St. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference Wednesday morning at St. Petersburg College, presenting $7.2 million to the Florida College System institution for a new semiconductor, AI and machine learning lab.
According to DeSantis, $3.2 million of the award is sourced from the Florida Job Growth Grant Fund while the remaining $4 million is from the Florida Department of Education Workforce Development Capitalization grant program.
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“This new lab is going to help fortify our standing as the No. 1 state for talent development in the nation. We’re currently No. 1 for talent development, and that was not true 20 years ago, so we’re proud of that,” DeSantis said. “It’s also going to be able to teach students really significant and applicable skills that they will immediately be able to use upon graduation.”
The governor was joined by FDOE Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. at the event.
“A traditional four-year degree doesn’t always lead to a high-paying job and the skills that students can learn in Career Technical Education can pay off without having to be saddled with debt,” Diaz said. “Industries like manufacturing, semiconductors, cybersecurity and construction all have high demand and high-wage jobs available that don’t require a four-year degree. This is why our governor has set a goal for Florida be No. 1 in workforce (education) by 2030, a goal that I fully expect us to meet and surpass.”
A reporter asked DeSantis for his thoughts on the likely potential that Vice President Kamala Harris will run against former President Donald Trump as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election.
“I think clearly we wanted to run against Biden. You know, I’ve been dealing with Biden for since I’ve been governor, it’s just the reality is, he was, he shouldn’t have run in 2020, he was in the basement, he used COVID to be able to do that and then it’s really, people have seen the decline over these years. It’s just the reality, and when he agreed to do that debate, I told people, I was like, you know, ‘Get your popcorn out, this is not going to go well,’” DeSantis said.
The governor went on to call Harris’ record as vice president “disastrous,” in large part since President Biden tapped her to oversee diplomatic efforts in several Central American countries regarding migration to the U.S. from said countries, what DeSantis phrased as her being “put in charge of the border.”
The last question that DeSantis answered invited him to weigh in on how Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez was cited with a non-criminal infraction for allegedly posting a photograph to social media showing the body of 13-year-old Madeline Soto. The governor said he didn’t have “all the facts on that” and encouraged waiting to see “how all that shakes out.”
“I will just say this, just generally. I spoke at the sheriff’s conference yesterday. We’ve got a lot of really good sheriffs in the state and we’re fortunate. You know, I was there with Grady Judd from Polk County (...) I was in the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin, I had Wisconsin people asking me about Grady Judd, so we’re proud of that,” DeSantis said before going on to speak for several minutes about Miami-Dade County’s upcoming election for sheriff — its first such election since the 1960s — then about squatters, retail theft rings, a statewide 50-year-low crime rate, the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, the U.S.-Mexico border, September 11th, October 7th, then once again back to the Afghanistan withdrawal.
DeSantis was previously scheduled to appear Monday morning in St. Petersburg, but that news conference was canceled.
Watch Wednesday’s news conference again in the video player below or by clicking here.
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