"We need a reckoning for what they did to this country."
Tallahassee, FL - Ron DeSantis today joined Dave Rubin on the Rubin Report. The highlights are below.
Watch the full interview HERE.
On the need for COVID accountability:
We need a reckoning for what they did to this country. In Florida, we fought back against it. There were other states like what Kim Reynolds did in Iowa to make sure kids were in school and to push back. But there are parts of this country that were really, really hard because of the Fauci-ism and yet they were wrong about lockdowns. They were wrong about forced masking. They were wrong about school closures. They were wrong about mRNA vaccines, and yet nobody's been held accountable. And it's my view that until there's accountability, they're going to keep trying it again. I mean, the notion that you have a school district in the DC suburbs, I think Montgomery county, imposing masks in 2023 shows that [if] you give these people an inch, they're going to take a mile. So we need that accountability. We're going to bring a reckoning. We're going to turn those agencies inside and out.
On cracking down on COVID authoritarianism:
In Florida, we've enacted permanent protections, so you can't force anybody to wear a mask. You can't force kids to mask in school, you can't close businesses, none of that. We saw that this would be something that would likely happen in the future, and so we put in permanent protections. But that should be the order of the day throughout this country. So accountability for what happened. And just think about it. Not only did you infringe freedom, not only did you lie about things like vaccines, the federal government went an additional $6 trillion in debt over COVID with the with the response, and that's more debt than we racked up in like the first 200 years of this country, and yet people don't want to talk about it.
On why Dr. Fauci should have been fired:
His excuse was, if you fired Fauci, both the democrats and the media would've pitched a fit. Of course it's 100% true, but that's the price of leadership. You gotta stand up and do what's right. Clearly he could've been fired from the White House Task Force. There was no obligation to run him out in press conference after press conference, have him doing media interviews...you know, during the height of the COVID stuff in 2020, Fauci would do local hits in Florida media attacking me for having schools open, so there was no obligation to do that. I think you could have also fired him from the NIH because he had basically committed misconduct with a gain of function. You also had him saying that it was naturally occuring when they knew it was a lab leak. All that stuff has come out now. If it's the right thing to do, you do it. If they sue you, they sue you, but you had the basis to do that and you should have done it. The country would have been better off had he done it.
On putting his money where his mouth is and delivering on American-first policies:
Nobody in the United States in the Republican Party has delivered more on America-first policies and principles than me. If you look at illegal immigration, we've banned sanctuary cities, we've cracked down on human smuggling, we even sent illegal aliens to beautiful Martha's Vineyard. And so we've put our money where our mouth is. You talk about things like China, we've banned the purchase of land by the CCP and its affiliates in our state. We got rid of things like Confucius Institutes, and we cracked down on their influence of universities. You look at what we've done for expanding Second Amendment rights with constitutional carry, look at what we've done to fight against the woke agenda, whether it's fighting Disney involving education, or fighting this ESG movement, which is really bad for our economy, and for American families. The way they're going after domestic energy production, you want to talk about draining the swamp? There's one guy in this entire country that's ever taken action against Soros-backed prosecutors, and that's me.
Ron DeSantis, DeSantis Campaign Press Release - ICYMI: Ron DeSantis on the Rubin Report Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/364720