Vivek Ramaswamy swipes at Ron DeSantis on Disney
The Florida governor’s crusade against the corporate giant is drawing increasing criticism.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made a dig at one of his likely opponents, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, over the governor’s public battle with Disney.
“Here’s where Ron DeSantis really lost it here. He’s gone on the wrong path as he claimed — and this part actually sounded good to me — Disney should have never had crony-capitalist, lobbying-related privileges in the first place,” Ramaswamy said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Here’s the part he doesn’t mention: one of those crony-capitalist privileges was — and I think the most relevant one — was codified into law by none other than Ron DeSantis in 2021,” Ramaswamy added, referencing reports that DeSantis’s staff worked with Disney to provide an exemption from a law that the governor signed that put restrictions on tech companies over social media usage.
That exemption “undermines the credibility of his crusade,” Ramaswamy said.
DeSantis’ battle with Disney began after the Florida Republicans’ passed a bill to limit discussion of sexual orientation and gender in schools, known colloquially as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The Republican governor has ramped up his attacks on the company in the recent weeks, moving once again to strip Disney of its self-governing status (after earlier being outfoxed by Disney’s lawyers) and suggesting, apparently jokingly, that the state build a prison near the Florida theme park. Disney has sued, saying it is being discriminated against over political speech.
Ramaswamy joins a growing list of Republicans who have criticized DeSantis’s crusade, including GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who said he Florida governor “is being absolutely destroyed by Disney.”
On Saturday, President Joe Biden chimed in with his own dig at DeSantis’s Disney battle: “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got to them first,” Biden quipped during his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.