May 12, 2024 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:00:50
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| The problem is we haven't hit the crisis because people are often crisis motivated. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| Like in my case, in fairness, when I did this, I'm making it seem like it was easier than what it was. | ||
| It was a crisis. | ||
| We were on the verge of bankruptcy. | ||
| We had a choice. | ||
| We could either, you know, declare bankruptcy, um, raise taxes, which I was not willing to do, um, or cut expenses, which is what we did. | ||
| It was awful. | ||
| Our employees, I had employees wouldn't shake my hand for years. | ||
| No, I have a great relationship with my employees. | ||
| I've actually just finalized, we're on the precipice of finalizing our fourth labor union, so we'll have labor peace throughout my tenure as mayor. | ||
| But it was also because they knew I wasn't going to lie to them. | ||
| I was always straight with them. | ||
| When times were bad, I would tell them, guys, we got to tighten the belt. | ||
| When times were good, I'd pass along those winnings to them. | ||
| Because I believe that, you know, motivated, well-paid workforce is important on a service-based business like ours. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But yeah, again, look, I think it's going to take real leadership or it's going to take a crisis, | ||
| which is going to spur, you know, the kind of real tough decisions that we have to make to get us in line. | ||
| All right. So Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, we've done some version of a sit down many times over | ||
| the last couple of years, some before I was a Floridian, now that I am a Floridian. | ||
| I was thinking, what would be the best way to start an interview with you? | ||
| And then it made me think, well, if I was sitting down with one of the other major city mayors, New York, LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. | ||
| We could go down the laundry list of cities. | ||
| It would be a lot of bad stuff. | ||
| But there's not a lot of bad stuff happening here. | ||
| That is not a question. | ||
| That is just a statement. | ||
| And I'd like you to take it from there because you have a little something to do with that. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| It is a beautiful story. | ||
| And it's a story of, in my opinion, American success. | ||
| And it's something that we're not ashamed of. | ||
| You know, there are cities that it seems like or states or sometimes people that live in this country that seem to be afraid or ashamed to talk about what makes this country great and what makes this country successful. | ||
| We believe in American entrepreneurship. | ||
| We believe in capitalism. | ||
| We believe that if you work hard and you play by the rules, you have a good opportunity to be successful. | ||
| And we built a city on the basis that the most precious asset that people have is their time. | ||
| And that's what they're investing. | ||
| And so our ecosystem has been built on A, having the lowest taxes in history. | ||
| So I lowered taxes to the lowest level in history. | ||
| And guess what happened? | ||
| Unprecedented growth. | ||
| So we grew 14% last year, 12% the year before that. | ||
| We have the lowest unemployment in America, 1.4%. | ||
| We have the highest wage growth in America. | ||
| We were ranked the happiest city in America. | ||
| You're now experiencing that. | ||
| The most fit city in America. | ||
| The healthiest city in America, right? | ||
| And so it turns out that when people are working, when they're happy, when they're healthy, when they're not getting taxed to death, guess what they're not doing? | ||
| Committing violent crime. | ||
| And so we started recording homicides. | ||
| In 1947, if you go back right now, if you make a public records request, a FOIA request, and you say, hey, City of Miami, what's the first year that you have homicide statistics for? | ||
| It's 1947. | ||
| We were a third of the population that we are today. | ||
| That year we had 32 homicides. | ||
| Last year, 2023, with three times the population, we had 31. | ||
| three times their population, we had 31. | ||
| So less than 1947. | ||
| And if you think, well, maybe it was just always good. | ||
| I mean, it's Miami. | ||
| It's a beautiful place. | ||
| It's sun. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| In 1980, we had 220. | ||
| So we had two every three days, people getting killed in our city. | ||
| So to go from a city that was arguably the murder capital of America, to a city where you have a lower homicide rate per capita than its history and a lower homicide rate than in 1947 when you had a third of the number of people. | ||
| I think that is one of the strongest cases that we make for the ecosystem that we've created that, of course, as you know, has attracted you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And has attracted people like Elon, people like Jeff Bezos, Tom Brady. | ||
| Of course we want to get Elon. | ||
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unidentified
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I was working on that for you, and we tweeted on that. | |
| But it has captured the imagination of some of the most incredible people, Leo Massey, who turned down $250 million a year to go to Saudi, to come here. | ||
| And that is because we are trying to create the most precious ecosystem where understanding that for a guy like Chapezos, the marginal dollar means nothing. | ||
| For him to be worth $200 billion and $1, That's not changing the needle for him. | ||
| For him, it's where can I get the most value for my most precious asset, which is my time. | ||
| And so from a culture perspective, from sports, safety, obviously we have amazing weather, which I don't influence. | ||
| I talk about it, but I don't influence it. | ||
| And so we're trying to build this incredible ecosystem, and I think we've done it. | ||
| For people like us, it's something we want to shout from the hilltops. | ||
| But for those who don't like what I represent, it is a massive threat. | ||
| And I've learned that in this time. | ||
| I thought, you know, if I just work hard, if I just do the right thing, and if we build this incredible ecosystem, everyone's going to see it. | ||
| And I never really fully appreciated what a threat I would be to those who don't see the world the way that I do. | ||
| And we've discussed this before, so we can do this kind of briefly, but a couple of years ago, middle of COVID, all hell's breaking loose across the country. | ||
| Florida becomes a kind of safe haven of sanity. | ||
| Miami's a safe haven of sanity. | ||
| I think it was Keith Raboy, tech guy, tweets out basically thinking of moving to Florida. | ||
| Your line was, how can I help, right? | ||
| It was, how can I help? | ||
| So it's a little bit different, but very similar. | ||
| It was actually Dalian Asparoff, who works for Keith, I founders fund who wrote, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami? | ||
| And I responded, how can I help? | ||
| And then we didn't just, we didn't just do that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| But that was a huge counter narrative. | ||
| What was happening at the time was New York competes for and wins the Amazon HQ2 prize and then says, no, thank you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We can thank AOC for that. | ||
| And then you had a public official in California, I don't even remember the name of the person, who said, F Elon Musk, and he replies, message received, and leaves to Austin, right? | ||
| And takes his Gigafactory to Austin. | ||
| So that was the context of that statement. | ||
| I was the only mayor in America saying, we want you. | ||
| Please come. | ||
| We want to create prosperity. | ||
| We want successful people. | ||
| We want scale. | ||
| We understand that the world is changing rapidly from a highly industrial economy to an increasingly digital economy, and we need to position ourselves to capitalize on what I call a tsunami of opportunity, a wave of opportunity. | ||
| We didn't just do that, right? | ||
| Then I, with the help of others, I don't want to take all the credit myself, we put out a billboard outside of Google in San Francisco that was a fictitious tweet that said, thinking of moving to Miami, DM me. | ||
| So we got into the viral marketing. | ||
| Then we created something in the city called Venture Miami, which was originally grant funded and from people in our ecosystem who wanted to lend us people on sabbatical. | ||
| And we help people on board. | ||
| We help people, you know, create, you know, where do I move to in my business, right? | ||
| We wanted to help them with that process. | ||
| You know, we wanted to make it seamless for people to move. | ||
| And we've had over a thousand companies move since we started. | ||
| The total assets under management of the companies that have moved to Miami, the Blackstones, the Blackrocks, the Citadels, you know, the Starwoods, is over $10 trillion. | ||
| And our venture capital pipeline grew by over 500% in the last three years. | ||
| So just a massive, in my opinion, migration and reconfiguration of the way the world works. | ||
| Were you shocked at the response to that? | ||
| Super shocked. | ||
| Because now it's three plus years later and everyone can see the fruits of that with this flourishing city, but still to have it happen. | ||
| And then it does put extra pressures on the city, right? | ||
| No doubt. | ||
| I was shocked. | ||
| It was hyper growth. | ||
| Um, it wasn't, you know, to be honest, it wasn't meant to do that. | ||
| When I was sitting on my bed tweeting, how can I help? | ||
| It wasn't, I wanted to create this viral movement. | ||
| It wasn't like, hmm, you know, I'm going to do this. | ||
| It was, it was spontaneous. | ||
| But then when I, where I think it was important was when you realize that there's an opportunity, that's the point at which you have to go all in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so I realized that it was a generational opportunity. | ||
| It's something that I always say, we're a 15 year overnight success story. | ||
| You know, for 15 years, we were trying to create this ecosystem, but we were doing it bootstrapped. | ||
| We were taking our gains as a community, reinvesting them. | ||
| And so it was, it was a very arduous process and this supercharged it, right? | ||
| And so we were able to do that, which was exciting for us. | ||
| And then, and then of course, like you said, it creates growing pains. | ||
| There's this sort of vacillation, right? | ||
| Because prices go up. | ||
| It gets more expensive to live here. | ||
| And then the people who were born and raised here say, hey, what about us? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| What about me? | ||
| You know, we have a mayor that's going out there trying to recruit people. | ||
| What about us? | ||
| And so we focused a lot on Venture Miami. | ||
| We created two scholarship funds that were funded almost exclusively by the private sector. | ||
| So we have one, if you're first in your family to go to college and you're a Pell Grant recipient, we pick up the tab and you go to school for free. | ||
| If you want to get a STEM degree, same thing. | ||
| And you're a Pell Grant recipient, we pick up the tab because we need STEM graduates. | ||
| And again, that was all private sector funding, very little public sector funding. | ||
| I think on the STEM one, we had an 11 to 1 private to public ratio, so almost exclusively privately funded. | ||
| And on the First in Family, it was an equally large amount of private to public donation. | ||
| So we don't believe that government is the arbiter of success. | ||
| In fact, we believe that government often hinders success. | ||
| And our job is to deconflict what government's role is and to try to the extent that we can be a facilitator or even at some level an ideator, but not the one that makes it happen. | ||
| We help people make it happen. | ||
| So I have just no doubt everyone watching this is like, okay, that all makes sense. | ||
| Lower taxes, safe streets, make the conditions for business, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| It all makes sense. | ||
| When you talk to other mayors in other towns, in other states, why are they not replicating this to the degree that we are? | ||
| I thought a lot about it. | ||
| You know, I feel for them at some level. | ||
| I was the president of the U.S. | ||
| Conference of Mayors, so all the mayors. | ||
| And understand that I'm, in this organization, most of the mayors are Democrats. | ||
| I'm what I would consider a unicorn, you know, a Hispanic Republican mayor of a big city. | ||
| And I just think they're under a lot of pressure. | ||
| And there's pressure because we know academia, we know the media has an agenda. | ||
| Right, and their agenda, in my opinion, oftentimes is not a pro-America, pro-capitalism agenda. | ||
| It is a socialist agenda. | ||
| It's an agenda where they want everybody to be equal, which of course is a laudable goal, but then they want to use government as the instrument to impose that equality. | ||
| And unfortunately, we've seen throughout the course of history, time and time again, that that does not work. | ||
| My parents, who came to this country at 12 and 7 legally from Cuba, are a testament to that, you know? | ||
| And I think part of the reason why Miami is succeeding while other cities are failing, right? | ||
| This sort of question that you just asked. | ||
| Is because of our birth narrative, right? | ||
| Sort of our trauma, right? | ||
| Our DNA is, and it's not just Cubans, by the way, it's Venezuelans, it's Ecuadorian, I mean, it's Nicaraguans, it's people from a variety, well now Ecuador has gone sort of socialist, but it's, and Brazil has issues as well. | ||
| So it is, and Argentina was coming out of it now with Meleo. | ||
| So, you know, it is certainly something that has influenced Because I've always said socialism is the easiest sell in politics. | ||
| It's very easy to tell people, if you're not doing well, have the answer. | ||
| We'll just take more from these people with government and we'll give it to you. | ||
| And the problem with that is it's a massive disincentive to produce. | ||
| It's a massive disincentive for investment, which is what propels growth. | ||
| And not only that, we've seen that these dictators, because they ultimately become dictatorships, these governments. | ||
| Never want to let go of power. | ||
| They never want to let the democratic process bring them back into line. | ||
| Thankfully, in Argentina, we just saw that happen, but it's not always happening. | ||
| So what do you do about the OG Floridians who've been here, now they see prices go up, harder to buy a house, rents going up, and it's all good set of problems, but it is real, and I'm very sensitive to that. | ||
| When I meet OG Floridians, I'm very thankful because I know how they changed my life by creating this refuge here. | ||
| So what do you do in those cases? | ||
| You know, it's a tough one for me. | ||
| I was also born and raised here, so I'm the first man actually born in Miami, so I'm an OG as well. | ||
| And for me, I think it's a few things. | ||
| One is we have the highest wage growth in America. | ||
| So we're also empowering people, not just at the collegiate level. | ||
| We work with companies like BrainStation, which used to be WinCode, | ||
| to help people that are adults integrate into this sort of knowledge-based economy. | ||
| We do things from the kindergarten level all the way through 12th grade. | ||
| We did a really good collaboration with Miami Dade College where we created a tech charter school with the college | ||
| so that kids could get a high-level education for free. | ||
| So, I mean, look, it's a problem that doesn't have any easy solution. | ||
| If it did, I would push the button, solve the problem, and move on to the next one, right? | ||
| Ecosystem building is hard. | ||
| And even when you think you're succeeding, you see the AI revolution, | ||
| which has pushed a lot of capital back to the Bay Area, and they've had a bit of a renaissance. | ||
| And it seems like their politics may be shifting from some of the things that you see. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| I'm not very hopeful. | ||
| I mean, I don't think it's hit rock bottom yet. | ||
| And just too many people have just. | ||
| But the bottom line is we've got to empower our residents. | ||
| I'll tell you this. | ||
| So what do you do like on the housing side? | ||
| Let me just tell you this. | ||
| So I spent the better part. | ||
| I've been in this service business, if you will, for 15 years. | ||
| I spent a lot of it on the housing, affordable housing, and on transportation, what I call the expense side of the equation. | ||
| I didn't start really getting attacked by the media until I started focusing on the income side of the equation. | ||
| The minute I started focusing on empowering people, helping people succeed, as opposed to saying, hey, we're going to give you a bone, right? | ||
| We're going to give you, you know, inexpensive and quality affordable housing. | ||
| We're going to give you inexpensive and quality mass transit. | ||
| When I started focusing on income, I became a threat. | ||
| Because that's fundamentally American, right? | ||
| To say, hey, what if you don't need an affordable housing? | ||
| What if you can afford to live in a house at market or above market, right? | ||
| How wonderful would that be if you can send your kids to the schools that you want to send them to? | ||
| And school choice being such a big part of that, right? | ||
| You know, certainly on affordable housing, I've done and will continue to do everything I can. | ||
| The beauty of the way we do it is there's two things. | ||
| One, and it makes us very different from other cities. | ||
| We don't believe in rent control. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Rent control is a band-aid. | ||
| It makes you feel good. | ||
| Hey, you're doing something about it. | ||
| But what happens when you've got to recapitalize that building? | ||
| A bank won't lend you the money because you can't get the returns for the bank to capitalize it. | ||
| So look what we saw on Surfside with the building falling. | ||
| That building needed to be recapitalized and it wasn't because the residents didn't want at the time to contribute to the capital funds. | ||
| And it was being pushed back and pushed back and then we had a catastrophe. | ||
| That's changed everything about the way we look at this capitalization issue. | ||
| And then I think it's hard to get new product. | ||
| Because what bank will lend if there's restrictions on what income can be earned? | ||
| So you have supply issues. | ||
| And then when you have supply issues, you have a situation in some of these cities where a building basically ages out and then they get emptied out because it is a life safety issue. | ||
| So you have to empty the building. | ||
| So you're taking supply off the rolls. | ||
| We have a 10x growth horizon. | ||
| So one of the things we want to do is continue to grow and just grow more efficiently, make sure that we can Efficiently process permits and things like that. | ||
| And then the second piece is using some available funds. | ||
| We do believe in doing private-public partnerships to build affordable housing where we get a leverage rate of approximately prior to this interest rate increase in inflationary environment that President Biden has given us. | ||
| You mean it wasn't the inflation reduction? | ||
| I haven't seen a penny of that money yet. | ||
| We actually were getting a 20 to 1 leverage rate on the dollar that we would invest in a private-public partnership on affordable housing. | ||
| My guess is with rising rates, That number will come down to about 10,000. | ||
| It's still significant. | ||
| Still means you're getting $10 for every dollar you invest on a project. | ||
| So we're going to, we're looking at a variety of ways. | ||
| We have something called the Miami Forever Bond, a hundred million of which is dedicated to affordable housing. | ||
| That's a self-imposed tax that residents decided they voted on to tax themselves on resiliency and on affordable housing and on cultural facilities. | ||
| So we're going to continue to do that. | ||
| But yeah, look, it's a real issue going forward. | ||
| And what do you do on the infrastructure side of that, just in terms of roads and everything else? | ||
| Because that's the main one I hear the original people complaining about. | ||
| There's just a lot more cars here. | ||
| Again, function of success, but something that needs to be done. | ||
| There's two pieces of it. | ||
| One of it is, as you densify, traffic increases. | ||
| And then there's a resiliency piece. | ||
| You know, we are in a place where we do get hit with hurricanes. | ||
| We do have what they call dry day flooding, two times a year when you have certain tides. | ||
| And you have what's called rain bombs, which are, you know, rain events that seem to overwhelm the capacity system. | ||
| So, you know, everything we've studied and learned is that for every dollar that you invest prophylactically, you save seven to eight dollars. | ||
| There's a good business case on investing on resiliency, and we're doing that. | ||
| And we're seeing other parts of the state of Florida with the insurance crisis, right, where Because they're not as resilient as Miami is, when a big hurricane comes, it just decimates the entire city. | ||
| You know, Miami post-Hurricane Andrew, we sort of learned our lesson, where some southern cities were decimated, like Florida City and Homestead. | ||
| And so we changed our building codes. | ||
| We built things as bunkers. | ||
| And so under my tenure, we've actually reduced flood premiums by 8%. | ||
| We were actually downgraded as a flood risk because of our investment. | ||
| So that's on the flood side. | ||
| On the traffic side, to be perfectly frank, I think we have been putting lipstick on a pig in terms of transportation solutions. | ||
| We've been focusing on rail and what they call bus rapid transit, which they put these little things on buses and they call them bus rapid transit. | ||
| It's really not a real technology. | ||
| And I think we've got to start thinking more Jetson-like, you know, and urban air mobility. | ||
| What Elon is doing with the Boring Company, which is underground tunneling, which is much less expensive. | ||
| If you look at New York, for example, the, I think it's 2nd Avenue line, if I'm not mistaken, was built at a $2 billion a mile cost. | ||
| Elon is building underground tunneling at $10 million a mile. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So the guy who runs Boring Company is a guy named Steve Davis, brilliant guy. | ||
| They're doing stuff in Las Vegas. | ||
| And, you know, we're doing some geotesting to make sure that our limestone subsoil can handle it. | ||
| But that, I think, those are the, you've got to think outside of the box. | ||
| It's a lot less expensive. | ||
| The problem with transportation is That it's infrastructure intensive and it's money intensive, right? | ||
| And so if you can disrupt those solutions with things that are faster to implement and a lot cheaper and effective, you're solving the problem for a much more efficient way. | ||
| And we have a pretty good state government here that I assume helps you do these things, right? | ||
| I mean, even the fact that we got the Brightline to work in this state when California has poured billions of dollars into a railroad that I don't think any track has been laid. | ||
| And the beauty of Brightline is that it's almost all private sector. | ||
| I mean, we did some, we put some public sector money into it in the Station to Connect Tri-Rail, which is another line with our downtown station, but it's almost all completely privately financed. | ||
| Yes, I think certainly this administration has been better than the rest. | ||
| I still think that state government, generally speaking, has a long way to go in terms of being innovative and being responsive to local issues. | ||
| So let's talk about the homeless thing for a second because I have brought up something that happened on my show on a live show. | ||
| I brought this up about a hundred times. | ||
| I think it's one of my favorite moments that has ever happened on the show. | ||
| I was talking about the crazy homelessness. | ||
| I had just come back from San Francisco and I was talking about the crazy homelessness there and I was talking about the crazy homelessness in LA and you texted me while I was live on air to say, Dave, we've got about 600 homeless people in Miami and I'm working on it. | ||
| And I thought, man, Not only the guy gets it, but you're at, so first off, 600. | ||
| Now, I think in, if I'm not mistaken, in San Francisco, there's about 30,000, about 40,000 in LA, but LA is much more sprawling. | ||
| That's why San Francisco, it seems so dense. | ||
| But, so what do we have now? | ||
| I think you told me right before. | ||
| 630. | ||
| 630 now. | ||
| Census. | ||
| So, we used to be as a community, and let me break it down a little bit for you so people understand, because there's always a lot of confusion. | ||
| So there's City of Miami Proper. | ||
| City of Miami Proper has approximately, this is an approximation based on the census, half a million to 600,000 people approximately. | ||
| The metropolitan area, which is called Miami-Dade County, they use the same name just to confuse everybody, right, is about 2.8 million people. | ||
| So we're a little bit more than a fifth of the population. | ||
| In terms of homelessness, Prior to the enactment of what they call the Homeless Trust, which I'll talk about, there was about 9,000 homeless in our community. | ||
| 9,000. | ||
| The Homeless Trust enacted a 1% tax on the sale of food and beverage in certain municipalities, and that generates about $50 million a year. | ||
| They created with that a center of homeless assistance centers, which provide housing, mental health treatment, drug addiction counseling, and vocational training. | ||
| That reduced homelessness by 90%. | ||
| So we went from 9,000 to about 900. | ||
| How long did that take? | ||
| It took about 10 years. | ||
| So we're now at the 900 to 1,000 countywide, 60% of which unfortunately are in the city because we're the urban population center, right? | ||
| So 630. | ||
| So I just identified and I created something called Functional Zero. | ||
| So I went to the community of care providers and said, hey guys, blank check. | ||
| What is it going to take to get to zero? | ||
| And I was like, nobody's ever actually tried to do that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| No one's actually even had that as a goal. | ||
| And I actually had people, really important people, frankly, tell me, don't say it out loud. | ||
| Like, don't do it. | ||
| And I said, guys, we're never going to get to the goal if we don't articulate the goal and if we don't challenge ourselves, even at the risk of seeming foolish. | ||
| Right? | ||
| We created a plan, and now I'm doing it for the first time ever, June 1st. | ||
| I think it's actually the first time I'm announcing this, so this is actually breaking news. | ||
| Let's do it. | ||
| June 1st, I'll have the first Mayor's Ball to end homelessness. | ||
| I want to be the first major American city to end homelessness, and I'm going to tell you why. | ||
| The obvious reason is because we care about the people who are in that state and we want them to be productive, contributing members of our community. | ||
| That's important. | ||
| Secondly, we know that it has an impact on people that are not homeless, right? | ||
| If you're homeless, if you're not homeless and you're walking down the street, there's all kinds of unfortunate interactions that can happen that are not positive. | ||
| And I think third, you know, and this is to me arguably one of the most important reasons There is, I think, a misconception that if you are pro-capitalism, pro-American free enterprise, you somehow don't care about people other than yourself. | ||
| And I think that that is bogus. | ||
| And it's wrong. | ||
| And it's not really representative of this country. | ||
| If this country has demonstrated anything in the course of its history, is that it's compassionate, is that it's willing to sacrifice for ends and goals that are bigger than itself. | ||
| And I think so. | ||
| I think to me, it's such a ratification of of who we are as a people. | ||
| If we can get out there and say, hey, we are the first major American city to end homelessness. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We we don't just succeed, but we succeed while we care for those who are most unfortunate, who are having the roughest time, who some feel like are being left behind or being ignored. | ||
| We're not going to ignore them. | ||
| We see them and we're going to take care of them and we're going to help them take care of themselves. | ||
| So what do you do? | ||
| I mean, for these for these six thirty I mean, it's not that many left. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| In some ways, we're sort of there in some sense. | ||
| We're the top, the bottom 10%. | ||
| And I would say maybe the hardest 10%, right? | ||
| Chronically homeless. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I would, so this is what I would say. | ||
| One is, most models that talk about housing, if you can get a homeless into housing, there's a 90 plus percent chance that they will not go back. | ||
| The problem has always been building enough housing. | ||
| So I identified an organization called Enmano de la Calle, which has been in business and operating for eight years. | ||
| They're a multi-million dollar budgeted organization. | ||
| And what they do is they find already existing homes and they place them there and they give them wraparound services and they help them become self-sufficient. | ||
| Initially, they'll start at zero rent, but the average rent that one of their participants pays right now is about $400 a month. | ||
| So they become self-sufficient, whether it's through getting jobs or through tapping into some of the benefits that they have that they maybe didn't know that they had or didn't know how to tap into. | ||
| And who's offsetting that? | ||
| The organization offsets it. | ||
| So they're a non-profit? | ||
| They're a non-profit, 501c3. | ||
| We're going to have a big gala. | ||
| We're going to raise them the money that we believe will be required. | ||
| And by the way, it's not as much as you guys think, to get us to zero. | ||
| So that is, they're going to identify 630 living units that are already in existence and rent out those units and get them there. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's something. | ||
| So you think you can really pull this off? | ||
| Man, it's exciting. | ||
| And it's, you know, everything that you should do when you're in this position should be driven by passion. | ||
| It should be driven by a why. | ||
| And then you back out the how and the what. | ||
| And so, you know, I think for us, We see all these KPIs that I talk about, right? | ||
| Low unemployment, high wage growth, lowest crime, right? | ||
| So you keep stocking this up in terms of building an ecosystem. | ||
| And then I also think that there is a multiplication component to this, right? | ||
| The fact that you're here, I guarantee you has attracted people to be here, right? | ||
| The fact... I know it. | ||
| You should look at my inbox. | ||
| No, I know. | ||
| You're like Florida's number one importer. | ||
| I think I'm number two. | ||
| Well, I mean, look, I think the key is, you know, we're telling our story. | ||
| We're telling our narrative. | ||
| Some people want to rewrite the narrative, but we're telling our narrative. | ||
| And our narrative is backed by facts, like you said. | ||
| It's not just like me being such a good marketer or me being a good hype man. | ||
| These are facts. | ||
| I mean, the fact that we, our homicide rate, I can't manipulate that. | ||
| You know, the unemployment rate, I didn't invent it. | ||
| I got it from a publication. | ||
| Well, you could probably make it get a lot worse if you did some of the wrong things. | ||
| Oh, well, absolutely. | ||
| And this is one of the things I tell people is, look, one thing I'm not willing to do to lower prices is lower the quality of life. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You know, I have friends who are mayors of cities, I won't call them out and mention them, who say, man, I wish I had your problems. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And they do. | ||
| And they're great people and they're working hard for their cities. | ||
| But, you know, we're blessed. | ||
| And so with that blessing comes other challenges that we also got to face. | ||
| How much coordination do you do with some of the other mayors? | ||
| So you mentioned Miami-Dade. | ||
| So it's about two million more people than in the city of Miami, right? | ||
| That was roughly it. | ||
| So, like, a few weeks ago for spring break, there was an incredible ad campaign that Miami Beach did. | ||
| So that's not your jurisdiction. | ||
| But they basically were like, we're not going to allow... We're breaking up the spring break. | ||
| We're breaking up with Spring Break and we're just not going to allow ransacking and all-night parties and, you know, breaking into stores. | ||
| And then this year was like the most successful year ever. | ||
| Incredible economically. | ||
| People are happy. | ||
| I didn't hear anyone complaining, like, we can't take over the streets anymore. | ||
| There weren't any major incidents, right? | ||
| So are you guys coordinating all that? | ||
| Like, what are our sort of wider policies on crime, for example? | ||
| So I have great relationships with my brother and sister mayors that are in the surrounding area. | ||
| This particular mayor, Steve Miner of Miami Beach, basically got elected on the basis of him fixing Spring Break. | ||
| And so we are in close coordination. | ||
| And I always joke with him, I say, and his predecessor, Dan Gelber, would always joke and say, you can't say Miami Beach without Miami. | ||
| And so what happens is if something were going wrong in Miami Beach, guess who would get the calls from CNN and from Fox and from You know, from News Nation and, you know, from all the major stations, I would get the call. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it behooved me to, at some level, be proactive. | ||
| And so we always, A, are here, are sort of available to give them ideas, to lend expertise, but we also lend manpower, right, because our officers. | ||
| And then the other question is, concern is, What do they do that might flow over to us? | ||
| So there's always a concern that if they have imposed a curfew, for example, or if they close their parking garages or whatever they may do, restrict flow, that there may be some spillover to the Miami side, which has been perfect. | ||
| I mean, I don't toot my own horn, but we've been flawless, right? | ||
| Like we haven't had any issues. | ||
| And that's a whole nother conversation. | ||
| But yeah, I think there is coordination. | ||
| We do talk a lot. | ||
| I'll give you a perfect example. | ||
| I just had today in my office, and I know this is not going to air today for your viewers, but I had the mayor of Key Biscayne because the Florida Department of Transportation closed a flyover bridge and people got stuck over the weekend for six hours trying to get out of the island. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| He calls me, I call him. | ||
| What are we doing? | ||
| You know, how can we alleviate? | ||
| Once you're getting out of Key Biscayne and into the city side, what can we do to flush traffic, get people out as quickly as possible? | ||
| So there is a lot of coordination. | ||
| You know, and at the national level, as president of the U.S. | ||
| Conference of Mayors, you know, I tried to set an agenda that I thought was logical. | ||
| You know, people ask me, what's Miami's formula for success? | ||
| It's simple. | ||
| We keep taxes low, we keep people safe, and we lean into innovation. | ||
| That's all we do. | ||
| And that was the agenda. | ||
| So speaking of bridges, you know, I think a lot of people are watching the news these days. | ||
| They're watching bridges be closed. | ||
| San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. | ||
| They're watching the O'Hare Airport be shut down. | ||
| Protesters all over the place. | ||
| These are highly illegal protests. | ||
| You can't just shut down bridges and roads if you want. | ||
| We did discuss this privately once, not too long ago, but what is your policy on that? | ||
| Because I have no doubt they want to bring this stuff to Florida, they want to bring it to Miami, because it would be great for them to be like, see, even that free state of Florida, we can shut them down. | ||
| Well, I mean, you have to look no further than yesterday, and again, I know this is not coming out today, but you can go back on the news and see. | ||
| We played the video on my show, yeah. | ||
| That there was a Palestinian protest, a pro-Palestinian protest yesterday in the city, where there was about 75 protesters. | ||
| Not big by any sort of national standards. | ||
| I think there's reasons for that we didn't talk about. | ||
| But we have a zero-tolerance policy, and it doesn't matter what you're protesting about. | ||
| We're not going to allow you, whoever you are, whatever you're protesting, to disrupt other people. | ||
| You have every right under the Constitution to speak your mind, and as long as you do it respectfully and within the bounds of the law. | ||
| But we're drawing a very, very, very clear line, and I think even during the George Floyd Protest. | ||
| You know, we gave people space to protest, but we're very clear on what the rules were. | ||
| You can't destroy people's property, you can't destroy people's business, and you can't hurt anybody. | ||
| If you do any of those three things, you're going to jail. | ||
| And I think we set the tone early. | ||
| Our police department, you know, is phenomenal. | ||
| While our murder rate has gone down and while we have more officers than ever, and what we call calls for service. | ||
| have gone up significantly. | ||
| Our officer involved complaints have gone down by 15%. | ||
| So, which means in a highly charged environment, in a very, very dynamic environment, | ||
| where there were in body cams, so everything they do is recorded, | ||
| which by the way, oftentimes protects them because people are recording with these things anyways. | ||
| It's become the most challenging profession, in my opinion, in the country for sure, | ||
| arguably in the planet, where you have people that, there is no profession where people get paid less money | ||
| and expected to do more things and take more risks than police officers do. | ||
| What do you do as it relates, because some of these, you mentioned this last time we spoke about this, but some of these roads, some of them are federal roads, some of them are state roads, they're city roads. | ||
| It's sort of inconsistent in how you can make things happen. | ||
| I know that's a little in the weeds, but I think people really care about it. | ||
| It's important to get in the weeds a little bit because I want them to know particularly where a jurisdiction begins and ends. | ||
| So if they do it on a highway, that becomes Florida Department of Transportation state jurisdiction. | ||
| So we try to avoid them from getting on, but like if they get on, like not from a ramp, right? | ||
| Like if they try to go up a ramp, but if they get in at an area where it's at grade and they jump over a fence, right? | ||
| Then they're on state property. | ||
| Even if it's a federal street like U.S. | ||
| 1, we're there. | ||
| So these protests happened on U.S. | ||
|
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1. | |
| They got on U.S. | ||
| 1, boom, we picked them up and we arrested them right away. | ||
| And we do work in conjunction, and I'll give the state some credit. | ||
| They did a good job going back to the Miami Beach thing. | ||
| The governor brought specifically troopers From Tallahassee, or dedicated a certain number of troopers, I'm not sure where they came from, to Miami Beach. | ||
| And the mayor gave the governor a lot of credit, and I give credit to the governor as well, for doing that. | ||
| And I think that's leadership, that's helping as a force multiplier, particularly when you have resources for the right reason. | ||
| This is obviously all connected also to the immigration situation, or I should say the illegal immigration situation, because as you pointed out, Miami is a great city of immigrants. | ||
| I love the amount of people down here from different places and the foods and the languages. | ||
| And I told you, I still got to work on my Spanish. | ||
| I'm working on it. | ||
| But we do have an illegal immigration problem. | ||
| It's a little hard to tell where Florida fits into that. | ||
| You know, it's interesting. | ||
| We've got a lot of water around us, which I think helps. | ||
| And I think when there was wet foot, dry foot. | ||
| People were using the water more as a means of getting in. | ||
| Once Wetfoot-Dryfoot came off, I think the Mexican border became the new frontier again. | ||
| Can you just explain what that is? | ||
| So Wetfoot-Dryfoot meant that if you were, let's say, Cuban, or actually it was Cuban, not for Haitians, it was only for Cuban people, if you made it to land And this was a Clinton, Bill Clinton policy. | ||
| You were automatically eligible for asylum. | ||
| So there was a huge incentive to risk your life, essentially. | ||
| Although they're risking their life on the Mexican border, but I mean, this is like 90 miles, no propulsion, right? | ||
| Like risking your life. | ||
| But once you made it to American soil, if you touched American soil, you were You were automatically eligible for asylum and you were ultimately on your way to road to citizenship. | ||
| Once that was taken away, how did you feel about that as a Cuban? | ||
| You know, it's interesting. | ||
| I think for me, you have to sort of zoom out and look at the broader immigration conversation, right? | ||
| Because I don't think, A, as a Cuban, we shouldn't necessarily have special rules per se. | ||
| I think everybody should have an equal playing field because everyone is getting here for reasons of desperation. | ||
| I mean, whether it's political desperation, economic desperation, whatever the case may be. | ||
| That's, by the way, part of what we need to address, right? | ||
| I think as we look at the nearshoring debate and we think about depowering China, which has become a massive adversary, and we're giving them $400 billion, if not $600 billion a year. | ||
| Of our money, in the form of a trade deficit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And in the form of the IP that they steal from us on an annual basis. | ||
| Why are we doing that? | ||
| And why aren't we trying to reinforce, you know, with our money, our allies, or create allies in the region? | ||
| It's the kind of stuff that they're doing against us, right? | ||
| In their investments. | ||
| The One China policy, and sort of Belt and Suspension policy that they've implemented, right? | ||
| Belt and Roads policy. | ||
| You know, that's part of it. | ||
| I think the other part of it is our immigration policy does not serve our needs as a country. | ||
| I have a guy who right now has a green card, and I won't say his name, who was helping run a $40 billion fund and can't become a citizen in the U.S. | ||
| I mean, that doesn't make any sense. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| This is like a Yale- On top of the Fed. | ||
| This is a Yale grad, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then we have millions of people coming in illegally, right? | ||
| I think the last count was over 7 million since Biden took office, which is greater than the population of 37 states, not to mention the fentanyl that's coming in. | ||
| Right, so we have a massive, I mean, I was once with Kellyanne, who made a really great point, and I've used the point, so I got to give her some author's credit for it, where she said, you know, if a 747 crashed every single day in our country, we would stop all air traffic and we would solve that problem before we allowed another day of air traffic, right? | ||
| And that's essentially what's happening at our southern border, right, with fentanyl. | ||
| You have the equivalent of a 747 crashing every day with the number of people that are dying. | ||
| So, you know, when are we going to create a policy of immigration? | ||
| And this goes for Cubans, for Asians, for Mexicans, for anyone who's trying to get here that serves our country. | ||
| A. And B, we obviously have to be able to control whatever that is. | ||
| And C, we obviously have to know who they are and vet them. | ||
| I mean, these are obvious things. | ||
| I mean, these are things that are These are things that every Democrat believed 20 years ago. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| And it's become a hyper-political situation. | ||
| Where Hispanics, and I'm using Hispanics as an example, where they come down in the 2024 election is going to be very important to this issue. | ||
| Because I think that they're breaking Republican. | ||
| And I think if they are even or more, I think that no one will be able to use it as a tool, political tool. | ||
|
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Right? | |
| That's my hope is that it becomes demystified. | ||
| And then what we do is focus on what's best for our country. | ||
| What do we want to be doing? | ||
| We want to be growing. | ||
| You know, we want people who are law abiding, who pay taxes, you know, people who are willing to assimilate and believe in the values of this country. | ||
| And then what do we need? | ||
| You know, what do we need as a country? | ||
| We can be picky. | ||
| That's the beauty of our country. | ||
| Everybody wants to be here. | ||
| Nobody's taking the boat back to Cuba. | ||
| No one's getting on a flight to China saying, I can't wait to get Chinese asylum or Chinese citizenship. | ||
| No one's taking the U-Haul back to California either. | ||
| No, no they're not. | ||
| Yeah, they're not. | ||
| And in fact, you know, it was funny because at the beginning, and I think we talked about this the first time that I was on your show. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You asked me the question that I was getting a lot, and I'm sure the governor got a lot, which was, hey, all these people are coming from the outside. | ||
| Aren't you afraid that they're going to change your policies? | ||
| And I said, no, because they're people like you. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| In other words, people who are fleeing usually are not fleeing to implement the same policies that they fled. | ||
| And so what you've seen from a registration perspective- It's insane. | ||
| Is insane. | ||
| Yeah, what is the breakdown now of Miami? | ||
| Because most people know about the Florida breakdown. | ||
| I think before DeSantis came in, it was, I think, 200,000 more Democrats, and now it's about a million more Republicans. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Something like that. | ||
| That's a 1.2 million Delta. | ||
| Insane. | ||
| And in Miami-Dade County, we went, the year before I was elected, in 17, in 16, it was plus 30 for Democrats. | ||
| I got reelected in 21, and in 22, with the policies that we've implemented, it's now plus 10 and 12 for Republicans. | ||
| That's a 40-point swing. | ||
| Did you ever think that this place could become what it has become? | ||
| I mean, before you were mayor, when you were thinking about becoming a mayor. | ||
| You know, Cubans have been traditionally conservative. | ||
| I think, ironically, the influx of Venezuelan and other Hispanics have actually made it more conservative. | ||
| And then policies that work. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| When you see the delta between the prosperity we've experienced here versus what's happened in other places, You know, people, they're smart. | ||
| They get it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And they understand, like, hey, we don't want to be dominated by government. | ||
| We don't want to pay more in taxes than what we need to. | ||
| We don't want a place that's lawless. | ||
| That's lawless. | ||
| That doesn't benefit us. | ||
| I had a friend come here a couple of weeks ago who lives in the suburbs of New York City, but works in New York City, or at least mostly worked in New York City before now. | ||
| Everyone kind of works from home. | ||
| But we went out to Coconut Grove and he could not believe that there were no homeless people. | ||
| He could not believe there were no drugs. | ||
| He could not believe That the whole place didn't smell like weed. | ||
| I mean, that's the... I mean, he was genuinely shocked, and that kind of tells you everything you need to know. | ||
| What are we doing on the drug side? | ||
| Because we don't see... I know there is a drug problem everywhere, but we don't see the fentanyl walk everywhere or any of that stuff. | ||
| I don't see it. | ||
| I can tell you that, you know, as mayor, the major issues always percolate up, right? | ||
| I forget which president once said that if the issue hits my desk, it's... | ||
| It is an issue that no one else has been able to solve, right, by definition. | ||
| It's not an issue that's percolating up to me. | ||
| You know, homicides, like, we went six weeks, the last six weeks without a homicide. | ||
| The record is eight weeks. | ||
| Record, right? | ||
| So this year, this is in 24. | ||
| So, you know, When I don't hear about, and thank God, I don't hear about an officer-involved shooting, and I heard about one, unfortunately, not that long ago, a couple of weeks ago, but there usually are long stretches. | ||
| I mean, these are good things, right? | ||
| But I haven't, I mean, there isn't like, I'm not getting calls like, hey, this is a drug haven or this is a, not at all. | ||
| So I think that's a testament to How much of it also is do you think that people are packing heat here? | ||
| which gives people dignity and allows them to be in buildings that look like they're in Brickell | ||
| in some of our underprivileged neighborhoods, but they have gyms inside of them, have community | ||
| centers, have security. And then... How much of it also is do you think that people are | ||
| packing heat here? I mean, you don't know who's walking around with a gun and that does kind of | ||
| keep people a little more, not necessarily on the drug side, but it keeps people a little more like, | ||
| ah, I can't just get away with anything. Yeah, look, I think, so my view of it is to say it | ||
| another way, which is to say we don't... And again, the nightmare of a mayor is these mass shootings | ||
| and all this stuff. | ||
| And I think the mass shootings come from, first and foremost, fundamentally, loneliness. | ||
|
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Right? | |
| You know, whoever it is, is alone. | ||
| And they're not being paid attention to. | ||
| So, for example, one of the initiatives that we did In Miami that I'm a big, big fan of is this fitness initiative for kids to be able to get CrossFit-like training for free. | ||
| Why is that important? | ||
| For three reasons. | ||
| Number one, they're in community, so they're not lonely. | ||
| Number two, they get the stimulation of natural, feel-good chemicals when you work out, so you don't get addicted to opioids. | ||
| And number three, they get adversity training, right? | ||
| What happens? | ||
| Life is going to be tough. | ||
| And you're not learning in second grade, like, hey, today's adversity class. | ||
| We're going to dunk you in water until you can't breathe. | ||
| It's not the way it works. | ||
| So you have to create your own adversity overcoming mechanisms. | ||
| And part of what people do is they go to these classes and they learn and they, you know, look, the workouts are tough. | ||
| People don't want to. | ||
| So my point, the point I'm trying to make is that, you know, people talk about the gun issue, massive issue. | ||
| But for us, we're focusing on making sure that they're employed. | ||
| Making sure that they understand how to deal with adversity, making sure that they're not lonely, and making sure that we're getting them feel-good chemicals so that they don't get addicted. | ||
| So we're dealing with the root causes, right? | ||
| The gun is an instrument, right? | ||
| Just like a bus can be if you hijack it, or a knife can be if you use it. | ||
| I mean, it's an instrument. | ||
| You can push somebody. | ||
| So these are all instruments, but you're not dealing with the cause, which is often mental health. | ||
| What do you make about, speaking of mental health, what's going on sort of nationally, politically? | ||
| You did run for president. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Kind of quick. | ||
| Didn't work out, I suppose, exactly as you thought. | ||
| Do you want to get into that at all? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, what was the angle or what do you think maybe didn't work? | ||
| So I think the angle was Everybody who ran, who's not Joe Biden and Donald Trump, saw the same arbitrage. | ||
| The arbitrage was, we're looking at polls that said 70% of America did not want to see the same two people run. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that's still where America is. | ||
| Although that's what we got. | ||
| So I think there's an interesting dynamic at play where the country doesn't want to see a repeat, but has not decided who is going to be the next generation person. | ||
|
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Right? | |
| So I think all of us who are in that next generation had our own path to victory. | ||
| Some of us, I would say, started at the zero, like me. | ||
| Some of us started at the 40 yard line and didn't get very far or went backwards. | ||
| Right? | ||
| We all had a vision of how it was all going to play out for us, every single one of us. | ||
| And, you know, if you would have told me, for example, and I don't mean this in any way disrespectfully, because I, you know, I think highly of the ambassador of former Governor Nikki Haley, but if you would have told me she was going to be the last person standing. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| I'm not so sure that that's what would have been my original bet. | ||
| Again, no shade on her. | ||
| I think she has a lot of skill set. | ||
| She proved herself, right? | ||
| She obviously was polished and I think she performed very, very well, right, to get herself there. | ||
| I'm not so sure I would have guessed that from the get-go. | ||
| So you got to run the race. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I knew I was running it at some disadvantages insofar as I started late. | ||
| Part of the reason why I started late was because I was waiting on the current governor, our governor, to determine whether the resign to run for him and for I was going to become a factor. | ||
| So that had to play itself out, which led me to run later than I would have liked. | ||
| Um, and then, you know, to be honest, uh, you know, like I, I didn't necessarily, I know Vivek well. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And I knew Vivek before he ran. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um, and then we debated it, you know, and we, we saw each other in common circles. | ||
| I read his books and saw, I didn't, would not have guessed. | ||
| Personally, you know, that Vivek would have. | ||
| And again, no shade on Vivek. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's a super successful guy. | ||
| He was in that chair two weeks ago. | ||
| Super successful guy. | ||
| He and I have a good relationship. | ||
| We talk. | ||
| I think, you know, you know, I respect him. | ||
| I respect his intellect. | ||
| But he has no public sector experience. | ||
| I'm not saying that I would have said, hey, this is the guy that's going to be the young guy that sort of breaks through. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| So you think he kind of took a little of that air, basically? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then I think I'll be honest with you. | ||
| I actually think playing it back. | ||
| I thought I could distinguish myself from our current governor and sort of create a different path because we're different people. | ||
| I don't think anybody would argue that we're the same. | ||
| And again, that's not throwing shade on him either. | ||
| We had a different thing that we were selling to the people. | ||
| But I think it was just hard for people to see a mayor As opposed to a governor from the same state. | ||
| And then it's always hard to say, well, who's the guy that's creating the success, right? | ||
| Is it really the governor? | ||
| Is it the mayor? | ||
| Is it some of the governor's policies? | ||
| Is it the mayor's policies? | ||
| And then with respect, I mean, he started with $100 million war chest and Fox News 100% backing him. | ||
| I never got, you know, an Elon. | ||
| He started with Elon, for God's sakes, on Twitter space, which unfortunately didn't work out as well as I think he would have liked. | ||
| But nevertheless, he had Elon. | ||
| I wish I had. | ||
| Imagine if I would have started with that sort of wind beneath my wings, if you will. | ||
| So I think he was given a lot of opportunity. | ||
| I wish I would have gotten some of those opportunities. | ||
| I didn't. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But look, you do it for a variety of reasons. | ||
| One is I thought that the country would be ready for generational change. | ||
| I don't think it was, despite some of the numbers. | ||
| You know, I thought I had something unique to offer. | ||
| I was running a successful, big American city, you know, and that gives me an executive role. | ||
| I thought, you know, as a Hispanic, that could be important because 20% of the country is Hispanics. | ||
| And, you know, as we talked about in terms of the numbers, some of the swing states have, you know, presidential states. | ||
| So, and as someone who was pro-innovation, I don't think there were many candidates, maybe with the exception of Evake, who could really talk about innovation and really understand it. | ||
| And I thought that was a differentiator for how the country should be looking at the next generation of opportunity. | ||
| So, look, I mean, again, you play it out, you do due diligence, and I wouldn't change it. | ||
| I wouldn't change the decision, because first of all, you can't. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And second of all, I mean, you know, my wife and I, my children, we had a wonderful time together. | ||
| It was a relatively positive thing. | ||
| I do think that in poking my head up, I did become a little bit of a whack-a-mole, particularly for my local press. | ||
| And those are things that you've got to accept, right? | ||
| Like if you're going to run for the big job, you know, they're going to, you know, they're going to try to take you down if they don't like who you are and what you represent. | ||
| So where do you, like, how do you feel about where we're at sort of nationally at the moment? | ||
| So we ended up with the two guys that, as you said, 70% doesn't want. | ||
| It's fairly obvious to me. | ||
| At least one of them has dementia. | ||
| That seems like a problem. | ||
| We got big problems in the Middle East, Ukraine, inflation, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Like, it just, as I talk about on my show every day, it seems like there is just, like, we have all the ingredients for some really bad stuff right now. | ||
| And I'm not a black pill guy at all. | ||
| I'm not either. | ||
| But I agree with you. | ||
| And I would say this is not really a tough decision. | ||
| I supported President Trump. | ||
| I came out, I endorsed him. | ||
| And my viewpoint is really simple. | ||
| Take out the noise. | ||
| Take out the distractions. | ||
| You know, I think this is going to be an election, unfortunately, where a big, maybe even the deciding majority, will be voting against the candidate as opposed to for a candidate. | ||
| I think that's unfortunate. | ||
| But if you take out the noise, if you take out the real questions about Biden's capability and judgment, And if you take out what people don't like about the former president, maybe his brashness, right? | ||
| You just put that aside. | ||
| Look at the records, right? | ||
| The Middle East under Trump was forging peace with the Abraham Accords. | ||
| This is a historic achievement. | ||
| We now have a conventional war between Gaza and Israel, which Iran is involving in, which could inflate the conflict, and it's scary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right? | ||
| You also have a convention on war in Ukraine. | ||
| And again, you can say what you want to say about what Trump has said about Putin. | ||
| And I have my own view on Putin. | ||
| But Putin was contained, right? | ||
| He invaded Crimea under Biden and he invaded Ukraine again under, I'm sorry, under Obama | ||
| and he invaded Ukraine under Biden. | ||
| So, you know, but that didn't happen during Trump. | ||
| These are just facts. | ||
| I mean, this is not my opinion. | ||
| This is a fact. | ||
| The border was significantly under better control, whether Mexico paid for the wall, whether the wall was completed. | ||
| You know, you cannot dispute the fact that Trump made this a priority, in fact, made the issue. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And Biden has been a disaster, colossal disaster, to the point where I think he actually realizes that he's been such a big failure. | ||
| He's tried to walk it back a little bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you think it's, everyone always wants to know, do you think it's incompetence with these guys or do you think it's malicious? | ||
| I think it's incompetence and I think it's bad judgment. | ||
| Which is kind of a mixture of both. | ||
| And it's naivete. | ||
| It's only malicious insofar as some of the people that work for him, which are like the Obama Bee team, are ideological. | ||
| They are those people that I talk about who are a real threat to the country because of | ||
| their ideology. | ||
| So, that's where the malice comes from. | ||
| I don't think that they, you know, I don't think that they're evil, although you could | ||
| argue that that's a form of evil. | ||
| I think the malice really comes from a perverted ideology, which doesn't work. | ||
| It will never work. | ||
| It's in people's heads, a figment of their imagination, but they really feel passionate | ||
| And they're really indoctrinated, frankly. | ||
| And so that's number two. | ||
| Then you talk about general economic conditions. | ||
| You know, I'll never support a candidate that wants to raise taxes. | ||
| I think that's bad for, you know, more government is bad for the country. | ||
| You know, it's a disincentive for production. | ||
| It's a disincentive for investment. | ||
| And so somebody was telling me that his tax proposal calls for a doubling of the capital gains tax, which would stifle investment. | ||
| It's what is keeping America alive right now. | ||
| What's keeping America alive is the fact that AI has spurred a next generation of investment and economic growth. | ||
| We cannot do anything to slow that down. | ||
| In fact, the only chance that we have right now against inflation and a rising debt, if we're not going to actually be disciplined about our expenses, which nobody's done, frankly, no Republican or Democrat, is we've got to grow our way out of the problem. | ||
| And that's the only way to do that. | ||
| So I don't believe that, by the way. | ||
| I believe that we, you know, we need to right-size the size of our government. | ||
| I did that in 2009. | ||
| In Miami, I was confronted with, ironically, the exact same percentage deficit. | ||
| A $600 million budget with an actual $450 million budget, $600 million in expenses, about $150 million delta. | ||
| And that's the same differential. | ||
| And I would often say on the campaign trail that. | ||
| The courage that it takes to make those cuts doesn't depend on the number of zeros, right? | ||
| Because it's going to take a courageous person to say, look, these budgets are fictitious. | ||
| This is BS money. | ||
| This is not real money. | ||
| Is that the problem? | ||
| That nobody really understands that? | ||
| That people understand where everyone just says, OK, you got to raise this. | ||
| You got to bring in a certain amount of money. | ||
| But no one understands that there's an endless machine that always wants money. | ||
| Dave, the problem is we haven't hit the crisis. | ||
| Because people are often crisis motivated. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| Like in my case, in fairness, when I did this, I'm making it seem like it was easier than what it was. | ||
| It was a crisis. | ||
| We were on the verge of bankruptcy. | ||
| We had a choice. | ||
| We could either, you know, declare bankruptcy, raise taxes, which I was not willing to do, or cut expenses, which is what we did. | ||
| It was awful. | ||
| Our employees, I had employees wouldn't shake my hand for years. | ||
| I have a great relationship with my employees. | ||
| I've actually just finalized, we're on the precipice of finalizing our fourth labor union, so we'll have labor peace throughout my tenure as mayor. | ||
| But it was also because I knew I wasn't going to lie to them. | ||
| I was always straight with them. | ||
| When times were bad, I would tell them, guys, we've got to tighten the belt. | ||
| When times were good, I'd pass along those winnings to them, because I believe that a motivated, well-paid workforce is important on a service-based business like ours. | ||
| But yeah, again, look, I think it's going to take real leadership or it's going to take a crisis, which is going to spur You know, the kind of real tough decisions that we have to make to get us in line. | ||
| Does it seem to you that we'll only respond to a crisis? | ||
| That's what I'm worried about, where the country's at at the moment, that one side or the other won't respond. | ||
| So I would say this, if you look historically, the answer is nobody's done anything about it, right? | ||
| So I think it would be interesting to see, because obviously you know that Biden's not going to do anything about it. | ||
| He's obviously made the problem worse. | ||
| But frankly, in fairness, you know, President Trump didn't, you know, reduce necessarily the size of the deficit either. | ||
| So it will be interesting. | ||
| I believe he'll be elected. | ||
| It will be interesting to see in President Trump's next term what he does. | ||
| It's never popular to cut. | ||
| Because you're cutting someone, whether it's a congressman's project, someone's district. | ||
| And by the way, I'm not saying they're not worthy causes, but we're just living in fiction. | ||
| And, you know, what I learned from that experience is you take short-term pain, but the long-term benefit is exponential. | ||
| And so we now have the lowest taxes ever in our history, but the highest growth. | ||
| Highest reserves in our history. | ||
| Cash reserves. | ||
| Highest bond rating ever. | ||
| So we've never been more fiscally sound as a government in 125 plus years than we are now because we had the courage to make a tough choice. | ||
| It's just so refreshing, man, that I happen to live in that city, too. | ||
| Well, you chose to live there. | ||
| You voted with your feet. | ||
| I voted with my feet. | ||
| All right, I got one more question for you. | ||
| When I moved here— This is going by fast, man. | ||
| Well, if you've got anything else, please bring it. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| But when I moved here, I met up with Jared Kushner, and he said to me—they had just moved to Miami after living in New York and Jersey their whole lives—and he said to me, I think it was the week I got here, he said, if America is to continue, Miami's already 30 years in the future. | ||
| And I quote that a lot because I think it's right. | ||
| It feels like we're in the thing that will lead America if this thing is going to continue. | ||
| So what do you think Miami looks like, say, 30 years from now? | ||
| My vision is that it becomes what I call the capital of capital. | ||
| can be the central aggregation and deployment of capital center in the world if we want to be and if we strive to be. | ||
| It's going to take a little bit of work in terms of some of the educational deltas and outcomes that we have to produce in terms of talent. | ||
| But I think we have the people to do it, the Bezos, the Ken Griffins, people like Jared, who from the first minute Jared got here, he was like, you know, let's work on this together. | ||
| You know, I remember the first time I met Jared. | ||
| He probably doesn't remember the first time I met him, but it was at an AEI event in Sea Island, Georgia. | ||
| And he was, I mean, Jared looks young, right? | ||
| Like incredibly young. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I mean, this was a few years ago, so he looked even younger then. | ||
| And he was talking about how he was going to Pre-Middle East peace. | ||
| And I remember sitting in the audience thinking to myself, and I could tell because I looked around, I'm the only person that believes this guy can actually do it. | ||
| And to his credit, he did it. | ||
| And why did he do it? | ||
| He did it. | ||
| I mean, if you've read his book, I've read his book. | ||
| I'm sure you have. | ||
| I think he did it for two reasons or three reasons. | ||
| The first is, and this goes to kind of how we are, how we operate as a city. | ||
| He never, never adopted conventional wisdom. | ||
| If he would have adopted conventional wisdom, we would have gotten conventional results. | ||
| And number two, Someone who is born and bred and sort of makes their living in as tough a business as New York real estate, right? | ||
| Which is frankly how, you know, again, people underestimate the former president, but that's why he's so tough, right? | ||
| Doesn't ever get put in a position like that. | ||
| That just doesn't happen. | ||
| And if it wasn't for the fact that he was the son-in-law of the president, you know, America would not have benefited from someone of his level of talent who could demystify an issue, who could look at it from a different perspective, through a different prism, and re-engineer the solution in a radically different way. | ||
| And what he did was he re-engineered the solution in a way that did not address the Palestinian issue. | ||
| What he did was he circulated it around and said, hey, all these people that want to do business, let's get them all on board and let's start working with them. | ||
| And that will create a positive pressure that will want to get other people on board. | ||
| It was a complete 180 of what everyone was doing for six months. | ||
| I'm sure, and you see it in his book, that everybody said, Oh, this isn't going to work. | ||
| You know, even, you know, moving the, the embassy to Jerusalem, this is going to create, you know, all this conflict. | ||
| And it really didn't. | ||
| That's not what's created this right now. | ||
| And so, you know, there was a lot of courage and of course there were other people involved. | ||
| You know, and I think Jerry would admit that, you know, there were many people that made this happen. | ||
| You know, the U.S. | ||
| ambassador to Israel, etc. | ||
| So, but yeah, that sort of entrepreneurial attitude, this attitude of, we love this country, and if we understand how radically disruptive the moment is, but we keep pushing ourselves to get out of that disruption, we're going to continue to be successful. | ||
| We just can't sit back. | ||
| I'll just end with this. | ||
| A great podcast from the guy who runs a Norway sovereign wealth fund, which I didn't realize was the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. | ||
| He's doing a podcast with the CEO of Microsoft. | ||
| And you even hear it in his podcast with Elon, this notion that you just can't rest on your laurels. | ||
| Even in this moment, we're doing well. | ||
| We cannot just say, hey, we've got this thing figured out. | ||
| Our opponents are always going to give us the leg up or the advantage. | ||
| And all we got to do is be ourselves. | ||
| No, we have to keep pushing ourselves. | ||
| We have to keep iterating. | ||
| And frankly, we owe it to the next generation of Miamians to do it. | ||
| I moved two businesses, all these people in this room, and everything else in large part because of you, so... Keep doing it, man. | ||
| Keep grinding. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of non-stop screaming, 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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