Sept. 27, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
33:38
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Let's talk about law enforcement. | ||
| We're at an all-time low in terms of crime. | ||
| We are happy and blessed to do that. | ||
| But how do we get here? | ||
| You know, when the Summer of Love happened and you saw George Floyd and all these horrible things, it didn't happen in Florida because he said, you know what? | ||
| You're going to get punished. | ||
| You're going to go to jail. | ||
| And we're going to hold you accountable when that happens. | ||
| Things like holding people accountable when you steal. | ||
| You go to California. | ||
| If you want to steal $999, it won't even stop you. | ||
| I mean, what kind of lunacy is that? | ||
| Could you imagine being a business owner thinking that anytime someone walks in, you're going to write off $1,000? | ||
|
unidentified
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All right. | |
| I'm joined today by the lieutenant governor of the free state of Florida, Jay Collins. | ||
| I love saying the free state of Florida. | ||
| Doesn't that just sound perfect? | ||
| You know, Dave, it does. | ||
| It hits you right here. | ||
| It just feels right, especially anytime we're talking to other patriots across the country. | ||
| So thank you for having me. | ||
| Yeah, it's my pleasure. | ||
| I want to start with just a quick personal story because although we had crossed paths in my few years in Florida once or twice, you actually did something unbelievably powerful and profound and important for my family not too long ago when the Iran-Israel war was going off. | ||
| I didn't mention this on air, but my sister and her family and three kids happened to be in Israel and you were leading the team that was getting Floridians out of Israel. | ||
| Their only international airport was closed. | ||
| It was an unbelievably difficult logistical feat. | ||
| And you did an incredible job. | ||
| And I speak for my sister and my entire family. | ||
| I mean, we're all indebted to you. | ||
| So I just want to put that right there. | ||
| And maybe you want to discuss some of the logistics around that. | ||
| But maybe before we get into that, for people that don't know you outside of Florida, I feel like people are getting to know you here. | ||
| You have an incredible backstory, born in Montana, served in the military and paid the price for that. | ||
| I thought maybe we could do like maybe a two-minute biography and then we can dive into all of the stuff. | ||
| Yeah, no, Dave, that sounds good. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| So you hit the high points there in the front. | ||
| I was born in Montana. | ||
| I was born to a 16-year-old kid who had struggles with alcohol and drugs and was adopted by my grandparents. | ||
| So when people say somebody can't make a difference, one person can't do it. | ||
| Well, my grandma and grandpa made a heck of a difference for me. | ||
| They gave me a life. | ||
| They gave me a future. | ||
| Lord knows where I would have ended up otherwise. | ||
| Jumped forward to graduating high school, went to college for a couple of years, decided to join the military. | ||
| I said I'd do it for a few years, fell in love with it. | ||
| I was in jump school for September 11th, and the whole world changed. | ||
| I didn't find out the towers have been hit until literally six or seven hours afterwards. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And we knew we were going to be going from a nation at peace to a nation at war. | ||
| It was just a matter of when. | ||
| So I did a quick deployment to MacDill Air Force Base, saw a bunch of green berets and three letter agencies working together and figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up, volunteered shortly after that and went to selection. | ||
| And I've been volunteering for our nation ever since. | ||
| I got to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, all over the Middle East, all over Europe, all over South America. | ||
| I did get shot and I did do surgery on myself. | ||
| It's a great barroom story now. | ||
| It was not awesome at the time. | ||
| I did get hit by a mortar. | ||
| I fell and jacked up my back, blew out some discs, broke some bones, and that eventually led to the loss of my leg. | ||
| Well, I didn't lose it. | ||
| I know where it is. | ||
| It's just not with me anymore, Dave. | ||
| Wait, where, where, since you have a sense of humor about it, where is it? | ||
| Well, I think it's somewhere in a trash heap, actually, in Arizona, where the where the Mayo Clinic figured out what was going on with my leg. | ||
| So I went through about six and a half years of limb salvage trying to figure out why my leg wouldn't work, why it would not do what I needed to. | ||
| By the time they amputated, it was skin, it was bones, and had no functionality. | ||
| They cut my leg off in January of 14. | ||
| I re-qualified as a Green Beret roughly a year later. | ||
| You had to re-qualify in every single thing we did, shooting, moving, communicating, airborne ops, free fall ops. | ||
| There's only one standard. | ||
| You meet it or you don't. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And I didn't want it given to me because it has incredible value. | ||
| Anything of value has to be earned, not given. | ||
| How difficult? | ||
| I'm sorry to interrupt, but how difficult was that? | ||
| So then you have to basically go back in with part of your body gone and you have a prosthetic. | ||
| But I mean, so you just knocked it out of the park first time going through all of the different levels there? | ||
| Well, Dave, I could talk for about three hours on the lessons I learned face first on that one from fast roping and learning that carbon fiber does overheat when it's applied on a rope and literally my toes would break off when I hit the ground or jumped out of an airplane and my leg pulling off my body and flopping around underneath me. | ||
| That was really not cool. | ||
| It didn't kill me, though. | ||
| So it did make me stronger, I guess. | ||
| And I learned how to plan around it. | ||
| Actually, doing shooting drills was incredibly hard because when your foot doesn't flex and it's basically a brick, your sight moves differently. | ||
| So you had to shift your body and accommodate differently. | ||
| So the weight distribution was completely different. | ||
| I had to relearn all of those tasks. | ||
| And again, you had to do it right because we had one standard. | ||
| But in the end, there are one-legged Green Berets and people like that deployed all over the planet now. | ||
| So we helped shift Army policy and grateful to have had an opportunity to do it. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So I want to spend most of the show talking about what we're doing right here in Florida. | ||
| But if we could back up for just a sec, can you talk to people about what I mentioned up top about the program that you were involved in to get Floridians out of war zones? | ||
| Because it wasn't just Israel in this one time. | ||
| It's some other things that you guys have done. | ||
| And I do want to just reiterate like your calming presence that you were taking calls with me and meeting my sister on the ground in the family in the midst of rockets that were falling very close to you and they were hearing all sorts of explosions and everything. | ||
| How did you even get involved in that? | ||
| And what can we do to help? | ||
| Bulldog is the organization Bulldog. | ||
| I'm suddenly Gray Bull Rescue. | ||
| Gray Bull Rescue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So Gray Bull Rescue is the nonprofit. | ||
| The state of Florida has shown that we want to lead from the front. | ||
| And when others weren't stepping up, we were getting calls from moms and dads and families, brothers and uncles and sisters and all over the state and eventually all over the country because their loved ones were in harm's way. | ||
| You know, if you had actually queried my friends and family, this was very typical of what I would like to do with my life, what I thought I was going to be doing when I retired and the way I lived in my life for many years. | ||
| So running to get Israel and bouncing between Jordan, ducking and diving ballistic missiles was the most normal thing I've probably done the last five years. | ||
| But in the end, that's what leadership should look like from our government. | ||
| Imagine where those people would have been. | ||
| Imagine how you would have felt if Governor DeSantis didn't have the courage and commitment, the conviction to say, yes, go ahead and go. | ||
| Make a difference. | ||
| Bring our people back. | ||
| And by the way, even if they're not Floridians and they're American citizens, bring them back too. | ||
| That is leadership. | ||
| And being upfront and taking that hard right matters. | ||
| So, you know, we deployed forward. | ||
| I went from Tampa into Cyprus. | ||
| From Cyprus, we chartered a plane into Jordan. | ||
| We landed in a little airport there, walked around, found our bearings, got a hotel, and then went from the Queen Alia airport into the Sheikh Hussein border crossing and went backwards through the entire system. | ||
| You had to pressure load it to make sure that we had connections, we knew the process, we understood where the gaps, where the risks could be, and we made our way into Israel. | ||
| We started reaching out to that first group of people, getting them set up, telling them how the process would work, get buses online, bring them in, set up times, and then bring them back through the reverse way we came in, which was right back through the border crossing, in this case, back over to Queen Alia Airport, and then on to Cyprus, and then back to Tampa Bay, Florida. | ||
| And we did that again and again. | ||
| We also used boats, which was a very interesting, slow way back to Cyprus to then get on the same aircraft. | ||
| But in the end, man, it was just such a privilege to be there and get to lead from the front and be there for so many people. | ||
| And, you know, it was odd. | ||
| My phone number made its way to, I believe, all 50 states. | ||
| Text messages. | ||
| But, you know, I thought about what if that were my sister? | ||
| What if that were my kids? | ||
| Having someone pick up the phone and care about what's going on, that's the difference. | ||
| People just have to have faith in their leadership, that they actually care. | ||
| It's the head and the heart. | ||
| You got to be competent and capable, but you got to be someone who's trustworthy as well. | ||
| And it's just beautiful that we so consistently do that here in the state of Florida. | ||
| And then you guys are able to scale it across the world. | ||
| And then you were on the ground there, of course, and DeSantis was in Tampa waiting for people to land again and offering reassurance. | ||
| I do want to mention also that my personal friend and friend of the show, Josh Hammer, you helped get him and his wife and his just few month-old baby out with that via that road or that route that you took right there. | ||
| So let's talk about Florida because everybody watching this knows I love this state. | ||
| I view Florida as the freest state and the freest nation in the world. | ||
| And we are doing almost everything right. | ||
| So tell me a little bit about how is it that we're getting it right? | ||
| How did you and the governor and the people that are doing it right? | ||
| And I know we've got some weird stuff happening in the legislature. | ||
| Maybe we can talk about that. | ||
| But how did Florida really get it right? | ||
| Is this all the success that we're seeing now the result of the craziness of COVID? | ||
| And because DeSantis got that right, it then pushed a lot of other good stuff forward. | ||
| Or was there a lot of good things before that that maybe got strengthened? | ||
| So, you know, that's actually a great question, Dave. | ||
| And I think it hits on the nuance and the point of delineation here more than anybody else who's asked that question, frankly. | ||
| I love the approach. | ||
| Governor DeSantis had all the tools. | ||
| He had all the talent. | ||
| He had the moral compass that pointed the right direction. | ||
| Nobody knew COVID was going to happen. | ||
| When he got elected, nobody would have thought that COVID would define five years of our lives across this country. | ||
| They would change how business is run, that it would destroy our economy in many states. | ||
| And that Florida, because we elected the right person who had the moral characteristics, who had the ability to stand alone if necessary, and he did stand alone. | ||
| He had people attacking him from all over the planet, all over the country, and he stood alone. | ||
| And eventually people built up alongside him. | ||
| If Governor DeSantis didn't have that courage, that fortitude, if he didn't have a conviction to stand in what he believes, Florida would have fallen. | ||
| We would have been like New York. | ||
| And what's the result of that? | ||
| Because he's done that. | ||
| We have a supermajority in the House, the Senate. | ||
| We have passed more conservative language and legislation than any other state. | ||
| I call this the conservative proving grounds of America. | ||
| And it's very simple. | ||
| What's going on now across the country, most of it we've proved here in Florida, whether it was our anti-CCP bills, whether it was common sense things like school choice, standing up for prayer and sports, standing up for parents' rights, all of those things. | ||
| Those are American ideals, ideas, principles. | ||
| And we stood strong here in Florida. | ||
| But here's the key thing: elections have consequences. | ||
| We were so close, so incredibly close to that election going awry, both in the primary and in a general. | ||
| Yeah, you're talking DeSantis' first time around. | ||
| DeSantis' first run. | ||
| Imagine where we would have been in COVID if things had gone differently. | ||
| It was that close. | ||
| Well, the guy he almost lost to, the guy he almost lost to, and thank God didn't turn out to be a meth addict, also. | ||
| Well, there was that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, could you imagine? | ||
| COVID event then. | ||
| My goodness gracious. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He seemed to be having all sorts of strange parties. | ||
| All right, whatever. | ||
| We'll let that be. | ||
| Yeah, we digress. | ||
| So, so what is so talk to me about how we're doing it right and how we how we continue his legacy. | ||
| So you're lieutenant governor right now. | ||
| So you're you're number two in the Florida government. | ||
| I mean, what else? | ||
| I know one of the things DeSantis is trying to do right now and pass through that legislature, which he mentioned, we have a supermajority. | ||
| He's trying to get rid of property taxes, which I can tell you everyone down here in Miami would be pretty freaking thrilled about. | ||
| What are some of the things that he's done right on the ground that still we still need to focus on? | ||
| And what are some of the things for the future? | ||
| Which perhaps there's a future where the word lieutenant disappears from your title. | ||
| Well, you never know. | ||
| It's something we're digging into. | ||
| So how do we do this? | ||
| Well, first off, I think as a conservative, as a Republican and a conservative, we run on certain things. | ||
| You know, immigration was one of those. | ||
| President Trump in his election had a clear mandate from the American people. | ||
| It wasn't Democrats. | ||
| It wasn't Republicans and it wasn't independents. | ||
| It was the American people across the way that said illegal immigration is a problem and we want you to take care of it. | ||
| And that's happening. | ||
| No state has stepped forward and led more than the state of Florida. | ||
| Our 287G agreements, what we're doing with Alligator Alcatraz, what we're doing with Deportation Depot, and the potential for the panhandle pokey as we grow. | ||
| We're taking this seriously. | ||
| We're leading from the front because ultimately it's a math problem, it's a safety problem, and the American people have been abundantly clear. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| Why aren't other states following that lead? | ||
| Imagine where we would be in this problem if other people had the conviction and the courage to lead, even if it's a little bumpy, even if you have to fight activist judges in your own state. | ||
| We still win. | ||
| We still push forward and we persevere. | ||
| Property tax is really one of those things where we can step into next. | ||
| You know, the American dream, you know, is an amazing story, right? | ||
| Many of us have lived that. | ||
| I grew up in a trailer. | ||
| And to go from growing up in a trailer without two wooden nickels to rub together to being the lieutenant governor, the 21st in the great state of Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis, man, it reads like a bad Hallmark movie, right? | ||
| But what an amazing opportunity and a blessing. | ||
| But only in this country and in a state like Florida is that truly possible. | ||
| So property tax is the American dream. | ||
| We want to own our home. | ||
| And if you really pay rent and the government can take your home, the fact is you don't own it. | ||
| So we can do that and we should do that. | ||
| The people across Florida are craving, yearning, demanding property tax relief. | ||
| But we've got to use our supermajorities to get this out there. | ||
| It's got to go on the ballot. | ||
| The people have to vote for this. | ||
| And I think what we really want to focus in on are those homesteaded properties. | ||
| That's a critical component of it. | ||
| At home, not corporations that own two, three, 400 of these things. | ||
| Your home, the American dream, your people. | ||
| You know, we got to get that right. | ||
| And we'll be out of the tip of the spear on that, both myself, the governor, and whoever else wants to get in beside us. | ||
| But the fact is this: if you're elected as a Republican, we have an opportunity to land this plane, make a difference, and get it right. | ||
| And our people are very clear in this. | ||
| They want property tax relief. | ||
| They want to have the American dream. | ||
| They want the government out of the day-to-day of their home like that. | ||
| So let's do that. | ||
| Let's move forward. | ||
| Let's do the math. | ||
| So, okay, so speaking of the math, then what, without getting too insider baseball here, what is the general pushback you're getting? | ||
| Because you mentioned a supermajority. | ||
| So everything you said there, I'm sure everybody watching this is going, yeah, of course, we don't want to pay property taxes and people shouldn't, in essence, pay a penalty, especially in a state where we have record tourism every year. | ||
| So it's not like we don't have tax. | ||
| It's not as if we don't have income coming into the state. | ||
| And we have a very trim budget. | ||
| So it's not like we have a lot of fat. | ||
| So what is the pushback that you get when you hear that or when you present that? | ||
| Tax doesn't actually come to this state. | ||
| It goes to the municipalities. | ||
| So, you know, we have our FAFO, formerly known as Doge, that is going out there. | ||
| You know, we just found almost $200 million in waste just in Orange County, just in one county, Orange County, Florida. | ||
| Not shocking that it's that place, but the fact is there's a lot of fat that can be trimmed from some of these municipal and city budgets. | ||
| You can't tell me that in some of these counties where they've had de minimis amounts of population growth, yet their budgets have grown 40, 50, 60%. | ||
| It's all going to the common good, to our law enforcement, to our firefighters, to our roads. | ||
| I doubt it, right? | ||
| So cut the garbage, get down to the brass tax, focus on what people actually want their dollars spent on. | ||
| The pushback has been simple. | ||
| Well, this sounds really hard. | ||
| Well, this is the United States of America. | ||
| This is Florida. | ||
| We do hard things. | ||
| Don't be afraid. | ||
| Don't be afraid to step up and let's get it right. | ||
| We got to do the work. | ||
| The people want it and we're going to do this. | ||
| It can be done. | ||
| So, okay, so let's assume we get that done. | ||
| And hopefully that becomes one of, you know, Ron DeSantis' lasting legacies. | ||
| What are some of the other things we should be focusing on? | ||
| I mean, one thing that's very clear to me is how wonderfully, I mean, incredibly we do policing here wherever I am. | ||
| And I know several police chiefs, especially in the part of Miami that I'm in. | ||
| And I just see functioning systems that are working here all the time. | ||
| And we've brought in all of these guys from NYPD who wanted to get out and DeSantis gave them bonuses. | ||
| I mean, what are other things we can do in terms of strengthening policing? | ||
| You also referenced alligator alcatraz and what we're doing with immigration. | ||
| I mean, just strengthening the things that are working. | ||
| Yeah, well, that's a key thing. | ||
| We've had so much success for the last six and a half years under Governor DeSantis. | ||
| You want to keep that train chugging down the tracks. | ||
| Yes, whatever happens in the next eight years for whoever the next governor is, something big, something bold, something crazy will happen. | ||
| And they're going to have their opportunity to shine to lead through that thing. | ||
| But we want to make sure they have that moral compass. | ||
| But let's talk about law enforcement. | ||
| We're at an all-time low in terms of crime. | ||
| We are happy and blessed to do that. | ||
| But how do we get here? | ||
| You know, when the Summer of Love happened and you saw George Floyd and all these horrible things, it didn't happen in Florida because he said, you know what? | ||
| You're going to get punished. | ||
| You're going to go to jail. | ||
| And we're going to hold you accountable when that happens. | ||
| Things like holding people accountable when you steal. | ||
| You go to California, if you want to steal $999, it won't even stop you. | ||
| I mean, what kind of lunacy is that? | ||
| Could you imagine being a business owner thinking that anytime someone walks in, you're going to write off $1,000? | ||
| I always say it's the PS5 and you can steal four games, but you take that fifth game, then they're going to come after you. | ||
| Now we're going to chase you down. | ||
| You know, it's just, it's hot garbage, Dave. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| But it's common sense. | ||
| People want leadership. | ||
| We stand by our law enforcement. | ||
| We fund them. | ||
| But, you know, how can we get better? | ||
| I think there's ways to further improve how we purchase vehicles, how we purchase arms, how we train our people from a fusion concept, how you can get more deliberate in training them. | ||
| As a military man, I always look for opportunities to create horizontal and vertical capabilities to stack those up. | ||
| The fact is, everything in your home that touches Wi-Fi is up at risk with cyber being really the next, one of the next major fields of warfare and attack in our communities. | ||
| It's frightening. | ||
| That's going to happen, drone warfare. | ||
| You know, we talked to Josh and so many other people over there. | ||
| There were drones flying all over Israel. | ||
| The fact is, eventually that's coming here. | ||
| We're going to see that. | ||
| We have to prepare for that. | ||
| And our law enforcement have to be prepared for those things. | ||
| But that means you have to train them, fund them, and make sure that they get back to their families. | ||
| That's time, tools, training. | ||
| But we often forget that our cops, our firefighters, they're moms and dads. | ||
| They're daughters and sons. | ||
| They have families too. | ||
| And we often don't pay enough attention to the people behind the badge and all that they do. | ||
| They deserve to have all they need to do their job, but they got to get home to their families. | ||
| And in Florida, we're going to continue to fight and lead from the front on that as we always have. | ||
| But there'll be something that pops up and we'll prove our worth and our value there as well. | ||
| You know, we're a military-friendly state, Dave. | ||
| There are 1.5 million veterans. | ||
| I want veterans to retire and come to the great state of Florida. | ||
| I want them to continue to serve, whether it's an education, whether it's building a business, or it's getting into politics. | ||
| That brand, that approach, those can-do attitudes make a difference. | ||
| But we're going to have to solve problems with the VA. | ||
| We have to draw people in here. | ||
| That's why we did our Florida Department of Veterans Affairs and Modernization Act that I ran that allowed us to recruit veterans and their spouses to help them build bridges and build lives right here in the great state of Florida. | ||
| We're going to continue to push on those things, building businesses, that American dream as well. | ||
| It's getting things done and getting jobs built. | ||
| Do you guys in Tallahassee have a special office somewhere where you're able to track the voting habits of the newcomers? | ||
| Now, I'm down here where I can tell you the newcomers, and I'm only here three, you know, barely, barely four years now. | ||
| The newcomers are the most dread, the ones that come from Cali and New York, all obviously the backdrop of COVID. | ||
| But that's always the concern with the OG Floridians. | ||
| And I'm very sensitive to that concern. | ||
| So when I first got here, I was always walking around with my Florida hat or American shirt flag because I wanted people to know, hey, I'm here for the right reasons. | ||
| I'm not here because you tell people you're from Cali and they start freaking out. | ||
| Are you guys aware of a good set of problems, which is we've created the conditions for freedom, so everyone's still coming here, but it does present a risk that places like Utah and Montana, where you're from, that in some sense have become a little more blue at times because the blue people flee and then they bring the stupid policies. | ||
| Yeah, you know, Dave, we've been pretty good at this right now. | ||
| I look at Hillsboro County. | ||
| I live in Tampa. | ||
| It is not historically a bastion of conservative values. | ||
| I ran against the mayor of Tampa's mother-in-law originally. | ||
| I had like five months to jump in this race. | ||
| We won by 10, and it has shifted, I believe, 15 points in the local congressional district there over the last four years. | ||
| That's incredible. | ||
| That's incredible growth. | ||
| So what does that tell us? | ||
| In cities like that, we have political refugees from California, from New York, from New Jersey that have said the lunacy is enough. | ||
| I mean, Mamdami and the nonsense. | ||
| I think you're going to see an expressway flying down here from New York and New Jersey because of that guy. | ||
| We are the last bastion. | ||
| If America's a shining city on the hill, we're the light. | ||
| But we've got to keep solving those problems and we've got to bring back conservative, people-focused leadership across this country. | ||
| We've got to export what we do. | ||
| What do you find your contemporaries in other states are saying about Florida? | ||
| Are they all jealous? | ||
| I've asked Governor DeSantis this many times. | ||
| Like, I just don't understand. | ||
| And he had his blueprint for America. | ||
| It was the blueprint for Florida that really he was trying to scale to America. | ||
| And I think is happening in some kind of slow-motion version where states are waking up. | ||
| But when you talk to other governors or lieutenant governors or House members from other states where they're doing it wrong, what are they saying? | ||
| What do they actually say to you behind closed doors? | ||
| Well, often they're very jealous of what we've accomplished. | ||
| You know, you guys have the supermajority. | ||
| You have all of these things that are going on. | ||
| You've done choice and education. | ||
| You've pushed gun rights forward. | ||
| You blocked the CCP. | ||
| You've built a better licensure to get the government out of the way. | ||
| You've deregulated all the things that we dream of and they can't do in these other states. | ||
| But, you know, there's the other side of that, the discussion as well. | ||
| We weren't where we were a few years back. | ||
| The Democrats were in the exact same seat and they eroded their own values. | ||
| They fought each other. | ||
| They tore the thing apart. | ||
| We have to remember what we got elected to do, what the people in Florida want, and we got to continue to fight. | ||
| It's not about words. | ||
| Words are cheap. | ||
| You got to put points on the board. | ||
| You got to do things. | ||
| It's deeds, not words that matter. | ||
| And our people expect that. | ||
| Look, we had a bumpy road last session. | ||
| We did. | ||
| It was not up to our expectations. | ||
| It was not what Florida deserved. | ||
| And frankly, I hope and pray we are on a course for a better solution. | ||
| You know, our Senate, our House, in the EOG, we all have to work together to solve this. | ||
| But in the end, the governor stood strong in conservative values. | ||
| He fought for the people. | ||
| He fought for immigration. | ||
| He fought for the things that we promised people we would do. | ||
| We got to keep that in mind. | ||
| You know, hopefully we have a better session this last year in Governor DeSantis' time as governor. | ||
| I would love to see that happen. | ||
| But in the end, we're not going to stray. | ||
| We will not lose our resolve. | ||
| You know, there's so much going on, whether it's Charlie or Mamdami, we have to maintain who we are in Florida because we lead. | ||
| And that is consistently what other lieutenant governors, other members of Senates and Houses have said state to state to state. | ||
| They're jealous of what we've had. | ||
| Yeah, you know, even for a guy like me, me, who's obviously well-versed in Floridian politics, I didn't realize until the last session how sort of screwy the house with the supermajority could be. | ||
| Do you think some of that is also that DeSantis, because this is his last term no matter what, that in essence, he's a lame duck. | ||
| So they're just like, ah, let's just see what we could get away with because we don't have to worry about this guy anymore. | ||
| Yeah, if someone made that bet, I don't think they were paying attention. | ||
| There is nothing lame duck about him. | ||
| I'm not even sure a duck is the right word. | ||
| I'm not making the argument. | ||
| I'm trying to make their argument. | ||
| He's got teeth and claws, right? | ||
| DeSantis is no lame duck. | ||
| I've heard that discussion 100%. | ||
| That was an egregious miscalculation. | ||
| He is hitting the gas pedal. | ||
| He is driving forward fast. | ||
| And I'm so incredibly proud to be his lieutenant governor because I'll tell you what, if we're going to wear suits and ties every day, we're going to get dressed up. | ||
| We better get something done. | ||
| I don't sit idly very well. | ||
| I kind of have something to do with my hands. | ||
| And that, thank God, is serving the people of Florida and getting things done. | ||
| We're going to get things done. | ||
| So speaking of getting things done, I think one of the major things that people talk about that Florida could do better is figure out what's going on with, you know, we have all these natural disasters. | ||
| Obviously, we've had, you know, basically two virtually category five hurricanes hit us in the last three years, Ian and the one last year. | ||
| I'm blanking on which one that was. | ||
| Helena, thank you. | ||
| Yeah, Matt Milton, right? | ||
| And obviously there's an insurance problem here in that we are a peninsula. | ||
| We have a lot of water around us. | ||
| We get hit on the Gulf. | ||
| We get hit on the Atlantic. | ||
| Is there anything we can do? | ||
| Is it the government's responsibility to be facilitating the insurance companies to be making better deals with people? | ||
| Or is it just kind of baked in that if you live in an area like this, and it's not just Florida, obviously, that there's a price to pay in some sense? | ||
| Yeah, Dave, there's a little bit of all the above. | ||
| I think we'll grab E, answer E on this. | ||
| It is all of the above. | ||
| But here's the fact, right? | ||
| Yes, there are things we've done and there are things we can do, but this is where we've got to stay the course. | ||
| You know, I've heard the first lady call Governor DeSantis a steely-eyed missile man, right? | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
| It is not easy to go look at people in the community when their homes have been destroyed. | ||
| Insurance prices are going up and say, we have to be patient. | ||
| The tort reform work that we did is working. | ||
| Insurance companies are coming back. | ||
| Rates are stabilizing. | ||
| I know it's hard. | ||
| And we've done all we can to help as a state and lead from the front with many programs to either elevate your home, to refurbish your home, to ruggedize your home and make it more resilient. | ||
| But in the end, tort reform, we had 77% of the litigated claims and only 7% of the actual claims in the country. | ||
| That math is not math. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I have 10 fingers and five toes. | ||
| And you got to do the math, right? | ||
| It makes you scratch your head a little bit. | ||
| So I got the joke. | ||
| I got the joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| You know, I'm a one-legged guy. | ||
| I live in a city of pirates, man. | ||
| It's okay. | ||
| But, you know, we have brought back more insurance companies. | ||
| I believe there's 13 or 14 now that are up and selling. | ||
| Our secondary market's broadening. | ||
| Rates have stabilized. | ||
| Rates are starting to come down. | ||
| Insurance companies filing for rate reductions are improving. | ||
| And across the board, they're either stabilized and holding or dropping. | ||
| Auto insurance, while the other 49 states are going up right now, Florida is going down. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Well, we were a little torque crazy over here in Florida and we got it fixed. | ||
| And thank God. | ||
| Now, there are a lot of people who want to push back and flip-flop back. | ||
| If we go backwards on tort reform, you're going to watch insurance prices skyrocket again. | ||
| It's just stabilizing the market. | ||
| We have to hold what we got and we've got to keep leading. | ||
| And that doesn't mean we're not going to lead on insurance. | ||
| Look, if there are companies who aren't doing right or aren't doing good business, we're going to hold you accountable. | ||
| FAFO, formerly known as Doge, is out there in Florida and we take it serious. | ||
| Treat your people right. | ||
| Do the right thing. | ||
| Do good business and we'll be okay. | ||
| But if you are taking advantage of people, there is accountability. | ||
| We will find you and we will fix the problem. | ||
| That being said, I think we're on a good course right now, Dave. | ||
| I think rates are dropping and hurricanes happen. | ||
| We could have a few years without hurricanes. | ||
| It sure be nice. | ||
| It certainly would be. | ||
| I mean, Ian particularly, I mean, that was what they said was the once in a hundred year thing. | ||
| So hopefully we've got about 95 years to go on that one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So we have to end with the obvious question, which we already hinted at, which is that it seems to me you are lined up quite well to keep the DeSantis legacy alive. | ||
| Byron Donalds is the only sort of big name Republican that has announced that he is running for governor. | ||
| I think a few other people have announced much lower level. | ||
| What's the future here, Mr. Lieutenant Governor Collins? | ||
| Well, what I wanted to announce today, Dave, is really pretty spectacular. | ||
| I am going to be the spokesperson for Hair Club for Men nationally. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
| No, just kidding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, what I want to do here. | |
| Let's talk about 26 and let's talk about where we're at. | ||
| Yes, Byron's been in the race for a while. | ||
| He's been there. | ||
| You know, when I look at this, I look at three things. | ||
| I look at people in my family. | ||
| I look at people in my community. | ||
| I look at the state of Florida. | ||
| It's not a me thing. | ||
| It's a we thing. | ||
| We the people, if this is good for my family and we're good to go, fantastic. | ||
| If the community is behind us and I believe we have the right path and there's people to fall in as I move up, if I took that choice, great. | ||
| And as the state of Florida lining up to really espouse my brand of leadership, and it's a very complex decision. | ||
| You know, it's not just I'm going to jump in and literally take my leg off and throw it in the rain and get down to business, right? | ||
| Turns out hopping hard. | ||
| And, you know, you want to make sure that this isn't my ego talking, that it is about other people. | ||
| So here's where we are right now, Dave. | ||
| And it has been a lot of prayer. | ||
| It has been a lot of discussion. | ||
| And I am so grateful for my family because they are unequivocally behind me. | ||
| If we decide to do this, they have my back. | ||
| They're ready for the fight ahead. | ||
| Our community has resoundingly said that they support me, that they have my back, that we're in a good position on this. | ||
| And then what I've heard repeatedly across the state of Florida is this. | ||
| We don't want politics as usual. | ||
| We don't want business as usual. | ||
| We want people who understand it's not a me thing. | ||
| It is a we thing. | ||
| We want people willing to step in and step up to step into that breach because they understand what matters. | ||
| They understand that these are people's lives and that government can't move at the speed of government. | ||
| It has to move at the speed of people's lives. | ||
| That's what we should do. | ||
| So where that leaves us is this. | ||
| We are making our final decisions. | ||
| We are weighing this very heavily. | ||
| And we are very nearly at our final decision point. | ||
| And here's what I want to leave you with. | ||
| I am not afraid of the fight. | ||
| I am not afraid to get in and step up and lead because I've seen what goes wrong with bad government. | ||
| I've fed, I've fought beside people for 23 years all over the country. | ||
| I've fed millions of people across this planet, millions of people across the state of Florida after disaster. | ||
| I have been there in their worst times and in their best times. | ||
| And I know more than anything else, when you take away money, you take away things, it comes down to moral compass and leadership. | ||
| And that we can do. | ||
| So we're really close. | ||
| If we decide to jump in, Dave, I will personally call you and give you a thumbs up and say, let's go. | ||
| We got this, and it's time to win. | ||
| I think that was your way of saying that Florida's gain might be the Hair Club's loss. | ||
| We will find out more. | ||
| Well, Jay, it's been really a pleasure and an honor getting to know you. | ||
| And we shall see. | ||
| And I look forward to that phone call. | ||
| I thank you. | ||
| And stay tuned, everyone. | ||
| All right. |
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