Nikki Haley attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on his stance on Disney, but DeSantis responded by saying he does not take campaign contributions from Disney and that Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District has been there for decades.
via redstate:
I remember back in April when 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley attacked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had yet to declare his intentions at the time, on his stance regarding Disney.
All I could think was “Why? Why?”
Pushing back hard on corporate wokeness should be a major defining issue for any Republican presidential campaign, especially one that wants to be successful. Yet Haley went full corporatist instead and made it about business and jobs and tax dollars and supposed “sanctimoniousness,” either ignoring or not understanding the fact that Disney took a lead role in trying to get a Florida law that was designed to protect children in public school classrooms from being taught sexually explicit lessons repealed or struck down.
Since then, Haley has doubled down, strangely insinuating that DeSantis is a “thin-skinned” hypocrite or something for taking campaign donations from Disney and then turning around and not playing nice when they went too far. This is something she again claimed during her CNN town hall Sunday, calling it “vendetta stuff.”
On Monday, DeSantis was asked about Haley’s remarks during an interview on Brian Kilmeade’s radio program, and he laid it all out on the line.
“How utterly bizarre. I mean, somebody does a campaign contribution you’re supposed to lay down for them? That’s not how I operate,” DeSantis stated. “People can support me or not support me. I call them as I see them. And if you’ve supported me, but you’re wrong, I’m going to do what’s right.”
DeSantis also pushed back on Haley’s claim that DeSantis was all about richly rewarding Disney until they crossed him, telling Kilmeade that Disney’s Reedy Creek Improvement District “has been there for decades” and “had their own government, had these massive subsidies,” which the DeSantis administration “unwound,” in DeSantis’ words.