On June 11, 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appeared on The Rubin Report with Dave Rubin. During the interview, DeSantis discussed Florida drivers’ rights when a mob surrounds a vehicle and threatens the people inside.

DeSantis stated:

We also have a policy that if you’re driving on one of those streets and a mob comes and surrounds your vehicle, and threatens you, you have a right to flee for your safety. And so if you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to just sit there and be a sitting duck and let the mob grab you out of your car and drag you through the streets.

That description tracks Florida’s 2021 anti-riot package, CS/HB 1 (Combating Public Disorder), signed into law by DeSantis on April 19, 2021 (Chapter 2021-6). Among other provisions, the legislation created Florida Statutes section 870.07. In a civil action for personal injury, wrongful death, or property damage, it is an affirmative defense that the injury or damage was sustained by a participant acting in furtherance of a riot. The defense may be shown by a riot conviction under s. 870.01 or by proof of such a crime by a preponderance of the evidence.

Important limits that are easy to overstate in commentary:

• Section 870.07 is a civil affirmative defense — it does not automatically erase every lawsuit, and it does not by itself grant blanket immunity from criminal prosecution for hitting someone with a vehicle.
• Related but separate Florida self-defense law (including "stand your ground" under chapter 776) can also matter in a criminal case if the driver reasonably believed force was necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm; that is not the same provision as s. 870.07.
• Social media summaries of DeSantis's remarks sometimes framed the law as a green light to run over protesters with no consequences. That oversimplifies the civil-defense structure and omits the criminal-liability caveat noted by legal analysts covering the June 2025 comments.

In short, DeSantis publicly described a Florida policy of allowing drivers threatened by a vehicle-surrounding mob to flee for safety — including the risk of striking people who blocked them — and that framing is rooted in the 2021 HB 1 / s. 870.07 civil framework (with stand-your-ground principles often discussed alongside it), not a guarantee of zero legal consequences in every scenario.