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Oct. 23, 2022 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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Multiple Major Cities Repeating the Mistakes of Detroit? | Francis Suarez | POLITICS | Rubin Report
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dave rubin
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francis suarez
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francis suarez
What's happening now in the United States is very similar to what happened in Detroit at the Industrial Revolution, which is that you're seeing this change from industrial to digital.
And Miami is the only city in America that got the memo and has basically built its entire economy to capitalize on what I call a tsunami of opportunity.
Cities like New York and San Francisco and Silicon Valley thought they were too big to fail.
And I'll tell you, Dave, they're not.
The world is more disrupted than ever.
Companies that are massive get disrupted out of existence like that.
and we are building for the future and it's exciting to see.
unidentified
All right, I'm Dave Rubin.
All right, I'm Dave Rubin, we'll see you next time.
dave rubin
We are at the local studio here in Miami, and I am with the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, who loves Miami.
Fair to say you love Miami.
Nobody loves Miami.
Everyone loves Miami, but, like, you love Miami.
francis suarez
There's no separation between me and Miami.
Like, first of all, just coming here and seeing this incredible studio in the heart of Wynwood in Miami, which is one of the most dynamic, fun, exciting neighborhoods.
It's totally on brand for you, right?
And, you know, it's just exciting to see you here.
And we totally embrace what you're doing, you know, in terms of the content, the conversations that you're provoking.
And it's very much in line with who we are as a city.
So it's just fun and exciting to be here.
dave rubin
So I asked my guys right before we started, I sat down with you in Miami Beach in June of 2021.
That's right.
So it's about a year, a little less than a year and a half ago.
I was not a Floridian.
I was not really thinking about Florida.
There was a little bit of it.
There was a little something, but a lot has changed for me and this company.
And you're basically in charge of the city that everyone is coming to right now.
How do you feel about that?
Because I know it's good, but it also comes with some stuff that's tough, right?
unidentified
Sure.
francis suarez
So look, first of all, as the first mayor of Miami that was born in Miami, right, in the 125-year history of Miami, this is a dream come true.
I feel like every day I'm living a dream.
Insofar as I was born here, I grew up here, went to college here, law school.
dave rubin
Your dad was mayor here.
francis suarez
My dad was a mayor from when I was eight years old to when I was 16, so I saw this sort of evolution of the city very up close.
And to be in a situation where we have set up a city to be successful, when a lot of urban cities in America are not successful, are failing.
And we did it because we followed three simple rules.
We keep taxes low, we keep people safe, and we lean into innovation.
So, you know, we have created a city that's number one in tech job growth, right?
Number one in wage growth.
We have a city that, because we've kept taxes low, has grown 12%, which is the second most in recorded history.
And with all that additional revenue, even though you lower taxes, you actually have more revenue, right?
Spoiler alert for New York and California, right?
We have actually done the opposite of what other cities have done, which have defunded their police.
We've increased funding for police, more officers than ever.
Another shocking correlation.
Our crime is about to be, God willing, you know, a knock on wood.
We're not in December yet.
But we are on the precipice of having the lowest per capita homicide rate in history.
dave rubin
Yeah.
francis suarez
So it's exciting time to be here in Miami.
So much has changed in the last year and a half.
dave rubin
And it's everywhere in Miami, not just right here, because although I don't want to say the specific part of town that I live in, you know, and in the area that I live in, there hasn't been a home break in 14 years.
I mean, the flourishing is every day I wake up and there's a new Los Angelino coming to my town.
Now I'm starting to worry.
francis suarez
And I've been in an elected office for 13 years, so maybe there's a correlation between the 14 and the 13.
But look, I think you're right.
Miami was the best-kept secret, number one.
Number two, Miami has always punched above its weight, right?
When you think about, what is Miami?
I mean, you could arguably have someone who lives in Palm Beach, who is in Paris, and they ask them, where are you from?
They say, Miami, right?
There's this big thing, right?
I always say Miami's an idea, it's more than a city.
And it's an idea born out of a trauma.
What's the trauma?
The trauma is many people in Miami were kicked out of their country of birth, were exiled, because a leader in their country said, give me all your businesses, give me all your property, don't worry, we'll make everything equal.
And you know what they did?
They made everything equal.
Equally miserable for everybody, right?
And so, we are traumatized by that.
And I think that's why Miamians are so fundamentally pro-America.
We're so fundamentally pro, you know, sort of fair market and free market.
And we believe in freedom and liberty, right?
Those are principles that for us, we fought for, right?
We've been, my grandfather was in jail in Cuba.
His brother died in a Cuban jail.
You know, it's very, very real for us.
dave rubin
So on the tax side, you wrote a piece in Wall Street Journal about a month or month and a half ago talking about free markets and capitalism and why this place is thriving.
So how does it make any sense?
I thought the government just needs more of our money to make things work, but you're keeping taxes low and we don't have roads exploding and all sorts of stuff.
francis suarez
Yeah, it's so counterintuitive.
dave rubin
How is it possible?
francis suarez
How is it possible?
So let me give you a real example, right?
If you are living in New York City right now, cost of living differential between New York and Miami is two to one.
So in New York, the median home price is a million dollars.
In Miami, median home price is 540.
Two to one, right?
In addition to that, in New York, you're paying, if you're in the highest tax bracket, a lot of New Yorkers are, because again, your cost of living.
dave rubin
Well, they're all coming down here now.
francis suarez
Well, but check it out.
Let's do the math, right?
You're paying $0.54 out of every dollar in taxes.
That means that for every dollar you earn, you take home $0.46.
In Miami, you get $0.63.
It is a huge delta.
And so that, at scale, obviously is incredibly motivating to people.
I've seen statistics that 70% of the taxes in New York are paid by 8,000 people.
And if that becomes $7,500 and $7,000 and $6,500, you get what's called a vicious cycle, right?
You get massive holes in your budget when those people leave, and there's only one way to get more revenue for them, which is to increase taxes, which creates more migration, more holes, and I call it the death spiral.
So, what's happening now in the United States is very similar to what happened in Detroit at the Industrial Revolution, right?
You're seeing this change from industrial to digital.
And Miami is the only city in America that got the memo and has basically built its entire economy to capitalize on what I call a tsunami of opportunity.
And cities like New York and San Francisco and Silicon Valley thought they were too big to fail.
And I'll tell you, Dave, they're not.
The world is more disruptive than ever.
Massive, get disrupted out of existence, like that.
And we are building for the future, and it's exciting to see.
dave rubin
Do you get any pushback from other mayors who are going, hey, Francis, you know, if you keep taxes low, it's gonna make us look like a bunch of idiots, because we got the grift going here, and it's kind of working, until it doesn't work out.
francis suarez
You know, I'll tell you this.
I'm president of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors.
I'm president of all the mayors in the country.
And what I get more of, and I gotta be careful how I say this, is I get more of the, camera's not on, listen, we really think It's great, but we don't have the ability to do it.
That's more the sentiment that I get, right?
dave rubin
So why would a mayor not have the ability?
Is it because of the locals?
francis suarez
I think there's a variety of reasons.
I think they get a lot of pressure from the press, right?
Which has their own agenda, right?
Which is a grow government.
Government is a solver of every problem agenda.
I think they've got to deal with institutions.
Like, for example, when I first got elected in 2009, I was the only candidate elected without union support.
Because I wouldn't lie to the unions and tell them, look, we're going to raise your pay when we're in a recession, right?
You know, when we have to cut 20% of our budget in one year, which is another thing, that's another lie, right?
Which is that government can't balance its budget.
Listen, I had to cut 20% from my budget in one year.
$115 million out of a $600 million budget.
If I can cut 20% in one year, we can balance our budget at the federal level.
dave rubin
And the city didn't fall apart.
francis suarez
No, on the contrary.
It started thriving, right?
So we balanced our budget.
We were at $13 million in reserves at the time, 2009 in November.
Now we're at $150 million in reserves, the most reserves we've ever had.
We have the highest bond rating under my administration ever in the history of the city, which is AA+, one away from the highest, which is AAA.
So we're incredibly fiscally sound.
You know, sort of following the same formula that you would if you're a homeowner, right?
Like in your own personal, save a little bit of money, pay off your credit cards, you know, pay your debt, don't overspend, right?
And then spend strategically on the things that are going to make you more successful.
Invest in yourself, invest in, you know, policing, keeping people safe, that kind of thing.
dave rubin
What kind of pushback do you get from the Democrats here when you're doing some of these things?
So you're lowering taxes, you're putting police on the street.
I mean, one thing for sure that I notice here is that when I go to New York and I see cops all over the place, to me it's a sign that something is not right.
When I go here and I see cops, whether it's in South Beach or down where I am, it's like, oh, they're patrolling and just making sure everything's okay.
It's a huge difference in mentality.
francis suarez
And I think the other difference in mentality is we support them.
I think in other cities, they don't feel supported.
What you've got to understand is right now in America, being a police officer is the hardest job in America.
It's harder than being a roofer.
There isn't a job in America where you get paid less money, with more scrutiny, and more risk, and more at stake, and being asked to do more things, because now they're being asked to be social workers.
I mean, it's really, really hard to be a police officer in America, and I think fundamentally, number one, they need to be Protected, they need to be sort of supported, right?
Number two, they need to be well paid, right?
Like anybody in life, right?
You've got to support them financially because they've got to take care of their kids.
They want their kids to go to school just like you do.
And so we've been blessed.
And then you have to have a lot of police officers because it creates a deterrent effect.
We've given them a ton of technology to help them leverage their sort of force multiplier.
And all of that has been incredibly successful in maintaining our homicide rate.
dave rubin
What are some of the stresses of having all these people move here?
I mean, house prices for sure.
You mentioned they're lower than New York, but it's tough to get a place here.
And one of the things I'm always worried about, and I see emails from this, is that people that are the OG Floridians, who have done it right and lived here for a long time, they're suddenly feeling, oh, we could get priced out because all of these rich people from LA and New York.
francis suarez
Look, we are a victim of our success, right?
What happens is, first of all, you have historic inflation.
So, here's a problem with government saying, we're going to solve the inflation crisis by giving everybody money, right?
So, you're in a level where we're at historic inflation.
If you look at urban America right now, not just Miami, urban America, rents are up 25% or more in every urban city, big city in America.
Miami's more like 35-45%.
Why?
Because you layer on top of that a hyper demand.
People are just fleeing, getting the heck out of places where they think they're not wanted, or where they think they're getting taxed to death, or where they think the economy's moving away from.
dave rubin
I know the feeling.
francis suarez
You have all these things happening, right?
And so, that is definitely putting pressure on Miami.
No doubt about it.
I would be lying if I didn't say that were the case.
But what makes us different and why will we thrive in the face of that stress?
A couple of things.
One is New York is completely built out.
I think they built the last building in Park Avenue in the last 50 years just got built, right?
San Francisco is artificially constrained, right, with their zoning code.
Miami has the ability to grow 10x.
We're in a neighborhood right now, Wynwood, which has explosive growth.
You see it when you walk out of here.
dave rubin
You can feel it here.
It's ready to happen.
francis suarez
We have the ability to grow.
The delta between what's built and what can be built is a 10 to 1 multiple.
So we can supply ourselves at a level where, you know, where we can keep prices relatively low.
We have, just to give you some numbers, about 185,000 dwelling units in the city proper.
In the pipeline right now, to be built in the next 24 to 36 months, we have 47,000 dwelling units.
So that's a 25% increase in our entire building stock.
So that's number one.
Number two, we do affordable housing in a way that is sort of private sector oriented.
We do the carrot approach, not the stick.
We don't tell developers, this is what you have to do.
We tell developers, look, we want to be a part of your capital stack.
We will do, you know, we'll give you a dollar for every $15 that you invest in the project, every $20 you invest in the project.
And the only caveat for our dollar is you got to maintain rents at a certain level for a certain period of time.
That's it.
It's a carrot.
You want the carrot?
This is what you got to do to get it.
If you don't want it, it's okay.
dave rubin
So they can build either way?
francis suarez
Absolutely, 100%.
They can do market, or if they want to do something different, they can do affordable housing.
And we have built, and we will build, probably between $4.5 and $6 billion of affordable housing over the next 5 to 10 years here in Miami, in addition to the supply.
dave rubin
Can you also talk about the homeless situation?
Because there basically isn't a homeless situation, at least compared to other major cities.
So Florida, it's pretty nice.
Seems like people would want to come down here, right?
francis suarez
Don't give away ideas.
dave rubin
I'm sure a lot of them watch your podcast.
20% of my audience is homeless.
francis suarez
So look, we're blessed.
We have systematically invested and we did it in a way that was really smart, right?
So we have something called the Homeless Trust and it is a tax, right?
We don't like to pay taxes, but this is a tourist tax.
So this is for people who are coming to Miami, staying in hotels, they pay 1% on their bill, right?
And it funds a homeless trust.
So basically our visitors, not our residents, are paying this tax.
Our visitors are basically paying a tax.
That goes to help what I call the least, the last, and the lost, the most marginalized in our community.
And so, you know, what have we done?
We built a decentralized set of centers that give them alcohol treatment, drug treatment, mental health treatment, and vocational training.
Right?
In addition to that, we're spending over the next two years about $7 million in a plan that I call Functional Zero.
So we have 640 homeless right now.
6-4-0, according to our last census.
That's it.
That's it?
That's it.
But I want to be at zero.
Because I don't think any city in America, big city, has really challenged themselves to get to zero.
And I think that if we create a model, then it can be certainly exported, right, to the rest of the country that are dealing with tens of thousands of homeless in their cities.
dave rubin
Yeah.
And again, this is one of those things where I just see these other mayors, it's like, why don't you just look at Miami and fix things?
I went to Denver.
francis suarez
Yeah.
dave rubin
I did not, you know, Denver is not San Francisco.
Denver is not LA.
francis suarez
And I love the mayor of Denver.
dave rubin
Yeah, but I was like, but what's going on here?
francis suarez
Look, I think I had a mayor, and I won't say who it was, from a big city, one of the top 20 cities in America, tell me recently, we just waited too long.
You know, we didn't do what you guys did.
We used to have 9,000 homeless.
We brought it from 9,000 to 1,000, right?
And 1,000 is in the county, which is 2.8 million people.
Only about 600 of that 1,000 is in the actual city proper, which is my jurisdiction.
So we did it through this decentralized network.
A lot of these cities just didn't do it.
And then, of course, we're seeing a lot of mismanagement, a lot of... I mean, I've heard some crazy statistics in California where people are paying like $400,000 or $500,000 a homeless or something like that.
dave rubin
Yeah.
francis suarez
And it's just money that there's no controls.
It's rife with, you know, a variety of problems.
And so that obviously is not going to work.
dave rubin
Let's talk a little bit about the hurricane situation because obviously it ended up, Hurricane Ian ended up hitting Southwest Florida.
We're obviously in Southeast Florida, but at first it was going to hit here.
Obviously hurricanes do hit Miami.
Yeah.
You've been tweeting about it and doing all sorts of stuff.
What do we need to know for the Miami and the future Miami and who's going to come down here or to Florida in general when it comes to these storms and all this stuff?
francis suarez
So to be honest, and I'm, you know, again, as President of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, I led a delegation To the Gulf Coast, to see all the cities that were impacted in the Gulf Coast.
And it was devastating.
And there's two things that I think everybody needs to know.
Thing number one is, for every dollar that we as a community, as a country, spend on the front end in resiliency investment, we save seven to eight dollars on the back end.
So I was just at a podcast today, at an interview, where they were saying that Senator Rubio's Advocating for 33 billion dollars of spending for hurricane relief So my point is if we would have spent 5 billion on the front end We could have potentially saved 25 to 30 billion on the back.
You're talking about building new structures I'm talking about things like buildings that I'm talking about things like like like like urban reservoirs pumps pumps increased seawalls You know backflow preventers.
These are all the things that we're doing in Miami right now Yeah.
Okay.
In Miami, we, post Hurricane Andrew, which was in 1992, which was a 200 mile an hour wind event, we basically made Miami the most wind resilient city on the planet.
Like, we're a bunker, right?
The problem now is water, and water volume.
What we've seen in the last two years are two events that, frankly, are super frightening.
Ian and Dorian, I don't know if you remember Dorian from a couple years ago.
Dorian was a Category 5 that sat on top of the Bahamas.
Never touched continental U.S.
that I'm aware of.
Maybe up north.
But certainly didn't touch Florida.
And it produced 25 foot of storm surge.
So Ian has produced 10 plus foot of storm surge.
You're talking about 25.
So Mother Nature has just shown us two massively destructive events that no city in the world is prepared for.
Period, full stop.
We've got to start being creative.
One of the great things about this country is its innovative spirit.
Its ability to solve problems, complex problems.
We get thrown challenges, we solve them.
We're the first country to invent We have always been a country that finds a way to solve big problems.
Obviously, as heinous as it was, we used it and it ended the war.
It could have saved—who knows what would have happened if we didn't have that technology.
We have always been a country that finds a way to solve big problems.
And this is a big problem.
And I think, you know, we're going to have to really dedicate a ton of resources to try
to solve it, because the scale of these problems are much bigger than what we've seen before.
dave rubin
How does that work related to the city level versus the state level?
I mean, you know how proud I am to be a Floridian, but watching Governor DeSantis just go from every community every freaking day and you could see the media, the media was doing what they do with you.
Like when we had, when we had one day of water and brickle, there was one picture of some Kids getting out of a club because they want to use it against you guys.
But can you talk a little bit about how the cities have to operate with this stuff versus the state?
francis suarez
Yeah, so I'll give you a sense of the differences in our budgets.
We've got about a billion and a half dollar budget.
The state has a hundred and ten billion dollar budget.
So it's about a hundred to one, right?
Approximately.
So, you know, definitely the state, we need the state.
We also need the federal government.
Under President Trump, he had proposed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill.
What ultimately ended up getting passed was a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
That money, it's like a joke, I haven't seen a penny of that money yet.
dave rubin
Have you called anybody?
francis suarez
Oh yeah, we've called a bunch of people, like, hey, when is this thing gonna flow, right?
So I think, but I think, look, infrastructure is a legitimate expense for the federal government if it's spent properly and if it doesn't, you know, produce massive deficits, which unfortunately it has, right?
But I think at the end of the day, you know, we need a piece of that money so that we can spend money on the front end to, again, avoid having to spend more money on the back end.
dave rubin
How confident are you that Florida is going to stay in good shape like it is?
Obviously, we've got elections coming in a couple weeks.
You mentioned Senator Rubio, obviously Governor DeSantis.
I mean, it really feels like things are functional here and working.
I mean, to watch those bridges get rebuilt, the Pine Island Bridge and the Sanibel Causeway.
In two weeks, I mean, it's incredible stuff, but how confident are you that it's gonna keep kind of moving in this direction?
francis suarez
So I'll give you the good news and the worrisome news, right?
So the good news is that Trump won Florida by 100,000 votes in 16 and 400,000 votes in 20.
So the trend is favorable.
In addition to that, Republicans for the first time, I think in history or maybe in like 40 years, outnumber Democrats, right?
So I think it's about 250,000 votes as of the last time I looked at it.
So, that's the good news, right?
So, all that indicates strength for Republicans.
Republicans should win at all level.
2018, which was the last election like this, was very close.
The governor, I think, won by 35,000 votes.
Senator Scott won by, like, 14,000 votes.
And in that same election, a Democrat won statewide, right?
So, that just—which goes to show just the variability of Florida.
The worrisome news is that in Florida, there—and people don't talk about this.
I don't know why they don't talk about it, but they should.
There's 20 to 25% of the entire electorate is MPA.
It's a huge number, right?
dave rubin
No party affiliation.
francis suarez
So they're not Republicans or Democrats.
So when you're talking about, you know, 4 million people that are MPA, if 50% of them vote, that's 2 million votes.
So you could win Republicans by 250,000 votes, but the MPA's got to drop, they've got to break your way, right?
And so that's, if somehow something bad happens, I guarantee you that would be why it would happen.
So, you know, we'll see.
dave rubin
What do you do to get those people?
I mean, I guess you just keep making it work?
francis suarez
Yeah, you keep making it work.
I think a lot of those people, even in a county like Dade County, which is a predominantly Democrat county, right?
I'll give you an example, something that the former president did, right?
He lost Dade County in 16 by 30 votes, 30 percent, I'm sorry, right?
And he only lost it in 20 by 8 percent.
So, when you talk about that increase from 100,000 to 400,000, it almost comes exactly back to Dade County, because it's a 22% delta on 1,200,000 voters, right?
So, what did he do?
He was strong in Venezuela, right?
He was bold, and he recognized Guaido and got a coalition of countries to recognize Juan Guaido to try to disrupt the Maduro regime.
What did he do on Cuba?
He rolled back all the Obama giveaways, right, during Obama's presidency.
He wanted a legacy victory, kind of like Nixon's China opening, right, with Cuba and putting an embassy there.
And we got nothing in return, right?
Trump undid that.
So 75% of new arrival Cubans voted for Donald Trump.
dave rubin
Yeah, it's really fascinating.
I mean, that these people know it and they get it.
unidentified
Of course.
francis suarez
No other issues that are near and dear to their heart.
So when someone speaks to those issues, people are loyal about it.
dave rubin
So we're going to, in a little bit, we're going to bring in Asaf, who's the CEO of Locals, but I just want to talk to you broadly on the tech side before we talk about what we're doing.
Sure.
So you brought in all these tech, well, you brought them in.
I mean, basically, you sent out a tweet.
You said, how can I help?
Next thing you know, all these tech people show up.
We've talked about this a little bit once or twice before.
But, you know, there's always the fear from the original Floridians.
Oh, they're going to bring all the bad ideas.
francis suarez
Sure.
dave rubin
What do you think?
francis suarez
Well, I'll say two things.
One is, it was a counter narrative, right?
What was happening in American cities.
New York pushed out Amazon after HQ2.
unidentified
Yep.
francis suarez
And people don't realize it's not just that you're pushing out 50,000 high paying jobs, right?
It's the signaling effect.
What are you telling your own residents that you're taxing to death?
Things aren't going to get better.
We don't want you here.
Get out of here because we don't value people who achieve the American dream.
California, F Elon Musk.
Elon says, message received.
I'm out of here.
Same thing.
You're not only losing the world's richest person, frankly, you're losing something much worse than that.
You're losing the jobs from those companies.
Again, signaling effect.
We don't want to hear if you're successful, which to me is an anti-American sentiment.
When somebody says, hey, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami?
And I respond, how can I help?
What am I saying?
I love this country.
I'm saying, I want you to be successful.
I'm saying, I want my residents to be successful.
And I think what happens is the media feeds our residents one thing and one thing only.
Government is here to help you on the expense side.
We're here to give you housing, we're here to give you transportation.
And I unlocked something that I thought was counterintuitive and by the way, the press sometimes
give me a hard time about it, which is I wanna help you fish, not just give you a fish.
I want to teach you how to fish.
I want you to be empowered.
I want all my residents to get the best paying jobs, to be able to provide for their families so that they don't need an affordable house, affordable housing, apartment, that they can buy whatever apartment they want, that their kids can go to good schools.
I want my people to be successful.
And I think, I don't know why that's controversial at times.
You know, I get criticized because it's like, oh, but you don't care about it.
No, I do.
I've spent 12 years of my life building affordable housing and mass transit.
Free, you know, trolley systems in our city.
Now, I want people to be successful.
And I spend a lot of my time and energy on that.
You know, in terms of some people who find it harder for them.
You know, my heart goes out to them because obviously you want everybody to be successful and you want people to embrace the competitive scenario that we're in.
But it reminds me a little bit of… I don't know if you ever saw the movie Primary Colors?
dave rubin
Yeah, I saw it 20 years ago.
francis suarez
Anyways… I know it's the Hillary… Yeah, there's a scene where the Clinton character, John Travolta, actually says, you know, I'm going to do something very outrageous.
I'm going to tell you the truth, by the way.
unidentified
I don't know how.
francis suarez
I don't know how many times that's happened.
But anyways, and what he says is he's telling a union organization that the jobs that left that factory are never coming back, but that what he said was that he's going to teach them to exercise a different set of muscles, the one between their ears, right?
And I think as our economy becomes more digital, unfortunately the economy that we're going to be living in is going to be more experiential, content-based.
And it's going to be more technological.
So we're going to have to get better.
And in getting better, we're going to thrive.
God willing.
dave rubin
How at odds do you feel like you are with the current administration?
francis suarez
Well, I think we're at odds on a lot of issues.
Look, we're at odds on government spending, right?
They've created this inflation.
Now in California, they're giving $1,000 in anti-inflation, which is going to create more inflation.
So they've created inflation.
unidentified
It's strange.
dave rubin
They always raise the taxes, and then they give you your money back, and you're supposed to thank them for it.
francis suarez
Exactly.
And by the way, it just creates inflation, right?
Right.
So you've got more inflation, so you've got dysfunctional foreign policy, disastrous retreat in Afghanistan, conventional war in Ukraine, which obviously this administration wasn't able to avoid.
This oil situation in the entire world, right, where you have oil prices that are dependent on foreign producers, the dependency of Europe on Russia.
You've got South America going socialist more and more, and the U.S.
having no coherent policy on that.
You know, we have systematically ignored Cuba's role as the head of the snake in exporting its only commodity, which is communism, and doing it very effectively because they were trained by the Russians in the 1970s.
And, you know, there's supply chain issues.
I mean, they have really not confronted successfully, in my opinion, any of the macro issues that are generational in nature that are going to set up this country for success.
dave rubin
Where are you at on the immigration stuff, generally?
Obviously, we had this big thing with the Martha's Vineyard.
francis suarez
Sure, sure, sure.
dave rubin
That whole thing.
I don't even really know, actually, how the city falls on when people just show up here and all that stuff.
francis suarez
Yeah, look, I mean, we're a city of immigrants, right?
Mostly legal immigrants, frankly, because, you know, Cubans had a favorable immigration policy called, you know, wet foot, dry foot and what preceded it.
So you were able to get asylum, essentially, automatically.
I just don't think we're having a very coherent conversation about it, you know, on both sides, right?
I think when you look at a city like Miami, we have 1.4% unemployment.
That's awesome until you want to start a small business and then you can't find employees.
Right?
So the beauty of us, of America versus China, for example, is we both have declining birth
rates and the difference is nobody wants to go to China.
Everybody wants to come here.
So I think that's an opportunity if we have a conversation that benefits the US, right,
as opposed to just a border conversation, right?
And I think that's where I hope the future of this conversation goes, because this is an unresolved issue that is not—it reminds me of World War I trench warfare.
Everybody's sort of in their side, just gonna poke up, they get back in,
and then in a year they maybe move four inches, right?
So there's just no coherent discussion on it.
dave rubin
So what do we do in Miami?
Like what's the policy?
If somehow illegals get here, I'm not even sure where the Martha's Vineyard one started
or how they ended up roughly here.
unidentified
But what is the city's policy on it?
francis suarez
Well, we're not ICE, right?
So we don't have a formal role.
So that's an ICE issue, right?
It's a Federal Government Immigration Customs Enforcement issue as to whether or not, how they detain people and what they do with them once they're detained.
So we don't have a role in that.
We don't get in their way either.
We sort of let them do their job.
And support them if and when necessary.
But, you know, again, part of what makes us special is our diversity, right?
And our inclusion in terms of a variety of different people that come from a variety of different backgrounds.
And it makes us who we are.
So, I also think for the Republican Party, I think this is important, Hispanics are trending Republican, right?
And I think, why is that happening in part?
Because Democrats don't know how to speak to them.
They either call them Latinx, which does not resonate when you go macro.
And then when you go nuanced, you call them a San Antonio taco.
So they don't get the macro branding.
They don't get the nuanced branding.
And I think this is an awesome opportunity for Republicans to say, hey, we respect you.
We know you want to be Americans.
We know you're law abiding.
We know that you believe in family and you want to, you know, you believe in the family unit as a means of trying to get people to be successful and education.
These are all of the things that Republicans always talk about, right?
So, you know, there's a great opportunity there to lean into that and not be worried that if, you know, something happens on the immigration front, it's going to be damaging to Republicans.
It actually might be very beneficial.
dave rubin
You mean you're telling me that Latinos, just like everyone else, care about more than one issue?
francis suarez
They do.
dave rubin
Isn't that wild?
francis suarez
And they care about our country.
dave rubin
Very bizarre.
francis suarez
Let me ask you one that I saw... Oh wait, look what's happening on the southern Texas border in congressional races.
No, it's incredible what's going on.
It's incredible Republican women that are going to hopefully sweep three congressional races, including one that I think they hadn't held for 150 years or something.
dave rubin
Myra Flores.
francis suarez
Myra Flores, yeah.
dave rubin
And she's the one that then the New York Times ran the article, what was it, the Latino face of the new right or something, or the alt-right?
francis suarez
There you go.
dave rubin
Something insane.
Let me ask you one about, that I saw some of my guys giving you some crap for, which is some of the gun buyback stuff and this thing.
So I saw my more conservative side going, he's coming for guns, he's a Democrat, something like that.
So I allow you to clean it up however you see fit.
francis suarez
Well, first of all, I think... People that like you generally, that live in this I'll tell you this, let's see how I put this sort of a little bit delicately, right?
There's a lot of jockeying going on right now and there's a lot of surrogates that are doing a lot of things to try to build people up and tear people down, kill them in the crib type of thing.
There's a lot of that happening with me as my profile gets bigger, as I get talked about in more prominent circles.
It's more like, hey, let's try to brand him as a certain thing, right?
And there's a lot of that happening with me.
You know, gun buyback is something that the city's been doing forever, right?
And it's not about, you know, being pro-gun or anti-gun.
I'm fervently pro-Second Amendment, I'm a gun owner, and incredibly pro-police.
I think really more, it's more for, you know, what happens oftentimes is like a widow.
Right?
Whose husband passes, and the husband was an avid gun collector, and they have 20, 30 guns at home, and they're afraid that if somebody breaks in, they're going to steal the guns and kill them or hurt somebody else, so they just don't feel safe with the guns at home, and they prefer to sell it.
You know, oftentimes our elderly people who are living on fixed income, right, and they get, you know, we have like, what do you call it, coupons that we give them or, you know, I forget what they're called.
sort of a gift cards that we give them, right?
And so we'll give them gift cards to Publix or gift cards to Target or whatever.
And they'd rather have $1,500 in gift cards to Target than 20 guns that they don't know what they're doing with,
right, in their own home.
So that's the prototypical scenario.
So it's not like we want to take guns off the street in that sense, or we want people not to,
it's completely voluntary, right?
So people want to do it, they do it.
If they don't want to do it, they don't have to do it.
dave rubin
Do we even have a gun problem?
I mean, are there shootings here, really?
francis suarez
So, that's the other thing, is that, you know, in this conversation about gun violence, you know, people, it's such a myopic conversation, right?
We don't talk about the fact that in Miami, for example, we were ranked the happiest city in America, the healthiest city in America, with 1.4% unemployment and increasing funding for police departments.
So it turns out, if you have more police officers, happy people, healthy people, and people that are working, guess what?
They're not killing other people, right?
So that's the formula for success.
dave rubin
The happiness may come from not being killed.
francis suarez
And by the way, that has nothing to do with whether they own a gun or don't own a gun.
That has to do with their frame of mind.
It has to do with what they are in life.
And I've often said, look, you know, if somebody wants to hurt somebody, there are unfortunately a multitude of ways that that can happen.
And so we've got to look at the root cause of why people feel compelled to do X and what we're missing.
And I think that gets lost in the discussion a lot.
dave rubin
Do you think the happy part is, I mean, and literally, it's not, you're not making it up.
I mean, it was voted the happiest city in the United States.
francis suarez
Multiple years, by the way.
dave rubin
You can see, you can see it here.
I mean, people, and it's not just the weather.
I think it obviously is connected to the spirit of freedom and all those things.
francis suarez
And taxes.
When you don't have to pay so much in taxes, you're happier, right?
Like, you know, at the end of the day, we want to, look, I have this concept called return on time.
Right?
We think about return on investment, right?
ROI, right?
And people don't realize that their most precious commodity is their time.
It's the only thing that we all have in common that is finite, right?
We can't make more of it.
I mean, we can be healthy and hopefully, you know, we have good genetics, you know, hopefully we live longer.
But we're all basically, you know, conforming to a life that is a certain amount of time.
And I think we have got to build our city around that concept.
And if you see the world, it's going to that concept.
It's experiential.
unidentified
Right?
francis suarez
Restaurants, virtual reality, metaverse, it's content, podcasts, YouTube, etc.
And then it's sports, it's, you know, experiential in parks and things like that.
And that's how you build a city that I think really respects people's most precious commodity.
dave rubin
On that note, we're going to take a 10 second break.
We're going to bring in Asaf because a year and a half ago, I said to you, I'm thinking about it.
And you said, basically, how can I help?
francis suarez
And here we are.
I love it.
dave rubin
All right.
If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist.
And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here.
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