Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis slammed Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on social media over his latter’s push for legislation targeting Disney.
In a tweet on Tuesday, Polis criticized DeSantis for being in support of the state legislation stripping Disney of its special self-governance powers and for saying he was looking into legislation regarding Twitter’s poison pill to Elon Musk’s offer.
“Florida’s authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector are driving businesses away,” Polis tweeted. “In [Colorado], we don’t meddle in affairs of companies like [Disney] or [Twitter].”
“Hey [Disney] we’re ready for Mountain Disneyland and [Twitter] we’re ready for Twitter HQ2, whoever your owners are,” the Democrat governor continued.
Polis discussed his tweet in a phone interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday, during which he said DeSantis is “welcome to disagree” with any company and that he believes “when the government starts threatening private companies with retribution based on their free speech, that takes us down the road towards authoritarianism.”
“I think it’s important that we can create a culture that goes against this kind of cancel culture that we’re seeing,” Polis said. “And just because a company has a viewpoint you don’t like doesn’t mean that that company should be penalized by politicians, right?”
“Consumers, absolutely,” the Colorado governor continued. “You can choose not to go to Disneyland. You can choose to buy or not buy whatever product you want. But where it becomes inappropriate is where government leaders say we’re specifically running laws that penalize your company because we don’t like the way you’ve exercised your free speech.”
Polis warned that the Sunshine State could “see a mass exodus of companies” if the state attempts to hurt them with legislation because of their political viewpoints.
The Democrat governor also said he is adamant that “the best balance for a free market economy is to respect that there’s a variety of voices of political opinions, and no person or company should be singled out because of their ideology or belief and specifically targeted by a bill that’s really anti-business.”
A spokeswoman for DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, pushed back against Polis’ comments in a Thursday email to Fox News Digital, saying, “Floridians, many of whom have fled from socialist countries like Cuba and Venezuela, understand what socialism is and is not.”
“It would be prudent for all politicians to educate themselves on the definition of socialism before weaponizing such baseless allegations,” Pushaw wrote. “Socialism IS: an authoritarian system where the state controls the means of production and the entire economy.”
“Socialism is NOT: [p]assing legislation to create a more even playing field for all businesses [or] [s]elling shares of a corporation due to evidence that corporation is not acting in shareholders’ best interests and therefore creates unnecessary risks to investors,” she continued.
Pushaw said that DeSantis “has consistently supported a more level playing field for all businesses in Florida” and that it is “not ‘retaliatory’ to pass legislation that allows all corporations to do business in a fairer environment.”
