Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis slammed the NCAA during a Fox News interview on Tuesday night that highlighted a bill that DeSantis signed earlier in the day that protected girl’s sports in the state.
“I think 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,” DeSantis said. “And so I called the Speaker of the House in Florida and I said, ‘did you hear what they said?’ And he’s like, ‘yeah,’ I said, we definitely got to get this done.”
“You can’t be cowed by these organizations, or particularly by woke corporations from doing the right thing. And so my view was throughout this whole time, we have to protect our girls, it is discriminatory to force them to compete against biological males,” DeSantis continued. “And so if the price of having a tournament is that 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.”
WATCH:
FL Gov Ron DeSantis signed a law banning trans female athletes from competing against biological girls in sports. He did this, he tells #TuckerCarlson, despite pressure from corporate interests. pic.twitter.com/6iSOCGvoF6
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) June 2, 2021
TRANSCRIPT:
TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS HOST: Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida joins us tonight. Governor, thanks so much for coming on. We’ve seen bills like this in a bunch of different states come before Republican governors who, who don’t sign them because they came under corporate pressure not to sign them. How much corporate pressure did you come under not to sign this bill?
RON DESANTIS, FLORIDA GOVERNOR: What was interesting, Tucker, I think 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. And so I called the Speaker of the House in Florida and I said, ‘did you hear what they said?’ And he’s like, ‘yeah,’ I said, we definitely got to get this done. You can’t be cowed by these organizations, or particularly by woke corporations from doing the right thing. And so my view was throughout this whole time, we have to protect our girls, it is discriminatory to force them to compete against biological males. And so if the price of having a tournament is that 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.
CARLSON: I think it’s a really a great point. And you listen to the athletes, and it’s, you know, they’re at the 80 meter mark when races already won, and they’re the top female runners in the state. I mean, it’s it’s ridiculous. Do you expect that–
DESANTIS: Selena made the point today, she missed New England regionals by two places and those two places ahead of her were biological males. So she did everything that she could, she put herself in the position. And had they had fair competition, she would have advanced, she could have advanced in her career. Some of the, a lot of these women are going to have opportunities to play in college, some of them get college scholarships. But even short of that, these are enjoyable experiences, they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and just think how you feel to basically get cheated out of a victory.
CARLSON: So unfair and we shouldn’t we shouldn’t tolerate it and you haven’t. Do you expect to be punished? And you expect your state to be punished for this?
DESANTIS: No, actually, I don’t think so, Tucker. Because I think what, what I think we’ve shown not just with this, but you know, we did a strong election integrity bill in Florida, actually stronger than Georgia. And we just made it clear. We’re standing with our folks, we’re gonna do the right thing. And so if corporations want to come in and try to bully us around, they are going to go nowhere. It’s going to be like hitting their head against a brick wall. The result has been, we’ve had very little to do with that elections bill. And I don’t think we’re gonna have very much to do at this point here, because we leaned into it and we stood strong.