fox news "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Ron DeSantis Speaks Out about Florida Primary Victory

Interview

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INGRAHAM: Ed, thanks so much. And joining me now is one of the men who just won one of these important races. Congressman Ron DeSantis is now the Republican nominee for Florida governor. He is here now and his first interview since his primary victory. Congressman DeSantis, congratulations. You must be feeling pretty good tonight.

RON DESANTIS, FLORIDA GOP GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, Laura. And I remember you and I talking after we did the debate on Fox News, and you were like, "you are not going to be behind much longer after this." And sure enough, I mean, we really pulled ahead. We had the president come at the end of July with a huge event for us.

And we really just had unstoppable momentum. And the good thing is, we are going to carry this all the way through November and post a strong victory so we can continue on Florida's path to success and make it even better.

INGRAHAM: Are you surprised that Gillum wins on the Democrat side? So he'll be your challenger, endorsed by Bernie Sanders, as you just heard us talk about. Soros and Tom Steyer both pitched in a total of about $650,000. It seemed to make a difference down the home stretch. So you are going to be running against a hard left former Tallahassee mayor.

DESANTIS: He is the most liberal candidate that the Democratic Party has ever nominated in the state of Florida by a country mile in a governor's race. He wants to abolish ICE. He wants a billion dollar tax increase. He wants a single-payer health care system in Florida, which would bankrupt the state.

I'm trying to make Florida even better. He wants to make Florida Venezuela. But he also combines the far left ideology with managerial incompetence. As mayor of Tallahassee, his tenure has been absolutely disastrous. Tallahassee is one of, if not, the most crime-ridden city in all of Florida, year after year, rising crime, he is embroiled in a lot of corruption scandals. This is not -- the guy who can't even run the city of Tallahassee. There is no way Florida voters can entrust him with our entire state.

INGRAHAM: Now, Congressman DeSantis, in your jubilation and your celebration, you may have missed that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out congratulations not to you, but to your challenger, Andrew Gillum, saying, "the progressive movement is transforming the country and he proved that again tonight. Gillum ran on Medicare for all, legalizing marijuana, abolish ICE and more. Thank you Florida voters! On to November. I'd wear that as a badge of honor tonight, congressman.

DESANTIS: Well look, we have people who in Florida who have fled socialist countries like Cuba and Venezuela. They don't want that imported into Florida. We also have people who flee from left-wing policies in states like New York and Connecticut and they don't want that imported into Florida. So, I think we want to keep Florida great. We want to keep it going in a good direction. And going in the direction of an Ocasio-Cortez is just untenable and it will not happen in Florida.

INGRAHAM: Congressman, some of your critics will throw out this, they'll say, well, you won on Trump's coattails, but you are short on your own policy initiatives on a statewide level. How do you answer your critics?

DESANTIS: That's not true at all. We have a solid vision for how to create high-paying jobs in Florida. I've been very strong on our environmental problems and solving our water crisis that we have in different parts of the state, and then only one of the few people have stood up against some of the entrenched interests. Laura, you know they were spending millions of dollars to stop me in the race and yet we did that. We've been very strong on illegal immigration, saying we need E-Verify in Florida, we can't have sanctuary cities. I've been somebody that's been a wholesale supporter of education reform, from parental choice to vocational education in the classrooms, to more civics education. So we've been talking about these key issues time and time again, and we're going to continue to do that and spread the message far and wide.

INGRAHAM: Did you hear from Putnam tonight? Did he give you a call?

DESANTIS: Yes. Look, he's a class guy. He worked very hard. He was a tough competitor. People say you won big, but this guy built a huge organization, he raised a boatload of money, and he ran a very tough race. He tried to knock me around a lot, that's politics. But he's supportive of where we are going. He knows we've got to keep Florida in Republican hands, and he's going to help me. So that's just how these things go. I would've supported him if he had beaten me, and you got to move forward as a team.

INGRAHAM: Absolutely. And the president, I don't care what anybody -- he's very popular in Florida. The endorsement did help a lot, but he also did a great job on the on the hustings. Congressman, congratulations, thanks so much.

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