Florida Governor Discusses WWE Being an “Essential Service,” Responds to Criticism

As noted before, Florida state governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order this past Thursday to include WWE and nationally televised sports as “essential services,” exempted from the state’s current stay-at-home orders. This legally allowed WWE to resume production of live weekly shows at the Performance Center and ended previous warnings from Orange County officials about shutting down WWE’s production due to being in violation of the initial state order.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference on Tuesday and discussed his reasoning for why WWE was upgraded to “essential service” status within the state.

“Obviously, WWE, there’s no crowd so it’s a very small number of people. We look at it on a case-by-case basis. We haven’t had a huge amount of requests. A lot of this will be ‘what do we look like in May?’ rather than doing stuff now. The one thing I do support is, we do need to support content, especially sports and events. We’re not going to have crowds there, I get that. If NASCAR does a race and can televise it, I think that’s a good thing. I’d like to see [Tiger] Woods and [Phil] Mickelson golf. That’s social distance. I think people are starved for content. We haven’t had new content since the middle of March. If people are told to say closer to the house, it sure does help to have fresh things to do. People are chomping at the bit. I think people, to be able to have some light at the end of the tunnel and see things get back on a better course, I think from a psychological perspective, it’s a good thing.” (Transcript h/t: Fightful.com)

The portion pertaining to WWE starts at the 25:55 mark of the video below:

During another press conference today, DeSantis was also asked about the possible connection with Linda and Vince McMahon being huge monetary supporters of Republican politicians, with Linda working to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign this year. On the same day that she pledged to raise $18.5 million for Trump in Florida, DeSantis signed an executive order declaring WWE an essential service.

A reported began to ask about the connection, saying, “Because Vince and Linda McMahon are big supporters of the president and the president helped you get elected…” before being interrupted by DeSantis.

“Who suggested that? What does that have to do with me? Like, are they supporting me? Did you look up that?” DeSantis said. “Here’s the thing. I support doing things… I mentioned NASCAR, I talked to Lesa Kennedy. I want them to race, I think the public would like to see – it’s gonna be on TV. I understand you’re not going to fill up Daytona Speedway right now. I’m not suggesting you do, but I think if there’s content that can be created, I think that’s a good thing.”

“And even Dr. Fauci said televised sports is a positive thing,” DeSantis continued. “There’s not a lot for people to look at right now and I think you’re starting to see that start to wear on some people after a while. And so my view would be, well let’s do what we need to do to stop the spread, to make sure we’re flattening the curve, but at the same time you can give people some outlets. Maybe that’s with programing on TV, maybe that’s with essential activities, which I’ve supported from the beginning, where you go for a run, you get out and do things, as long as you’re not in close contact with other folks So that’s kind of the deal but obviously people can look up anyone that’s supported me. If there’s no support it’d be really hard to draw that connection at that point, not that it would be legitimate anyways.”

NEW: @GovRonDeSantis dismissed notions that politics played a favor in decision to expand Executive Order that allows @WWE to continue operations and LIVE broadcasters.

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— Greg Angel (@NewsGuyGreg) April 15, 2020