I started by praising him for keeping Florida largely open during Covid.
“I just had to make the decision as a leader,” says DeSantis. “Are you gonna worry about the daily news cycle? Worry about your personal popularity? … I did not know how it was going to work out politically. I was going to do what I thought was right.”
That worked well for Floridians. “If you look at excess mortality, we were the lowest in the Sunbelt and (had) lower excess mortality than California and New York.”
Today’s favorite media “hate-DeSantis” topic is his Parental Rights in Education law. Critics smear it by calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The law bans “classroom instruction … on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“Transgender or probing some student’s sexuality, that is not appropriate for the schools. We’re going to leave that to parents to discuss.”
But “it can come up,” I say. How far does the ban go? “A gay teacher could say he’s gay?”
“Our law doesn’t affect that,” DeSantis answers. Also, the decision to teach sex education is made at the district level.
Good.
I ask, “Doesn’t school choice solve this? Parents who want kids taught about gender changes could have that.”
Some private schools do teach that, says DeSantis. But “when you’re talking about what the taxpayers are funding, you just have to make a choice.”
For 44 minutes, DeSantis and I talk about: how America will go broke, whether he’d cut social security or raise retirement age, what departments he’d cut if he were president, the drug war, his opposition to Barack Obama’s plan to send Americans to Syria, Donald Trump and whether DeSantis is a “slob who eats pudding with his fingers.”
I don’t think his staff liked some of my questions. They cut our interview short, saying the governor had to go.
R&I ~ MJM
