Oct. 25, 2025 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
48:23
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Communism is the easiest sell in politics. | ||
| Every society is an inverted pyramid. | ||
| And so it's very easy to tell them, look, guys, if things aren't working out, I have the answer. | ||
| I'm going to use government. | ||
| Government's going to be the vehicle to take more from these people. | ||
| Let's flatten that triangle. | ||
|
unidentified
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What we will do is to buy those lands that be out of production to give them poor countrymen. | |
| Fidel Castro, that he said, give us all your property, give us all your businesses, and we'll make everybody here. | ||
| And he did. | ||
| He made everybody equally poor, equally miserable. | ||
| I just don't understand how this guy thinks. | ||
| This guy meeting Madami thinks that he could squeeze more money out of people without seeing a mass exodus. | ||
| To raise $10 billion a year that would make those buses free, pay for universal child care. | ||
| You know, people talk about gun violence in America. | ||
| So if you were to look at gun deaths in America, we would rank up there, maybe top 20. | ||
| But if you pull out the top five or the top 10 blue cities in America, you take out their homicide, we go down to like 180. | ||
| Everybody in Miami has guns and we have the lowest homicide rate. | ||
|
unidentified
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So is it a gun thing or is it a social policy thing? | |
| Is it that sort of Cuban PTSD that we have in Miami that will always save us? | ||
| All right, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. | ||
| I should say outgoing Mayor Francis Suarez. | ||
| We've done this many times before, sometimes digitally, sometimes on location in Miami, sometimes in this room. | ||
| Right before we sat down, we agreed no jackets. | ||
| No jackets. | ||
| You could be retiring. | ||
| This could be your retirement show right now. | ||
| It's like a weekend thing. | ||
| I'm very glad to have you. | ||
| Everyone knows how I feel about the free state of Florida and this city in particular, which I think is the number one city in this country. | ||
| We're going to talk about all the successes and all of those things. | ||
| But your tenure is coming to an end. | ||
| We'll talk a little bit about the election. | ||
| Likely. | ||
| Likely. | ||
| Well, that's well, why don't we start with that? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Likely. | ||
| Why likely? | ||
| So the way it works in Miami, and not everywhere is like this. | ||
| You have an election, which will be November 4th, just like in New York, there'll be a November 4th election. | ||
| And we'll talk about that, I'm sure. | ||
| No doubt. | ||
| And to win, you have to get 50% plus one. | ||
| So what happens is there are probably half a dozen serious candidates. | ||
| So the likelihood that someone reaches that 50% plus one threshold is very low. | ||
| So there will more likely be a runoff. | ||
| The runoff will be in early December, December 8th. | ||
| It takes a few days to certify the results. | ||
| And then the new winner is sworn in five days after the certification. | ||
| So when you do all the math, the likely first day for the new mayor, last day for me is, I think, noon on December 17th. | ||
| So that's my Arriva Dirchi day, most likely. | ||
| So in that you have had such a successful tenure here, and I'd love, and I know you love going through the numbers. | ||
| So I'd love to hear some numbers about the economy and homelessness. | ||
| I still tell people all the time that you literally once, I was live on air, I said something about the, like, I said something like, we have 100 homeless people in Miami and you texted me during the show and you gave me the actual number. | ||
| So I know we can do all that stuff. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But as the tenure is ending here, there is another Suarez who's well known in this town who is running. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| But I'm a little surprised that we don't have somebody that everyone is like, oh, this is going to be the winner in that we've had such a successful run with you. | ||
| So what is going on here? | ||
| Well, I think part of it is if you look at historically in Miami, you've had a dynamic mayor and then it's almost like the city needs to take a break from all the dynamism. | ||
| And then they hire someone who's not quite as dynamic. | ||
| So my predecessor wasn't a super dynamic guy, wasn't particularly a visionary. | ||
| His predecessor was a super dynamic guy. | ||
| So we've sort of followed that pattern. | ||
| It is a little bit worrisome to me as a lifelong Miamian, the first Miami-born mayor, that someone like us, we're about the same age, right? | ||
| Doesn't feel that they either can or have the desire to run for office in what we both are agreeing. | ||
| You just said, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, is the best city in America and arguably one of the best cities in the world, in my opinion. | ||
| And I have the numbers to prove it, of course. | ||
| But really, it's a little bit of an indictment on politics as a whole. | ||
| I think it's an indictment. | ||
| We're talking a little bit off the air about the mainstream media and the character assassinations and sort of how they make it really difficult for good people to want to serve. | ||
| Miami's unique. | ||
| I get to work in the private sector, which is nice. | ||
| But a lot of people are, for the record, I've only had a lawyer once in my life for one little thing about a year ago. | ||
| And I'm sitting across from him right now. | ||
| We dealt with it. | ||
| We dealt with it very quickly. | ||
| And so, and so I'm a professional, right? | ||
| And so I actually think part of our great success is the fact that I can be a professional. | ||
| And so I'm always tethered to the private sector. | ||
| So I'm have a foot in the private sector, foot in the public sector, obviously always being careful to avoid conflicts and any ethical issues that may come up. | ||
| But it's important. | ||
| If you look at the president of the United States, I think one of his main reasons for his success is how much time he's spent in the private sector. | ||
| He is not a prototypical politician, right? | ||
| And I think we were talking off the air as well about how he has changed what it's like to be presidential, right? | ||
| Presidential before we would think Ronald Reagan, right? | ||
| This guy who was the great communicator, buttoned up, always looking perfect, always saying the right thing. | ||
| And I think we struggled sometimes at the beginning with Trump. | ||
| I know I did, because he didn't fit that mold. | ||
| I think what he has demonstrated, particularly now in the second term, but certainly in the first term as well, is that he has redefined what it means to be presidential. | ||
| And he's done it by being a strong leader, by being a great negotiator, by being someone who is the most resilient person I've ever encountered. | ||
| I've never seen a person more resilient, more under attack, more able to glance at the blows. | ||
| I was in the White House a few weeks ago for the G20 announcement. | ||
| I'm sure you're going to want to talk about that. | ||
| And he, the way he manages the press, I mean, he's sitting in the resolute desk. | ||
| They're all there. | ||
| And it's like an elementary school teacher with elementary school students. | ||
| You know, he's sitting there going, be quiet. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| You're being disrespectful. | ||
| Where are you from? | ||
| And the guy's like, I'm from Australia. | ||
| He goes, when my, the Australian delegation comes, I'm going to tell him you're a bad kid. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And it's funny, but it's true. | ||
| You know, no one has ever treated these people in the way that they treat other people. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And I think he is for the first time redefining that. | ||
| So going back to Miami, you know, I think our residents are going to have a tough choice. | ||
| They're going to have to pick the best of the bunch. | ||
| And hopefully they do, because I think Miami is politician proof, frankly. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| But a good that sounds scary to me. | ||
| It is politician proof. | ||
| I do at some level, right? | ||
| I think Miami is such a resilient city. | ||
| We're so dynamic. | ||
| We have such a strong private sector, right? | ||
| We have such a strong community that, you know, government, most of the time, I always say, I just want to screw things up as government. | ||
| You know, I'm not trying to be the hero. | ||
| I'm trying not to be the villain. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I think we've obviously been very successful with that. | ||
| But I also think that what I've tried to do is redefine who we are as a city. | ||
| And I do think a leader has that ability. | ||
| And so we'll see who among the current crop can articulate that. | ||
| So one of these guys has your last name and he was mayor of Miami. | ||
| And I assume you are voting for him, your father, we're talking about, obviously. | ||
| So why in that your Suarez, this thing has been so successful? | ||
| He's a name here. | ||
| I mean, why isn't he running away with this thing? | ||
| Is all of this just a function of our success that people aren't that interested in politics here because it's going so well? | ||
| Something like that? | ||
| I think first off, you know, he was a great mayor in 1985 to 1980. | ||
| He was the first Cuban mayor. | ||
| I learned a tremendous amount from him. | ||
| I am in part who I am because of my father. | ||
| I think what makes it challenging is, you know, politics is about fundraising. | ||
| It's about a variety of things. | ||
| And, you know, my dad is kind of old school when it comes to that. | ||
| You know, he's the kind of guy that doesn't really believe in any of that stuff. | ||
| And it's understandable. | ||
| I mean, he ran and went door to door back in the 80s. | ||
| You know, he took graduate degrees from Harvard. | ||
| He's written like 11 books. | ||
| He's an intellectual. | ||
| So he's very idealistic in that sense. | ||
| I wish sometimes we were a little more pragmatic because I think to win elections nowadays, unfortunately, you have to, you know, publicize yourself, raise money. | ||
| And so I wish him the best. | ||
| Obviously, I hope that he comes out on top. | ||
| I think he's got a shot. | ||
| But there's also a possibility that it could become, it could go the other way, you know, in terms of Republican Democrat dynamic. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I mean, oh, really? | ||
| You think a Democrat could end up? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Very possible. | ||
| As far as we've come and with all the success and all the new people voting the right way, really. | ||
| And I think it's sad, I think. | ||
| It is sad. | ||
| And because, again, in a vacuum of leadership, you know, sometimes people will be left with choices that are not good. | ||
| And I think unfortunately, given a variety of circumstances, that may be what we're facing today in Miami. | ||
| So let's go through some of the wins because mostly what I talk about on the show when I'm doing domestic politics is blue cities imploding. | ||
| And then I'm always saying, well, here I am in Miami where everything's great. | ||
| And the only thing people complain about is traffic. | ||
| Maybe you can address traffic, but sure. | ||
| But go through some of the wins that have happened here in the last, what is this? | ||
| This is the city. | ||
| Now it's eight years as mayor, eight years as council. | ||
| So really, if you go back 16 years when I became councilman, I inherited a broken city. | ||
| We were bankrupt. | ||
| And I've often said that our model for success is frankly the same model that any state or city should implement around the world. | ||
| We do three things. | ||
| We do three things well. | ||
| We keep taxes low, we keep people safe, and we lean into innovation. | ||
| So, when you delve into that, keeping taxes low. | ||
| So, what have I done? | ||
| I've lowered the tax rate, the millage rate. | ||
| We don't have a state income tax, so we're already benefiting vis-a-vis New York, Illinois, and California. | ||
| But I lowered the millage rate, which is the rate at which we apply against our property taxes to get the property tax rate. | ||
| I want to talk to you about that too, because that's a good thing. | ||
| I know that's another issue that's been talked about a lot. | ||
| But we lowered it to the lowest level ever. | ||
| And what happened? | ||
| We saw unprecedented growth. | ||
| So, we grew 150% in the last 10 years. | ||
| So, it turns out when you create a favorable tax environment, people invest. | ||
| What happens when people invest? | ||
| You get more resources. | ||
| You can pay your police officers better. | ||
| You can deal with things like homelessness. | ||
| We've often talked about homelessness on the show. | ||
| We have the lowest homeless rate in 11 years. | ||
| In our last census, we had 534 unsheltered homeless. | ||
| We want to be the first American city to have zero, and we're quickly approaching that. | ||
| We're 13% down year over year. | ||
| And then, you know, we kept people safe. | ||
| You know, we never got into the defund police nonsense. | ||
| We never got into the no-cash bail nonsense. | ||
| We're a city of laws. | ||
| We're a city, a community that respects law and order. | ||
| And because of that, we have probably one of the lowest homicide rates in history. | ||
| So now, probably, we do. | ||
| So let me break that down for you. | ||
| In 1946, we started recording homicides. | ||
| That year, we had 31. | ||
| The worst year on record was 1980. | ||
| I was three years old. | ||
| We had 220. | ||
| So from 31 to 220. | ||
| The best year on record was 24 in the 1950s. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We're 2024 now. | ||
| Sorry, 2025 now. | ||
| Last year, 2024, we had 27. | ||
| So less than 1946 and almost less than our record low. | ||
| This year, we're at 23 and we still have a couple months to go. | ||
| So we have the possibility of having the lowest year on record. | ||
| So we're going to be the safest city, safest we've ever been historically, and one of the safest major cities in America. | ||
| When you think about Chicago, sometimes they've had 50 gun shootings in a weekend. | ||
| We do it. | ||
| It's a running joke. | ||
| It's a joke in a sense. | ||
| On Mondays, we do how many people were shot and killed in Chicago. | ||
| It's not that it's funny. | ||
| It's like it's just because you guys chose this. | ||
| It's tragic. | ||
| Well, when you look at, if you take out, you know, people talk about gun violence in America. | ||
| This is an interesting statistic. | ||
| You can do this on Chat GPT. | ||
| One of these guys can probably pull it up real quick. | ||
| So if you were to look at gun deaths in America, where does America rank? | ||
| We would rank up there, maybe top 20, great. | ||
| But if you pull out the top five or the top 10 blue cities in America, you take out their homicides, we'd go down to like 180 out of like 200 countries. | ||
| So we would be arguably one of the safest countries in America. | ||
| So, I mean, in the world. | ||
| So it's interesting that the cities that have the worst policies, in my opinion, and certainly very restrictive gun policies, have the highest homicide rates in all of America. | ||
| Everybody in Miami has guns, and we have the lowest homicide rate. | ||
| So is it a gun thing or is it a social policy thing? | ||
| We have the lowest unemployment in America. | ||
| We have the highest median wage growth in America. | ||
| We were ranked the happiest city in America and the healthiest city in America. | ||
| You're happy, you're healthy. | ||
| You're lucky. | ||
| I'm way happier and healthier here. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| What are you not doing? | ||
| You're not killing anybody, right? | ||
| If you're happy, you're healthy, and you're working, you're not hurting people. | ||
| I mean, it's just a very basic principle. | ||
| So at the height of sort of the BLM and the defund the police and all that stuff, were you under any pressure to go along with that kind of craziness? | ||
| Look, I think what we did during that time was we let people express their First Amendment rights to protest under the condition that they not hurt anybody or not destroy any property. | ||
| We had a zero tolerance policy for those things. | ||
| But other than that, you know, we respect the First Amendment. | ||
| We want people to have the ability to say what they want to say in the public square. | ||
| And we're very, you know, we're very open about that. | ||
| But that cannot cross the line. | ||
| And I think once we saw, we articulated that policy during the George Floyd manifestations or demonstrations, you saw that there was no Antifa here. | ||
| There were none of the rabble rousers here because they knew that they weren't going to be able to create the kind of disorder that they were creating in other parts of the country. | ||
| So I think as a leader, you have to set expectations. | ||
| You have to be willing to make tough decisions, but you have to be clear and open about what your expectations are. | ||
| And we were, I was from the get-go. | ||
| How much of that is also having the governor that supports your ability to do that? | ||
| Meaning, you know, we had the Hamas guys took over a road outside Orlando. | ||
| They were up there for 12 minutes. | ||
| And he loves telling people, yeah, they got it for 12 minutes and then we got them all out of there. | ||
| And he helped when there were some issues on the turnpike and on the expressway, which are technically Florida Highway Patrol jurisdiction. | ||
| He acted very decisively and we also supported him in those things. | ||
| So yeah, I mean, it's a team effort. | ||
| And there's no doubt that having the governor act swiftly and decisively is important. | ||
| You need to have the upper level elected officials supporting your decisions. | ||
| So where are you on this property tax situation? | ||
| This seems to be now I'm going to take a drink of my coffee here. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, I'm going full Floridian on you because this seems to be what DeSantis wants his kind of parting gift to Florida to be. | ||
| We have record tourism where we're bringing in plenty of money. | ||
| We run slim budgets here, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| But it seems to me that the Republican legislature is kind of against it, which I don't fully understand. | ||
| Where are you? | ||
| Although you will not be mayor at the time. | ||
| So this is the part that I'm a little confused about, about the initiative. | ||
| And I would welcome a conversation with him about it. | ||
| I'm happy to discuss it with him and get his perspective on this because the city of Miami, which has lowered the property tax rate to the lowest level ever, so which means we're the leanest we've ever been, right? | ||
| We have a surplus with the lowest tax rate. | ||
| So we're very fiscally sound. | ||
| I got the city in bankruptcy. | ||
| So we took it from bankruptcy to fiscally sound. | ||
| We were Doge before Doge existed, okay, because we had to cut in 2009, 20% of our budget in one year because we were 20% out of balance. | ||
| And I had to take on the unions to do it. | ||
| And it was very painful, right? | ||
| Nobody's ever had to do that. | ||
| The state's never had to do that. | ||
| The federal government certainly hasn't done that. | ||
| And we were the first ones and really the only ones to do that as a government. | ||
| The concern I have or the question that I have is the following. | ||
| So the city of Miami generates 45% of its revenue from property taxes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| 45%. | ||
| So it's not a question of leanness, right? | ||
| It's a question of if we had to reduce tomorrow or eliminate tomorrow 45% of our budget, how many police officers are we going to lay off? | ||
| How many firefighters are we going to lay off, right? | ||
| Or are we going to reduce their salary by 45%? | ||
| So is the counter to that that there's going to be some bump in sales taxly affect the tourists? | ||
| So that's the question, right? | ||
| I think that part hasn't been articulated. | ||
| So if I'm the incoming mayor or if I were the mayor, if I could get reelected, that would be my concern, which is I can't look at my police officers in the face and tell me they take a 45% pay cut. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| Or I can't let go of four out of 10 police officers because that homicide rate that I've been focusing on is a byproduct of the fact that as we've grown this 150% over the last 10 years, we've been able to hire more officers. | ||
| We want to continue to hire more because we need to be able to do that. | ||
| Are we still getting the guys from New York coming down? | ||
| And I have a feeling there's, we'll get to Mondami in a second. | ||
| Well, the answer is yes. | ||
| And the answer is hell yes when Mondami gets elected, right? | ||
| That's going to be, I think, a 20, 30, maybe 40% increase in demand, right? | ||
| So if you're out there and want to buy a house, now's the time to buy the house. | ||
| You got two months. | ||
| Yeah, trust me, my audience knows it. | ||
| I mean, I mentioned that. | ||
| I talked to my real estate agent all the time. | ||
| He's like, it's happening. | ||
| And there's nothing I can do about it. | ||
| And there's nothing I can do about it, right? | ||
| This is not a Miami thing. | ||
| This is not, you know, sometimes I would get criticized for being, you know, too wanting to sort of grow the profile of the city and they would attract people. | ||
| First criticism, if you remember this, first people were concerned that it was going to change the politics of the city, right? | ||
| Which went and it went because they thought you were going to bring all the left 10. | ||
| It actually was the opposite. | ||
| It was the Republicans that were leaving those places coming over here. | ||
| So Miami-Dade, just to remind you, went, I think, 20% or 24% for Biden plus 24. | ||
| No, fair, 24% for Hillary, 8% for Biden, and then plus 10 for Donald Trump against Kamala. | ||
| So it was almost a 40, 30-point swing from one to the other. | ||
| So the influx of people, politically at least, was beneficial to the county and beneficial to the state. | ||
| The state's now plus, I think, a million Republican voters. | ||
| So the state is a solid red state. | ||
| And there, I think the governor deserves a lot of credit because I think the governor really focused on registration, on ideology, on things that could drive that dynamic. | ||
| I think that's one of the biggest gifts that he gave the state actually was that. | ||
| And then, you know, what you're seeing is, of course, now with Mandami likely getting elected, if you're Jewish and you live in New York or you're high income. | ||
| I mean, you're already paying 60% of your income in taxes. | ||
| So I always joke that the government is your partner in business and you're the minority partner, right? | ||
| And you're the silent partner. | ||
| So I just don't understand how this guy thinks that he can squeeze. | ||
| This guy meaning Mondami thinks that he could squeeze more money out of people without seeing a mass exodus, which is going to create what I call the death spiral. | ||
| Well, as a Cuban, I assume you actually do know the answer to that, right? | ||
| Like this is basically this is just communism 101, right? | ||
| It is. | ||
| It doesn't have to work on the balance sheet. | ||
| It just has to work in their mind, basically, it's temporarily, I suppose. | ||
| I've always said, Dave, that communism is the easiest selling politics because every society is an inverted pyramid, right? | ||
| There's always less wealthy people numerically, more people that are on the lower end of the economic pyramid. | ||
| And so it's very easy to tell them, look, guys, if things aren't working out, I have the answer. | ||
| I'm going to use government. | ||
| Government's going to be the vehicle to take more from these people. | ||
| Let's flatten that triangle. | ||
| The problem is it's the opposite of all, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats. | ||
| This is a sinking tide sinks all boats. | ||
| So it will literally, you know, I always joke about Fidel Castro that, you know, he said, give us all your property, give us all your businesses, and we'll make everybody equal. | ||
| And he did. | ||
| He made everybody equally poor, equally miserable, and equally destitute. | ||
| And that's what's going to happen in New York, unfortunately. | ||
| Is it that sort of Cuban PTSD that we have in Miami that will always save us? | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| In some sense, I hope so. | ||
| I think that's part of even why if a Democrat were to get elected in Miami as a mayor or a Democrat, we have a Democratic county mayor. | ||
| Even those people are very sensitive to the issues that Cubans and Cuban Republicans feel. | ||
| And they toe the line very, very carefully because they know that they're one election away from being defeated if they mess around too much. | ||
| What's been some of the functions of success? | ||
| So like, I know you can rattle off all the success stuff and that's kind of easy. | ||
| But what have been some of the headaches that have come along? | ||
| I mean, the big thing, everyone always complains about traffic. | ||
| I'm from New York and I lived in LA. | ||
| So to me, the traffic here is just normal traffic, but I get it. | ||
| If I was here 15 years ago, there maybe was less traffic. | ||
| I mean, what are some of the headaches that have come along the way? | ||
| And what do you think we can do better in the future? | ||
| Yeah, like, I don't know that there's less traffic. | ||
| I think that there's enough traffic that people, it annoys people. | ||
| And I think it's understandable. | ||
| I don't think we've progressed enough on mass transit. | ||
| Part of the reason why is unlike New York, which is very vertical and Manhattan, you got 8 million people in a very short envelope, small envelope. | ||
| So it's very easy to move people in that envelope, although it's extremely expensive. | ||
| I don't know if you know the second one. | ||
| It's going to be free. | ||
| It's going to be free, my friends. | ||
| Yeah, well, I'm sure. | ||
| But I'm saying, in terms of cost, right, to actually build it. | ||
| Like the second avenue line was $2 billion a mile. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So in Miami, since we're so horizontal, it's hard to efficiently move people because everybody loves a car. | ||
| They love the freedom of the car. | ||
| And so I think what I think is going to happen in the future, and I think we have to be more disruptive and more innovative in transportation, we're going to see things like the boring company potentially with Elon. | ||
| We're going to see urban air mobility, believe it or not, the Jetsons are coming. | ||
| It's happening. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| We're going to see autonomous vehicles that are going to redefine how we move. | ||
| It's already amazing that you can get in your car and you know with precision what time you're going to arrive, but it's not a guesstimate anymore. | ||
| You can literally say, okay, I'm three minutes late. | ||
| How many times have you got a text with me? | ||
| ETA, eight minutes from now. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And like, so you know with precision, and that's all private sector technology, right? | ||
| That's our phone technology. | ||
| Micro mobility. | ||
| So you have scooters, development, the way you develop buildings. | ||
| You're seeing like Dayland is a great example, not too far. | ||
| You have these like little miniature cities that are walkable where you can live, work and play in the same ecosystem. | ||
| So I think all of that's going to help. | ||
| Remote work is going to help. | ||
| A lot of people work from home. | ||
| I like to work from home personally. | ||
| I'm just more efficient. | ||
| I don't have to travel. | ||
| I work out at home. | ||
| I work at home. | ||
| And then I don't have to go anywhere. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so for me, every minute counts and every day, I'm sure it does for you. | ||
| So the less I have to move, the more efficient I am, regardless of whether traffic was good or not, right? | ||
| Like having to go to an office, even if there's no traffic. | ||
| There's a reason we're at my house, right? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I didn't want to say it because I don't know if everybody knows. | ||
| They know they know. | ||
| Okay, okay, okay. | ||
| Where's your house, right? | ||
| So you're making my point, but the whole point is that even, let's assume perfect efficiency, right? | ||
| You have to go distance. | ||
| Let's assume perfect efficiency. | ||
| Let's say you could get in a thing, there's no traffic. | ||
| You still have to go from point A to point B, and that takes time to come back. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you can only do a limited amount of things in the car to be efficient, right? | ||
| Like in terms of work. | ||
| So I think that phenomenon is going to help tremendously too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| So if we get some of the traffic out of the way and some of the tech takes over that problem, what else do you see as the problems right now? | ||
| I mean, did the import of people create any unforeseen problems for you? | ||
| Yeah, I think one of them that's pretty obvious is housing affordability. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right. | ||
| Prices definitely have gone up. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| It makes it harder for Miami's natives to compete with people from New York that have been accustomed to a much more expensive cost of living. | ||
| For them, paying a few million dollars for a house is a bargain. | ||
| For us, it's like, whoa, that's like a big deal. | ||
| And by the way, that's another argument for getting rid of property taxes because it's the OG Floridians who are paying the price of everything that's yeah. | ||
| And again, I'm not against getting rid of property taxes. | ||
| My only question, it's not even, I'm going to ask DeSantis and then we're going to send you the clip. | ||
| I am 100%. | ||
| Where are you? | ||
| Where are the offsets? | ||
| Where, or, or what I think I've heard also people say is you can do it like for people that are homestead as opposed to like renters. | ||
| Um, again, that's probably marginal in terms of like the hit to the city that might only hit us 20% of our budget or 10% of our budget. | ||
| I still think you got to figure out, you know, or is it like, hey, just figure it out like on your own? | ||
| You got to figure out how to do it. | ||
| Um, and I think you know, the concern will be again, you know what I mean? | ||
| How do we pay our officers? | ||
| How do we pay our firefighters? | ||
| Um, that's that's that's what I would want to know. | ||
| So, but so what can we do about the affordability issue? | ||
| Because it is an issue. | ||
| I mean, we still know tons of people that are coming down here. | ||
| So, the house prices are bananas. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I think there's a few things. | ||
| I think one is we can build affordable housing, not in the old way, which was like it looked like an insane asylum, you know, with the public housing, right? | ||
| That you see in New York and even some here in Miami. | ||
| We do public-private partnerships. | ||
| We've built, we have built about 4,000 units in my mayoralty, and we have about 2,000 in the pipeline right now. | ||
| So, we're building about 6,000. | ||
| And how do you make sure people don't get trapped there? | ||
| Because that's always the thing, especially people on our side of the aisle. | ||
| You hear affordable housing and you immediately are like, all right, now we're just doing what the Democrats do. | ||
| There's no doubt that that's a concern, right? | ||
| Because if the idea is you're going to go there because it's inexpensive and you're not going to use it as a stepping stone to the next point of prosperity in your life, then it certainly can be a trap for you. | ||
| There's no doubt about it. | ||
| I think the second part is. | ||
| But how do you deal with that? | ||
| I mean, I think we have to continue to create educational opportunities for people to be able to do better, right? | ||
| I think one role that government absolutely has is in education. | ||
| And the governor will tell you that. | ||
| Anybody will tell you that. | ||
| We are focusing a lot. | ||
| We in Miami and I have as mayor have done things that nobody else has ever done. | ||
| I'll tell you what we've done: kindergarten savings accounts. | ||
| So we funded savings accounts for kindergartners and we taught them in the public schools financial literacy and their parents' financial literacy. | ||
| So they learn how to save money so that they get out of this sort of cycle of desperation, if you will, right? | ||
| We did a tech charter school, high school with Miami-Day Community College called MIA, you know, or the initials of Miami, Miami Innovation Academy. | ||
| So it's an innovation tech charter school. | ||
| We created two scholarships, mostly privately funded, right? | ||
| I went out there and raised the money privately. | ||
| But if you're first in your family to go to college or you want to get a STEM degree and you're a Pell Grant recipient, which means you're someone of low means, we give you, we pick up the balance, we pick up the rest. | ||
| So it's a scholarship from the city. | ||
| Nobody's ever done that. | ||
| I don't know anybody's doing that in the country, to be frank. | ||
| And so we're giving people an opportunity to get out of the situation. | ||
| We also do a lot of vocational training type stuff. | ||
| We have coding boot camps and things like that that we've supported. | ||
| I've even done initiatives for 5,000 role models with Bitcoin. | ||
| I'm big into crypto. | ||
| I was actually looking at something on Twitter the other day on X, I guess, where we had done something two years ago where we gave kids $100 of Bitcoin at $30,000. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, man. | |
| So now it's $400, right? | ||
| It's 400% increase. | ||
| So all those kids from predominantly underprivileged neighborhoods in our community have learned about digital assets. | ||
| So we've tried to do a lot of things that are outside the box to try to whet the appetite of ambition and not say, hey, we're going to settle for affordable housing or that's the goal. | ||
| The goal is not affordable housing. | ||
| The goal is affordable housing to make sure people can, if you're a teacher, you're a doctor, I mean, if you're a teacher, you're a nurse, you're a police officer, and maybe you can't live in the city. | ||
| Most of them can't live in the city, can't afford to live with it. | ||
| Maybe that's an opportunity to do that. | ||
| Those are professions that are capped in terms of salary. | ||
| So you need something that they can afford. | ||
| But other than that, I think it's educational pathways and it's also creating an economy. | ||
| We have the highest median wage growth. | ||
| So we're bringing in companies that hopefully can hire Miamians at a high level. | ||
| You are here. | ||
| You have a staff. | ||
| These people were not hired before you were here. | ||
| And I know because we've had an employee that I worked for you who's phenomenal. | ||
| I mean, this is super talented people, right? | ||
| And you're giving people opportunities to work, make money, and live in this community. | ||
| So thank you for that. | ||
| Well, speaking of my guys, so all right, traffic. | ||
| Okay, we talked about that. | ||
| Affordability, also important to everybody in this room. | ||
| Now I got one that I know is not really under your purview, but I'm curious what your thoughts are. | ||
| What is going on with our airport? | ||
| It's the only thing in this town that everybody's like, why do we have the greatest city in America? | ||
| Yeah, I really believe that. | ||
| And our airport is like third rate. | ||
| It's third rate. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's definitely not under my purview. | ||
| So just for the audience perspective, it's not under equity. | ||
| The mayor doesn't control that. | ||
| I do not, unfortunately, control the airport. | ||
| And if I ever ran for county mayor, and I'm not like, you know, for everyone who wants to run for county mayor, you know, don't freak out. | ||
| But if I ever ran for county mayor, it would almost be like a single issue campaign, like fix the airport. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because I agree with you. | ||
| I think our airport is, it's our stepping, you know, it's our, it's our stepping stone, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's our, it's our welcome map and it's our exit map. | ||
| And I think, unfortunately, it's not up to snuff on a variety of different levels. | ||
| I've had extensive conversations with the airport director, who I think is a good guy. | ||
| He's working hard to try to fix it. | ||
| They have a $9 billion capital plan to fix it. | ||
| I think if it were me, if I had my brothers and I've talked to some county commissioners about this, I would, you have to accelerate it at this point. | ||
| And I think the acceleration. | ||
| Right, because you always see, you see little plans. | ||
| You go there and they tell you we're doing this bad. | ||
| The acceleration has to be done with procurement. | ||
| And it's just like the federal government with military spending where we're getting killed on procurement. | ||
| We're getting killed with unionized labor, but we're also getting killed with procurement, which is making it harder for us to compete with the Chinese. | ||
| But in the airport, you've got to empower the airport director to just go out there and hire good people and get it going right away. | ||
| And I think the easy wins also are facade. | ||
| The facade. | ||
| Have you ever watched the movie Scarface? | ||
| Have you ever watched some Wisconsin? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I live in Miami. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So the facade of the airport in Scarface is essentially identical to what it looks like today. | ||
| And we're, you know, how many years after that four years? | ||
| That's actually a great point because the rest of the movie, you can really see how Miami has changed. | ||
| Even a lot of it takes place in Coconut Grove. | ||
| He's not far from here. | ||
| And South Beach too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So, you know, I think you're absolutely right. | ||
| And I feel your pain. | ||
| I feel the pain. | ||
| I feel, you know, this is interesting. | ||
| I go to the airport a lot. | ||
| I travel a lot and they take really good care of me there. | ||
| And the employees are phenomenal. | ||
| And I, one day I kind of, you know, whispered to them and I said, look, guys, I don't criticize the airport because I come here so often. | ||
| You guys are so good to me. | ||
| They're like, no, no, no, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do it. | |
| Do it. | ||
| We want you to do it. | ||
| We're not going to get offended. | ||
| And I said, which means that even they feel like they need that support and that help, you know, publicly. | ||
| So I'm glad you're here. | ||
| Well, it's just a weird thing because it's such a disconnect between the place that is so explosive in every sense. | ||
| And then you go to the airport and you're like, this, yeah, all right. | ||
| And the thing is, too, you travel a lot. | ||
| So you've seen, I know what you've seen. | ||
| I've seen all these airports, even in like LaGuardia. | ||
| I mean, it's no harder. | ||
| No, LaGuardia. | ||
| You can't say anything about good about here, but LaGuardia is nice, right? | ||
| I mean, there's so many. | ||
| It's not that big waterfall. | ||
| It's pretty good. | ||
| No, it's so easy. | ||
| Get on the waterfall. | ||
| Just one waterfall. | ||
| Are you going to miss anything about doing this? | ||
| I mean, I feel like you had a pretty solid tenure that you accomplished most of the things you want to do. | ||
| I mean, are you really looking? | ||
| And as I said, you, or as you said, you're, you're a lawyer by trade. | ||
| I mean, that's your daytime job. | ||
| Is that, do you know what percentage of mayors are allowed to have the outside gig? | ||
| So in Miami, it's very common. | ||
| So in Miami, it's about 31 of the 34 mayors work. | ||
| So the mayor of Core Gables is a contractor. | ||
| The mayor of Dorao has a business. | ||
| The mayor of Miami Beach, Steve Minor works, I think, in private equity. | ||
| It is worth noting that Miami is very spoiling. | ||
| So it's 34, is that what you said? | ||
| 34 day county altogether, which everyone thinks of as Miami, but it's all I get the calls. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Well, the first time I met you, because technically you're not my mayor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| But I thought you were right when I moved here. | ||
| And then it made sense. | ||
| But I always see you in Miami. | ||
| And I see you in all the, well, you're, well, it's funny because one of the first times when I moved here and I saw you in Coconut Grove. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it was right when I had come from LA where everyone hated the mayor. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you were just walking around, smiling, shaking hands, kissing babies. | ||
| And I was like, man, this is so different. | ||
| You know, I'm so blessed. | ||
| I'll tell you this and then I'll answer your question. | ||
| I've been doing this for 16 years, eight as mayor, eight as council. | ||
| I've never had a bad experience in public. | ||
| I was, it's interesting. | ||
| I was watching a video the other day going back to Mondami where somebody was screaming at him that he was an anti-Semite. | ||
| Yeah, I see. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And like the guy was just going off running to the car. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And I've never had, I mean, look, I knock on because I still have a couple months, right? | ||
| But I've been very blessed. | ||
| I've never had a situation like that. | ||
| And in fact, it's quite the opposite. | ||
| If I'm ever having a bad day, usually I'll run into somebody who'll be like, hey, man, you're doing a great job. | ||
| Keep doing it, you know, whatever. | ||
| And it's uplifting and it's energizing. | ||
| Am I going to miss it? | ||
| Of course. | ||
| There's going to be an adjustment for me since I've been in City Hall for 16 years. | ||
| That's a third of my life. | ||
| If you count the eight years my dad was mayor and you aggregate that to the 16 years, that's 24 of the 48 years that I've been alive. | ||
| That's half my life in City Hall, messing around, running around as a kid, and then being the mayor, being a councilman. | ||
| So it's definitely going to be an adjustment. | ||
| And I was actually watching, I don't know if you ever watched the movie Spy Games with Robert Redford. | ||
| Such a good movie. | ||
| Yeah, no, I know it's an old classic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Rod Pitt, I got a long voice. | ||
| Rob Talia coming up. | ||
| By Games, I promise you'll love it. | ||
| But the whole movie is premised around his last day at the CIA. | ||
| And at the end, he sort of, you know, says goodbye to his secretary as he's leaving. | ||
| And I just think there's going to be a last day and I'm going to turn off the lights one last time and then I'm going to walk out of the building and that's going to be it. | ||
| Do you think you'll spend the rest of your days in the private sector or do you do you want to get back in on the public side? | ||
| You know, I'll tell you this. | ||
| So first, as you, as I just said, you know, it's politics is hard because I've been able to make a living. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So there are not a lot of political positions that I would want to have that I can do that. | ||
| So I have to get to a place financially. | ||
| I have a seven-year-old and an 11-year-old where, you know, hopefully money is not the predominant factor in my life decision-making wise. | ||
| And whenever that day comes, hopefully it comes sooner rather than later, I can really think about it. | ||
| The one thing I can say about politics, having been around this I was two years old. | ||
| I did my first political commercial on my dad's lap at two. | ||
| I looked into a camera and said, which means vote for my dad, please. | ||
| The one thing I can say about politics universally is there's a lot of opportunity. | ||
| There's never a shortage of opportunity. | ||
| So if the bug is really with me and I really want to serve and I think I can make a contribution in the airport, whatever, Congress, Senate, you know, I don't know, whatever you name it, the ambassadorship, whatever, I would certainly consider it. | ||
| I would certainly consider it. | ||
| And, you know, it would be something that I would give deep thought to, because even though it's financially tough, I've never been driven by money. | ||
| Money's never been the predominant motivator for me. | ||
| It's really been impact and passion. | ||
| And so, but I'm a father and I feel a sense of responsibility. | ||
| You're a father too. | ||
| You know, I feel a sense of responsibility to take care of my kids and make sure that, you know, that everything's going to be okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How much of your success do you think goes back to the tweet that you sent to Keith Ruboy during the height of the COVID-19? | ||
| It was actually Zelian Astrov, who I guess works for Keff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, works for Keith at Teal, whatever that is. | |
| But basically, it was complaining about San Francisco and the tech world and everything. | ||
| We'll show it. | ||
| And you wrote back, how can I help? | ||
| And that basically blew up. | ||
| And that was the moment that the tech world all moved here. | ||
| It's a huge part of the story in the same way that you doing this podcast has become a huge part of your story. | ||
| What's the common theme? | ||
| Virality of a new medium of communication, which is this sort of social media world, right? | ||
| This concept where you don't have to go through the traditional validators, right? | ||
| Mainstream media to make or break you. | ||
| And so I think politicians don't have to kowtow as much as they used to. | ||
| And it bothers the mainstream media. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And that's why they go on the attack in many ways. | ||
| I think part of the reason why I got attacked so viciously by my local newspaper is because they saw I was getting so much national attention. | ||
| And then my social media was growing tremendously. | ||
| So I could go direct to consumer. | ||
| And so they basically, I didn't necessarily have to deal with them if they weren't going to be fair and honest with me. | ||
| And I felt like they weren't being fair and honest. | ||
| So I was basically shutting them out. | ||
| And they wanted me to pay for it. | ||
| And that's what they did. | ||
| They built a narrative. | ||
| This is who we believe he is. | ||
| And then they selected facts to try to build that narrative and blow that narrative up, you know, and at some level it worked because they, you know, my dad used to tell me, I used to remember back in the day, the saying, you don't, you don't pick fights with people who buy ink by the barrels, you know, because every single day they have the ability to put, and I think one year, the year around for president, they wrote like 70 negative articles about me in one year in one paper, you know what I mean? | ||
| When the year before that, they had written 12. | ||
| And our press here is pretty freaking vicious for a place that's so successful or I guess not. | ||
| And very left of center for a place that's so center or right of center. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right. | ||
| Which I think, and I've talked to people in the paper about this, you know, that, you know, I believe, and maybe I'm wrong, that at some level, the media should be representative of the values of the community that it seeks to, you know, to cover, right? | ||
| In other words, you have customers, your viewers. | ||
| I have clients in my residents, right? | ||
| They're my boss. | ||
| And I have to serve them. | ||
| I don't serve myself. | ||
| I don't serve my own ideas. | ||
| I serve them. | ||
| Obviously, I have my own ideas and I try to influence my ideas insofar as I think I have good ideas and hopefully I can convince them of that. | ||
| But at the end of the day, it's their decision ultimately. | ||
| What was your worst day doing this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, I don't even want to remember. | |
| You know, I definitely had, I'll put it to you this way. | ||
| There were not a lot of bad days. | ||
| There were not a lot of bad days. | ||
| I think when you look at the totality of my tenure, both as commissioner and mayor, I used to tell my wife all the time, when we were in the bad moments, I used to tell her, honey, you know, we've lived a pretty charmed political life. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, in that we haven't been attacked a lot. | ||
| You know, we've been relatively free of any sort of, you know, anyone accusing me of anything. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, from one day to the next, I became, you know, according to these people, you know, some bad guy. | ||
| Obviously, nothing ever, I never got, I've never had one, thank God, ethics complaint ever sustained against me. | ||
| I've never had anything happen to me. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But even natural disasters, I mean, we, we skirted that because this state's been hit a lot on the other coast. | ||
| And we had one. | ||
| We had one when I was coming into the mayoralty. | ||
| We had Hurricane Irma, which was really, which was pretty bad. | ||
| And I actually credit the fact that I was very present as a commissioner. | ||
| This was at the end of my tenure. | ||
| And it was almost the opposite of this election when I ran for mayor. | ||
| I was the only candidate, basically. | ||
| I had basically pushed out the field and it was like, we're here. | ||
| You have, you're struggling to find a good candidate. | ||
| It was like here we had only one good candidate. | ||
| And I don't know if that's good or bad, but I got elected by 85%. | ||
| And then I got re-elected by almost 80%. | ||
| So for me, it was good because it gave me a lot of confidence that the people were giving me a strong mandate to lead. | ||
| And I made mistakes, right? | ||
| Like I tried to implement a strong mayor and it failed. | ||
| You know, recently there was an effort by my council that I supported to change the election year from an odd year to an even year. | ||
| And it was successful at the council. | ||
| And we had based that on a state law that other cities had availed themselves of four other cities. | ||
| It had been challenged in another city and the appellate court in that case had supported the city's right to do it. | ||
| So we thought we were on very safe constitutional and legal grounds. | ||
| And one of the candidates sued us and won and overturned it. | ||
| What was the reasoning for wanting it done in the first place? | ||
| It was just to line things up with the calendar differently. | ||
| Yeah, so the state law, which was passed by the state, articulates basically two reasons. | ||
| One is you align the elections with governor and presidential races. | ||
| So you go from elections that are, you're going to see in this election, 15% turnout. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's going to be nothing to 70% turnout elections. | ||
| So you have a much more engaged electorate with a broader cross-section of the population picking people. | ||
| So presumably they'll make better choices, right? | ||
| Because they're more plugged in and they're bigger. | ||
| Secondly, from a financial perspective, we have to finance our own elections since they're on off-cycle years. | ||
| So they cost over a million dollars. | ||
| So we're going to save over a million dollars every year for infinity, you know, so that's tens, if not hundreds of million dollars in savings for the city. | ||
| Plus, we align with state elections and presidential elections, which are much, much higher turnout elections. | ||
| So that was the, that was the rationale. | ||
| There was a state law that said that you could do it. | ||
| And, you know, the unfortunately the judges disagreed. | ||
| We just, so we live in a country of laws. | ||
| You know, you just follow a law and that's it. | ||
| No big deal. | ||
| So what was the so all right. | ||
| So the worst day, basically, you don't have one. | ||
| I mean, there were some tough times, but all right. | ||
| What about, what about best day? | ||
| Wow, we had, I remember when we passed the inter-Miami deal to bring the interteam to Miami when they got Leo Messi. | ||
| That was a great day. | ||
| I have to say, being in the Oval Office for the announcement of the G20 was a pretty amazing day and it was funny, a funny day because the president's a funny guy and he's such an engaging guy. | ||
| And so we get there and he looks at me. | ||
| This is the beginning of the press conference and he literally looks at me and he goes, and I'm to his left. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So he goes, you could have been here. | |
| And then he says, it's not as easy as it looks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I said, you're right, Mr. President. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I completely agree. | ||
| So that was a pretty special day. | ||
| You know, and so it's been a lot of victories, a lot of good days, but the defeats are also good. | ||
| They're important. | ||
| I think you learn more from the defeats. | ||
| The pain, pain, is a tool, right? | ||
| Of a learning lesson, learning tool. | ||
| And I think as you get older, and I don't want to speak for you, but as you get older, I think, you know, you learn that defeat or losing or having a setback, it's temporary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| It's temporary. | ||
| And it does get you stronger, sharper, avoid mistakes in the future. | ||
| It stays with you. | ||
| Well, as a victory, you know what I mean? | ||
| You're like, okay, what's the next one coming? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| And so, but yeah, we've had some fun times. | ||
| How does it feel to be kind of wrapping it down then in that mind? | ||
| I mean, you've got staff members that have been with you for a long time that got to go do other things. | ||
| And I'm guessing you're probably losing people just in the course of wrapping things up because they know there's an end date. | ||
| Yeah, it's actually funny. | ||
| My social media team's down to one person. | ||
| All our social media has left, which is tough because you communicate. | ||
| I mean, that's like one of your main vehicles of communication. | ||
| And by the way, I think I've said it once on air, but Adi, who is my former chief of staff, who's now moved on and she's doing her own thing, we got her from you. | ||
| She was still working for you at the time. | ||
| And I called you because I didn't want to do anything. | ||
| I didn't want to do anything like under the table. | ||
| And you immediately were like, it's a great opportunity for her. | ||
| Go, go get it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great. | |
| It's amazing. | ||
| That's my philosophy of leadership. | ||
| And I've always encouraged my staff members to do bigger and better things. | ||
| Government is not the end. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it actually, to me, the way I view it is it's a benefit to me because now I have someone in your organization that I can rely on to communicate with you. | ||
| Or, you know, I've had people that I've gone to these incredible organizations and now I can tap into them for the benefit of the city. | ||
| And I've done that a bunch of times. | ||
| So, and I think it's a credit. | ||
| It actually helps you recruit too because you can show people like, hey, this is a stepping stone to Day Rubin. | ||
| This is a stepping stone to X or Y or Z. And so it is a great recruiting tool too. | ||
| It's been at least for me. | ||
| But is it a generally bittersweet feeling at the moment? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I try not to think about it too much. | ||
| I'm focused a lot right now on this conference that I'm doing in November, America Business Forum, November 5th and 6th, where we have the president speaking there. | ||
| So it's exciting that he's doing all these things. | ||
| And then he's going to be coming to the conference. | ||
| We have Leo Messi speaking at the conference, Jamie Diamond, Ken. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| All right. | ||
| I'm going to swing by. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| You're coming. | ||
| You're coming. | ||
| So buy your tickets. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| They're very, very inexpensive. | ||
| I think they're like $100 in the upper level and $200 in the lower level for a two-day conference. | ||
| So with some of the most amazing speakers. | ||
| But I've been focusing a lot on that. | ||
| That's kept me very busy, kept me very focused so that I'm not overthinking about the last day. | ||
| You know, traveling a little bit and trying to enjoy it. | ||
| You know, I'm trying to enjoy it as much as possible, take it in day in and day out, understand that all good things come to an end. | ||
| And there will be a day where I have to turn off the lights and then move on to the next section of my life, which I'm happy about. | ||
| I think we've done it all here, right? | ||
| We have done it all. | ||
| We've kind of done it all. | ||
| Like the city, regardless of what happens at this election, it feels to me like the city is in good shape. | ||
| I need to research the candidates a little more. | ||
| There's a Suarez involved. | ||
| But, you know, we've done something. | ||
| And I mean we, I really mean it. | ||
| You can feel it in Florida. | ||
| People really do have a feeling like we are invested in what's going on here. | ||
| So it's a beautiful thing. | ||
| You know, the charter calls me the chief executive officer, but I've often thought of myself as the chief ecosystem officer. | ||
| And I think when you say we, it is we. | ||
| It's the ecosystem that is us. | ||
| I can only be as successful as you are. | ||
| And we can only be as successful as we both are. | ||
| And, you know, you've got to be able to pick up the phone and say, hey, man, I need you for this. | ||
| And I've got to be able to say yes and follow through and vice versa. | ||
| So I do think it's been a wee thing as greater Miamians have come here, as our Miamians have stayed, because a big, a big issue is, I call it the boomerang effect. | ||
| We've had a lot of Miamians come back. | ||
| You know, Miamians that were in Boston, if you were in, you know, if you're in biotech or New York if you're in finance or DC if you're in politics or, you know, California, if you're in tech, come back to Miami. | ||
| So we've had a big boomerang of, and I've had parents all over the place tell me, we're so grateful to you because you made it possible for my child to come back home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So that's been a big part of the story. | ||
| But now we got these snowbirds who won't leave. | ||
| I mean, we're getting a lot of Canadians who I'm pretty sure are doing something illegal here because they just don't want to go back anymore. | ||
| We're getting it from everywhere. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it, my friend. | |
| It's great, man. | ||
| Great to be with you. | ||
| If you're craving more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics, check out our politics playlist right here. |
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