Gov. Ron DeSantis continued his tour of right-wing media outlets Tuesday night, closing out the evening with Tucker Carlson.
It was highlighted by the Governor’s contention that NCAA pressure actually made him more motivated to sign a sweeping charter school reform bill that included language banning transgender athletes from female sports in the state.
“As these bills were going through various legislatures, I remember the NCAA put out a statement saying ‘Any state that enacts this, we’re not going to hold events there’. So I called the Speaker of the House in Florida (Chris Sprowls) and said ‘Did you hear what they said’ and he said ‘yeah’ and I said ‘we’ve definitely got to get this done,'” DeSantis said.
“You can’t be cowed by these organizations, particularly by woke corporations, from doing the right thing,” DeSantis said, before again daring the NCAA to cut bait.
“If the price of having a tournament is I have to deny equal opportunity to hundreds of thousands of young girl and women athletes throughout Florida, I am much more willing to stand with the girls, and to hell with these events,” DeSantis said.
The Governor says he isn’t worried about consequences for this, noting that there were none to speak of for the similarly controversial election law changes this year.
“If corporations want to come in and try to bully us around, they’re going to get nowhere,” DeSantis vowed.
DeSantis, who signed a bill banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports earlier in the day, had given exclusives to One America News Network, Breitbart, and the The Federalist in the wake of an abbreviated press conference in Jacksonville.
The Fox News hit was the most high-profile of all, however, and a necessary capstone of a message play that was geared toward the professional conservative media more so than Florida press.
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
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