'It was a HUGE mistake': Disney learns the hard way what NOT to try with Ron DeSantis
During a live event in Orlando, Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis told BlazeTV host Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" how he fought back against the media's “don't say gay” narrative, and why he won't cave in to pressure from woke corporations such as the Walt Disney Company.
"Did you choose this fight, or do you feel like they just brought it to you and you just punched back?" Rubin, who hosted the event as part of his book tour for "Don't Burn This Country," asked DeSantis.
"The media start[ed] badgering me with these slogans about 'gay'," DeSantis recalled. "And I was thinking to myself, okay, this isn't my first rodeo. I know what they're doing. They create narratives and then they try to run with these narratives. So, I know they're lying ... and so even though it was not necessarily legislation that I had authored initially, I started fighting back against them because they were just lying to people and it's offensive when they're lying."
DeSantis told the audience that he initially pushed back by simply asking reporters to point out where in the bill it says "don't say gay" or to explain what the bill does say, and was usually met with silence. The smear campaign didn't end there, however, and the next phase was to involve corporations, namely the Walt Disney Company.
"I don't know why [Disney] got involved in this. It was a huge mistake for them, I think they've lost 60 billion in market cap since they got involved. But what the left is doing it's honestly smart. They know that ... running for election on gender ideology for kindergarten [and] first graders would not fly with the voters," the governor explained.
"They know they can't win elections on that. So, I think what they try to do, which again is smart, they say 'okay, if we could subcontract out our leftism to a corporation, pressure the corporation to come on our side, then maybe they can get these elected officials to cave.' And, you know, it's not a dumb strategy because there have been a lot of Republican governors that have caved to corporate pressure," he added.
DeSantis went on to offer the example of how the corporate media stirred up "massive hysteria" over Georgia's Election Integrity Act in 2021.
"You had Delta Airlines, you had Coca-Cola demagogue the bill. They equated it to Jim Crow [laws]. You had Major League Baseball move the all-star game out of Atlanta. And so we've now had our first election in Georgia last month under the new law, record voter turnout," he said. "They were lying about the Georgia bill. Anyone who read it would know. So I think when they're accepting these false narratives, especially if it's about people in my state ... we have a responsibility to fight back."
He continued, "I took an oath to support the laws and Constitution of the U.S and the state of Florida. I did not take an oath to subcontract out my leadership to a corporation based in Burbank, California. They don't run this state ..."
In April, DeSantis revoked Disney’s special tax district privileges and its ability to self-govern in the Walt Disney World Resort location, ending an exemption that the corporation enjoyed for more than 50 years.
"They are not free to force all of us to subsidize their activism. And that's what they were doing," he added.
Watch the video clip below to catch more of the conversation:
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