Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, joined by his wife Casey and his children, walk the Fourth of July parade in. Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
Ron DeSantis refused to say how he would respond if one of his children is gay.
DeSantis has fought to pass restrictions in Florida on how gender identity and other topics can be taught.
But when Time Magazine’s Molly Ball pressed him on his own family, DeSantis shut her down.
Both as governor of Florida and as a presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis has made anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation a key part of his public platform.
Among other things, he signed a slew of anti-transgender rights measures into law, launched a war with Disney over his so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, and his presidential campaign recently tweeted a widely condemned anti-LGBTQ video.
In short, he’s tried to make a name for himself in large part by attacking the sexuality and gender of other people’s children and pushing laws that would restrict both. But when asked by Time Magazine how he would respond if one of his three kids turned out to be gay or trans, he didn’t have much to say.
“Well, my children are my children,” he told Time’s Molly Ball. “We’ll leave that — we’ll leave that between my wife and I.”
DeSantis’ presidential campaign has been struggling, to put it mildly. He’s consistently polled far behind former President Donald Trump and recently dropped below extreme longshot Chris Christie in one New Hampshire poll. He’s laid off a huge portion of his campaign staff, and in a “reboot” of his campaign earlier this month, hired a rookie to replace the rookie who had been running things. He’s also been taunted with jeers of “pudding fingers” at campaign events.
As of today, according to FiveThirtyEight, DeSantis trails Trump by nearly 40 percentage points in major national polls.