The Daily Signal - ‘Most Radical Ticket We’ve Ever Had’: Sen. Rick Scott Weighs In on Harris-Walz Campaign

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris' choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate shows how radical she is, Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., tells The Daily Signal. Scott spoke at Erick Erickson's The Gathering conference in Atlanta on Saturday. He joined The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss Walz's military record, expectations for the 2024 election in the state of Florida, and what to expect from a Harris-Walz Democratic ticket. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a bonus episode of The Daily Signal podcast for Monday, August 12th. I'm Elizabeth Mitchell and I sat down with Senator Rick Scott of Florida at the gathering conference in Atlanta this weekend to discuss what's going on in the U.S. Senate and his expectations for the Harris Walls campaign. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Senator Rick Scott after this. This is Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. In today's media landscape, it's more important than ever to have a trusted source of news and conservative commentary. That's why we are asking for your support. Your donation helps us continue our mission of delivering accurate, factual reporting on the issues that matter most to you.

Whether it's $5 or $500, every contribution makes a difference. Visit dailysignal.com slash donate to help us keep Americans informed and fight for conservative values. The Daily Signal is your voice for the truth. You've said that vice president nominee for the Democrats, Tim Walls, is a radical socialist. Are you concerned about him being on the Democratic ticket? Well, I mean, it shows you exactly who Kamala Harris is. I mean, this is the most radical ticket we've ever had. I mean, look, this guy wants to forcibly take away your guns.

He wants to make sure children can emulate their bodies without their parents' consent. To defund the police, he doesn't believe in prosecuting. riders and looters. He believes in Green New Deal open borders. And he's clearly a socialist. And by the way, he's misrepresented to his military records. I actually don't, I don't know one veteran who's been to war who's a socialist. And so, and this guy's clearly a radical socialist. And speaking of his veteran record, there have been some allegations of stolen valor on the part of walls. What do you think about that? Well, my father was one, 3,000 people did all four combat jumps with a second airborne, also fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

I think it's a big deal to make sure you are honest with your military record. I served in the Navy during the Vietnam War area, but I did not go to Vietnam. I didn't have the same experience my father had where he was at war. And I think anybody that's been in the service, I appreciate their service, but they ought to be very clear what they did and didn't do. Absolutely. And do you expect Florida to go red in 2024 again? It's going to go red. You know, what we've done in the last 14 years, we've gone from my race in 2010, where I won the

governor's race, we had 568,000 more Democrats. Now we have over 950,000 more Republicans. And the reason is, is people want what Republican principals stand for. They want smaller government, less taxes, less regulation, easier permitting. They want better schools. They want to be living in safe communities. And you recently proposed a homeowner tax deduction bill. And I assume Florida has pretty high home prices. Perhaps this was a bit of a motivation, but what do you hope this accomplishes for Americans? Unfortunately, since I left office as governor in the last five and a half years ago, the property insurance rates have doubled. And so we've got to figure out how we can help them. This is a state issue, and it's a state issue around the country. But one thing the federal

government can do is give families a tax deduction for their cost of their property insurance. And the media hasn't seen much of presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris lately. So her policy platform is largely up to speculation. How do you think a Harris Walls presidency would be different from the Biden Harris ticket? I think it'll even be more radical. I mean, I served on Homeland Security Committee with her. She clearly doesn't support Border Patrol. She doesn't want to have a closed border. She doesn't want to, you know, there's nothing that I can think that a typical Florida family cares about that she's on the same side of. She doesn't support school choice. We believe in school choice. She supports an open border. We don't support an open border.

She supports massive spending, which causes inflation. We don't support that. So there's, I can't think about policy. She supports that Floridians believe in. What's the state of school choice in Florida? We've got, you know, basically completely, you know, a complete opportunity forever for you to send your child the way where you want to. That's what we ought to be doing. It's your tax dollars. If you want to go to a government-sponsored school, you can go there. But if you want to go to another school, you should have their opportunity to do it, and you can in Florida. And Florida has done a lot to counteract the Chinese Communist Party's influence. And sometimes we've even seen that influence in K-12 schools. Is it important for other states to do similar things? Well, we all have to understand that Communist China, the government of China has decided to be our enemy.

They want to destroy our way of life. and they're destroying American families. They're sending fentanyl precursors here that last year, over 76,000 people died from. They're stealing our jobs. They sell us produce that is despicable and unsafe to Americans. So we've got to do everything we can to combat what they want to do. We've got to stop buying their drugs. We can't have our military members relying on Chinese drugs if we end up going to war with China.

So I think every American's got to wake up and stop buying anything. anything made in China. Absolutely. And you said that you worked alongside Vice President Kamala Harris years ago. What else did you learn about her from that? She's not as serious. She wasn't serious when she came to the committee meetings. She used it as an opportunity to basically yell at people. She was very disrespectful to Border Patrol when I first, when she was on the committee with me, when President Trump was in office. And sometimes people say that every state has become a border state, how has the border crisis affected Florida? Well, we have a lot of people dying and fit an overdose.

That's number one. Number two, just in the patent handled, recently we had two young women raped by people that illegally crossed our border. So we have crime in our state as a result of an open border. And then we all worried about what director of the FBI said that we have terror cells all across the country. We're just worried about when they're going to. act and harm Americans.

There's been a problem in Florida and across the country with rogue prosecutors, letting criminals loose. How has this impacted crime in Florida and what can be done to stop it? We actually believe in the enforcement of our laws. When I was governor, there was a prosecutor in their land area that wouldn't prosecute criminal cases. And so I took her cases away from her. So in our state, we expect people to buy by the law.

if you don't, you're going to, you're going to suffer the penalties. And so we, you know, we're going to continue to work hard to keep our citizens safe. Absolutely. And the Senate recently passed a Kids Online Safety Act. Why do you support this bill and why is it important? Well, clearly social media has been toxic. We all worry about the impact on our children and our grandchildren from social media. There has to be accountability. The social media platforms need to be held accountable for the content that they're putting up. And so I support the bill, and I'm appreciated my colleagues that worked on it. And Tim Walz's education record is about the opposite of the education policies that we've seen implemented in Florida. What do you think

parents should expect on this front? Well, that's why so many people have moved out of Minnesota to Florida, because they want their children to get a great education. Florida is now number one higher education. We're in the top five for K-12 education. We have probably the best school choice program in the country now. So in our state, you can decide how your child is going to be educated rather than the state. Awesome. And which families do you think benefit most from school choice initiatives in Florida? Well, I grew up in a poor family.

I was born to a single mom, lived in public housing. And I think every family has the opportunity. But as we know, rich families have the ability to go wherever they want. So what this does, people that can't afford private education now will have the same opportunity that a rich family has to get the best education possible. And since you've been on the campaign trail lately, when you talk to various Americans in different parts of Florida, what issues are most important to them in the 2024 election? Well, they want Republicans to win, number one.

They want the border to be secure. They want inflation to go away. They don't want criminals all over their state. They don't want terrorists in our country. They don't want to be at war across the world. They want their federal government to balance the budget to get inflation under control. So they want the government to do, the people get elected to do what they said they're going to do in their campaigns. Thank you so much for doing this interview.

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