be governed the way we're doing it rather than have someone come in and do what the Illinois and the Californians and then, New York were doing because those policies are obviously failing.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Right, which is why you got so many independence, not just there, but also in Palm Beach and throughout the state, which is kind of unique for the country. You know, the people talk about the Miami Dade because that had been something, as you mentioned, Hillary won by a lot. And I think it's been like 20 years since a Republican carried it for governor. And because it's such a diverse, big, diverse urban county. And it was a big deal, especially to win it by double digits. But, you know, Palm Beach County.

Starting point is 00:03:59 had been kind of the rock-ribed Democrat County for so long in Florida, and a Republican hadn't won that in 40 years. And so we were able to carry Palm Beach County. A lot of people were thinking we were going to do Miami because they were seeing the trends. Very few people predicted Palm Beach. We were confident that we would have a good chance at it, and we ended up doing it. And I think you see similar issues at play there. So we're proud because we had a good agenda.

Starting point is 00:04:26 We've delivered a lot of results. But we have converted people who may not. of voted Republican in the past. And that's, that's an important thing. Yeah, you know, one thing that I'm sure appealed to those independents, appealed to those people that maybe had been voting Democrat. And this is something that I pick up on when I see you being interviewed about Florida, is that you speak with such a sincere respect for the people of Florida. And you would think that that's common among all politicians, but it's not actually. And that's something I really appreciate about you. And I saw on MSNBC recently, someone just denigrate the state of Florida, which is not, not new for

Starting point is 00:04:59 MSNBC, but a contributor said, oh, we don't want the country like Florida because Florida is nothing but meth and alligators. And obviously your team had a response to that. But what do you say to that kind of vitriol about your state? Well, it just shows leftist ideology. Their ideology comes before anything else. And so here in Florida, we're succeeding. Like there's just no way you can slice it and dice it in their way. We're leading that we're the fastest growing state in the country, leading in net in migration, number one in economic freedom, number one in education freedom, number one in new business formations, massive budget surplus, low taxes, all these things, unemployment rate over a percentage point lower than the national average. And so those are just

Starting point is 00:05:42 facts, but those are facts that are very threatening to leftists because it calls their whole worldview into question. So they can never admit anything good about Florida, and they have to try to pursue narratives of the like or denigrate the state. But here's the thing. The media has been doing this really since the entire time I was governor. I mean, during COVID, they acted like Florida was a big, you know, COVID haven. And no one ever would be people dying in the streets. And they were trying to create this fake narrative.

Starting point is 00:06:13 But what was actually happened on the ground as the media is saying Florida's bad is everyone in the country was trying to get to Florida, either to move or to visit. And we boomed like never before. So I think that when the left does this and they're basically trying to tell people to believe them over their own lion eyes, it typically is very ineffective. Yeah. Speaking of MSNBC online, Andrea Mitchell, she said in an interview with Kamala Harris recently, she said that the state of Florida is no longer allowing teachers to teach about slavery. And actually, I think it was yesterday. She said, I don't know if she really apologized or yesterday as we're recording this.

Starting point is 00:06:57 But she did kind of give a caveat. She said, you know, I said that. That wasn't really true, which I thought it was kind of incredible to even see that on MSNBC. But I want to hear from you. Is it true that the state of Florida no longer allows schools to teach about slavery? Yeah, of course not. And not only is that not true that they're not allowed to do it. They're required to do it in Florida standards.

Starting point is 00:07:20 And so we have very good standards about, and not just black history, we have Holocaust study, but all kinds of important things. So you have to teach all of that. It specifically says in our standards, you have to teach about racial discrimination throughout American history.

Starting point is 00:07:36 And so what you'll have the left do is they're upset that we're getting parents involved in the curriculum. And so there are pornographic books that the parents are identifying that are being removed. And they should be removed. You don't need tenure there with books with hardcore pornography.

Starting point is 00:07:52 But what they're trying to do is they're trying to say, oh, well, a teacher can't teach about Henry Aaron who faced racial discrimination because Florida doesn't allow CRT, which is absurd. But if any of these corporate media people just did basic research, it literally would take you five minutes to show that not only is that not prohibited, indeed, it is required. And that's one of the reasons, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:16 we got in this tussle with the college board. They tried to create a new AP. course. It was a pilot. It had never not been approved yet, so they did want comment on it. And they sent it. It was about, it was AP Black African American Studies. And, you know, some of it was pretty standard fair. But then they had section about queer theory. And they had a section about intersectionality and basically neo-Marxism. And so our Department of Education rejected it. They said it doesn't fit Florida standards. And so the media kind of had a hub up about that and they tried to say that we didn't want black history period and then all you had to do

Starting point is 00:08:53 is refer them to Florida standards and you can see that for not just black history but many other things and so they don't want I think the problem with what corporate media has become is it's one thing to be biased but what they do is they elevate the narrative at the expense of the facts and so if it's too good to check they'll just run with the narrative and if they get caught on it they figure well we've already gotten some people to believe the narrative, so it's worth it for them to try to launder false things. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

Starting point is 00:09:32 aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they lead, even more. when it's unpopular.

Starting point is 00:09:51 This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. It's pretty incredible how far they take it from the truth. And obviously we saw this with the whole Disney and parental rights and education bill, which we'll get to in a little bit. but they really do just keep inching more and more towards absurdities.

Starting point is 00:10:28 I mean, the idea that you're not able to teach about a black baseball player or something like that in Florida or that you're not allowed to teach about slavery or Jim Crow or things like that simply because Florida said, you know what, we're not going to teach our kids that just because they're white, that they're a part of an oppressive class or just because they're black, they're part of an oppressed class. It's really amazing. actually how audacious the media is and just going more and more towards total propaganda without any regard whatsoever to the truth. I mean, that's stunning to me, actually.

Starting point is 00:11:01 But I think it's a testament that we're winning these debates because they can't argue for things like genderqueer on the merits. Should a fifth grader be doing gender queer? Should you see some of the graphic stuff that's in there? They don't want to have that argument on the merits. So they try to create these boogeymen and hope that people will buy it. But I think more and more people realize that, no, in Florida, all that, the normal stuff is taught. But yes, we are not going to teach students that they are inherently racist because they're white. That is not appropriate. And that's not something that is permitted in our classrooms.

Starting point is 00:11:45 But they don't want to have that debate because they know the vast majority of the public. of all races agrees with us that that's inappropriate. So they got to try to do these other things to try to act like Florida's doing something out of the ordinary, when in reality what we're doing is supported by parents across the board. And, you know, I've had people come up to me about some of the things we've done thanking me. It's like, look, you know, the madness has got to stop, and we've got to just get to education. Let's give these kids the right foundation. Hopefully they can think for themselves when they get older.

Starting point is 00:12:18 but this indoctrination has got to stop. And so we're fighting it. I think the left gets really upset about it because they've just taken it for granted for so long that they had a right to use the school system to impose their agenda. And in Florida, we're saying, no, that is not your purview. These are taxpayer-funded institutions,

Starting point is 00:12:39 and they should reflect, the mission should reflect the best interests of the state and the students in Florida. Yep. And it's not just K-12 that, leftist ideology has really tried to take over and has successfully taken over in a lot of cases and in a lot of states it's also higher education it's academia of course and you're going after DEI in higher education as well and obviously this is going to get the same kind of blowback

Starting point is 00:13:04 but what does this look like and why is this important not just K through 12 but also talking about in academia well this thing of DEI has really just exploded almost out of nowhere I mean I think back I don't even know when I even knew what this was and diversity, equity, inclusion, I mean, it actually sounds like, okay, maybe you have diverse viewpoints on college camps because that's what you need because the diversity is very superficial that they strive for. You do need more ideas and more free speech, but that's not what DEI is. What DEI is is effectively taking the administrative machinery of the university and imposing under the auspices of these DEI programs an ideology.

Starting point is 00:13:49 And they want people to have to conform to the ideology. I mean, it is a leftist ideology. And they want that agenda to permeate every artery of the university. And so some people say, oh, you can't take out DEI due to academic freedom. First of all, I wish we had academic freedom in higher education. I mean, you try getting tenured if you're a conservative professor in some of these fields. You'll have no chance to do that. But that aside, what the administration is doing has nothing to do even with the classroom.

Starting point is 00:14:24 I mean, this is like you become a student at a university, and you have this agenda imposed on you by the administrators. So this has been a total failure. I don't know if the intentions were good by some when they were doing it, but I know what it is evolved into or Maybe it was always planning on this is something that is trying to enforce orthodoxy, and it's a very woke left-wing orthodoxy. So we are working with the legislature who comes in in Florida second week of March, and we're just going to eliminate all DEI offices and programs and employees in our state university system.

Starting point is 00:15:04 We believe in having a system that treats everybody the same, regardless of their skin color. We don't think that that's important involving in terms of their self-worth or their ability to achieve academically. And I think that's what people want to get back to the idea that we're all equal before the law and we should not have this type of ideology imposed upon us that really ends up dividing us. Yeah. Yeah, which is the exact opposite of what DEI and CRT teach teaches that we are unequal before the law and the solutions that it tries to give as remedies just always lead to destruction. So that's good. So you're going against this DEI, the CRT, also gender ideology, especially as it pertains

Starting point is 00:15:45 to kids. Kids are most vulnerable to indoctrination. They're most malleable, which is why they're indoctrinated with this stuff. And when it comes to the parental rights and education bill, I mean, man, I feel like we talked about that so much on the show because of all the misinformation on it. But really one of the most remarkable part of it is, is you going against Disney. I mean, that's just not something that we see very often from governors, and particularly Republicans were very pro-business, of course. And so we're just not used to going against these lucrative

Starting point is 00:16:14 corporations in our states. And yet you did. When they decided, or they said, announced that they were going to go against the parental rights and education bill, you guys said, okay, let's play ball. So you got a lot of reactions on that from both the left and the right. Tell me kind of your thinking and saying, all right, we're going to come back after Disney. Well, as the governor, I got to look out for the best interests of the state, and that means that, you know, our state needs to be grounded in solid values. Also, as a parent, I'm very sensitive about what is being put in our child's education and programming, unfortunately. And yes, Disney opposed this bill. People thought that, and honestly, it was not a bad thing to predict that if Disney's opposition to this would end up sinking the

Starting point is 00:17:05 legislation, because the fact of the matter is, since the 1960s, they've been. gotten every single thing they've ever wanted with the state of Florida. I mean, until me. And so we had to put our foot down and say no. But one of the things I think in addition to them saying that they were going to work to get the law repealed, they were going to sue and all this stuff, was you had those videos that came out where you had the Disney execs on the call talking about it's really their agenda to inject the sexuality into the programming for very young kids.

Starting point is 00:17:38 And we have a six, a four, a two-year-old at home. At that time, I guess it would have been five, three, and one. And my wife and I are just very sensitive about that. I just think that you should be able to raise kids in our country without them having an agenda shoved down their throat when they're watching a cartoon or when they're sitting in a second-grade classroom. So from that perspective of a dad, it was an easy thing. And yeah, we faced a lot of media fire.

Starting point is 00:18:08 in Disney's an 800-pound gorilla. It's interesting, though, when we did that, the media was saying, like, oh, the governor is going to pay for this in his reelection campaign because they're doing it. And it turns out that the county where the majority of Disney employees live, Osceola County, had been a solid blue county, and I don't think a Republicans want it in a while. So not only did we carry Osceola,

Starting point is 00:18:33 I think we carried it by like 7%. And we did better in orange, which also, has Disney employees than a Republican's done in a long time. So it just shows you, even people that were working there believe the company was out of line on this. And I think it was an issue, even though superficially you'd see the left have a spasm, corporate press have a spasm. Underneath that, across party lines, I think there was a broad agreement that, you know, this is not appropriate for these school children, and we need to focus on reading and writing and math and science and not be jamming this down. Now what we ended up doing and we're putting the

Starting point is 00:19:12 finishing touches on that over the next few weeks is Disney was unique because they actually had their own government that they controlled in central Florida. And I don't think there's a corporation that wielded that kind of power anywhere in the country, but certainly in the state of Florida. They really were treated better than every individual and every company in our state. And so the state chose many decades ago to put this one company on a pedestal to give them all this special treatment and indeed self-governing status. And my view on that was that that had that had to end because we cannot be putting on a pedestal a company that is going down the road of trying to promote things like gender ideology to young kids. And so we made the decision that that game was

Starting point is 00:19:59 up. I'll be signing legislation soon to permanently remove their self-goverbalty. And so we made a decision. governing status. They've been stripped of any special privileges, and actually it's reverting to the state of Florida. So we're going to ensure they pay their debts, their fair share of taxes, and of course they're not going to have self-governing authority. And so I think that that was an appropriate thing for us to do. And you have some Republicans that think companies are entitled to corporate welfare and that you should just give them all these subsidies. And I just don't believe that. But certainly, you should not be using Florida tax dollars to subsidize a political agenda that is not in the best interests of the state of Florida. Exactly. And that is kind of the anti-democratic effort,

Starting point is 00:20:46 not the other way around. Some people saw what you and your administration did is anti-democratic or tyrannical, but actually passing a bill that very simply, just as a reminder to people, said, kindergarten through third grade, you can't hold formal classroom instruction to these kids. We're talking like five to nine-year-olds about changing your gender and about sexuality. And it kind of makes you wonder, why would you even want to hold those formal discussions with kids that age anyway? That's pretty much what the bill said in addition to some other simple things about parental rights and accessibility and transparency and things like that. And then Disney said, okay, well, we are going to actually undermine the wishes of the people of Florida who duly elected all of these officials who authored

Starting point is 00:21:28 and then signed that bill into law. That is actually anti-democratic. So, in my mind, I'm like, of course, of course the role of the duly elected governor then and the legislature is to say, no, you're not going to continue to undermine the wishes of the state of Florida. And more on gender ideology. Last year, you guys said that you were going to ban surgeries for minors that would permanently name their bodies in the name of gender confirmation. The Florida Board of Medicine, State Board of Osteopathic Medicine voted with a plan that will bar anyone under the age of 18 from receiving sex reassignment surgery or taking hormones. I think that's incredible. A lot of conservatives do too. Tell me a little bit more about that. So what we had to do on that is

Starting point is 00:22:14 work through the boards of medicine. So that's an administrative prohibition. If a physician is in violation of that, they will lose their medical license in the state of Florida. And I think that that's appropriate. You know, when you look at this idea of the gender ideology, particularly for young people, I mean, one of the things that we found is by the time they become adults, most of this is resolved. You have like 80% just gets resolved. So why would you permanently mutilate a 15-year-old if whatever they're dealing with ends up being resolved by the time they're an adult anyway? It is not based on science. It is ideology run amok.

Starting point is 00:22:54 And part of the problem is, you know, kids, especially in that age, they go through a lot. There's things that happen and parents sometimes are kind of looking for answers. And I think one of the saddest things about this is that you have some of these physicians that are very aggressive at trying to direct these kids into this type of treatment or surgery. And so a parent may not know kind of, you know, what to do. And you have a physician saying, well, your child is transgender. And if you don't do this surgery, they're going to commit suicide or something. And so sometimes these parents are getting kind of not forced, but they're being pushed in this direction.

Starting point is 00:23:33 You also have some parents, I think, that have really bought into the ideology, and this is something that they want. But either way, it's inappropriate. What we're going to do with the legislature is the legislature is going to pass statutory prohibitions that will supplement what we did administratively through our boards of medicine. I don't know if you saw that left-wing whistleblower that she spoke out out of, St. Louis, and she just chronicled. I mean, she's left wing. She said she's left of Bernie Sanders, and she chronicled all of the horrors that are going on in these gender clinics, these kids and parents, no idea what they're getting into. And then they're met with permanent sterility, the permanent disfiguration of their bodies. Of course, kids can't make these kinds of decisions.

Starting point is 00:24:26 Their frontal lobe isn't even fully developed yet. And so to me, I mean, it seems like common sense, but again, kind of as you've noted, the left continues to tell on itself when it defend these kinds of grotesque practices, and they're almost completely unashamed of it, too. Well, I think it's also an indication of something that's happened. I think more recently in society, I mean, I don't know if you went back 20, 30 years, that this would necessarily be the case. But you really have the politicization, the takeover of so many institutions by woke ideology or leftist ideology.

Starting point is 00:25:02 So these medical associations are woke, and they're putting the ideology. ahead of evidence-based medicine. You look at some of these medical schools. They've changed the Hippocratic oath. They have these medical students repeating CRT and all the woke nonsense. And you think about it. And that's a huge problem for our society if these elite institutions are all bowing down to this one ideology, which I think is very destructive.

Starting point is 00:25:34 And so you're seeing it with the gender ideology. with these minors, but I think it has implications in the field of medicine alone for so many other areas and can affect so many more Americans. And so when you see those institutions have been politicized, when you see that they're advancing an agenda that is adverse to the rights of the public or to the best interests of the public, you've got to stand up to it. And we've done that. And I think that you're seeing other states do it. And it's going to be the majority position very soon. And as you mentioned, this is not a partisan thing. There's people across the board who look at this and say, this is just wrong. Yeah. Abortion. Currently, the law is 15 weeks in Florida

Starting point is 00:26:21 for abortion restrictions. But you recently said that you would sign if the legislature put it on your desk a six-week abortion ban. So what do you think is coming down the pipeline for pro-life legislation in Florida? Well, I think there's a lot of support in Florida for heartbeat legislation. Our 15 week was done last year, so that was prior to Dobbs, but it was also done with the understanding that the state of Florida Supreme Court has ruled in the 1980s that our state Supreme Court mandate, or that our state constitution mandates abortion on demand. And so it was in some respects even more aggressive than both Roe and Casey. And so we knew that that 15 weeks was going to be challenged under the Florida state.

Starting point is 00:27:07 case law. So the Supreme Court of Florida has now accepted that case. So they're going to be doing arguments, briefs and arguments over the next few months. So we will get a decision on that probably this year. And so if that decision is, if they reevaluate the doctrine, then that allows the 15 and a heartbeat bill to stand. And so that's going to be a big deal. And I think one of the things we've seen post-Dobbs is you have some state Supreme Courts, that that are trying to be very aggressive at inventing different provisions and trying to block pro-life legislation. Florida is a little bit different

Starting point is 00:27:46 because this had been on, what the courts have been ruling for decades. And now we're in a situation where we believe, I've appointed four of the seven. I think that they're gonna look at that and say, you know, that decision wasn't really grounded in the text history structure of the Florida Constitution, but nevertheless, that is playing out right now.

Starting point is 00:28:04 A lot of these are culture war issues we've talked about today that a lot of politicians are just kind of scared to face head on. But you've mentioned a few times in this interview and then obviously I hear you talk about it a lot. Is your motivation as a dad you and your wife being motivated to fight for the things that you do and against the things that you do because you have three little ones? I have two little ones right around the same age and most of the people listening to this podcast or moms.

Starting point is 00:28:31 And so they're very sympathetic to that. Can you talk about that a little bit more, just how having children. and seeing the face of the future, the investment that you have in the future, kind of motivates how you govern. Yeah, I mean, one of the things my wife and I will think about is when we were growing up, it seems like there were less hostile influences around. I mean, you know, you didn't have these devices. You didn't have, you know, YouTube, all these other things.

Starting point is 00:28:56 And these kids know how to grab this stuff and put things on. And so we have to do all kinds of parental controls. I mean, it's just we're, they're like one step ahead of us. and our kids are six, four, and two. And so you can't just put on a Disney program anymore and be satisfied that it's going to be good. You've got to worry about what type of messaging they're trying to do. And so I think it's challenging for a lot of parents. And the last thing that we want to see in Florida is parents feel that they can't send their kid to school like I did when I was growing up

Starting point is 00:29:32 because they're worried about the kids coming back. with having an agenda shoved down their throats. And so we are, we've really empowered parents in Florida. We're gonna continue to do that. But I just think it's something that we want the family to be the ones who are impulsing the values. You know, schools are important, but you don't want a school to be negating

Starting point is 00:29:59 what the parents are doing in some, in terms of some of these basic things. And it plays in beyond just kind of, just kind of the curriculum. The parents' rights in education, one of the things was there, not that this is an issue with our family, but there were some schools in Florida that were, quote, changing the gender of these students.

Starting point is 00:30:18 Right. And without the parents even knowing. And if you think about it, like, how is it the school's right to go in there and supersede the parents and take such a drastic measure? But yet there's some elements in our society to think that parents just need to be budding out out of their kids lives.

Starting point is 00:30:36 We're the ones that are responsible for the upbringing. So we have not only a right, we have a duty to be involved in this. And so if other parents in our situation, you know, feel like Florida's a good place to raise the kids, that means a lot to us, both of us. Obviously, we're doing it for our family as well, but really just believe it's something that is very meaningful. And I'll tell you, the migration of Florida. we've always had people moving down.

Starting point is 00:31:06 A lot of people retire to Florida, as you know. But since COVID in particular, and since I've been governor in particular, more families have moved than ever before. And a lot of it is because of our approach to education and our willingness to stand up against things like the gender ideology and the woke agenda. Well, I want to honor your time, but there's a couple more quick things. I want to make sure that I get you to talk about the fatherhood initiative because I've heard of this. I've heard the First Lady explained this so eloquently and so well an event that we did together a few months ago. But I want to hear you talk about the fatherhood initiative and what it is because I think it's really unique and could be really effective. Well, when I became governor, we would do, we provided some money to a group called All Pro Dads, which is run by former NFL coach Tony Dungey.

Starting point is 00:31:55 And Tony tells the story that when he became the head coach at Tampa, he went to a prison, the minister to the prisoners. And he said, you know, after doing that, I noticed the reason they weren't, the reason they were in prison was not because they were poor, their race, or any of that. He said the reason they were in prison is because none of them had a dad in the house. They did not have a father figure that that could keep them on the straight and narrow and that could good look after them. And so he said, we got to do something about it. And so those types of programs where you're fostering fatherhood opportunities, You're promoting fatherhood in the community can make a huge, huge difference in the future of so many communities throughout the state of Florida. So our father initiative formalizes the relationship that the state has with so many of these great groups.

Starting point is 00:32:48 We in Florida are different than many states that we work with our faith-based community, and we're proud to do that. And we work with churches and we work with synagogues. So we've put money behind it to have programs to get the fathers back into the lives of the kids. And I think, you know, if you look, it is kind of the stable two-parent household is the minority. I don't think it's even the majority in terms of the kids that are being born nowadays. And if we can just change that and have fathers be more involved, some of it is they, some of these guys need to take responsibility. And some of them don't do that. And so there's a whole host of factors.

Starting point is 00:33:29 But if we can get the fathers back in in a really big way, and that's just standard, you're going to see a lot of other problems disappear. Okay, quickly, two more things. Your book, you've got a new book coming out, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so it's called The Courage to Be Free, Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival, and you can get it by going to DeSantisbook.com. We also have signed copies up for sale at premier collectibles.com.

Starting point is 00:34:06 But basically what we do in the book, talk a little bit about kind of how I got to be governor, like the pass and paths I traveled in life. And then what was my approach to leadership? How did I implement the agenda? And then some of the fights that we had to do to be able to keep Florida free and really make Florida leader. And I think there's a lot of implications for what other states can do. And some states have done some of the stuff Florida's done. And I do think that there's implications nationally.

Starting point is 00:34:35 One of the things we did, and you mentioned Disney, you mentioned taking on the gender ideology, you mentioned some of the stuff we stood up against the elites in COVID is the reality is right now in our country, entrenched progressive elites are a big, big problem. But they control so many institutions that if you really want to have a thriving state, you've got to fight these people and you've got to beat these people. And I think in Florida, we've shown that we've been able to succeed against a lot of really powerful institutions. And we've been able to prove a lot of the naysayers wrong. So it doesn't have to be this way in terms of some of the problems we see in other states or around the country.

Starting point is 00:35:20 There's definitely a better path. And I think the state of Florida has forged that. And that's out February 28th. So as this interview is airing or has already, or has aired, the book is available. So people can go that, go get that. that I guess wherever books are sold. You said to stantis book.com out February 28th. And then my last question is the question that I have to ask because everyone is wondering.

Starting point is 00:35:44 I mean, everyone's happy that you are a wonderful governor of Florida. But tell us, are you considering running for president of the United States? I don't think I can ever move like two blocks without having someone, you know, chime in about it. I know. But I'll tell you, it's been,

Starting point is 00:36:01 it's been really, humbling to see people come up to me and say, you know, we need you to turn the country around because it's not something, I've just been doing my job in Florida, but what we've done is reverberated. You know, we were, you know, I took my two oldest to the Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs game a few weeks back in Arrowhead Stadium, and the Chiefs fans were, you know, cheering me on. They're like, we're Chiefs fans, but we're Republicans. We love you. You need to do, do this or do that. But I got elected to implement an agenda. I have that agenda pending right now in front of the legislature, and we've already done a lot of it.

Starting point is 00:36:40 But I think we're going to end up delivering on all the promises I made when I ran in 2022. And then once we get through the legislative session, we'll be able to go on from there. So I would just tell people, if you're interested in what we're doing, buy the book, follow what we're doing in Tallahassee over the next few weeks, because I think this is the best that we've, done yet. And then as we get beyond that, we'll be able to make decisions. Okay, good answer. Well, thank you so much, Governor DeSantis. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really enjoyed it. Thank you. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Alley, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're

Starting point is 00:37:25 moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 763 | Governor Ron DeSantis on the LGBTQ Lobby, DEI, and Fatherhood

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