Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) accused former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) of not protecting children and siding with Disney, a company he accused of “trans-ing kids,” during Wednesday night’s Republican debate at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
The two were the lone debaters, as tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie both failed to qualify for the event. Christie officially ended his no-chance campaign on Wednesday evening. He promised to continue opposing the candidacy of former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner of the Republican presidential primary.
Early into the debate, co-moderator Dana Bash asked DeSantis, “You used your powers in Florida to take on Disney after the company criticized an education bill that you signed into law. How does that square with the traditional conservative view that small, limited government is best?”
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DeSantis responded, “The proper role of government, if it means anything, is to protect our kids, and I’ve stood for the innocence of our kids. It is wrong to sexualize the curriculum…. It’s wrong to tell a kindergartener, like Disney wanted to do, that you can change your gender or tell a third-grader, that you’re born in the wrong body.”
“The media didn’t like it, the left didn’t like it, and Disney didn’t like it, and they’re the 800-pound gorilla in the state of Florida,” he continued. “Most people, most corporate Republicans would have caved. I stood and I fought for the kids.”
DeSantis has retaliated against Disney for opposing his “Don’t Say Gay” law.
“We took on Disney and we defeated that and we won that fight, and our kids are better off now,” DeSantis added. He then accused Haley of inviting Disney to South Carolina, “even though they were involved in trans-ing kids.” Trans-ing kids is a right-wing scare term for using “gender confusion” to manipulate young people into medically transitioning. It doesn’t happen, but right-wingers claim it’s a major goal of the LGBTQ+ movement and its allies.
“We need to stand up for the people and not bow down to woke corporations,” DeSantis said. “And we know Nikki Haley will cave to the woke mob every single time.”
Haley responded by saying, “Government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. And what we don’t need is government politicizing anything.”
“I have always fought to protect kids,” she continued. “I’ve always said that boys need to go into boys’ bathrooms, girls need to go into girls’ bathrooms, that we shouldn’t have any gender transitions before the age of 18 — just like we don’t have tattoos before the age of 18. We shouldn’t have gender transformation or puberty blockers.”
She then said that, “Disney has been woke for a long time” and said that DeSantis “gave them the largest corporate subsidies in Florida history” while Disney opposed other conservative legislation on immigration, restricting abortion, and greenhouse emissions.
“I will always invite businesses to come to South Carolina,” Haley continued. “But the one thing you don’t do is government doesn’t bully our businesses and that can’t happen. Ron is determined anybody that offends him, he goes after them.”
DeSantis then slammed Haley for not pursuing a transphobic bathroom bill during her time as South Carolina’s governor. She has said at the time that residents weren’t asking for such a bill.
“When she was governor … they had a bill to protect girls from men going into the bathroom,” DeSantis said. “She killed it and she’s bragged about it for years that that happened. She didn’t stand up and fight the kids.”
He also claimed that she had previously supported gender-affirming care. What she previously said was that parents should be allowed to make medical decisions with their kids without the law interfering.
After saying that trans youth weren’t as prevalent when she served as governor, Haley added, “I have fought for women’s sports and making sure that biological boys are not women’s sports and I’ll continue to do that. I have always said we have to raise strong girls strong girls become strong women, strong women become strong leaders.”
In the next segment about education, Haley somewhat alluded to anti-LGBTQ+ parents’ rights groups, saying, “Parents should decide what types of education their children get… No parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their child in the classroom.”
Tapper then asked DeSantis, “You have supported limits on what subjects can be taught and how including American history. In Florida schools. You have also made it easier to remove books from public school libraries. You say you want to ‘make America Florida.’ Do you want to implement those Florida school policies nationwide?”
After slamming Haley for not combatting teachers’ unions and promoting so-called “school choice,” he said, “It’s wrong to have pornographic materials in fourth or fifth grade.” He then said that some of his state’s banned materials are so sexually explicit that they’re not allowed to be read aloud in school board meetings or the evening news.
“Well, if it’s not appropriate in a school board meeting, and you can’t put it on the six o’clock news, why are you jamming it down the throat of a fourth grader?” he said to crowd applause. In reality, DeSantis’s policies have been used to target non-pornographic, age-appropriate content at libraries primarily written by or about LGBTQ+ issues and people of color.
While he said didn’t want “a nationalized curriculum” — saying, “That’s a bottom-up thing” — he also said that he would “get rid of the Federal Department of Education.” He also pledged to use taxes to create a national school voucher program — part of a right-wing plan to defund public education.
