Ron DeSantis Issues Warning For Biden About Economic Road Bump: ‘Needs To Take This Seriously’

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, he continues to deliver success after success for the residents of the great state of Florida. He put an end of all emergency COVID restrictions. Schools, they’ve been open in Florida for in person learning since August, restaurants they’ve been open since the fall. Florida safely reopened while protecting seniors the entire time. Big blue states failed, suffered, under disastrous lockdown policies that were pushed by let’s see Cuomo, Murphy, Whitmer, Wolf, Gavin Newsome, and it doesn’t stop there. Florida’s also prioritizing election integrity. The governor signing into law a bill that bans ballot harvesting, enforces voter ID, limits the use of drop boxes, addresses concern about unsolicited mail in ballots, and that’s not all. Florida also cracking down on rioting, enforcing law and order, supporting our brave men and women in law enforcement with Governor DeSantis announcing a $1,000 pandemic bonus for all of Florida’s first responders. Meanwhile, in New York, they’re defunding the police a billion dollars in New York City, launching vicious attacks on cops on a daily basis. Shootings, you know, have skyrocketed a whopping 86% compared to 2020, a record year. That was double the number 2019. Here to explain more Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Let’s start with the state of emergency in the oil and the gas shortage, Governor.

RON DESANTIS, GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: Well, Sean, this is something that’s a very serious attack on critical infrastructure in our country. This pipeline actually doesn’t touch Florida, but it does feed into many of our gas stations. So we declared a state of emergency, we’re lifting restrictions to be able to get more fuel into pumps. But the Biden administration needs to take this seriously. Their initial response is, oh, this is a private pipeline and just shrug your shoulders. This is important infrastructure for our country, and it could impact our economy greatly if they don’t respond.

HANNITY: Five things I think are needed for voter integrity and confidence: voter ID, common sense; signature verification, I think that’s common sense; chain of custody, it’s got to be sacrosanct and we keep an eye on it; cleaning up voter rolls; and the law of statute says partisan observers can observe both sides I think that ought to be maintained and respected. It wasn’t in 2020. Your thoughts?

DESANTIS: Well, Sean, we’re very proud of what we did in Florida in 2020. You and I’ve talked about it, we counted 11 million votes, by midnight, very transparent. And people had confidence in the results. At the same time. I don’t believe in standing pat, we go on offense, we look forward to heading off problems. Fact is, we can’t have ballot harvesting. It’s prone to fraud. We’ve got to have voter ID enforced strictly, we’re doing that in the state of Florida. Another thing we did, which is very important, we banned these third party private groups from spending millions of dollars to actually administer elections, like Zuckerberg did, they call’em Zuckerbucks, we have banned Zuckerbucks in the state of Florida. So we’re proud of what we did in 2020. We believe the strength of this package is such that we’re going to also be strong and 22 and in 24.

HANNITY: How come your schools in Florida… Now I remember interviewing you early on, when the pandemic struck, you used every state agency, and you instructed them to protect the elderly, which have a very high elderly population in Florida. That turned out to be the wisest decision of any governor in the country. And there were a few others to their credit that did the same thing. We saw what happened when they didn’t do that. You were able to get schools opened in August, you were able to keep restaurants open. Why couldn’t these other governors follow your lead?

DESANTIS: Well, I think they embrace fair failed policy, Sean, which last March and April, okay, a lot of this is a new thing. But man, the data came in by the end of April, and they should have reversed course, they didn’t. We’ve had schools in person, as you’ve said, we had a successful school year, it’s coming to a conclusion over the next couple of weeks. And we’re proud of that. But just think of all the millions of kids who were locked out of school for over a year in places like California, that is going to have ramifications for our society for years and years. And I can’t tell you, Sean, every time I go out, someone will come up to me and say thank you for keeping us open, you saved my job, or you saved my business. And we know if we were in other states like California and New York, I know my job would be gone or I know my business would be gone. So we’re proud of the success that we’ve had. We obviously have more to do going forward but the damage of those lockdowns are going to reverberate in this country for a long time.

HANNITY: Yeah. Your support for the police. You know, it was kind of refreshing to see one state at least recognize the hard work that they do every day, something you can afford. How is it all these states have, you know, less population even then your state, but you have half the budget size that they do and better infrastructure. Just trying to figure out the math, you don’t have a state income tax.

DESANTIS: And New York has over twice the budget we do and we have millions of more people than they do and so we’re proud of the way we’ve managed it. It’s given us an ability to do some things, like provide these law enforcement bonuses, Sean, they have a tough job. They were treated horribly in many parts of the country for the entire year. We’ve stood by them in Florida 100%. But we also recognize this was a very challenging year. So this is one way for us to say thank you. Another way that bill that you mentioned, our anti-rioting bill provides additional support for the police and it says very simply, for local government tries to defund law enforcement, the state of Florida will veto that, we will make sure law enforcement’s funded. And if people are rioting, if they’re damaging property, attacking police, they are going to go to jail and we’re gonna stand by the men and women in uniform.

HANNITY:  You might be seeing me more often in Florida, in case, you’ve been reading the news, just saying.