DeSantis rips up Newsom in California speech, says state ‘population hemorrhage’ to Florida

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis slammed California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom during a Golden State speech Sunday, saying Californians are fleeing the state en masse to live in Florida, where he says they can live freely.

“I knew you guys had a lot of problems here, but your governor is very concerned about what we are doing in Florida, so I figured I should come,” DeSantis joked at the start of his Ronald Reagan speech. Simi Valley Presidential Library.

DeSantis said Reagan “understood the vital role government has to play” and how it can be “a negative force if not used properly” and that he ran Florida with the same understanding throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 19.

“And I think that if you look at the last four or five years, and look at the performance of individual states, and compare Florida with California, New York, Illinois, some other states, we have had a great experiment, a great test in management philosophy. “, – he said. “Because, of course, you know, we approach things very differently in Florida than you guys do, here in Florida it’s very different than in New York and Illinois.”

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“And if you look at the last four years, we have seen a mass exodus of Americans from states run by leftist politicians, imposing leftist ideologies and producing bad results, and you will see huge gains in states like Florida that govern according to the tried and true the right principles that President Reagan held dear,” he continued. “From the very beginning of the history of this state, up to the last four or five years, people have been making their way to California. You didn’t make your way out of California. And yet now you see how the population of the state is declining.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (left) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (right). (Getty)

DeSantis said Florida became a beacon of freedom when states like California became a “biomedical security state” due to outside pressure based on political ideology rather than data.

“And I can tell you that we had families that moved from the Pacific coast, simply because we had schools open in Florida, when they didn’t open in many other states,” he said. “We did things like ban vaccine passports in the state of Florida. The states said you want to stay at a hotel, go to a restaurant, you have to cough up your wax papers for those mRNA shots. their business. Everyone has the right to participate in the life of society. It is your personal choice to accept it or not, and we will not allow you to be expelled.”

“Now what ended up happening, because we did what ended up happening, is that in 2021, Florida set a record for domestic tourism,” he said. “If you compare the changes in California tourism from 2019 to 2021, tourism in California is down 22%.”

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DeSantis spoke to a crowd of more than 1,300 patrons at the Reagan Library, DeSantis’ team told Fox News Digital.

Simi Valley Police said vandals attacked the library on the eve of the governor’s visit, graffitiing “Ron the Defascist,” according to KTLA. It is reported that the library staff managed to wash off the paint before the visit of the governor.

Sunday’s event was to open with DeSantis’ new book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Plan for America’s Resurgence, which was released Tuesday. The governor has not officially announced his participation in the presidential election in 2024, but many consider him a likely candidate.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Courage to Be Free book (Broadside Books)

DeSantis presented his “Make America Florida” proposal in his book, stating that achieving freedom would require “successfully fighting a host of powerful elite institutions”.

The book details DeSantis’ approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, which often went against the guidance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and often drew backlash from liberals. The Governor argued in the book that the attacks were “a price worth paying” for exercising leadership.

“A governor who aggressively pursues policies that challenge the leftist ideology of the national elites will face fire—not just from mainstream media, but from activist groups, big tech companies, and corporate America,” he wrote. “When I strongly opposed the prevailing narrative of draconian coronavirus policy, I may have been denounced by the usual suspects, but I was able to save the livelihoods of millions across Florida.”

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