Florida Gov. DeSantis hosts Sean Hannity's radio show, warns of threat from the left

Here's a microphone check: Gov. Ron DeSantis sat in as the guest host of Sean Hannity's radio show Wednesday afternoon.

Broadcasting from Palm Beach, what he called "sunny South Florida," DeSantis promoted the Sunshine State as the “Southern Command” in a fight against “the mortal threat that the left poses to all that we hold dear.”

DeSantis tweeted on X at 3 p.m. that he would be host for the next three hours.

The governor joked that Hannity had taken a major career risk by turning the program over to him, and then proceeded like a radio veteran, regaling his audience with stories about Hannity and golfing with the late conservative icon and radio talk show legend Rush Limbaugh.

DeSantis recounted how he had “nagged Sean for years” to move his radio and television shows to Florida. Hannity took him up on the offer in January. He now broadcasts live every weekday from a studio he built in a $5.3 million Palm Beach home, according to the Palm Beach Daily News.

And DeSantis described Limbaugh as a humble conservative who had “paved the way for so much of what people like Sean and me have been able to do.”

DeSantis recounted after Limbaugh’s death he had ordered flags to be flown at half-staff – and Palm Beach County refused to comply. “Palm Beach has been like a long-time liberal bastion,” DeSantis explained.

But that was in early February 2021. In the 2022 election, DeSantis carried the county, which had voted blue for decades. Republicans also took a majority of the seats on the Palm Beach County Commission.

“Nobody thought that was possible. I think that’s Limbaugh’s revenge,” DeSantis said.

The governor closed his first segment by telling his nationwide audience that "Rush understood you need to take on the left."

“And that’s what we really do in Florida," DeSantis added. “We are not only fighting the left. We are beating the left.”

DeSantis will be hosting the program until 6 p.m. Eastern time. Hannity's Show is heard on 735 radio stations across the U.S. and is also carried by Sirius XM radio. The program has an estimated 20 million listeners.

Editor's note – Information above on the number of radio stations and listeners has been updated.

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: DeSantis sits in for Hannity on radio show: 'We are beating the left.'