April 6, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
21:11
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Some of the people that serve with me on the House of Representatives, even though they may have noble intentions, they are useful fools because they think that what they're peddling is good for others. | ||
| No! | ||
| Because they have never had the experience of being or living in Cuba or Venezuela. | ||
| Go for two weeks to Havana. | ||
| I always tell them, two weeks only. | ||
| Make it a week with a Cuban family living with no dollars and waiting to come to the United States. | ||
| Go live with them for one week and then you tell me what the beauties of socialism are. | ||
| No, because we don't really want the Cuban or the Venezuelan type of socialism, really. | ||
| So what socialism would you like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| All right. | ||
| Day three of three in D.C. | ||
| Can you tell us what you think? | ||
| I think it's a great question. | ||
| continues. | ||
| I'm still Dave Rubin. | ||
| This is still The Rubin Report. | ||
| And joining me today is a Congresswoman representing Florida's 27th District, which happens to be my district, Maria Salazar. | ||
| Welcome to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Welcome to District 27. | ||
| I can't promise you... The ultimate melting pot! | ||
| It is indeed. | ||
| I can't promise you this is going to be a very combative interview because I told you when you walked in, I voted for you. | ||
| Everyone in this room voted for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| You guys are smart people. | ||
| And we're all pretty thrilled about what's going on, obviously. | ||
| And now you live in my district. | ||
| And I'm in your district. | ||
| We're thrilled, obviously, with what's going on in Florida, Miami specifically. | ||
| So before we get into the nuts and bolts of that, could you just give the people that may not know you a little bit of your history? | ||
| You have an interesting work history and family history that frames a lot of your politics. | ||
| Sure, of course. | ||
| I was a first-generation Cuban-American. | ||
| My parents came to that city in 1960, thanks to the United States that opened up the doors to two million Cubans who were fleeing probably the most cruel and the most evil revolution that the Americas has seen since the arrival of Christopher Columbus. | ||
| Completely, completely a bad situation. | ||
| So I grew up in Miami. | ||
| I have an accent because my parents could not find work like many other millions of Cubans | ||
| and we had to hop from island to island. | ||
| And I lived in Puerto Rico some of the time, another time in Miami. | ||
| That's why I speak Spanish and I can communicate with 72% of my district that happens to be Hispanic descent. | ||
| I may need you to help me brush up on some Spanish. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Because, yes, everybody down there is Cuban. | ||
| They're like, hey, I speak Spanish! | ||
| Yes. | ||
| La biblioteca? | ||
| La biblioteca, yes. | ||
| But we love the American exceptionality, and I more, and that's why I represent them proudly. | ||
| I went to the University of Miami. | ||
| After that, I started working for Univision. | ||
| I'm one of the founders of Spanish television, Univision and Telemundo. | ||
| Then I went to Harvard, and I worked hard 35 years in front of the camera. | ||
| paying my rent. | ||
| And after that, I decided to come and serve the country. | ||
| And believe me, this is a lot harder and it pays a lot less. | ||
| It is highly gratifying, highly gratifying to be able to represent the American values | ||
| in the United States Congress. | ||
| So my guys showed me right before, your election history is really interesting | ||
| because in 2018, you lost by three points. | ||
| Then in 2020, you won by three points. | ||
| And then in 2022, you won by 15. | ||
| I had 13 here, but I'll go with 15. | ||
| And that sort of is indicative of the direction that Florida is going in, right? | ||
| Well, because the problem is that the word socialism, it's highly scary. | ||
| And every time a member of the Democratic Party mentions democratic socialism, we run the other way. | ||
| Whether you're registered as independent or as a Democrat, it doesn't matter. | ||
| 30% of Democrat registered non-Cuban Hispanics voted for Salazar because we do know that they promised paradise and what you get is hell at the end. | ||
| So anything that has to do with socialism or socialist policies, you may have some social programs that could benefit the underprivileged. | ||
| But don't give me socialism. | ||
| And that's why Maria Salazar is serving the most difficult district in the state of Florida. | ||
| Difficult meaning where you are 50-50. | ||
| It's not that you are in a very highly concentrated Republican district. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| This is where even one-third Democrats, one-third Republicans, one-third Independents. | ||
| And that does seem to be shifting, though, a little bit, right? | ||
| Because after this last wave, I mean, DeSantis took Miami, which... Yes, Miami-Dade County. | ||
| First time in 20 years, a Republican governor. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because we are understanding that this country, politically speaking, is not going the way we need it to. | ||
| What people have to understand is that people say, well, because Florida, there was a red wave. | ||
| Yeah, because you have people in Florida. | ||
| The people who live in Florida come from either Venezuela or Cuba or Nicaragua or Central America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| Or worse, Los Angeles. | ||
| Well, okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So that you have a point of reference. | ||
| You cannot understand what's black if you have not seen white or vice versa. | ||
| So once you, my parents saw black, really black. | ||
| So now when they see white, they run away because they have a point of reference. | ||
| But unfortunately, some of the members and some of the people that serve with me on the House of Representatives, | ||
| even though they may have noble intentions, they are useful fools. | ||
| Because what they think that what they're peddling is good for others. | ||
| No, because they have never had the experience of being or living in Cuba or Venezuela. | ||
| Go for two weeks to Havana. | ||
| I always tell them, two weeks only. | ||
| Make it a week with a Cuban family living with no dollars and waiting to come to the United States. | ||
| Go live with them for one week and then you tell me what the beauties of socialism are. | ||
| No, because we don't really want the Cuban or the Venezuelan type of socialism, really. | ||
| So what socialism would you like? | ||
| They want that one that's never been put into practice. | ||
| Or that we don't know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So how is it for you going from your district in Miami, which is highly functional, I mean, everything, I'm telling you, like, I have no complaints. | ||
| I wish, you're my Congresswoman. | ||
| I wish I could come to you and be like, fix a couple of things, but it's working. | ||
| Our roads are good. | ||
| Our police are fantastic. | ||
| It's clean. | ||
| There's no homeless people. | ||
| There's no drugs on the streets. | ||
| There's no riots. | ||
| But when you go from that, down in Florida, and then you come here where it's so dysfunctional and so crazy, and just as you said, you're talking to members of Congress who have, you know, their ideas completely backwards. | ||
| How do you put those two things together? | ||
| You know, it's that we speak another language, and I've been trying to, I've been meaning to sit with some of the members that like democratic socialism, and I've been wanting to ask them, what is it that you know that I don't? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Tell me. | ||
| Explain to me. | ||
| What is it that you see that I don't see? | ||
| Because Democrats and Democratic Socialists do not have a monopoly on compassion. | ||
| We are compassionate too. | ||
| I want to help those who are, I want to help the Browns and the African Americans and those kids that don't have good schooling because I know that education is the way out of poverty. | ||
| I want to help them too, but I don't want to, I don't want to atrophy them and just give them money and money, money and, and, and, and give them the wrong incentives. | ||
| So I don't know what to say. | ||
| Maybe it's just, I have it in my DNA. | ||
| And like I said, you know, we lived it. | ||
| Have you been able to sit down with any of them? | ||
| For the record, I've been telling all of them. | ||
| We tried to get AOC here this week. | ||
| We tried to get Rashida Tlaib. | ||
| We tried to get Ilhan Omar. | ||
| We tried for everybody. | ||
| Nobody said yes. | ||
| Well, I have specifically gone to talk to the Black Caucus because I wanted the Black Caucus to help me defend the Afro-Cubans. | ||
| That has been my ask. | ||
| Help me with the Afro-Cubans. | ||
| We're not here to talk about Cuba, the embargo, food. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| We're here to talk about defending the Afro-Cubans. | ||
| They are as black as you are. | ||
| I need you to help me defend them because they are my constituents, or at least I have constituents that are their relatives. | ||
| But I don't get any response. | ||
| I do not understand because if you come to me to something that is so dear to me as defending African American rights and Black Lives Matter, but you know Black Lives Matter across the board. | ||
| Not only in the United States, in Latin America too. | ||
| And you have the repressive apparatus in Havana, repressing those people who are Afro-Cubans and who are screaming and saying, libertad, we want freedom. | ||
| So why don't we have the Black Caucus in the United States helping them? | ||
| I don't get it. | ||
| Well, I think it would expose a lot of their... And I went to them and I went to three specific members and they're saying, yeah, yeah, we want to work with you, then let's do it. | ||
| I'm waiting. | ||
| I sense, I sense. | ||
| So things are working in Florida. | ||
| I had Governor DeSantis on a couple of weeks ago and I said, look, obviously I'm a supporter of his and I know how great things are in Florida, but I was like, all right, I got to ask you one tough one. | ||
| So let me, let me ask you one tough one too. | ||
| As you've seen this influx of people into Florida, obviously we're having a house price issue because they're just 1200 people moving a day. | ||
| It's just this function of success. | ||
| What can we do about that beyond just building faster, which I know they're trying to do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Is there anything else that can be done? | ||
| Because a lot of the original Floridians are now being priced out | ||
| and I don't want them to pay for doing it right. | ||
| The original Floridians who said it that do not have the income or the right income in order to. | ||
| Well, I've been talking to the mayor of the city of Miami and in my district. | ||
| I'm trying to find tax incentives and tax initiatives for those wealthy developers to buy land that is highly priced at this hour and be able to build some workforce and some affordable housing. | ||
| And that's what I'm working on. | ||
| There are solutions and the federal government can help those in the private sector to make some money and at the same time serve the community. | ||
| So that's the way. | ||
| As someone that was part of the media for a couple decades, the media tends not to be too friendly to some of the ideas we're talking about here. | ||
| Does that surprise you? | ||
| I'm very disappointed because I'm older now and I started in 1983. | ||
| 1983, the American School of Journalism ruled. | ||
| You had the Walter Cronkites, you had the Peter Jennings, you had the, what was the name of that guy who was doing Nightline, Ted Koppel. | ||
| You know, you did not dare. | ||
| Right, these were old school journalists. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| What do you mean, giving your opinion? | ||
| What? | ||
| That was not part of the game. | ||
| And right now, I'm not sure what type of journalism we have. | ||
| We have commentators. | ||
| We have advocates. | ||
| And I think that's confusing the public when you are watching the newscast and you think that what he or she is saying is facts and news and its opinion. | ||
| Even the fact that every American basically knows the name AOC and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and they don't know you. | ||
| Right, like at a national level. | ||
| And that even sort of shows it right there. | ||
| Of course, yeah, because I'm not expressing the- You're a scary capitalist. | ||
| Well, that's right. | ||
| And a brown girl from the hood. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With an accent. | ||
| What do you make of what's going on in D.C. | ||
| right now? | ||
| I sense Republicans are kind of feeling pretty good about things. | ||
| I interviewed Speaker McCarthy yesterday. | ||
| He feels like there's an agenda to go forward with that makes sense for people. | ||
| Do you feel like there's really some momentum and things could change? | ||
| I think there's momentum and at least we're sending the message and we're telling the American people that we are here to try to fix the national major economic and social problems, the border. | ||
| The border is a major issue. | ||
| For 35 years no one has dared to make that a priority and I am because I think I can't do it. | ||
| We've got to seal the border. | ||
| We have to seal the border and put on all the technology that is out there available to prevent people | ||
| from sneaking in and from the drugs and the arms, everything that's illegal coming and going. | ||
| Seal the border. | ||
| And then after you do that, then review the legal immigration | ||
| and review what are you gonna do with the 13 million people who are right now here watching us that do not have papers. | ||
| What are you gonna do with them? | ||
| I take it you were pretty thrilled when these illegals come through Texas or whatever, | ||
| they make it to Florida and then Governor DeSantis basically puts them on a bus and sends them to Delaware | ||
| or to Martha's Vineyard or. | ||
| It's just, yeah, but that's not the way we fix the problem. | ||
| I'm trying to fix the problem at the root. | ||
| Don't let them come in illegally. | ||
| And if they are, then you know what they're going to do. | ||
| Why are they here? | ||
| Give them a legal visa. | ||
| You know, we can talk about my dignity program whenever you want to, but we do have to fix the problem. | ||
| How are we going to fix it? | ||
| So how do you think they're going to live? | ||
| How are they going to eat? | ||
| I mean, you keep on having, what's happening, it's unthinkable. | ||
| They're coming in and they don't have work permits. | ||
| So how do you think that they're gonna live? | ||
| How are they gonna eat? | ||
| We're gonna give them a bunch of stuff. | ||
| Well, that's not the way to do it either. | ||
| What do you mean giving them government programs? | ||
| I'm not for it. | ||
| I'm just telling you what the Democrats are going to do. | ||
| If I let you in, then you have to work. | ||
| And how are you going to work? | ||
| I have to give you a piece of paper that gives you a permit. | ||
| But at the same time, I'm letting you in if you are not legal. | ||
| So that's why I'm saying stop this madness. | ||
| Are there any Democrats? | ||
| Like, when you hear Mayorkas basically being like, oh, the border's not open and yet we have more border crossings than ever, than ever in this past year. | ||
| It's just, it's just outright lies. | ||
| Whatever the politicians are saying, you know, what's, what's the empirical evidence? | ||
| The empirical evidence is that we need to solve this problem. | ||
| And like I said, I'm the only Republican member of Congress that has put together an initiative called the Dignity Act and we can review it whenever you want to. | ||
| And it solves the problem because let me tell you something, we also have a legal immigration problem. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| That if you want to attract the Albert Einsteins of the world, if you want to Bring the best minds leaving Ukraine or Russia or China You need to give them a visa for them to come in and that legal path is not so easy to come into the United States You know that too, right? | ||
| That's not good for our economy. | ||
| Yeah, so Miami though has an incredible economy right now And we're growing and obviously mayor Suarez has done an unbelievable job bringing me I mean, we're basically the tech leader now in the world and How has that changed the way you've thought about your constituents and all of these new people fitting into all of this? | ||
| Well, I think that the system takes care of itself. | ||
| And you see right now, you just said of the housing market, now we have more shops. | ||
| My constituents are doing better, economically speaking, because we have people like you coming in and consuming. | ||
| The market always finds its way. | ||
| And, but the only thing I can tell you is that if you love the system like we do, and District 27, some of my people, the people that are serving you and your staff, may not know English that well, but the English is in their heart. | ||
| Yeah, I'm working on it. | ||
| I mean, everyone that comes to my house, they're teaching me Spanish, I'm teaching them English. | ||
| I welcome you to ask them, what do you think about the United States? | ||
| Oh, America! | ||
| We love America! | ||
| Yes, yes, yes! | ||
| Best country! | ||
| No, trust me, I know it. | ||
| I'm out there with my landscapers every week and we're talking- Best country on earth! | ||
| Best country! | ||
| This country, my country! | ||
| And I just got here two years ago or something. | ||
| Yeah, but they also, one of the things that I've found, and this is definitely different than some of the immigrants in LA, and I don't think this is, it tends to be more Mexican there where it's more Cuban and Venezuelan here. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| The work ethic is unbelievable. | ||
| These guys are busting their butts constantly. | ||
| We don't want anyone to give us anything. | ||
| Because if you make it for yourself, which is what I was trying to say to the underprivileged communities, I don't want the democratic socialists to be teaching our children that let me give you, no, no, let me give you the opportunity for you to earn it yourself. | ||
| and not take away from you that joy and the taste that I made it and that I am a successful human being because look whether it's a landscaping company whether it's a car dealership or like me You know, I made it to Congress! | ||
| Wow! | ||
| In one generation! | ||
| And how do you think I did that? | ||
| Because the system gave me the opportunity. | ||
| I busted my butt working on television. | ||
| Oh, Jesus, did I! | ||
| But that gave me the platform for people to, I mean, because I have the platform, because Univision, private sector, they paid very well. | ||
| I was on the air. | ||
| I was on the air every day, you know, Monday through Friday, eight o'clock, whether I wanted to or not. | ||
| I went to work, I went to work, I had the opportunity, I grabbed the opportunity, and then after that I ran for Congress. | ||
| What? | ||
| Where else do you think you could do that? | ||
| Here. | ||
| Nowhere else. | ||
| In Cuba, in Venezuela, in Nicaragua, in Panama, in Dominicana, in Argentina, in Chile, in Uruguay, Paraguay. | ||
| No. | ||
| Only the United States. | ||
| So how are you going to come and tell me that this is a bad country? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Tell me where. | ||
| This might be the easiest interview I've ever done in my life. | ||
| But it's true. | ||
| Think about it. | ||
| The passion and the reality. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And I have nothing to complain about. | ||
| Don't touch the Constitution. | ||
| Don't touch the United States. | ||
| It's not perfect. | ||
| Of course it's not perfect. | ||
| The system needs to be fixed. | ||
| Of course I know that there are some grievances that we have to redress. | ||
| Some of the minorities, some of the African Americans have not had the opportunity that they deserve when it comes to schooling, when it comes to housing. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Let's fix it and move on and have a better society. | ||
| Not like, oh, let's destroy this. | ||
| No, what do you mean destroy? | ||
| That's what Fidel said. | ||
| Let's destroy this because this system is really bad. | ||
| Look what they got. | ||
| That's what Maduro said. | ||
| I got nothing else for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I guess all I can leave us with is... It's empirical evidence. | |
| Maduro, let me just tell you a little bit. | ||
| Venezuela. | ||
| Venezuela. | ||
| Perfect example. | ||
| I interviewed Chavez in 2020. | ||
| 2020 was five minutes ago when it comes to the grand scheme of things. | ||
| 2020. | ||
| Chavez said to me, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to implement democratic socialism. | ||
| And I go, what, really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, let's confiscate, confiscate, confiscate. | |
| Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the world, was the largest and the most important, the most robust economy in Latin America. | ||
| Largest reserves of oil, you know, so then you have a lot to sell. | ||
| They have wood, they have minerals, they have water, they have land, they have people. | ||
| Right now, the average Venezuelan weighs 20 pounds less because of lack of food. | ||
| In Venezuela, 7 million Venezuelans have fled. | ||
| What? | ||
| Because Chavez wanted to implement democratic socialism. | ||
| And he said the same thing. | ||
| I'm not going to do it like Fidel did it. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I'm going to do it the right way. | ||
| There ain't no right way. | ||
| All right, I got two things for you. | ||
| Number one, I want to host you at the house. | ||
| We'll get some of my Florida friends and we'll talk about how great Florida is. | ||
| And what's your favorite restaurant in Coral Gables? | ||
| How about Lulu? | ||
| Have you been to Lulu? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I love Lulu. | ||
| I want to tell you the favorite one. | ||
| You got one for me? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Right there. | ||
| Do you have a Brachi? | ||
| I haven't been there. | ||
| And it's an institution and you have another one that it's has been founded by a Colombian who fled and his name and it's liquor something and it's right there and it's a beautiful tapas. | ||
| You eat some tapas and you would drink some good wine. | ||
| So I will treat you to that one and then you treat me to an American one. | ||
| Normally I don't end an interview like this but we're gonna high five. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for the opportunity. | ||
| Let's hope the average American understands what I'm saying. | ||
| Let's preserve the system. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of mindless drivel, 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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