Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Sunday flatly denied having any discussions with former President Donald Trump or "with anybody" about partnering with him on the Republican ticket for 2024, as his focus is on the state of Florida.
"I haven't had any discussions with anybody about anything beyond what we are doing now because, you know, we are putting a lot of points on the board, and we are really going on offense, moving the ball forward," the Republican governor said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo," when Bartiromo asked him if he's had "serious discussions" with Trump.
"I have a great state, a big state," DeSantis said. "We've got a lot on our plates here. We take it one day at a time and try to achieve things for the people of Florida."
Last week, Trump told Fox Business' "Varney & Co." that there are "numerous people" who would make "great" running mates, but quickly praised DeSantis and said he would "certainly consider" him.
Meanwhile, DeSantis responded to President Joe Biden's performance in the G-7 summit, saying that while the president's talks about reducing energy production may have played with European allies, his policies have left thousands of Americans without jobs.
DeSantis also discussed a bill he has signed to stop big tech censorship of Florida residents and said emails between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Dr. Anthony Fauci were revealing, considering posts about COVID were taken down.
"They were also censoring around the same time last year, any criticism of lockdowns," said DeSantis. "We know lockdowns did not work. States like Florida that were open were better off for it."
There are people who say that because Facebook is a private company, it can do what it wants, but DeSantis said the site is acting as an arm of the state "because they are suppressing what the government wants to be suppressed."
Big tech, he added, is "unlike anything that we have seen. They have a massive amount of power, monopolies stronger than the 20th century. They control a handful of companies. A huge percentage of the political speech in the country."
Florida is already involved in multi-state legislation predating the Fauci-Zuckerberg revelations, DeSantis continued, but said the state's censorship bill is the first of its kind.
"You can have certain obviously, guidelines, or however you do it, but you have to apply it evenly," he said. "if you don't, you are advertising as an open platform and you're saying you're not publishers but you're acting as publishers by stifling speech that you don't like. That's a fraud on the consumer and people deserve to vindicate rights in court."
DeSantis has also recently signed bills to stop the foreign influence in Florida's universities, including one targeted specifically at the Chinese Communist Party to keep programs like the Confucious Institutes from getting a foothold in the states' schools.
"We also want to protect trade secrets from our businesses and all that because CCP infiltration has been very prominent throughout the country," he said. "There's deep ties in many segments of academia with the Communist Party of China."
He also touched on his battle with the cruise industry about whether vaccine passports should be required, but he said the fight is really with the Centers for Disease Control because "we don't believe they have the authority to do that."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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