Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis revealed the behind-the-scenes scandal of his contentious 2023 Fox News debate with California Gov. Gavin Newsom during a new appearance on Sean Hannity’s podcast – and trolled Newsom over his father, who fled California for Florida and said DeSantis was a better governor.
Hannity pointed out to DeSantis that the debate was supposed to run from 9 to 10:30 p.m. but that at 10:36, Newsom was still eager to continue.
“I’m looking at the clock, it’s 10:36. I’m like, ‘Guys, we gotta end this,'” Hannity recalled. “And Gavin goes, ‘Ah, having such a good time.’ And I’m like, ‘Would you like to stay governor?'”
Hannity said both men agreed to keep going, but after a commercial break, Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, walked onto the stage and ordered her husband to stop.
“‘Shut it down,'” DeSantis said, describing what followed. “And so I was just kind of sitting there. I didn’t know what to do. And then obviously, you had to finish the show. So it was kind of awkward.”
“I’ll tell you, though, this: when we did the first commercial break, I went to use the head. And I know that they were not happy that I invoked the father-in-law. I mean, they were hissing at me when I was going back there.”
During the debate, DeSantis had claimed that Newsom’s father-in-law told him he moved from California to Florida because it was better governed — a dig that landed hard with Newsom’s team.
“The reality is that the truth hurts,” DeSantis said. “I mean, it is what it is. And they were unhappy because you just put up the true facts.”
DeSantis also used the Hannity appearance to discuss a possible 2028 presidential run. The Florida governor did not close the door on a second run.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I think that in ’24, like in Iowa, the people that voted for Trump, if he wasn’t running, I would’ve gotten like 90% of those people. They were conservative voters, right? They didn’t want the non-conservative, they wanted me. The timing didn’t work out, obviously, for that.”
The 2023 Fox News debate, held in Georgia with Hannity moderating, was widely viewed as a preview of a potential 2028 matchup between the two governors. Both men are leading contenders for their parties’ presidential nominations heading into that election year.