WINTER HAVEN, Florida — Leaders of “woke” corporations must “grow a spine” and “stop being sucked into genuflecting to the left,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Monday.
DeSantis spoke to Breitbart News following his signing of Florida’s anti-riot bill, which enhances criminal penalties for rioters and takes a stand against defunding the police in the Sunshine State. On the emergence of “woke” corporations caving to the radical left, particularly in relation to state efforts to implement basic election integrity measures such as voter ID — like in Georgia — DeSantis said it is the height of hypocrisy given the fact that many of these entities continue to do business with bad actors, like the Chinese Communist Party.
“What I’ve said is, look. If you stick your beak into things that don’t concern you, then I’m going to start asking questions. I mean for example, if you say having a — we’ve [Florida] had voter ID for a long time — but if you’re upset at Georgia for having voter ID but you do business with the Castro regime in Cuba or with the Communist Party of China, that’s something that we’re going to want to make sure that that’s known and vetted because it’s just hypocrisy,” the Republican governor said, further explaining that it is “hypocrisy rooted in cowardice.”
“But it’s really hypocrisy rooted in cowardice. These are executives who are scared to death of the left and the corporate media and so they always want to take the path of least resistance, and they think the path of least resistance is just to cave and to kind of give them what they want,” he continued.
Bowing to the radical left, he said, is not the right move from a business perspective alone, because the radical left will only demand more.
“The minute you cave, they’re going to come back at you for something else. It’s never going to stop,” he said, explaining the virtue-signaling will not come “cost-free.”
“This is something we think is very damaging. It’s not the way— you don’t want an economy to be politicized in every aspect [and] have every economic actor take positions on all these things. And I know are they out there protesting H.R. 1 in the Congress which is outrageous and unconstitutional? No. I don’t hear that,” he said.
“Are they protesting the Democrats who want to pack the Supreme Court? I haven’t seen any of these corporations speak out against that. And so it’s basically rooted in them being bullied by the left, and a lot of these executives not having backbone to be able to stand up,” he continued before offering his own advice.
“So I would just tell them: ‘grow a spine and actually stand up and stop being sucked into genuflecting to the left,'” he added.
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