for cflts in iraq, syria, congo, libya, andemen. a vote is also scheduled on a resolution stating that congress believes israel is not a racist or apartheid state. it's offered in response to pramila jayapal's statement on israel being a racist state. she laterssd a retraction. and isaac herzog willpe to members of the house and senate torrow in a joint meeting of congress. all of this live as always here on c-span. >> a healthy democracy doesn't just look like this. it looks like this. where americans can see democracy at work, when citizens are truly informed, our republic thrives. get informed straight from the force on c-span, unfiltered, unbiased, word-for-word, from the nation's capital to wherever you are because the opinion that

matters the most is your own. this is what democracy rooks like looks like -- this is what democracy looks like. c-span, powered by cable. >> next, 2024 republican presential candidate ron desantis joined formerox news host tucker carlson at the leadership smit in des moines, iowa. they talked about florida's abortion laws, environmental stewardship and his plans for the executive branch, if elected. , and his plans for the executive branch if elected. [applause] >> good to see you. thank you for doing this. >> yeah, when i heard a florida resident was going to be monitoring, i wasn't going to turn it down.

for the record, tucker cannot hack the florida summer, so he's not there in the summer months, but he is the other months and i think he enjoys it. >> dependence you pay for being born in february, but i love it. congratulations on everything you have been doing. you signed a ban on abortion after six weeks in florida. would you do the same nationally? >> i'm proud to say kim reynolds is here and she signed a great heartbeat bill today. we were able to do that in florida. we had a lot of opposition to that. i'm proud to have been a pro-life governor and i will be a pro-life president. of course i want to sign pro-life legislation. i think it is something that we need to develop a culture of life in this country. if you look over the last 50 years, we allowed practices that were barbaric. post birth abortions. abortions when you have a fully formed baby seven months in.

i don't think rome was built in a day. i think it will take time to make progress in some parts of the country, but as president i will be somebody who will use the bully pulpit to support governors like kim reynolds when she's gotten -- when she's got a bill. this is a critical issue and one that i'm happy to have done. and, oh, by the way, this is an issue where i had a lot of supporters who work averse to me on this. donors saying they did not want to support me if i stood for life. it has been written about how i lost a lot of really big supporters. some of us get is a political liability, and at the end of the day, you get into office to be able to do what is right, and you've got to stand on principle, and you've got to say, why am i here? if you are here to contort yourself into a pretzel to try to not have to take on big issues, to take the political

road that is easier travel, then you are not somebody that is dependable. we stood up. we did what was right. we lost some support as a result of that, but if i had a chance to do it again, i would do it every day of the week and twice on sunday. >> what you are saying is people need to be brought over to that. can you give us your quick pitch? you are speaking to someone, a decent person who has a different position than you on abortion. how do you bring them to your position? >> i think one of the most impactful moments of my life was with my better half right over there. the first child we have come a very early in the pregnancy, we were going in, getting an ultrasound, and i hear this whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. i'm like, what is that?

"that's your daughter's heartbeat." that changed me. i was pro-life at the time, but that really had an impact on me. with science and technology, i think we have brought people over, but at the end of the day, to do what governor reynolds just signed or what we do in florida, a baby that has a detectable heartbeat, that is a life and we are better off when everybody counts. we are better off when everybody is given a chance, so we should stand for life. >> i don't know if this is too parochial to bring up here, but we have produced all environmental concerns to climate, but there is still an actual environment. it seems like kind of a disaster. what can be done about that? >> we have created an infrastructure in florida. the democrats on the left talk about global warming. them forcing you in an electric

vehicle is not going to change the climate when china is building a new coal plant every week. this is trying to control your behavior. it is social engineering and not something that's going to work. i'm actually going to focus on the environment that floridians like and enjoy and that makes our state unique. we tackle both blue-green algae, red tide. we have created infrastructure and task force. there's a lot of experiments being done on red tide right now with the program we put in, but you have to make a decision. maybe it works in a lab, but if you do it out in the gulf of mexico, is it going to have any other cascading effects? we think there are things that will be a very good -- now, red tide is natural. i think most people know that. it has been detected going back to the 1800s, but what can we do to mitigate it and what can we

do to prevent it being exacerbated? but we have done well on environment, not because i'm doing kooky liberal things but because i'm focusing on things that actually impact the daily lives of floridians, and, oh, by the way i have never come to iowa without someone coming up to me and telling me they spent time in marco island or sarasota or wherever during the winter months. >> that's a good thing, but when you see the new jersey governor down there, does that make you worry? >> here's the truth -- when i became governor, and i was born and raised in florida -- i had never seen a california license plate in the state of florida in my life, and all of a setting, we start seeing california plates. my supporters are like, uh-oh, are these people? -- all of a sudden, we start seeing california plates. my supporters are like, uh-oh, who are these people?

we would have supporters and find every new york or new jersey license plate, put a flyer in the windshield and say do not vote down here the way they vote up there. what ended up happening was i think we drew people who believed in what we were doing. it was not just these were liberals who just wanted no state income tax. there may have been some of those, but i think most of these people said florida is a free state. i'm not dealing with these lockdowns. florida has kids in school. florida has a 50-year low in the crime rate. i don't want to see rioting in my neighborhood. there were a bunch of reasons why people did it. the political orientation actually turned out pretty good. >> so you are getting good ones? >> we are getting good ones. and we are converting people, too. that is i think something we need to do as a movement. you cannot just preach only to the choir. i want to get some other people

who may not have voted republican in the past and get them on our team and we have done that in florida in record numbers, and i think that can be done in our country. we are up against a movement that is parroting woke ideology. their message to the american people is that men can get pregnant. really? that you should swim on the men's team for three years, switch to the women's team, and you can be the women's national champion. most people don't buy that, so i think we have an opportunity to capture a lot of voters back representing a platform of common sense and sanity. >> as president, you would be in charge pretty much single-handedly of american foreign policy. in the spring, you describe the war in ukraine as a territorial dispute that was not central to america's national interest. pretty soon after, you described

putin as a war criminal and said it was central to america's foreign interest. why did it change and where are you now? >> the last part i did not say. i served in iraq during the iraq campaign. in fallujah, iraq attached to navy seal team one. remember, it started on wmd. then we had al qaeda in iraq. then it was democracy. the lesson i learned is if you are going to commit to do military -- if it is a need or troops -- you need to have a concrete idea of what you are trying to achieve, so from the time i got out of the sandbox and landed back in the united states 15 years ago until the present, i have always felt that. my critique of the d.c. foreign policy elite is that they are doing a blank check policy without telling us when we will have achieved our objective, and i believe that today, and i believed that then. now, because you descend from

the d.c. policy elite, they smear you and say you must be for putin. i have always thought putin was a bad guy. i still do, but that is a separate question for a leader who has to look at the world with very clear eyes, glasses, you know it is not all peaches and cream out there, and you have to make a judgment of what is in america's national interest. that's a decision that i believe, and i also believe that i wish the d.c. elite cared as much about our border as they do about the ukraine-russian border. because there's people pouring into this country. we have people dying from fentanyl overdose. the cartels are running the show. what i said is this is something on day one, declare a national emergency, mobilize all resources including the military, stop the invasion, yes, build the wall, but most importantly, authorized the border patrol. authorize our military to deal with the cartels.

if they are breaking into our country bringing product, if i'm in charge, that's going to be the last thing they do because they are going to end up stone cold dead. [cheers and applause] >> so what is the goal, do you think, in ukraine? when do we know we have achieved it? >> they will not define it. >> what do you think it should be? >> i think the goal should be to have a sustainable peace in europe. we don't want there to be war breaking out. there have been a lot of people that have been killed, displaced. it is a horrible thing, but you have to provide a articulation of where you are going to go to get there. my fear is right now they are basically doing and open-ended consult, like this is going to be a multiyear quagmire, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to die, and is not going to be much change on the ground. the fear at this point is not if

ukraine's government is going to fall. they are fighting over territory on the far eastern part of the country between russia and ukraine, and that is kind of where this is at. the question is, ok, how do you get that to where we can stop this? from our national interest, this is humiliating for our country, that we are running out of ammunition. they are now trying to put mobilized u.s. troops to go to europe, when we have a major threat in the indo pacific, the chinese communist party, who they are basically giving a free pass to. as president, i would prioritize the threat to our national security. the top threat to this country is china. it is china's ambition, china's industrial capacity, their ability to pollute our culture, impact our universities -- incidentally, in florida, we got rid of the confucius institutes they put in universities. we cracked down on then being able to use research dollars

from our university and we banned any purchase of land by the ccp in florida. [applause] you have to do what is based on our interest. you cannot subcontract out our interest to a foreign leader. you cannot want it to go on because it will be good for defense contractors or globalist investors. it is all about what is in our interest, and i think we are in a situation with our foreign policy we are providing blanket security to europe, they are not providing their fair share and we are not doing what we need to do to project power in the indo pacific. at the end of the day, the ccp respects hard power. i'm concerned. the strong america can deter conflict. i think a week america may be on the path to inviting conflict with china and if we continue to be weak abroad and allow our culture to deteriorate at home, we could have a situation where our kids or grandkids are

memorizing 37 different pronouns in mandarin, and we cannot have that, so we've got to do better as a country. we need to reverse the decline of this country because it is happening very, very quickly. >> you inherit this mess a year, year and a half from now, say. what do you do about it? >> one, europe needs to do more. this is their backyard. we have nato countries that don't produce support for their own defenses, and we are supposed to do it, and we are taking away weapons and ammo? we would do more in terms of the indo pacific, and the goal should be to bring it to a conclusion. you bring it to a conclusion in a way that is a sustainable peace, and you have to be able to use different levers. one of the leverages i would use it as i would do our own energy exploration.

i would send it over to europe so they don't have to rely on putin. i would stop giving iran a free pass like biden is because they are funding russia. the goal should be we cannot have a quagmire that goes on for years and years, and seeing biden put those troops there, i can tell you, we cannot have american troops in ukraine. that is a total nonstarter. >> i mean, you've got a whole congress, and i know there are a ton of republicans there. they claim they are in the house. i have not heard anyone say that. why? >> i think there are some people that said, you need to define the mission before you are able to send any american taxes, and by the way, they have not even been able to account for all this. we don't know who is coming across the southern border. we don't know where all the money sent to ukraine has gone.

we don't know who's cocaine it was in the white house. >> what is your guess on that? [laughter] >> let me put it this way -- we have issues in florida with parents' rights and they are trying to put pornography in the schools. i think a lot of you have seen it. we allowed a parent to blow the whistle. you can get it out, and our message to people has basically been adult material does not belong in a classroom. you want to see pornography, check out hunter's laptop. i'm sure you could have that to your hearts content. >> is not available in your schools? [laughter] >> -- is that available in your schools? [laughter] >> hopefully not. >> how concerned are you that in the wake of whatever next economic disruption we are going to face, we will wind up with digital currency issues? >> if i am the president, on day

one, we will knit -- nix central bank digital currency. done, did, not happening in this country. because the fed has been talking about this. what the fed says is we would not do it without consulting the legislative and executive branches. ideally, we would get a law passed. no, that's not what the constitution says. he would have to get a law passed. congress would not do that. what we did in florida is we passed a law that says we do not recognize cbc -- cbdc in the state of florida. that would jam their ability to do it through executive action. for those who do not know what it is, what they want to do -- and this is tied in with davos, world economic forum, all these people. they want to get rid of cash. they want no cryptocurrency, and

they want this to be the sole form of legal tender, and they have said this publicly at, like, davos and these other places. it will allow them to prohibit "undesirable" purchases like fuel and ammunition. the minute you give them the power to do this, they will impose a social credit system on this country. cbdc is a massive threat to american liberty. on january, 2025, it goes to the ash heap of history in this country. >> previous presidents have discovered this, the president and vice president of the only elected leaders in the executive branch, and a lot of people work to subvert you from day one. we have just seen that at scale. what do you do about that and what do you do about the fbi or

cia or agencies that are heavily armed and have capacities you don't have and, like, they are vast? how do you manage that? >> with me on day one, you get a new director of the fbi. you need that. that's going to happen. one, there are thousands of positions in the executive branch appointed by the president. you've got to have all those people ready to go to be submitted to the senate in january 2025. you cannot wait two years to fill all the positions because then these career bureaucrats just take over. you have to have your people in on day one. you also have to have a certain character of people. if you are the attorney general, everything you do to deal with the doj and weaponization of government, deal with the fbi, the press is going to rake you over the coals. the left is going to break you over the coals. the democrats. they are all going to rake you

over the coals. you either are down for that or you are not. if you cannot handle that, if you do not have the backbone to do that, you will fail at that job. so you need people, and i look at different folks on the government, like the supreme court. i would look to clarence thomas as an example because he does not budge. he does not care what the media says about him. he does what he thinks is right. you have to have those people. and then you have to have leverage you can pull. i believe article two of the constitution means the president has the executive authority. we just say these bureaucrats somehow cannot be held accountable. i disagree with that. if we have an fbi agent going to harass a pro-life advocate like they did mark howell and sends a swat team, i would fire them immediately. when you have the fbi trying to censor dissent, you fire those people. had i been president in 2020,

anthony felt she would have been fired, and you've got to be willing to do it. the censorship regime in place during the last presidential election -- and by the way, i think it remains in place in federal agencies, telling people what they can and cannot run have to be held accountable, meanwhile julian assange is still in prison. so these people have violated the first amendment. they have to be held accountable for that. people died as a result of that because they were censoring truthful information about covid. if people would have adopted those policies, the country would have been better off. individual states would have been better off, so i think it had a profound effect, the fact that they censored dissent on covid meant some kids got locked out of school for a year. the fact that they censored dissent on covid meant some people took some of these booster shots when they did not

need to and ended up having an adverse reaction, so it had major, major impact. i think not just with the censorship, i think everything involving covid, i think you need to be -- i think there needs to be major, major accountability because if there's not, if you don't have a reckoning, they are going to do it again. in terms of using pardons, my goal is to and weaponization of government, and that involves firing people. it involves taking parts of the doj and putting them in other states. iowa, if you guys want part of the doj, i will send it out here, to alabama, wherever. part of what you need to do if you have a two-tiered system of justice, you need to make sure -- there are some people that got away that should not have. they need to face the music. if there are other people being targeted through abusive government, then needs to be use of the pardon power, so the day

after the election, we will open up the ability of people to submit applications after the pardon based on if they were treated to similarly or as a government mobilized against them, so we will do it at the front end of the administration. not going to wait until my last day of office. people are doing that, and that's part of ensuring a single standard of justice. we need to be willing to use the pardon power. it will be done on a case-by-case basis because i'm a governor who actually has had to look at these things. but we will be issuing pardons, and that will be determined based on the facts and circumstances at the time. >> we know the u.s. government reads the private communications of american citizens by the tens of billions without a warrant. everyone knows this. it has been revealed. no one has moved to stop it. do you think there is a good reason to allow this? how can that be? >> the federal government has a responsibility to protect us from foreign threats. we will have intelligence

capabilities overseas, but to turn those on our own citizens, especially with this government's behavior, is totally untenable. i'm going to go in and declassify or put as much stuff out as i can. i think you guys have a right to know things that happened 60, 70 years ago that the government kept under wraps. obviously things that are more recent, but my default will be that they will have to have a high birth to justify why it should not be public or some of these things we have all talked about that have occurred in the past because the government uses classification as a way to evade accountability for itself. there is a legitimate use of classified information, but what should be classified and what actually is is, like, so much more, so'tis it's all about protecting their power, but it is a huge problem in how they

have conducted this. to turn the government on the american people, that is a founding father's worst nightmare. >> let me end with a shallow question based on speculation. do you think biden will be the democratic nominee? >> honestly, i go back and forth. as an incumbent president, unless he is willing to step aside, i don't think they can get him out of there. on the other hand, i'm fully prepared to have a florida-california showdown and let the people choose what's the better vision for the united states of america because i'm very confident that the freedom in florida is what more people would choose rather than the public defecation on the streets of san francisco. >> governor ron desantis, thank you very much. >> thank you. god bless. >> wen yu and on "public defecation," it's good --