Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday said he supports what Elon Musk is doing with Twitter, but he does not necessarily want the tech company relocating to the Sunshine State.
A reporter asked the governor about the chatter of Twitter moving its headquarters to Florida, but the DeSantis was not enthusiastic about the prospect, citing the negative impact it would have on Floridians in terms of cost.
“In Florida, I think we’ve done very well, particularly over the last few years, attracting businesses that are producing things,” he said, noting that his administration has worked “really hard” on vocational and career education. But ultimately, “importing some tech company from San Francisco has not been high on our list,” he said.
“I think that what happens is they tend to come in, they drive up the cost of living for everybody else and okay, yeah, they enjoy our lower taxes, but you know, what is, what are they really providing?” he asked.
However, DeSantis made it clear that he is “supportive” of what the billionaire is doing with the social media platform, because Twitter has been used as “a tool to enforce narratives and to stifle dissent when it was born to be an open platform.”
“The fact of the matter is, this is a guy that has succeeded in almost every enterprise he’s ever done and so he will, our state will benefit, we will get, I think $15, $20 million dollar profit from in our pension fund, but then he will make that company more valuable. I have no doubt about it,” he said, explaining that the State Board of Administration wrote letters to the Twitter board of directors before they accepted the offer, warning them that they must not reject a good offer simply over fears of Musk opening Twitter.
“But I’m not wanting to import that necessarily into the state of Florida,” DeSantis said, explaining that he would rather bring jobs to the state that are “rooted in” this state.
“We’re working on some good stuff, some good manufacturing, and we’ve done very well with aerospace … we’ve done very well with finance and some of these other things here in Jacksonville,” he said.
“In terms of … bringing Twitter from San Francisco to Florida, you know, that’s not something that I’m advocating,” he added.