KERNEN: “I wanted to — with that intro, I guess we’ll talk about those things. What I really do want to get to, though, is whether you believe that some of the successes you’ve had in Florida, both economically and a lot of other successes, whether it’s possible to do that on a national level. That’s what I think sometimes it’s hard to imagine. But I want to hear you tell me that you can in a second. And I’m sure you don’t watch Drudge or don’t look at Drudge, but the headline today is ‘Ron downloads on Don, biggest attack yet.’ So you did step it up in recent days in terms of directly taking on the current leader for the race for the nomination, Donald Trump, former President Trump.”

DeSantis: “Well, Joe, this weekend in Iowa he said, with his famous promise of 2016, he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for that — we all remember that — and he said, ‘Well, there was no legal mechanism for me do that. I couldn’t have Mexico pay for it. You can’t just ask them for money for a wall.’ So that was basically a central promise, so that to me was something that I was taken aback by. But the thing is, you actually could have Mexico pay for it. Yeah, they’re not going to just check you a check. You impose fees on remittances from people that sending money back to Mexico and other countries. He was advised that he could have done that and he didn’t do it. So I think ultimately the choice for Republicans is, do we want somebody who will produce the leadership and results that will turn this country around? You asked is Florida’s success replicable nationally? Of course it is. What they have in D.C. is theatrics, it’s performative, but it doesn’t actually produce results for people. In Florida, I’m a leader, I’m not an entertainer, I’m not running a soap opera down here. I make promises to people and then I use the authority that I have and I work with the legislature to deliver the promises. So the results speak for themselves. While they have added massive amounts to the debt, I’ve paid down 25% of our state’s total debt just since I’ve been governor, over the last four and a half years. We’ve cut taxes, we’ve run surpluses, we’re ranked number one by your network for economy, of all 50 states, number one in education by U.S. News and World Report. We’ve taken on big issues like school choice, we’ve gone after ESG, we’ve even reformed higher education. So it’s really about leadership, but the leadership has to be focused on producing results. Politics and governance is not a show, and what we’ve seen in Washington over the last week, to me, is a show. I don’t see the results that they’re delivering, even though they all ran saying they were going to do these great things in 2022.”