Nov. 21, 2022 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
14:50
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| There's going to be some tough elbows in that race. | ||
| Let's just be very clear. | ||
| It's going to get rough. | ||
| It's going to be tough. | ||
| But I think at the end of the day, both gentlemen understand that the country is on the line. | ||
| Who comes out of that? | ||
| Man, Joe Biden might as well go ahead and pack his bags. | ||
| I think it's going to be over. | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is a congressman from Florida's 19th district, Congressman | ||
| Welcome to the Rubin Report in the swamp, man, in D.C. | ||
| How did we have to come all the way down here to do this? | ||
| Listen, it's work week, you know. | ||
| We finally get back to work. | ||
| So, no, Dave, it's great to be with you, man. | ||
| Thanks for coming up. | ||
| You're working here in D.C. | ||
| this week. | ||
| Everyone's here. | ||
| Everyone and their brother, they're trying to figure all this stuff out, huh? | ||
| Leadership, and Trump's now in, and it's messy, man. | ||
| It's always messy. | ||
| It's politics. | ||
| I mean, when is it time? | ||
| Give me a time when it's clean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's just not the case. | ||
| Look, right now, this week, everybody's, you know, swirling their bubble and trying to figure out who's going to be in what leadership slot. | ||
| Are the Republicans at 218? | ||
| I think we got that answer late last night, early this morning with Kevin Kiley out in California. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| We're going to get through this stuff and it's going to be back to business. | ||
| So what are you thinking about all this leadership stuff? | ||
| We were at the Senate building yesterday. | ||
| I talked to a couple of Congress people. | ||
| Everyone's jockeying for position. | ||
| Tim Scott, Florida Tim Scott, Senator, is now going to run against McConnell for the Senate. | ||
| I mean, what do you think's going on here? | ||
| Man, I think it's good. | ||
| I think it's healthy. | ||
| Look, Mitch has been Senate leader for, what, 10 years now? | ||
| 75 years, I think. | ||
| Something like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| It's been a long time. | ||
| He's also 80 years old. | ||
| You know, I don't really get too caught up in the age stuff. | ||
| To me, it's, are you have the ability, the energy to do the job? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And as long as you keep that standard, I'm fine with how old you are. | ||
| Or frankly, how young you are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because I think sometimes up here on Capitol Hill, people are like, oh, well, you just got here. | ||
| Or, oh, you're really young. | ||
| You know, the Bible always says don't despise a man because of his youth. | ||
| So I think it's really about competence and ability and execution. | ||
| It's good that Mitch is getting challenged. | ||
| I know that people tend to be like, oh, well, how could you? | ||
| Well, how could I what? | ||
| Every Republican or every Democrat for that matter, that's up here. | ||
| It's because your people sent you. | ||
| They chose to elect you. | ||
| So if people, if we have to go through that process and battle for votes at home and earn the support every time from voters, then we come up here and we think it's all for acclimation? | ||
| I think that's wrong. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons why leadership, frankly, in both parties has caused issues for the people of America. | ||
| So I think it's healthy. | ||
| You must be feeling pretty good about leadership in Florida these days. | ||
| I mean, obviously, we were together on election night. | ||
| DeSantis crushes it by 20 points. | ||
| Rubio wins by 15 points, something like that. | ||
| Like, super majority in the House for Republicans. | ||
| We're doing something right in Florida. | ||
| Is that the blueprint for the rest of the country right now? | ||
| It is. | ||
| To take a step back, people need to understand, in Florida, a couple things. | ||
| One, we have term limits in our legislature. | ||
| So you don't have a situation where you have members who have just been around for a long, long time and then their own power structure becomes the navigation point of your state. | ||
| Our legislative seats roll over all the time. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| Number two, everybody knows Ron DeSantis. | ||
| Let's talk Rick Scott for a moment. | ||
| Rick Scott, before he became Governor Rick Scott, challenger to Mitch McConnell, Rick Scott, he was a donor. | ||
| And he was a businessman. | ||
| Completely upset the apple cart in the Republican Party going back, what, 2010? | ||
| 2010, 2012 was the time when he came in? | ||
| I think it was 2010. | ||
| He completely upset the apple cart. | ||
| The Republican establishment did not want Rick Scott. | ||
| He thought that there was a better way. | ||
| He becomes governor. | ||
| And so then you have Ron DeSantis. | ||
| He was not the establishment's choice in Florida. | ||
| He becomes governor. | ||
| He was basically a Tea Party guy. | ||
| Or the Liberty Caucus, I mean. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not even. | |
| It was the Freedom Caucus. | ||
| One of the Freedom Caucus founders. | ||
| Tea Party conservative. | ||
| Tea Party patriot. | ||
| Now he's governor and everybody says now he's America's governor. | ||
| You know, I said that first, by the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was that you? | |
| Was that you? | ||
| I'll give you credit. | ||
| But anyway, he's basically, he's the best governor in the country. | ||
| We all know this. | ||
| That is because in Florida, our political environment is a meritocracy. | ||
| That needs to be translated throughout the United States. | ||
| Do you think other red state governors have the cojones, basically, to do it? | ||
| I mean, he picks the right fights, he's bringing in the right people. | ||
| I always tell people, you know, from the staff I meet, it's like, these are good people, but other governors, they kinda, they still want the media to like them. | ||
| You know, he bans mainstream media from events. | ||
| Like, he's fighting in a completely different way. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I always tell people back home, we have a lot of electeds, we don't have a lot of leaders. | ||
| That's just the truth of the matter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Carrie Lake, it's unfortunate she didn't get across the line, but she was in that mold where she was just going to be like, this is what we're doing. | ||
| You either like it or you don't, but it is what needs to happen for the state of Arizona. | ||
| And I think that Arizona, in my view, is going to suffer because they're not going to have that type of leadership, which is critical in that state, and frankly, in all states. | ||
| But are other people capable of Ron DeSantis-type leadership or Donald Trump-type leadership? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| But you have to have an ability to not be concerned about what the pundit class is going to think. | ||
| You have to be willing to go against the grain sometimes, because you have to look at the facts, look at the data, and then present the best option for people, regardless of what the apparatus is going to say, regardless of what the press is going to say. | ||
| So you mentioned Trump. | ||
| You're a Trump guy, and you're a DeSantis guy. | ||
| It seems like everyone's just itching for this fight. | ||
| Trump's thrown out a couple lines on this thing. | ||
| I keep telling my audience, look, I feel like I win either way, because if DeSantis doesn't run, he's our governor, and that's freaking great, and then I'll support Trump. | ||
| If they both run, they'll battle it out, and hopefully it doesn't get too nasty, and we get a better candidate out of it. | ||
| But what do you think? | ||
| For people, because I think a lot of people like them both, partly for the same reasons, partly for different reasons. | ||
| Where does that put you and what do you think they need to do? | ||
| How about that? | ||
| First and foremost, does it put me in a bad spot? | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Because, look, I'm supportive of both men. | ||
| They both have been tremendous in the roles that they've played in the apparatus of our politics. | ||
| Donald Trump speaks for itself. | ||
| Our country, and frankly Republicans, learned how to stand up and do the right thing because of Donald Trump. | ||
| Simply would not have happened without him. | ||
| Absolute truth. | ||
| Say what you want, but whether it's Mitt Romney, John McCain, God rest his soul, George W. Bush, we had seen the line of, let's just try to do the things that are possible, be leery of the press because they have more ink in their pen than you have words in your mouth and all that kind of other stuff. | ||
| And Donald Trump broke that mold and said, no, forget all that. | ||
| Those people don't even know what they're talking about. | ||
| Do the job and then let the people see the results and they'll reward you. | ||
| And so he is the catalyst for the new wave of Republican. | ||
| But if you're going to ask me what I think needs to happen, Donald Trump's speech announcing | ||
| for the presidency was exactly where he needs to be. | ||
| Yeah, the tone was right. | ||
| Pitch perfect, talking about his agenda, and talking about his record. | ||
| Because beyond a shadow of a doubt, he has the very best record of anybody in the United States. | ||
| Stay in that lane, focus on that, he's the leader in the clubhouse. | ||
| If that's the Donald Trump you see for the next 16 months, he's President of the United States. | ||
| You can go ahead and book that right now. | ||
| What would you want to happen between him and the governor, if the governor gets in? | ||
| I know it's a little hypothetical stuff, but how would you want it to go down? | ||
| I mean, you know both of them. | ||
| Do you want it to all be done publicly? | ||
| Do you want them to kind of, you know, have to sit down at Mar-a-Lago and figure out how to work it out? | ||
| I mean, look, I would hope they would have a sit down and figure this thing out, whether that's Mar-a-Lago or the Governor's Mansion, whatever that place is. | ||
| They might want to do it in Orlando, somewhere neutral site or whatever, I don't know. | ||
| But I would hope that they would work it out. | ||
| Now, the reality of politics is sometimes that's not what happens. | ||
| So I'm not going to sit here and tell you what I would hope to see. | ||
| I'm going to tell you what I think I will see. | ||
| It's going to be rough. | ||
| I'm just going to tell you. | ||
| It's going to be rough. | ||
| Governor DeSantis has accorded himself very, very well. | ||
| He's led the state of Florida. | ||
| Biggest win in modern Florida history. | ||
| Nobody thought we would see election victories like this in Florida. | ||
| He's the tip of the spear of that. | ||
| You got to give the man credit for what he has accomplished. | ||
| Donald Trump is looking at this whole thing like I'm the one that's shown everybody how to do it. | ||
| There's an OJZ line. | ||
| I'll show you how to do this, son. | ||
| And that's Donald Trump. | ||
| And so I think that there's going to be some tough elbows in that race. | ||
| Let's just be very clear. | ||
| It's going to get rough. | ||
| It's going to be tough. | ||
| But I think at the end of the day, both gentlemen understand that the country is on the line. | ||
| Who comes out of that? | ||
| Man, Joe Biden might as well go ahead and pack his bags. | ||
| I think it's going to be over. | ||
| Yeah, well, amen to that. | ||
| And for the record, unless you know something I don't know, we don't even know if DeSantis wants to run. | ||
| I mean, it's just as simple as that. | ||
| Like, the guy loves Florida. | ||
| That's what people keep saying. | ||
| It's like, is he going to run? | ||
| He loves this state. | ||
| Look, I want to piggyback off what you just said. | ||
| I don't think a decision's been made on this. | ||
| As much as the pundit class is throwing it out there and they keep asking the questions because it's clickbait and that's what people want to watch and see, I would rather the media actually focus on this FTX debacle, because there's some real stuff going on that has to be uncovered. | ||
| But I digress. | ||
| He has not made a decision. | ||
| Maybe he's made it in his mind, but nothing's really coming out, like, signaling this, here we go, here we go, here we go. | ||
| I think we gotta, like, pump the brakes. | ||
| Donald Trump has now come out, he's announced. | ||
| Let Ron DeSantis take the time, whatever that time might be, to decide what he's going to do. | ||
| And then we're going to have plenty of time for the fireworks, trust me. | ||
| He'll be waiting for it. | ||
| Right, it's very early anyway. | ||
| Let me ask you something else just about being here in D.C. | ||
| and being somewhat new in Congress, and that technically you don't look exactly like what a generic congressman looks like. | ||
| You're black? | ||
| That's what they told me. | ||
| That's what they said. | ||
| My mama said it when I came out the room. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| How does it feel to be in this, you know, like when you're doing your thing in Florida | ||
| and it's just kind of working and then you come to a place like this | ||
| where it's all about the jockeying and the media and everything else. | ||
| Like, do you like being here when you're in DC doing your thing? | ||
| Sometimes. | ||
| Like, just to be straight with you, man, Like, it's still surreal that I'm here, that I'm doing this. | ||
| I told my colleagues, you know, after this conference chair thing, they were like, man, you know, it didn't work out. | ||
| How do you feel? | ||
| And I'm like, are you kidding me? | ||
| If you look at my life, going up from Brooklyn, New York, all the struggles I've been through, to being in a room doing this, man, I'm playing with house money, man. | ||
| So that part is static for me. | ||
| um now just keeping it real because this is what i do the petty backstabbing stuff in dc man i don't like that kind of stuff yeah like i'm a man if you feel a certain way say it yeah i will respect you if you do I don't do all the backtalk, backstabbing stuff. | ||
| I don't like that stuff. | ||
| I'm very diplomatic and I'm a genuine person. | ||
| I'm very nice. | ||
| I respect everybody because I want people to respect me. | ||
| I'm here about business. | ||
| I'm here to fight for the country. | ||
| I'm here to win for the country. | ||
| But all these little petty games, Dave, I'm not that guy. | ||
| That is not me. | ||
| I'm still a kid from Brooklyn, New York. | ||
| I'm a kid from the streets who has matured through life, built a career, engaged in politics. | ||
| Let's do business and let's go home. | ||
| We're not always going to like each other. | ||
| We're not always going to agree with each other. | ||
| And that's fine. | ||
| But let's do business. | ||
| Let's make sure it gets done for the people. | ||
| All the petty stuff, I'm not a big fan of that. | ||
| Two guys born in Brooklyn fighting in the free state of Florida, pretty cool. | ||
| I got, all right, two more for you and then we'll let you go. | ||
| So just talk to me real quick about what's going on with the hurricane recovery, because as I told people, you are the congressman for, I mean, you got hit. | ||
| It is your, that is your home area right there. | ||
| What's the latest? | ||
| It's gonna be tough sledding on our beaches. | ||
| Our beaches were hit really, really hard. | ||
| That's what's gonna take two years, in my opinion, to rebuild. | ||
| Now I wanna caution everybody. | ||
| Most of Southwest Florida is back up and running. | ||
| You know, our restaurants are open, our businesses are open, hotels, Airbnbs, you know, I think some of the boat rentals and stuff, you can still probably get your boats and get out to certain places. | ||
| Some of the places are still going to have to be repaired. | ||
| But Southwest Florida is open. | ||
| People are flying in and out right now as we speak. | ||
| But our barrier islands, our beaches, they're going to take some time to recover. | ||
| In Fort Myers Beach specifically, in Sanibel, in Bonita Beach. | ||
| The beach in Naples, you know, we're going to redo some stuff, | ||
| but we'll be back on track. | ||
| It's going to be fine. | ||
| It's just going to take time and some patience. | ||
| Now, I think we have the leadership to get that done. | ||
| Obviously, Governor DeSantis at the head of that has been phenomenal. | ||
| Our local leadership has done a tremendous job. | ||
| FEMA, SBA, we've been working in concert with them. | ||
| Everybody's pulling forward. | ||
| pulling forward, it's just going to take time to get it back. | ||
| Were there any major screw ups with this thing? | ||
| Because it felt like it was just as disastrous as it was, that it was just kind of clean. | ||
| And obviously the governor gets a lot of credit for that, but FEMA, you know, there are federal agencies that came in and helped too. | ||
| Well, listen, first of all, in terms of screw-ups, the way the press likes to talk about it. | ||
| Well, because they were waiting. | ||
| They wanted something. | ||
| This is the problem with the press. | ||
| They do this stuff all the time. | ||
| The reality is, that storm, and I remember, I was at the National Hurricane Center because I was here in D.C. | ||
| when the storm made landfall. | ||
| And the modelers were telling me directly, it was tough to predict the track on this storm because it kept, they call it jogging, like it kept moving from here to there to here to there. | ||
| And it just kept jogging. | ||
| I think it was Tuesday. | ||
| late Monday into Tuesday before that storm hit. | ||
| We have people who evacuated from Tampa Bay into Fort Myers. | ||
| And they were shocked when they basically were in the epicenter of the storm | ||
| because all the modeling had showed Tampa Bay, Sarasota County. | ||
| And so that's kind of what happened. | ||
| It was tough, but I think in terms of response, in terms of preparedness and response, top-notch. | ||
| All right, I got one more for you. | ||
| What do you want to do after being congressman What's the plan, man? | ||
| We're in DC. | ||
| We have a governor who might move on to some other things. | ||
| There's all sorts of interesting opportunities and also a Republican party that's obviously in flux right now and needs some new voices. | ||
| What do you think about that? | ||
| When I left the statehouse, some of my colleagues said, would you ever come back? | ||
| And I said, I'm only coming back one way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| I like it. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| Good seeing you, man. | ||
| Good seeing you. |
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