The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - Nikki Fried | 04-17-25
Aired: 2025-04-18
Duration: 22:40


=== Money Scandal Unveiled (14:57) ===

[00:00:00]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
[00:00:06]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:00:15]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:00:18]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:00:23]  Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
[00:00:36]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:00:44]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:00:46]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
[00:00:49]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:00:53]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:00:57]  Don't cut rural health care.
[00:01:01]  The Stone Zone.
[00:01:02]  Entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:01:08]  Welcome back.
[00:01:09]  You are entering yet again the Stone Zone.
[00:01:12]  Joining me now, Nikki Freed.
[00:01:14]  She is the chairwoman of the Florida Democrat Party, a former Florida Agriculture Commissioner, the only Democrat elected statewide in the Sunshine State from 2018 to 2022.
[00:01:26]  She's an attorney, a lifelong advocate for medical cannabis reform, consumer rights, and environmental protection.
[00:01:34]  People find this hard to believe.
[00:01:36]  She's also a longtime friend of mine, despite our energetic political disagreement.
[00:01:42]  And she's here to talk about what I think could be the greatest single corruption scandal in Florida history.
[00:01:49]  That is the scandal surrounding Governor Ron DeSantis, First Lady Casey DeSantis, and our new temporary Attorney General, Mr. James Uthmeyer.
[00:02:01]  Nikki, welcome into the Stone Zone.
[00:02:04]  Thanks, Roger, for having me today.
[00:02:06]  Yeah, I think people are going to be surprised by our conversation.
[00:02:09]  Well, we agree on some things, and I think Governor DeSantis turns out to be one of them.
[00:02:14]  So let's try to recap this as best we can for our listeners.
[00:02:18]  It appears to me that Governor DeSantis and his wife, who aspires evidently to be governor, diverted $10 million that should have been spent by Medicaid for health care for the elderly, the poor, and the disabled.
[00:02:43]  And they moved it first to a slush fund, a political slush fund, and from there into two campaigns to oppose a question on the ballot constitutional amendment having to do with the legal status of cannabis.
[00:02:59]  Do I have that about right?
[00:03:01]  Yeah, that's about right.
[00:03:03]  You know, basically what happened from my understanding, and it's been, as we're talking, Roger, this is all kind of coming out and subpoenas and questions to the governor's staff, that there was, I guess, a lawsuit that had happened with one of the Medicaid providers.
[00:03:17]  And there was a settlement that a pre-lawsuit settlement that had happened where there was $67 million that was supposed to come back to the Medicaid program, to your point, to go to children and families that are really in need and help.
[00:03:32]  And they diverted $10 million of that to Casey's, I think they're calling it the Hope Foundation with the lofty goal of taking people off of welfare.
[00:03:43]  But that's not what happened.
[00:03:45]  They took that money and that was their slush fund and they started to play around with it and to eventually get into some dark money PCs that James was overseeing on the direction of the governor.
[00:03:55]  And then that money was used to go after our legalization of cannabis.
[00:04:00]  It's really quite extraordinary, I guess, particularly because of the governor's reaction when members of his own party in the state legislature.
[00:04:10]  Yesterday we had State Representative Andrade on, asking perfectly reasonable questions.
[00:04:15]  He seems to just go completely nuts.
[00:04:17]  Like the people of Florida have no right whatsoever to question him.
[00:04:22]  Yeah, like how dare us get to the bottom of the answers of why this nonprofit organization that was formed for Casey has never had a public meeting, that the attorneys that represent this Hope Foundation are the same attorneys that are representing these PCs.
[00:04:42]  Like, why did all this happen?
[00:04:44]  Who is in charge of cutting these deals?
[00:04:46]  Those are pretty rational, transparent questions that, you know, I would think the governor should be okay if he has nothing to hide being able to answer.
[00:04:54]  As far as I can see, based on my own research, the Hope Florida Foundation, this vehicle headed by Casey DeSanches, hasn't fired the required audits, their tax returns, or any of the legally required ethics disclosures under Florida law.
[00:05:11]  It's almost as if Ron and Casey DeSanche think the law does not apply to them.
[00:05:17]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:05:19]  And even on a nonprofit, they didn't register at the Department of Agriculture, which we have to do too if you're a nonprofit organization in Florida.
[00:05:26]  They didn't do any of their IRS tax forms.
[00:05:28]  And this is something else that Representative Andrade was asking questions on.
[00:05:31]  Where are your tax forms?
[00:05:32]  Where is your information?
[00:05:34]  Every question that was being asked of the director who, again, resigned after this testimony in the Florida House this week, kept saying, well, an advice of counsel, advice of counsel, the same attorney that was representing, again, these PCs.
[00:05:49]  But yeah, it looked like it was a flush fund.
[00:05:50]  And unfortunately, he's been getting away with this kind of stuff for six years.
[00:05:54]  I've been bringing to light all of this corruption that Ron and Casey and his executive office has been doing for six years.
[00:06:02]  And it's good to see that the Republican legislature, specifically in the Florida House, is finally understanding that we all need to be, this is not partisan, uncovering corruption and making sure that we're holding our elected officials to some type of standards and no one's above the law.
[00:06:19]  One of the things that I dislike the most about this administration is the way they have gutted the state's sunshine laws.
[00:06:25]  In Florida, it used to be capable of any Florida taxpayer could learn essentially anything about any public meeting or any public process or any expenditure of your tax dollars.
[00:06:39]  Now, unfortunately, it's almost completely opaque.
[00:06:42]  So, for example, you not only can't find out where the governor is going to take the state airplane, they argue that's a security issue, perhaps, but you can't even find out where the state airplane has been.
[00:06:55]  I don't see a security issue there.
[00:06:57]  What I see is potentially in the past the use of the state plane for political purposes.
[00:07:03]  And then Mr. Uthmeyer was actually raising money from the executive office of the governor.
[00:07:10]  That's against the law.
[00:07:11]  And using the governor's mansion for political fundraisers for the governor's presidential campaign.
[00:07:16]  That's also against the law.
[00:07:19]  These people really kind of have, and I'm a Republican, but these people have no shame.
[00:07:23]  No shame.
[00:07:24]  And I'll go even further than that, Roger.
[00:07:26]  It's not even just the manifest of where the plane has gone and where it's going, but who's on it.
[00:07:33]  You know, those are even more telling of where, you know, what conversations are happening not in the sunshine.
[00:07:39]  I know that over the course of the last six years, I mean, the taxpayers have spent so much money defending the governor when it comes to not fulfilling public records requests.
[00:07:49]  Everything has been taken out of the sunshine.
[00:07:51]  And going even to those dollars that have been raised, for anybody who doesn't remember, during this time period when he was between legislative session as well before signing of the budget and signing of any of those bills, James and other key leadership inside the governor's office were making phone calls to state representatives and lobbyists, holding over their heads the budget and these bills to get endorsements for his presidential run,
[00:08:21]  get money into the coffers for that presidential run.
[00:08:25]  I, in fact, as chair of the party, filed ethics complaints that year to kind of bring to light some of this.
[00:08:31]  And of course, the Ethics Commission, which half of it is appointed by DeSantis, just brushed it off because no one wanted to publicly come out and verify that that, in fact, had happened.
[00:08:42]  And we filed three criminal complaints last year, too.
[00:08:45]  We have three criminal complaints pending in three of our counties when James took six of the agencies that they oversee and also funneled money to take down a legalization of cannabis.
[00:08:58]  The other thing they got away with that truly shocked me was to raise, I think it was $85 million more than they needed for his reelection as governor, which was in a state PAC, and then transfer that money to a federal PAC.
[00:09:14]  Now, there used to be a line on the Secretary of State's website that said that that was illegal, but that wording suddenly disappeared like overnight.
[00:09:24]  It was gone.
[00:09:26]  The Trump campaign, as I recall, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about this illegal action.
[00:09:31]  It was, by the way, a number of individuals who donated to Governor DeSantis against Donald Trump but didn't want to own up to it.
[00:09:40]  They basically laundered their contribution in this way so they could see the president and say to him with a straight face, well, I didn't give money to Ron DeSantis for president.
[00:09:48]  No, they gave it to Ron DeSantis for governor, and he just transferred the money over.
[00:09:52]  By the way, we would never have gotten away with that.
[00:09:55]  Neither you nor I. Exactly.
[00:09:58]  But he got away with it.
[00:10:00]  I guess because the FEC ties three to three on any question put before it, and therefore you could never get any satisfaction there.
[00:10:10]  I do think it was really something when the governor essentially threw his wife over the side and said in this rambling diatribe in which he attacked everybody, the media, the Democrats, the Republicans, as if no one has the right to question him.
[00:10:27]  But he then eventually said, look, it was her thing.
[00:10:31]  I had no ownership of it.
[00:10:32]  I didn't devise it.
[00:10:33]  I didn't set the vision.
[00:10:35]  I didn't execute it.
[00:10:36]  As if it's like, hey, it's not me.
[00:10:39]  Ask my wife.
[00:10:39]  I'm going to go play golf.
[00:10:42]  Yeah, I mean, he does that on everything.
[00:10:44]  Whatever happened to the buck stops here, you know, in politics and in business, that at the end of the day, as a leader, regardless of who does what underneath, you take ownership.
[00:10:54]  They're your people.
[00:10:55]  And this is his wife.
[00:10:57]  It's the fact that he has never owned up to any of these things and always pushes on to somebody else and blames somebody else for it, takes no responsibility for his actions.
[00:11:06]  And again, it's good that everybody else is starting to see it unfolding in front of our eyes about the corruption, the nepotism that has happened under DeSantis.
[00:11:15]  And it's good to see finally that the public is seeing this firsthand.
[00:11:19]  I mean, I think people need to drop back and see the broader question.
[00:11:22]  When I criticize the governor in colorful language on social media, his flying monkeys, this little band of flying monkeys that he has online, immediately attack you.
[00:11:37]  But the facts are the facts.
[00:11:39]  Since Ron DeSantis took office, homework insurance premiums have tripled, averaging $6,000 a year in Florida.
[00:11:45]  They're the highest in the nation.
[00:11:47]  His reforms handed insurers $2 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts while letting them dodge lawsuits, which leaves the average Floridian with zoring rates and no recourse when the company denies your hurricane claim.
[00:12:02]  He also greenlit utility rate hikes with Florida Power and Light after they gave him $9.5 million directly and through their subsidiaries for his presidential campaign, jacking up our utility bills in Florida by 20% since 2020.
[00:12:17]  It's the highest single increase in Florida history.
[00:12:21]  Of course, his public service commission, stacked with DeSantis lawyers, DeSantoids, we call them, rubber stamped these increases, hitting working families very hard while he ignores our pain.
[00:12:34]  Meanwhile, try buying or renting a house in Florida.
[00:12:37]  Medium home prices jumped 65% under Ron DeSantis from an average of $254,000 in 2018 to $420,000 in 2024.
[00:12:50]  On the whole issue of housing, his inaction when it comes to affordability and his very cozy ties with developers prioritize profits over people.
[00:13:00]  They're pricing retirees and young people like my own daughter, who's trying to find someplace to live right now, completely out of the housing market.
[00:13:09]  So I always find that online, the people who tell me he's the best governor in the country, they never live in Florida.
[00:13:16]  They live someplace else.
[00:13:19]  Yeah, and I mean, I'm hearing it, and I'm going to even go one step further, that the property insurance in some areas in our state has actually increased 405%.
[00:13:28]  You know, people are, especially people that come down here and retired and even bought out their house or have a small mortgage, they can't afford the property insurance.
[00:13:37]  And it's just going to get worse because they, you know, have had blank checks over to insurance companies.
[00:13:43]  And I always ask this question, it's like, okay, so you pass all these reforms allegedly in the last couple of years to reduce costs.
[00:13:50]  Roger, you've been involved in this a lot longer than I have.
[00:13:52]  I have never seen a time when an insurance company or corporation says, you know what, I made too much money this year.
[00:13:58]  I'm going to cut my rates for next year.
[00:14:00]  That just doesn't happen.
[00:14:02]  And so there was no carrot and stick.
[00:14:05]  There was no, hey, when you finally get back to parity, if in fact there were some losses along the way, then at that point we'll start seeing reductions and costs and you have to do this.
[00:14:15]  That didn't happen.
[00:14:16]  And so now the insurance companies continue to get away with it.
[00:14:18]  There's no recourse, as you just said.
[00:14:21]  Our condo market in South Florida is about to completely crumble and put us into a crisis.
[00:14:28]  And we've got a lot of problems.
[00:14:29]  And don't forget the other thing that happened.
[00:14:31]  You know, as somebody who spends a lot of time in Key West, the people of Key West voted to not have those cruise ships.
[00:14:38]  The big cruise ships that are destroying the environment down there and are costing a lot of extra dollars for the local government.
[00:14:46]  And because he got a million-dollar campaign contribution from the guys who are the lease of that port, they had a piece of legislation last couple years that overrode that local bill.

=== Big Cruise Ships Controversy (06:49) ===

[00:14:57]  Just the corruption on every single corner to get into bed with the developers and the big ticket item, you know, donors, and all at the expense of the people that live here in our states.
[00:15:09]  For those who keep telling me what a great conservative Ron is, the truth is he raised taxes in the state of Florida by $1.5 billion since 2019, including higher vehicle registrations, online sales tax, really hitting small businesses and families.
[00:15:26]  He says there are no new taxes in his records, but people who live here really feel the pinch while he takes credit for tax cuts.
[00:15:35]  And then, of course, this is so-called signature issue.
[00:15:38]  Brags about Florida's freedom during the COVID pandemic, but he quietly signed laws shielding these big pharmaceutical outfits from vaccine lawsuits.
[00:15:49]  So his tough talk hit a sellout once more to corporate interests, betraying the people who trusted him to fight the system.
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[00:16:28]  If you're just tuning in, this is the Stone Zone.
[00:16:31]  I'm talking to Nikki Freed.
[00:16:32]  She's the chairwoman of the Florida Democrat Party and will be right back.
[00:16:38]  Welcome back.
[00:16:39]  We're in the Stone Zone.
[00:16:40]  We're talking to Nikki Freed.
[00:16:42]  She is the chairwoman of the Florida Democrat Party.
[00:16:44]  She is the last, I think, statewide elected Democrat serving as Florida Commissioner of Agriculture, the only Democrat elected statewide from 2018 to 2022.
[00:16:56]  She is a tough political operator who fights hard for her party and her point of view.
[00:17:02]  She's also an attorney and a longtime advocate for medicinal cannabis reform.
[00:17:09]  We're very happy to have her on today's show.
[00:17:12]  Let's talk some politics.
[00:17:13]  Nikki, Congressman Byron Donalds of the Naples area has announced his candidacy for governor.
[00:17:20]  He's already been warmly endorsed by the leader of our party, President Donald Trump.
[00:17:26]  I've said for roughly two and a half years that Casey DeSantis would run for governor.
[00:17:32]  People have laughed at me.
[00:17:33]  Those are the same people who laughed at me when I said that Ron DeSantis would challenge the man who made him governor.
[00:17:40]  Remember, he was an indistinguished congressman with a bad suit and an even worse haircut, running at about 8% in the polls when he was lifted out of obscurity with the endorsement of Donald Trump, soared to an easy victory in the Republican primary over the Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam.
[00:18:00]  But then in the last three weeks of that campaign, President Trump had to change his schedule three times to return to Florida to literally drag Ron DeSantis over the finish line by a mere 25,000 votes out of 8 million plus cast.
[00:18:16]  So my question for you, just looking ahead, what does the Democrat field look like in the next gubernatorial campaign?
[00:18:26]  You know, we certainly are looking through some of the candidates that have kind of popped up.
[00:18:30]  You know, I'm hearing the rumblings that we've got David Jolly, who used to be a member of the Republican Party in Congress and CD 13, who has been an independent for the last five to ten years.
[00:18:43]  I'm not sure on the exact timing.
[00:18:46]  Hearing rumblings that he is going to be declaring sometime in the near future.
[00:18:50]  There's other people that are kind of in the mix, but we are spending a lot of time here as chair of the party, making sure that we are getting back to the basics and talking to donors and talking to our voters and making sure that our message is right.
[00:19:03]  I think that one of the things, and I know we've got obviously different party affiliations here, but I think that what we have seen is when you have just complete domination from one party, and it could be Democrat or Republican, government doesn't work.
[00:19:15]  There's no checks and balances.
[00:19:17]  So that's always been my motto is to make sure that we get those checks and balances and get some good leaders on both sides to be able to work together to get some good legislation that affects and impacts everybody.
[00:19:29]  She's asking legitimate questions of a Republican governor.
[00:19:34]  I applaud the Speaker Danny Perez as well as Representative Andrade for asking the tough questions.
[00:19:42]  To the extent that we have checks and balances, there it is.
[00:19:45]  Maybe it's because of the governor's epic abuse of the legislature when he was riding high.
[00:19:51]  I also am of the opinion, some of my Republican friends may not like this, but I still think this is a purple state.
[00:19:57]  I don't, yes, I recognize that DeSantis won big, but I think the hurricane had a lot to do with that.
[00:20:04]  Would he have won?
[00:20:05]  I believe he would have won, but I don't think he would have won by the kind of margin that he won.
[00:20:09]  He dominated all free media for the last three weeks of that campaign.
[00:20:13]  Of course, President Trump won in an epic comeback bid, but anyone who thinks that Florida is no longer a competitive state, I happen to think they are incorrect.
[00:20:22]  I think it's a question of the candidates and who knows what the atmosphere will be two years from now.
[00:20:31]  I personally am for Byron Donald's.
[00:20:32]  I like him a lot.
[00:20:33]  I have a huge amount of confidence in him.
[00:20:35]  I think he'll be a great governor.
[00:20:36]  I want to see a spirited contest.
[00:20:38]  I want to see the Democrats nominate someone a little more to the center, but I won't be voting in the Democrat primary, so it's not up to me.
[00:20:48]  Anyway, this has been a great exchange.
[00:20:50]  I want to thank my guest, Nikki Freed.
[00:20:52]  She's the chairwoman of the Florida Democrat Party.
[00:20:55]  She's an accomplished attorney, the last statewide elected Democrat in the Florida, and a real fighter for everything she believes in.
[00:21:05]  Thank you so much for joining us today in the Stone Zone, and God bless you and Godspeed.
[00:21:13]  Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:21:16]  You can hear the Stone Zone with Roger Stone, weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
[00:21:23]  If you like the podcast, share it with your friends and listen anytime at WABCRadio.com and download the WABC Radio app.
[00:21:31]  Hit that subscribe button on all major podcast platforms.
[00:21:34]  Plus, follow WABC on social, on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X. See you next time for a new episode.
[00:21:42]  So you never have to wonder what the heck is going on here.

=== Rural Health Care Heroes (00:53) ===

[00:21:46]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
[00:21:52]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:22:00]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:22:03]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:22:08]  Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
[00:22:20]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:22:27]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:22:29]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
[00:22:33]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:22:36]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.