Nearly EVERY agency in Washignton D.C. has become an intelligence-gathering one. So, what’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ plan to end government’s overreach if elected president? The newly announced 2024 presidential candidate joins Glenn in this clip, explaining exactly how his administration would dismantle the Deep State. It all starts with having the right team, he explains, and being ready for the battle IMMEDIATELY: ‘It's like trench warfare. And you have to be ready on take one.’
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida. Announced yesterday, he is formerly announced that he is running for president of the United States.
And so it begins, and it's going to be an interesting 18 months. Welcome to the program, Governor DeSantis.
RON: I am doing great, Glenn. Thanks for having me. How are you?
GLENN: I'm good. I'm good. Enjoyed it not the first 20 minutes. That must have been incredibly frustrating for you with the technical problems. But it was the largest audience gathered on Twitter.
RON: Yeah. I mean, I was just kind of sitting in Tallahassee. I didn't really know what was going on. Because they Twitter handled all of that. And they were just getting so many people, above and beyond what they've ever gotten, that I think it kind of melted the servers, when they were able to -- to correct it and we were able to do an announcement that I think, you know, obviously, I laid out the case at the beginning for five or six minutes.
But then we were able to talk about actual issues, that people should care about. And now I think it's up to 8 or 9 million people that you did, across some of the platforms that have featured it.
And, obviously, when Elon was involved, you get a lot of buzz out of it. So you're getting huge feedback and raising money and doing all that, which is great.
STU: We were talking earlier today. Stu and I, about this choice. That you have always had this approach. Where you don't care what the New York Times said. You're not sitting down trying to get a puff piece out of the New York Times.
You know you won't get them, so you just we're going to it.
And I think that's really, really smart. But very different.
This too, I think will be remembered as the Clinton MTV or Arsenio Hall program.
This was really smart to do. Does this -- is this a sign the end of the mainstream media? Going right straight to people?
RON: Well, I think what Elon did, he opened up Twitter.
These social networks when they first came on the scene, had a lot of potential. Because we could go around legacy media.
And we could converse with ourselves. And that was a big threat to them.
They really helped lobby companies like Facebook. To help censoring.
Then it got to the point, where not only were they trying to enforce a narrative, the tech companies were colluding with federal agencies, like the FBI and the CDC, to censor and stifle dissent.
And so Elon, I think, has put his money where his mouth is, gotten one of those platforms and opened it up.
And so I think open platforms are good for conservatives, because it allows us to go around the filter.
But I do think we have a huge battle on our hands, about tech censorship at large. What Elon has done, is create how many people are worth $250 billion where they can afford to just put 54 billion down to buy a social platform?
And so technical censorship, I think will continue to be an issue. I think we've not dealt with it in Florida. Deal with it more as president, of course, to make sure that the First Amendment actually means something.
Because you can't let the government subcontract out censorship to Silicon Valley, and say you still have a First Amendment.
GLENN: Yeah.
Okay. So let me talk to you about the government. FBI. DOJ. IRS. NSA. CIA. ATF. Everything.
Even the Capitol police now, are an intelligence-gathering agency. How do you even run a campaign, when you know the all of government approach to the last election? How do you -- how do you -- if you win, how do you dismantle this?
Because it's -- it's almost like an unplug it, and plug it back in, and reset it to factory settings.
I mean, it's cleaning house.
RON: And that I think that this is -- this is a fundamental program. So we will look at an example of weaponization, which is obviously many examples. But that's kind of the end point.
Like, why are we here?
And the reason that we're here, is because we have these agencies that have been detached from constitutional accountability.
There was never supposed to be a fourth branch of government. But Congress has not held them accountable. The power of the purse. Or with legislating more precisely.
And presidents have not been able to wield Article II power, to discipline the bureaucracy.
So I think I'll come in. And on day one, we'll be spitting nails.
I understand, and all your listeners should understand. That if we do everything right. If we're disciplined.
If we're strong as anyone could be, it still takes a two-term project. I think it takes eight years to be able to reconstitutionalize this government.
But the question it raises, is do we govern ourselves, or do we not?
Because right now, the most significant issues, tend not to be resolved by our elected representatives. They're done by these bureaucrats and through these agencies. And so it's really I think a crisis of self-government. Now, what you have with lack of accountability, you just have a consolidation of power, amongst people that all have the same worldview.
And so their worldview is different than our worldview. And they view people like us, as factions that they want to exert power over.
And so the weaponization I think flows from human nature. So what would I do, you know, day one?
First of all, I already -- I already said.
New FBI director, day one.
That's a no-brainer. You have to do that. I'll have a attorney general that has a back bone. An attorney general that recognizes, you are doing your job properly.
You are going to be pilloried by the Washington Post and the New York Times and CNN.
And so if that's not something that you're comfortable with. Then don't even apply for this job. Understand, you're going into the lion's den. These people do not want to give up this power willingly.
And so they will smear you, they will attack you. So I think getting the personnel right, if you can't do that, then it just won't work at all.
Second thing, I think, you have to be willing to use Article II authority to its fullest extent. The idea that some FBI agent can collude with a tech company to censor like Hunter Biden, you should be firing these people.
You have the authority to do it. Yes, it will be contested. They will sue you.
But who gets the -- the Article II power? The person that wins the electoral college, or some middle managing bureaucrat in the IRS, or the FBI?
So asserting that authority, making sure that you have political control over those agencies, that is a huge battle.
It's something you have to be disciplined about. It's something you have to be strategic about.
And it's not something that anyone has really tried to do. Because these are tough fights.
It's like trench warfare. And you have to be ready on take one. And incidentally. Who is the attorney general, that is very important.
But it's also very important who is a step or two below that, across all these agencies.
And I think you need to have thousands of people, ready to go to descend on --
GLENN: You know, one of the things that really bothers me about the Republicans, is the Democrats were gaming and putting everything into -- you know, the -- the Obama bill, when he walked in.
That thing was 2000 pages long. They had worked on that for years.
Are you assembling teams and talking about what to do?
So you could just launch if you would win.
RON: Absolutely. So, first of all, we're working with allied conservative organizations, who are already collecting resumes from people around the country. And I will have a message if I'm in -- if I'm in Nevada. I will say, look, some of you who are in this audience, you may need to pick up your family and move to Washington, DC, for two, four, six years. Because you can't just recycle everybody from DC. It's not going to change if that's the case. So you really need to have these people descending on D.C. from outside the country. What we'll also do is I'll issue a directive to all these agencies, that they need to reduce the footprint of their agencies in DC by at least 50 percent.
GLENN: Oh, my gosh.
RON: Because I think what's happened is, you know, the growth -- the government, the size of it is one thing, of course. But the consolidation of it in Washington, I think has been totally toxic. You know you have a place in Washington, DC. It votes 95 percent Democrat. I think Trump got four or 5 percent of the vote in 2020.
And so this is totally not representative of the public as a whole. And I think the Founders would look at that, and I think they would say, that's a huge, huge problem.
So dispersing power out of DC. Yes, reducing the government overall. But whatever government you have, we want less consolidation in DC. And I think that will make difference.
GLENN: So, governor, the one thing that Donald Trump will have going for him in spades is the economy.
People will trust him on the economy. He's already done it once. He's known as a businessman.
What are you bringing to the table, to this all-out war on the American dream. Corporations have been weaponized. Red tape.
All of the stuff that's been going on. You'll have the fed against you.
The big banks.
How do you change the economy?
RON: Well, look, I would say, push back literally. He did great for three years. But when he turned the country over to Fauci in March of 2020. That destroyed millions of people's lives.
And in Florida, we were one of the few that stood up. Cut against the grain. Took incoming fire from media, bureaucracy, the left. Even a lot of Republicans.
Had schools opened. Preserve businesses. And so Florida since COVID has outperformed virtually any state in the country, when you look at all these significant metrics.
I mean, we're booming. We have people moving in here.
Wealth is coming in here.
And so I think when people look back, that 2020 year, was not a good year for the country, as a whole.
It was a situation where Florida started to stand alone. So I think that's an important contrast, now going forward.
Yes. You rip up what Biden has done on day one. With things like energy.
They are trying to price middle-class people out of having a middle class standard of living.
We're not going to force people to buy electric vehicles, we're going to make sure that people have a choice, to have affordable transportation.
We absolutely reduce federal spending. We're going to fight with the Congress on that. I think the debt has gone up. Under both Republican and Democrat.
I mean, we act like it was just Biden.
Went up 8 trillion. The debt under Trump as well.
We have to stop doing that. That absolutely has driven the inflation since March of 2020, with all the borrowing and spending.
I also think we need to have the Federal Reserve, focus on stable money. And stop trying to be the economic central planner.
You look at all the money they printed since COVID. Of course, you'll get inflation when that happens. So you need a major overhaul with the Federal Reserve.
And so, yes. Fighting woke capital.
Woke capital is absolutely bad for the average American.
Because they're pursuing an ideological agenda. To achieve ideological left-wing goals. That will make it harder for the average American family to make ends meet.
GLENN: May I ask you a question.
First of all, we're doing sitdowns with each candidate. You already done one. But as governor, not a candidate.
Will you sit down, and just talk about your policies with me?
RON: Oh, yeah. Of course. Absolutely.
GLENN: And would you be for a -- a debate or a roundtable, hosted by, for instance, us that would not necessarily get the backing of the Republicans?
I think the Republican Party is -- controls these debates so much. And we keep going back to the mainstream media. I don't understand why.
RON: Well, you guys should absolutely do a debate. And the RNC should sanction it. I mean, here's the thing, Glenn with corporate media.
Some will say, because I say, they shouldn't be involved in our process. Because they're hostile to us, as Republicans.
They have a partisan agenda. Which is fine. It's a free country.
And people say, well, you just don't want to ask the Republicans, tough questions.
No. Their gotcha questions are not tough questions.
Their questions are designed to further a narrative. Their questions though, are not illuminating to Republican primary voters. Because they're not one of us.
So when you have people who lived in kind of our world, you will be asking the tougher questions.
They're not going to be gotcha questions, but they're going to be substantive, and they will require candidates to actually go beneath a talking point. To talk about their vision for the country on these issues.
So I think you guys should do it. I would love to be a part of it. But I absolutely think the RNC should sanction it. You have seen what happens in 2015 or 2016. With some of those debates. It was a mockery. What some of these legacy media outlets were doing.
And their whole goal was to try to make the Republican candidates look as ridiculous as possible. They do not want us to look like serious people.
They want to be able to plow the field, to be able to get Biden re-elected.
So we know that's their agenda. Why would you want to give them a platform, to be able to be involved in our platform. I can tell you, in Florida, we have four congressional seats, that were open seats. Republicans ended up winning, and they were primaries in all of them.
We sanctioned debates with the state party, and we had conservative journalistic moderators doing the debates.
And guess what, they were great substantive debates, and the issues that people actually care about in our party, we discussed.
GLENN: Well, I will tell you, as we took a stand for Harmeet Dillon. We didn't make any friends, at the G.O.P. national level. But thank you so much for coming on.
Congratulations for the rollout yesterday.
We look forward to hearing more from you.
And all the best.
RON: Yeah. We'll definitely sit down with you. I would love for all your folks out there, invest with us, at RonDeSantis.com.
We would love to have your support. I pledge, you nominate me, we will win. We'll go in on day one, and we'll get all this done.
GLENN: Very good.
Thank you very much, Governor.
