Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Interview with Ron DeSantis

Interview

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INGRAHAM: Get out of the way. That was the President's message to my next guest, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Governor, thanks for being with us tonight. It seems to me that the Biden administration sees you as this kind of way to almost change the subject from their own failures. Your response?

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Well, I think you're right, Laura. I mean, this is a guy that ran for president saying he was going to shut down the virus. He wasn't going to shut down America, or the economy and shut down the virus. And yet, what is he doing? He's bringing in people from over 100 different countries across the southern border.

Every variant on this planet, some we don't even know about, are absolutely coming into our country that way. And what they're doing is, people are coming and then they're farming them out all over the United States, putting them on buses, putting them on planes. And so when he's lecturing people about imposing COVID restrictions and lockdown policies on the one hand, and yet not only doing nothing to stop the border surge, but actually facilitating it. On the other hand, he just loses all credibility when it comes to COVID.

INGRAHAM: Do you know how many migrants have been shipped to Florida? Are you given any notice?

DESANTIS: No notice. They do not tell us. We have to sometimes do - we try to do investigation. Sometimes we've gotten some documents given to us where we put two and two together. But they do fly people in, they fly in the accompanied minors. But then also, Laura, you've got a lot of Military age males coming through the border. And it's not mostly Mexicans, it's people from Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Haitians, you name it, and they're getting on buses and going.

I have law enforcement, they're helping Governor Abbott and we've been there for over a month. And they say of the my - the illegal border crossers that they come in contact with, a majority of them are telling our guys that they want to end up in Florida. So we're working on strategies to be able to deter that. But this is a huge issue. And obviously, it's an issue beyond COVID, because it's about the security of our country. But you can't impose restrictions on Americans and say Americans have to do all these things. And then just willy-nilly let in everyone from around the world.

INGRAHAM: Now, there's a narrative being spun, Governor, by the White House and, of course, the media there, that Florida hospitals are busting at the seams. But we found part of a roundtable from Florida hospital CEOs this morning. Watch.

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CARLOS MIGOYA, CEO, JACKSON HEALTH SYSTEM: Right now we're down to 25 percent of our inpatients in ICUs. Other hospitals in South Florida are seeing even less numbers in that between 15 and 20 percent of their patients in ICU.

SHANE STRUM, CEO, BROWARD HEALTH: 80 percent of our patient census is non- COVID patients. These are critically ill patients, many of whom delayed care during the Pandemic.

JOHN COURIS, CEO, TAMPA GENERAL HOSPITAL: At TGH right now we have 126 COVID patients. We're 1041 bed hospital.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Governor, what's the real story here?

DESANTIS: Well, I think those CEOs told the story, we have had a summer wave, we've had seen significant increases in COVID patients. But as the CEO of Tampa General said, that's 10 to 15 percent of their total census. And it's important when the media is spreading this misinformation and actually lying, it could deter someone from going in to get care for things like heart problems or stroke. And so all those CEOs said, we are treating everybody. We're open for business. We're busier with COVID than we were six weeks ago, but please come in and get care.

And so I understand the media's got narratives they try to spend, I understand they have a partisan agenda. But just be careful when you're spreading that misinformation that people somehow think that they shouldn't go in. You can go in and every one of those CEOs invited people to come in and they're running and they're running well.

INGRAHAM: Now, like you, Governor, many parents are concerned about what the - well, some of the misinformation about COVID in kids is doing to our youth. And this morning CNN did a piece about a 12-year-old from Duval County. Watch.

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LILA HARTLEY, STUDENT: Dear superintendent, Dr. Green, and school board members, I would like to encourage the requirement of masks at school in Duval County.

I am so worried that if masks are not required my brother could go to school one day, and the next be dying in the hospital.

WILL HARTLEY, STUDENT: At school I wear two masks because I want to make sure I don't get sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

INGRAHAM: Governor, I feel for these kids. They are really scared. But what is going on here? And why would the media obviously being using kids to try, I guess, backhanded way of hitting you?

GOV. RON DESANTIS, (R) FLORIDA: Well, they did this last summer, Laura, when we went to in person schooling. We said we're going to have kids in school. And we understood it was a low-risk environment. Oh, man, they were saying all kinds of stuff, and we had a very successful school year. We're going to do it again this year.

In Florida, though, we think it's really important that parents make decisions about whether kids go to school with masks or not. So if certain parents feel that they want their kids doing that, we're not going to prevent that. We have a lot of parents, including me, who doesn't think that's healthy for our kids to be wearing masks all day.

And I know people like Joe Biden think the government should force kindergartens to sit there under these masks for six, seven, eight hours a day. I could just tell you, Laura, in Florida last year in our school districts, we had some that had mask requirements, others that didn't. The ones that didn't, those counties had lower per capita cases than the ones that did. And so it's not proven to really impact viral transmission in schools. And so that's why I think it should be the parents' decision, and it shouldn't be mandated by the government.

INGRAHAM: Governor, we learned that the administration is considering -- I'm going to ask all my guest this tonight -- a vaccine mandate for foreign visitors coming into the United States. Apparently, they're working on that, it will be announced soon. Your reaction?

DESANTIS: I think that'd be a big mistake. I think that would chill commerce. I think that would hurt tourism. At the end of the day, in Florida, for example, we have 91 percent of our seniors have gotten shots. I do believe, and those hospital CEOs said that that has reduced mortality, particularly among our elderly. But ultimately the vaccine is protecting you. I think it's pretty clear people are getting infected even if they're vaccinating. So it's effect on transmission hasn't been what we anticipated. And so that's just the fact. And so I think that those types of requirements I think would do more harm than good.

INGRAHAM: Governor, great to see you tonight, thank you.

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