Chris Christie doesn’t think Ron DeSantis is a ‘conservative’ after Disney flap
Mabinty Quarshie
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Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) had blunt words about Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and his feud with Disney on Tuesday, questioning his possible 2024 rival’s conservative credentials.
“I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative based on his actions towards Disney,” Christie told Semafor’s Steven Clemons.
DESANTIS ANNOUNCES PLANS TO REVOKE DISNEY AGREEMENT THAT UNDERMINED STATE DISTRICT
On Monday, DeSantis announced a legislative push that would revoke an agreement Disney made with the former Reedy Creek Improvement District Board of Supervisors to bypass Florida’s control over the Walt Disney World Resort. He also floated the idea of building a prison next to Disney parks in a retaliatory move. This comes just weeks after DeSantis suggested he would raise taxes on Disney hotels and impose tolls on roads leading to the corporation’s theme parks.
Christie, however, wasn’t impressed with DeSantis’s latest move against Disney.
“Where are we headed here now? That if you express disagreement in this country, that the government is allowed to punish you,” Christie said. “To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did. And now, all of a sudden, here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”
Disney and DeSantis have been feuding since last year when the corporation criticized the governor’s Parental Rights in Education Act. But the discovery last month of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District’s agreement with Disney to strip state power over the corporation for decades has reinvigorated the ensuing feud. The agreement’s “King Charles clause” gives Disney control over the district until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, King of England, living as of the date of this declaration.”
Christie said DeSantis’s actions are unbecoming of any presidential candidate in the United States.
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“For him to have taken the action he took against Disney and to not have foreseen that Disney was going to do what they did in response, which was to completely take over the millions and millions of acres and the zoning decisions of that before they got the authority — well, I tell you this much: That’s not the guy I want sitting across from President Xi [Jinping] and negotiating our next agreement with China or sitting across from [Vladimir] Putin and trying to resolve what’s happening in Ukraine,” Christie said.
Christie also had tough words for DeSantis: “Sometimes in politics, you just have to admit when you screwed up and you got taken. It happens.”