Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Interview with Gov. Ron DeSantis
Interview
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INGRAHAM: Governor DeSantis joins me now. Governor, the ruling was on Friday. Explain how this could affect other businesses beyond the cruise industry?
GOV. RON DESANTIS, (R) FLORIDA: Laura, as you remember, the CDC closed the cruise lines for two weeks in March of 2020. It was supposed to be two- week, figure out what's going on, and then get going. And that turned into an indefinite shutdown. And we were in a situation where this is an important part of our economy. We have a lot of people whose livelihoods depended on it.
So we brought a lawsuit, and the experts said, you have no chance. And not only did we win, if you read the judge's opinion, it was resounding victory. And it said you can't just assert legal authority without a firm basis in law to close an entire industry. And also the judge correctly criticized the CDC for not having really any evidence to support what they were doing, or data. They rely on, quote, models. They don't even produce the evidence that underlies their models. So that is just not the way a constitutional system is supposed to operate.
And so I think it was a very important decision for Florida in allowing our cruises to get going this summer. But I do think the next time one of these things comes down the pipe, I think that a decision like this will be a roadblock to the federal -- some federal agency trying to do similar things in the future.
INGRAHAM: One of the most notorious COVID doomers, government, is making more dire predictions, and includes Florida. Watch.
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DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Travel, and especially over the July 4th holiday, that could be a big issue. We saw that summer surge, and that was pretty awful in a belt that went all the way from Arizona through New Mexico, Texas, across the Gulf Coast into Florida. We just have to assume that mother nature is telling us, this is going to happen again.
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INGRAHAM: That's the infamous Dr. Peter Hotez, Governor. They just can't let the pandemic old. At some point, they're going to have to break the addiction.
DESANTIS: And it's like some of these people get put out there all the time when they have been dead wrong over the last year. For example, a lot of these experts criticized Florida for getting our kids back into school in August. They said, this will be two or three weeks, everyone is going to get sick, all the schools are going to have to shut down again. That just never happened. I think schools were probably one of the places that had the fewest amount of infections of anywhere else in our society. So you are wrong on these really, really big issues that impacted millions of people, and you are still out there parroting stuff.
So look, I think at the end of the day we are happy we had the kids in school, we are happy that people have been able to work in Florida, and we are happy that our businesses have been open.
INGRAHAM: Governor, I was so excited to read this today, and it dovetails from the previously segment we just did on this Critical Race Theory in the schools in Virginia and the fight against that. You signed legislation that requires kids in your public schools to be taught the evils of communism and totalitarianism. This is just one of the three bills, I think, you signed about education. Briefly explain why you did this, and why now?
DESANTIS: I put in a civics requirement in 2019 for high schools. We're expanding not to include discussions of the evils of communism and totalitarianism. And then also we're creating a patriot museum, patriot library, where we have stories of Floridians who fled from communist regimes, from Cuba, from Nicaragua, from Venezuela, and beyond. And so this will show the effect that these bad policies had on people's freedoms and livelihoods, and their families. Many of them in south Florida, for example, lost family members to communism. I think it's important that we get this in the classroom and provide an honest assessment of what this totalitarian ideology has done for the last hundred plus years.
INGRAHAM: I think it's good, Governor. It's not just saying you're against something. You're actually advocating for something, and it's a solution. Thank you.
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