Sept. 27, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
33:38
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| Let's talk about law enforcement. | ||
| We're at an all-time low in terms of uh crime. | ||
| We are happy and blessed to do that, but how do we get here? | ||
| You know, when uh the summer of love happened and uh you saw George Floyd and all these horrible things, it didn't happen in Florida because he said, you know what, you're gonna get punished, you're gonna go to jail, and we're gonna hold you accountable when that happens. | ||
| Uh things like uh 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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$1,000? | |
| 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, uh, especially any time 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 uh although we had crossed paths in my few years in Florida once or twice, uh, you actually did something unbelievably uh powerful and profound and important uh for my family not too long ago when when the Iran-Israel war was going off. | ||
| Uh 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. | ||
| They're their only international airport was closed. | ||
| Um it was an unbelievably difficult logistical feat. | ||
| And you did an incredible job, and my I speak for my sister and my entire family. | ||
| I mean, we're 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 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. | ||
| Um you have an incredible backstory, born in Montana, served in the military and and paid the price for that. | ||
| I thought maybe we could do like a 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 yeah, you hit the high points there in the front. | ||
| I was born in Montana, I was born to a 16-year-old kid uh who had struggles with alcohol and drugs and uh 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. | ||
| Uh Lord knows where I would have ended up otherwise. | ||
| Uh jumped forward to uh, you know, graduating high school, went to college for a couple years, decided to join the military, uh, said I'd do it for a few years, fell in love with it. | ||
| Uh, was in jump school for September 11th, and uh the whole world changed. | ||
| I didn't find out the towers have been hit until literally six or seven hours afterwards. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| And uh we knew we were going to be going from uh a nation at peace to a nation at war. | ||
| It was just a matter of when. | ||
| So I did a quick deployment to McDill Air Force Base, saw a bunch of Green Berets and uh three letter agencies working together and figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up, uh volunteered shortly after that and uh went to selection and I've been volunteering for our nation ever since. | ||
| Uh I got to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, uh 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. | ||
| Uh I did get hit by a mortar. | ||
| I fell and jacked at 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. | ||
| Where 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, uh in uh in Arizona where the uh where the uh mayo clinic figured out what was going on with my leg. | ||
| So uh I went through about six and a half years of limb salvage, uh trying to figure out why my leg wouldn't work, why it would uh not do what I needed to. | ||
| By the time they amputated, it was skin, it was bones, and uh had no uh 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. | ||
| Uh there's only one standard. | ||
| You meet it or you don't. | ||
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unidentified
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Wow. | |
| And uh, didn't want it given to me because it has incredible value. | ||
| Anything of value has to be earned, not given. | ||
| How difficult? | ||
| I mean, I'm sorry to interrupt, but how how difficult was that? | ||
| So then you have to basically go back in with part of your body gone uh gone and uh you know you have the prosthetic. | ||
| But I mean, you you so you just knocked it out of the park first time going through all of the different levels there? | ||
| Well, Dave, I could uh I could talk for about three hours on the lessons I learned face first on that one from fast roping uh and uh learning that carbon fiber does overheat uh 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 uh pulling off my body and flopping around underneath me, that was really not cool. | ||
| It didn't kill me though, so it didn't make me stronger, I guess. | ||
| And I learned how to plan around it. | ||
| Uh actually doing shooting drills was incredibly hard because when your foot doesn't flex and it's basically a brick, uh 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 have one standard. | ||
| Uh, but in the end, uh there are one-legged green berets and people like that deployed all over the planet now. | ||
| So we helped shift Army policy and uh 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 for just a sec, um can you talk to people about what I mentioned up top about the the program that you were involved in uh to get Floridians out of war zones? | ||
| Because it it wasn't just Israel in this one time, it's some other things that you guys have done. | ||
| Uh and 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 else. | ||
| How did you even get involved in that? | ||
| And uh and what can we do to help? | ||
| Uh the the uh bulldog is the organization bulldog. | ||
| I'm suddenly uh Grey Bull Rescue. | ||
| Great Bull Rescue. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So Gray Bull Rescue is the nonprofit. | ||
| Uh 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 the state and eventually all over the country because their loved ones were in harm's way. | ||
| You know, if you had actually queried uh 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 live in my life for many years. | ||
| So running to get Israel and bouncing between Jordan, ducking and diving uh ballistic missiles was the most normal thing I've probably done the last five years. | ||
| But uh 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 up front and taking that hard right matters. | ||
| So, you know, we deployed forward. | ||
| I went from uh Tampa into Cyprus. | ||
| From Cyprus, we chartered a plane into uh Jordan. | ||
| We landed in uh a little little airport there, uh walked around, found our bearings, got a hotel, and then went from uh the Queen Alia Airport into the Sheikh Hussein border crossing and went backwards to 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 uh 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 uh Queen Alia Airport, and then on to Cyprus, and then back to uh Tampa Bay, Florida. | ||
| And we did that again and again. | ||
| We also used boats, which was a very interesting uh slow way back to Cyprus to then get on the same aircraft. | ||
| But in the end, man, it was just such a privilege uh 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. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| A lot of 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 gotta be competent and capable, but you gotta be someone who's trustworthy as well. | ||
| And it 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 uh 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 I view Florida as the freest state in 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 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 is 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 I think it hits on the nuance and the the the point of delineation here more than anybody else who's asked that question, frankly. | ||
| Uh 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. | ||
| If when he got elected, nobody would have thought that COVID would define, you know, 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 litig language and legislation than any other state. | ||
| I call us the conservative proving grounds of America, and it's very simple. | ||
| Uh 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 in sports, standing up for uh 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, you're talking DeSantis's first time around. | ||
| DeSantis's 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 turned out to be a meth addict, also. | ||
| But there was that. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, uh could you imagine? | ||
| Oh, 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. | ||
| Um, we digress. | ||
| Um 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. | ||
| Um, what are some of the things that that he's done right on the ground that's still that we still need to focus on, and what are some of the things for the future? | ||
| Um, which perhaps there's a uh future where the word lieutenant disappears from your title. | ||
| Well, you never know. | ||
| It's something we're digging into. | ||
| Uh so how do we do this? | ||
| Well, first off, I think as a conservative, as as a Republican and a conservative, we run on certain things. | ||
| You know, uh 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 independence. | ||
| It was the American people across the way that said illegal immigration's 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 uh the panhandle pokey as we grow. | ||
| We're taking this Serious. | ||
| 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, the courage to lead, even if it's a little bumpy, even if you have to fight uh, you know, uh 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, uh is is an amazing story, right? | ||
| Uh many of us have lived that. | ||
| I 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 we live in. | ||
| That's a critical component of it. | ||
| At home, not corporations that own two, three, four hundred of these things, your home, the American dream, your people. | ||
| You know, we got to get that right. | ||
| And uh we'll be out of the tip of the spear on that, both myself, the governor, uh, and whoever else wants to get in the 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 and they want the government out of the day-to-day of their home like that. | ||
| So let's do that. | ||
| Let's fight 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 you and people shouldn't in essence pay a penalty, especially in a state where we're we have record tourism every year. | ||
| So it's not like we don't have tax. | ||
| We don't it's not as if we don't have income coming into the state. | ||
| Uh, and we have a very trim budget, so it's not like we have a lot of fat. | ||
|
unidentified
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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 uh our FAFO, uh formerly known as Doge, that is going out there. | ||
| You know, we just found almost 200 million dollars 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 these municipal and city budgets. | ||
| You can't tell me that in some of these counties where they've had the minimum amounts of population growth, yet their budgets have grown 40, 50, 60 percent. | ||
| 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. | ||
| Uh 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 gotta do the work. | ||
| The people want it, and we're gonna do this. | ||
| It can be done. | ||
| So, okay, so assume let's assume we get that done, and hopefully that that becomes one of uh, you know, Ron DeSantis' lasting legacies. | ||
| Uh what are some of the other things we should be focusing on? | ||
| I mean, one one thing that's very clear to me is how wonderfully, I mean, incredibly we do policing here. | ||
| Uh, wherever I am, and I I know several police chiefs, especially in the 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 did who wanted to get out, and we've DeSantis gave them bonuses. | ||
| I mean, what are other things we can do when it in terms of strengthening policing? | ||
| You also referenced alligator alchemizing 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 gonna have their opportunity to shine to lead through that thing, but 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 uh crime. | ||
| We are happy and blessed to do that, but how do we get here? | ||
| You know, when uh the summer of love happened and uh you saw George Floyd and all these horrible things, it didn't happen in Florida because he said, you know what, you're gonna get punished, you're gonna go to jail, and we're gonna hold you accountable when that happens. | ||
| Uh things like uh 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 any time someone walks in, you're gonna write off a thousand dollars? | ||
| I always say it's that it's the PS5 and you can steal four games, but you take that fifth game, then they're gonna come after you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Now we're gonna chase you down. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Uh, you know, it's just it's 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 uh how we purchase vehicles, how we purchase arms, how we train our people from a fusion concept, how we can get more deliberate in training them. | ||
| As a military man, I always look for opportunities to create uh uh 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 uh being really the next one of the next major fields of uh of warfare and attack in our communities. | ||
| It's frightening. | ||
| That's gonna happen. | ||
| Drone warfare. | ||
| You know, uh, 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. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| We're gonna 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 uh our cops, our firefighters, their moms and dads, their 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 gonna continue to fight and lead from the front on that as we always have. | ||
| But there'll be something that pops up and will 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 gonna have to solve problems with a VA. | ||
| Uh, we'll have to draw people in here. | ||
| That's why we uh 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 gonna 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 read, the ones that come from Cali and New York, all obviously to 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 short 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 the blue people flee and then they bring the stupid policies. | ||
| Yeah, you know, Dave, uh, we've been pretty good at this right now. | ||
| I look at Hillsborough County. | ||
| I live in Tampa. | ||
| It is not historically a bastion of conservative values. | ||
| Uh I ran against the mayor of Tampa's mother-in-law originally. | ||
| Uh I had like five months to jump in this race. | ||
| We won by 10, and it has shifted, I believe 15 points as a local congressional district there over the last uh 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 gonna see uh 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 gotta bring back conservative people focused leadership across this country. | ||
| We've got to export what we do. | ||
| What do you find your uh 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? | ||
| W 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 uh choice and education, you've pushed gun rights forward, you blocked the CCP, you've built uh 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 gotta continue to fight. | ||
| It's not about words. | ||
| Words are cheap. | ||
| You gotta put points on the board. | ||
| You gotta 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, and he fought for the things that we promised people we would do. | ||
| We've got to keep that in mind. | ||
| Uh, you know, hopefully we have a better session this this last year, uh, and in Governor DeSantis's time as governor. | ||
| I would love to see that uh happen. | ||
| But in the end, we're not gonna 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, 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 we don't have to worry about this guy anymore? | ||
| Yeah, if someone made that bet, I don't think they were paying attention. | ||
| Uh there is nothing lame duck about him. | ||
| Uh I'm not even sure a duck is the right word, right? | ||
| Uh I'm not making the argument. | ||
| I'm trying to make their argument. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Like DeSantis is no lame duck. | ||
| I have heard that in discussion 100%. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That was an egregious miscalculation. | ||
| Uh 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 gonna wear suits and ties every day, we're gonna get dressed up, we better get something done. | ||
| I don't sit idly very well. | ||
| I gotta 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 uh the one last year a blanking on which one that was. | ||
| Um Helena, thank you. | ||
| Yeah, Matt Milton, right? | ||
| Um and obviously there's a there's an insurance problem here in that we 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, uh, that it 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 an 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, uh I I've heard uh 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 uh rugged your home and make it more resilient. | ||
| But in the end, tort reform, we had 77% of the litigated claims and only seven percent of the actual claims in the country. | ||
| That math is not matching. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I have ten fingers and five toes, and uh you got to do the math, right? | ||
| It makes you scratch your head a little bit. | ||
| So uh I got the joke. | ||
| I got the joke. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| You know, but one leg of guy live I live in a city of pirates, man. | ||
| Uh jokes, it's okay. | ||
| You know, but uh you know, we we have brought back more insurance companies. | ||
| I believe there's thirteen or fourteen now that are up and selling. | ||
| Our secondary markets 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. | ||
| Uh auto insurance, while other the other 49 states are going up right now, Florida's going down. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| Well, we were uh a little little tort 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 gonna watch insurance insurance prices skyrocket again. | ||
| It's just stabilizing the market. | ||
| We have to hold what we got and we gotta keep leading. | ||
| And that doesn't mean we're not gonna lead on insurance. | ||
| Look, if there are companies who aren't doing right or aren't doing good business, we're gonna hold you accountable. | ||
| Uh 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, uh, I think we're on a good course right now, Dave. | ||
| I think uh rates are dropping and uh hurricanes happen. | ||
| We could have uh a few years without hurricanes, it sure be nice. | ||
| It certainly would be. | ||
| I mean, the E in particular, I mean, that was what they said was the once in a hundred year thing. | ||
| So hopefully hopefully we've got about 95 years to go on that one. | ||
| All right, so we have to end with the obvious question, which we already hinted at, which is that it seems to me you you you are lined up quite well to keep the DeSantis legacy alive. | ||
| Um Byron Donald's is the only sort of big name Republican that has uh announced that he is running for governor. | ||
| I think a few other people have announced much lower level. | ||
| Um what's the what's the future here, Mr. Lieutenant Governor Collins? | ||
| Well, what I wanted to announce today, Dave, is is really pretty spectacular. | ||
| I am going to be the spokesperson for Hair Club for Men nationally, credible. | ||
| No, just kidding. | ||
| Actually, uh what I want to do here. | ||
| Yeah, uh 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. | ||
| Uh 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, and 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 m 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 gonna jump in and literally take my leg off and throw it in the rain and get down to business, right? | ||
| Turns out hopping's hard. | ||
| And uh, 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 uh 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. | ||
| Uh If we decide to do this, they have my back. | ||
| They're ready for the fight ahead. | ||
| Our community has resoundingly said that they uh they support me, that they have my back, that uh 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 a fight. | ||
| I am not afraid to get in and stop step up and lead because I've seen what goes wrong with bad government. | ||
| I've fed, I fought beside people for 23 years all over the country. | ||
| I fed millions of people across this planet, uh, 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 decided 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 hair club's loss. | ||
| We will we will find out more. | ||
| Well, uh Jay, it's it's been a really a pleasure and an honor getting to know you. | ||
| Uh and uh we shall see, and I look forward to that phone call. | ||
| I thank you, and uh stay tuned, everyone. |
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