Ron DeSantis went to Yale and Harvard Law School, but he maintains that he didn’t inhale, and that he despises both places even though he has profited from his elite credentials and connections throughout his career. This cynical ambivalence is not a new gambit for a prominent GOP politician. George W. Bush fairly broadcast the same attitude about his days at Yale during his years in office. Donald Trump loves to bang on about evil elites even though he always wanted his nominees to have impressive Ivy League pedigrees. Richard Nixon came by his anti-elite attitudes honestly, but the most prominent member of his administration was a Harvard professor. And so on.
What does this apparent hypocrisy about elite academic institutions mean in practice? There are inevitably limits to the populism of any candidate who relies on an Ivy League degree to make his case. It is, therefore, no surprise that DeSantis talks about the evils of woke corporations, but wants them to make as much money as possible, with a minimum of government regulation and taxation, as long as they shut up. After all, many of them are run by the kind of people who were his classmates.