DeSantis Says Florida Looking Into Twitter’s ‘Ruling Junta’ Over ‘Poison Pill’ Response to Elon Musk Bid

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) said at a Tuesday press conference that Florida is looking at potential action against Twitter, Inc. over the recent decision to use a “poison pill” play in an effort to prevent billionaire Elon Musk from taking over. The state’s pension fund, claimed DeSantis, is a Twitter investor.

During a presser at The Villages, DeSantis was asked if he would “commit to completely divesting” the state’s Twitter shares over the company’s positions and policies.

“If we did that, we would not have standing to hold the board of directors accountable,” he said. “It gives us standing to do it.”

DeSantis said that as a matter of course his office does not get involved in the pension fund investments, but acknowledged that they do in some cases, such as with Ben & Jerry’s over the company’s BDS stance.

DeSantis argued that if the board has lapsed in their financial responsibility, Florida as a shareholder has standing to object.

“If the board is acting in ways that are breaching their fiduciary duty, if they’re doing it for reasons of power and politics, and basically to serve as a suppression arm of the government, well then you’re in a situation where, you know, you need some accountability there,” said DeSantis. “First of all, that’s not free market capitalism, when you have that, OK?”

“That’s a ruling junta that’s using their policies to try to marginalize people that disagree with them,” he said.

He then went on at some length about tech companies and censorship, and Florida’s past actions on those subjects. He said tech companies are in some cases too big, and have too much power, and should be “broken up,” before circling back to Twitter specifically.

“You notice the people that are the most hostile to Musk are people from like these legacy media outlets like Washington Post and CNN and all these places,” said DeSantis. “Nobody trusts these people anymore, I tell you they lie every single day.”

“But they’re saying like, ‘Oh, this is so bad. It’s bad for democracy because Musk believes in free speech!’ And I’m just thinking to myself, Are you kidding me? But that is what they believe,” he said. “Their view is that they should be able to control the discourse. They should be able to control what you hear and think. They should be able to impose a narrative on our society. And Elon Musk represents a threat to that. And quite frankly, he represents a threat to their power.”

He said that big institutions “from media to tech’ have been “corrupted by ideology.”

“So stay tuned on what we’re able to do in the Twitter situation. I want to make sure that we have a viable path forward. I’m not just going to do it if it’s not going to be something that has a chance of success, but somebody’s got to start speaking out against this stuff and we’re going to do that,” he concluded.

Watch the clip above, via WKMG News 6 in Orlando.