Byron Donalds Breaks Down His Plan for Florida

Thank you. Listen. This one, can I say that I always say that but you always say something you always say that.

Yeah, you always say the best one.

but listen. You know, um, we this one I tell you that I'm I'm honored and I'm humbled that we have our our our future governor in our podcast. I mean, I can call him governor but no, I'm not going to say it. We got our Congressman Byron Donalds in the house today of a day in Miami, brother. Congressman.

A real pleasure having you here.

What a pleasure of you being a day in Miami with our day in Miami viewers. We got so many questions. We were you know, we throw out this a little bit and we start getting some like you know, from questions from people already and they start saying, you know, we do have the hardest questions with nobody knows. Not even you. One secret question at the end. Yeah. It's one secret question at the end, you know what I'm [laughter] saying? That's going to be your hardest question even on the fact of even saying can I pass budget on this one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But anyway, you know, listen, um, so much going on right now and and and the fact of just knowing that you took some time out of your campaign to stop here with us and chat a little bit. But give us a little bit of the fact of I always start this in the sense when when did Byron Donalds say you had the calling for that? You know, I always call it that that that that bite of that

The itch.

little mosquito that itch that said, I want to run for politics. Nobody knows how tough the you know, the politician and politic world is. What What did you Is it Is it in your blood? Is it your family or somebody that you guys decided or you just said, I this is what I want to do.

I'm not I don't come from a political family.

Really?

No, I'm I was born in Brooklyn, New York. My mom was a single mom and she worked hard, got me to the point where I was. I went to college at FAMU in Tallahassee then I transferred to Florida State. I graduated from Florida State. Um, I I a political when I was in college, uh definitely when I was in high school. Didn't care about politics. When even earlier in my career, I didn't care about politics. I was like most people, I cared about like my wife, my kids, sports. Uh I would play pick-up basketball 3 days a week. Like I was just doing normal stuff, normal stuff. Like, you know, but as an adult, I'd be, you know, playing pick-up with older guy, you know, guys in the community. Um it was the financial collapse in 2008 that got me looking at politics. And not even saying, "Oh, I got to run." It wasn't even that. Um the company I was working for, we had to save the client, the client keep the client and the company. I was doing the research. When I did all the research, I came across Congress. I'd never watched a congressional hearing before, never did any of this stuff before. I was 29. And I watched this hearing on the financial collapse. And the first thing that came to my mind was like, "Who are these people? They don't know what they're talking about." And the country economically is falling apart. These guys are talking about things that are not happening. Cuz I worked in commercial banking, I was working in insurance at the time. I knew what was happening, they did not. It pissed me off and I got motivated. I got involved locally in Southwest Florida um through the Tea Party movement back in 2009, 2010. And when I the first time I ran for office, it was 2012 because I had got involved and I was I was engaged locally. And people asked me to run for Congress. I ran in 2012, I did not win, lost that race. But I realized that I could run again. And so, I ran for the State House in 2016, won, served 4 years in Tallahassee. And then I ran again in 2020 for Congress. And the rest is kind of history.

Yeah, right.

Wow.

That's incredible.

This is what I love about our podcast. You know, we try and ask, you know, everybody goes to different things and and interviews, but I always say because everybody says, you know, are you just born this way? Do people like to run for politics? I mean, I like to get that perspective because there's so many young, you know, viewers that watch our podcast. They saying, you know, "Oh, did you get help from somewhere? You know, what That story can really resonate with a lot of our young viewers.

what? Honestly, it was knocking doors. That my first campaign, I didn't even know what running for for office even meant.

Yeah.

So, I would go to different events and answer questions, and then you start to learn, man, you got to knock on doors. You have to go You have to go house to house, person to person. And that was my first real entree into the electoral process.

Yeah.

And like I I I think anybody who thinks they want to run for office, I always tell them, go volunteer on somebody's campaign. Go knock doors. Go Go door to door in a community in the in July in Florida where it's 95° outside, and it's just you, a bunch of palm cards, and doors.

Yes.

And then you'll find out if you really have what it takes.

knocking and "Hi, how are you?" No, thank you. Bye.

That's what I was going to say. I'm

[laughter]

curious I'm curious to know like your your knocking doors experience. What are people uh most worried about right now that you see at least in Miami-Dade and throughout Florida?

Affordability.

Yeah.

People want to be able to afford their lives in our state. Seniors want to be able to live out their golden years. Young people want to be able to buy a home and start a family. Um everybody's trying to figure out how to make ends meet. And so, there's certain things that the state we just have no control over like we can't control food prices. What we can control is insurance. What we can control is local taxes. So, I know there's a big debate in Florida now about Amendment 3. The reason I support it is cuz people need relief. You know, people aren't piggy banks for government. And people need relief. Let's make sure they get that relief. And it That thing is really targeted to working families here in Miami-Dade County or in Jacksonville or in Tampa or Orlando or quite frankly, even in some of our more suburban or or rural areas. It gives them relief. So, I say let them get relief and in government, we have a responsibility to get our budgets under control, still make sure we put public safety first, but then keep budgets under control because if if you're just taxing people more, eventually they run out of money.

Yes.

And that's not that that that never works in any society. I don't care who's in charge, I don't care what the society is. When you start running out of other people's money, everybody's got a problem.

But to that point, we have Blazes coming in next week. We had a county mayor that we did a podcast with her about a couple weeks ago, right? And she was talking about the deficit that they have now and especially if Amendment 3 or right passes, she's saying we're going to have to get, you know, rid of, you know, police, fire, etc.

But listen to what you just said. She's talking about the deficit she already has.

Yeah.

Well, that's your first problem.

Yeah.

You got to live within your means. In your house, you can't just spend money you don't have. If you do, then you're in credit card debt. And that credit card debt just keeps rolling on you. It doesn't go away. Every month you got to look at that. Maybe you can make the minimum payment for a while, but after a while you got to start paying more money. In a business, you just can't keep expanding your expenses with without looking at your revenue. Government's got to live within its means. And and the means of government is not just whatever they want to spend, it's whatever the people have the ability to give in taxes.

Yeah, but when I But it's so important you say that because we to Eddie's point, we've had not only that one, but we've had a lot of local mayors, right? That have come and they're Some of them are for Amendment 3, some of them are against it because they're saying what what she said in that pod was that there's some you know, cities that are they're going to have to be absorbed by the county because they're not going to be able to collect, you know, operate on their souls on themselves with this or like this I don't know what city she talked about. But there's some mayors that come and say, "Well, you guys got to really understand what's going on. If we cut that, we got to cut back on some services." But then you have people and you just stated it right now, which I think is perfect in the sense you got to learn how to live within your means and you got to learn how to do that budget. Strangely enough, yet last night's budget passed.

Yeah.

It already passed. So, you know, I don't know, you know, there was 20 questions and deficits. You had the sheriff coming and saying

She didn't get the money she wanted.

She didn't get the money she But she they everybody I think more or less came out okay.

But the thing is

point, you know, you got to you got to negotiate this and got to figure out within, you know, the county and the different cities, how do you how can you make everything all these services happen within what you're already collecting?

Yeah. And also when Blaise was going down, you know, throughout the state, he said that there was a $400 million like, you know, that you could adjust for, you know, so then that's exactly what is what everybody's worried about cuz every time we we talk about Amendment 3 and reducing property taxes, 90% of the comments are, "We're doing this." Like we're voting yes on this, you know, like people want to get relief. So, how else besides property taxes relief do you feel that the state, which is a good point of view, can actually help people beyond beyond just that? Is there any other opportunities?

Two big ones. First, [clears throat] insurance. My plan lowers insurance premiums 20%. Governor DeSantis brought uh tort reform in a couple of years ago. That's starting to work. We have more insurance companies now in the state of Florida than we did 3 years ago. 20 new carriers are coming in and that competition is really helping to stabilize our insurance market. Now we got to go into the the regulatory side of how Florida manages it. There's a couple of key reforms we want to do that are going to lower premiums. We also want to target the home hardening programs at older homes that need to make sure that those roofs are on tight so that they have a lower risk rating. Third thing is we got to keep Citizens insurance low. We got to keep that low. And the fourth thing, and this is the big one. Uh not the big one, it's just another one. After a storm passes, your permit should be automatic. Why are you waiting 9, 10, 12 months to wait for a building permit to rebuild your home?

Yeah.

The government already said you can live in cuz you've been issued a permit before.

Yeah.

I've seen it in Southwest Florida. We saw it in the Tampa Bay area after Helena and Milton. Mine was Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Irma we went through in my area in Southwest Florida. So, my attitude is you you need to rebuild? Your permit's automatic.

Go for it.

get government out of the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so, that way we we we are going to lower costs

in our state coupled with what Governor DeSantis has done. Another big thing we can do to lower costs, permitting reform. 30% of the cost of a new house is government. Not a roof, not appliances, it's government uh fees and government timelines.

did not know that.

You talk to who?

Talk to the developer.

Oh, no, no.

Steve are complaining about that actually.

Yes, huge one.

So, we're talking about we want to lower the cost of housing, but 30% of the cost of housing is government?

Yeah.

We have to we have to restructure that. We have to look at it common sense and say, "How do we shrink these timelines down? How do you make it efficient from when somebody acquires the land so they actually can build the home? Because the longer these projects take, the more expensive they get."

Yeah, 100%.

And I'm not saying that because I'm running for governor. My first stop in my career was in commercial banking.

You saw that too?

I was a I was a credit analyst. I would underwrite construction projects. The longer it took, the more expensive the project was. Period, full stop. Talk to any contractor, they'll tell you the same thing.

Yeah, I know that. We see that here with the grease traps with restaurants. It just takes months and months and months and they're paying rent and they can't open, you know?

A grease trap? Are you serious?

Wait, listen to me.

Crazy to me.

Dog, listen. I I can tell you stories of people and not for anything because we have a very we not for anything, we have a great mayor in in in this area, which is our And and Largo really he

Vince is awesome.

Vince is great. Vince fights for that.

Yeah.

I imagine. I I I my hats off to him because you know, everybody has a problem. The guy's there like, "We'll resolve it." But there's other places in in the county that have all these all these problems with the fact of the of the restaurants and openings and the grease traps. The permitting thing even just gets stalled and stalled and stalled over and over again, you know? I mean, and and and especially now when you see this congressman where you see everybody you know, we we we sit here and we The great thing about Dade County we have entrepreneurs, we have restaurateurs, we have people that come in with cookie businesses here that come and talk about everything. Right. But you see everybody's biggest thing is that they want to live in Miami. Everybody you know, I call this all the time. I call this you know, Miami USA. I feel like we're I feel like we're I feel like we're home country because everybody just wants to be part of Miami. Everybody just wants to be here. And I you know, everybody keeps on saying about you know, the houses. You said something that was very important a little bit ago because of of everything with the fees. Everybody wants to own their house. You know, I I I sit here, you know, my my my daughter's here behind the scenes today. Um I worry for them in the sense of like what's going to happen when she gets married, when she wants to have a family, and a house. We got to do something about it because everybody just wants to come to Miami. They Everybody wants to live home. Not everybody's the apartment living person, you know what I'm saying? And and and you see a lot of people with in Miami saying, "I'm I'm moving up to Orlando area or I'm moving up a little bit a little you know, further up because of of the the prices and and the cost." With your plan, do do you know, what Dad was saying with the insurance or anything, would that help us with with everything we want to do?

Because when a young person wants to go buy a home, you got to go to the escrow table. It's not just a down payment, you have to escrow out taxes. You got to escrow out insurance. Uh 6 months sometimes a year or you have to prorate it depending on the situation. That's It's money coming out of your pocket. It's not just that.

the taxes alone, you're going to lower your mortgage.

That's right. So, you what we want to do is you got to shrink that stuff down so young people can get in. The other piece is a young person, they want to be able to know they can afford a home and go into it. It's also about what kind of homes are you building? Not everybody's going to be able to have, you know, the four bedroom, three bath, you know, two-car garage. You Everybody starts somewhere. My first house, my wife and I we The first house we bought we bought out of foreclosure. Um in 2008. That was the first house we bought. And then we were in there, stabilized ourselves, got ourselves accustomed to home ownership. Then we bought another house. And then we were in that house for a really long time. Sold that one uh during COVID. And then I actually was renting. I rented for a couple years.

Yeah.

And then I just went back in, you know, we went back into the home ownership game, bought another house. So, it There's There's fits and starts to it, but what we can control is getting government costs down, decreasing the cost of construction through get it for through modernizing permitting and planning. Modernize our insurance markets, get those premiums down. That actually helps the young person be able to get into their first home. And then the other side of affording a home is having a is having a high skill and having a high-wage job. So, we If a kid goes to college, great. Get a degree that's going to put food on the table. But if you're not going to college, we have an we have an initiative where junior year, senior year of high school, if you're not going to college, let's line you up with a business so you can go directly and get an apprenticeship or an internship, get real skills so by the time you graduate high school, you're walking into a job, not walking into, okay, what am I going to do next?

Yeah. People underestimate the importance of internships. We do a lot of internships

a lot of internships here and they absolutely love them when they come on here.

Yeah, and and you just said something that's been resonating in our pod big time, especially with the whole AI craze that's going on.

Yeah.

But a lot of people looking again, how important is it tradesmanship?

Yes.

And and the and these tradesmanship, you know, vocational you know, centers and stuff like that of learning how to do, you know, plumbing contractor, an HVAC contractor. You know, all that is out there to your point on the sense of how many people are saying, "Okay, you don't want to go this route, but you still you need these people. We need all these folks you know, to keep on helping us with this."

Are you familiar with Robert Gonzalez? Commissioner Robert Gonzalez?

Yeah.

You know, he's bringing in bringing aerospace down to Florida.

I know.

I know. So, can you talk to me a little bit about that? Like I was trying to I feel like Florida's like leading in the aerospace industry.

We are

[clears throat]

We are at the precipice. Um I know it's not specific to Miami, but I'm going to come back to aerospace here. Couple hours up the road, Cape Canaveral, we're going to lead the Western Hemisphere in commercial space here in Florida. We do all the launches come out of our state. So, whether you're talking about um SpaceX or Blue Origin or any other rocket company, it's not just the launches, it's the manufacturing that happens in our state. We're talking about jobs for engineers and scientists, but also welders and electricians. And it's and it's the construction around all of this that'll happen right here in Florida. Specific to Miami, you're talking about aerospace, tech, defense, not just the engineering, but the testing. Like these are all high-tech manufacturing jobs can be done right here in Miami-Dade County, can be done up and down the coast of Florida because we actually have a couple of things in our favor. Number one, people want to be here. Let's You're right. People want to be here. That's just the way that's the way it is. So, you got to plan for people wanting to come. But number two, we're now getting people who want who are in these industries because of our military installations in Florida, they know they can manufacture and test here in our state in order to have whatever whatever product they need that ends up going into the aerospace community or whatever. The other thing that we're doing next year, Governor DeSantis signed it, we're going to be doing the test track for advanced air mobility. That's going to be here in Florida. And so, for older people, I would say, you remember the Jetsons? That's what I'm talking about. I mean, younger people don't know what The younger people don't know what the Jetsons are. Just go on YouTube, you'll see. But, advanced air mobility is coming to Florida. It's coming to Florida. We're going to lead in that. And so, we have an opportunity to still be a tourism state, to still be a retirement state, but we're also going to be an aerospace state, a commercial space state, um still an agriculture state cuz we still grow food all through Florida. And we're going to have to continue to grow food all through Florida. It's going to We want to have a dynamic economy, so young people can not only to have the skills, but they have the opportunities to earn money. And then, on the government side, lower costs, so they can afford Florida and build the Florida dream for themselves.

Talking about that, right? You have something that was super interesting, and I love personally, and it's make Florida most transparent government in America.

Yeah. So, what we want to do, so you've all heard about the DOE stuff.

Yes, yes, yes. And everyone's a big fan of that, you know, like keeping government accountable.

We're going to continue all of that. We want to do DOE audits on every government in our state. And that's not just local governments, it's not just special taxing districts, it's also state agencies. All of it has to be transparent. We want to put it in one online portal where people can go in and they can look at any government they want to. And not just have it be some government report. No, we want it to be distilled, easily to explain, easy to follow for the citizens of our state. And then, the other thing we want to do, so you know how you get it like an alert and there's a storm approaching, or you you get an alert if there's like an amber alert, ding, goes on your phone? Well, you should get an You should get an alert when the new uh analysis is ready.

Oh, that's good.

When the new analysis is ready on on the gables, you should get an alert on that. When the new analysis is ready on Miami-Dade County, you should get an alert.

It's our money.

It's your money. And so, we believe that you post salaries online, post contracts online.

Post budgets online. People should know. People should know, and they And I just know it So, what how it works right now is, "Oh, no, we passed our budget. It's out there for everybody to see." Unless you're a person that goes to these meetings

That's what Now, you know, you're right on. You're right on.

Hey, send me a note. Send me a Send me a text message.

we talk about that all the time, because not everybody can go to those meetings. Not everybody can go. Not everybody can go. So, we always tell people, you know, yeah, you know, you thank all the people that went, but not everybody can go, take time out of their schedule, go downtown, find parking, and go to the commission chambers to listen to what's going on.

It should come to you.

Yeah. It should 100%.

But, to that point, when we had the mayor here, she was talking about how we might need to reduce CBOs, which is NGOs, and everyone in the comments was like, "Who are we giving money to? Who are these NGOs or CBOs?" And every See everything going on in California, and it's like if we had like a clean list of hey, you know, 2 million here, 3 million here, 6 million here, things would probably be a little bit different.

It It's It's First of all, if you're going to be in politics, the one thing I learned early on, it's not my money. It belongs to you. You should know where your money goes. Period. Full stop. Forget anything else. You should know where your money goes. We got the same problem at the federal level. We have all these NGOs where we're giving them money, and they're actually not working in the interest of the United States.

Yeah.

But, they get money from us.

And then they give it donations to certain candidates.

Yeah.

You know, so then it's like

But, it happened with um the US Aid.

US Aid.

Yes. That's why That's why we were trying to clean it up, because you were giving money out the door to entities these these inde- these independent groups that are actually not promoting Western civilization. They're not promoting the United States of America. They're working against us. So, in Florida, we're going to be very clear. If you're going to give that money to some NGO

Yeah.

then you have to disclose who it is, how much they got, and what they're doing with the money.

You know, I know a lot of people laugh about this stuff, but at the end of the day, when you would listen to these things, they're saying, "No, uh $17 million to give some books to I don't know where." You know, I'm going to tell you, I got a little upset sometimes. I said, "I should have gone and distributed books somewhere for that."

the thing is that you have You have these situations where people are using

People were distributing books to I don't know where like for $17 million and another $20 million for this and another $15 million for that was crazy.

Yeah, and [clears throat] also, too, you notice a lot of these cases, it's like a company that was just open 6 months ago or a year ago, you know, and like they're really not in business. It's just, you know, you know something's going on, you know? Apart from that, you talked about it earlier about the agriculture. You have something that's Healthy Florida?

Yeah, so what we have there is we want to test our food toxins in in kind of classrooms. Not in classrooms, in cafeterias.

Correct, yeah.

You know, we want to make sure people are having healthy food. We want to make sure parents are aware of that. We want to test water in schools. We want to make sure that the water quality is high for for for children. We want to make sure parents are aware of that. I just think that if you're going to talk about where government is going, if you're going to have a good government that works on your behalf, it's got to be a transparent and it's got to be efficient. If it's wasting your time and it takes you forever to figure out what it's doing, that's that's not good governance. Good Good governance is transparent and efficient.

Yeah, when our K flipped the pyramid to me, when I was when I was younger, I would see this pyramid and I'm like, "That's kind of weird." I didn't feel like it was correct. And when he came and flipped it, it, you know, he did the right thing.

You were one of the few that were looking at the pyramid because nobody really looked at it.

[laughter]

You know

Not because of anything, but you know

But what you put in your body, you you know, you feel it, you know, you feel it. So then I was very happy to see that you guys are actually caring, you know, about cuz, you know, that, you know, feeds your brain, feeds your body, it really changes your your effect and and and then how you operate on your day-to-day basis, you know?

think parents should know what the what their kids are going to be eating. They should know what's in it.

There's nothing wrong with that.

100% 100%.

So, you know, we we This is a This is a you know, a hot topic here, of course, with with in Miami-Dade and all of Florida, but where does the Congressman see Do Do we finally get over the line in the sense of seeing a free Cuba?

Yes. I do. I do. I think there's multiple pressures on Cuba. Number one, Mark By the way, Marco's doing a great job. Marco's doing a great job. But that's now the Cuban regime doesn't have the support of Venezuela. I don't I don't be people understand how important it was to get Maduro out of there. So, now that they don't have the They don't have Venezuelan oil supporting them and they don't have the support of Venezuela, it's really put the Cuban regime on its back. That is a communist dictatorship murderous regime. They need to go. We need a free Cuba. So, I think we're definitely going to see a free Cuba.

And and and here we go. Now you'll be governor

Yeah.

of Florida. We got a free Cuba.

Yes.

Where where you know, you're going to have so many great Cuban-Americans here that are going to say we want to go and rebuild, you know, Havana. We go want to you know, we want to have the everybody coming in and coming back.

I support that.

We're we're we're we're ready for that.

I support that. I I think a free Cuba would have definitely have a friend in Florida. No doubt about that.

That's that's that's that's good to know. I mean, I think it's it's time I mean, we had that once when we had the Mariel boatlift at you know, so many

Yes.

from from Mariel here, but you know, we had, you know, that whole entry, which we got some great people in the '80s that came from from from Mariel and big entrepreneurs and workers. And I keep on saying there's so many great talent in Cuba that want that chance. And at the same time, I feel like us having, you know, Floridians go over there and and and and help rebuild that that that country will be, you know, phenomenal.

But I think the rebuild is important. It's also going to take time. There's a lot of There's a lot of work that's got to go on that's got to go on over there. You have to when, you know, this this regime falls, you have to stabilize some semblance of government over there. You got to make sure that there's a sound judicial system that people will honor contracts and commitments. Because, look, you can we can talk about Republicans and Democrats and all that other stuff. The core of society is that if you say you're going to do something, you got to do it.

Yeah.

If you make a commitment, you got to follow through. That's why contracts are so critical and that's the real foundation of how America's economy has been able to be successful for this long, for 250 years. Because at the at its core, we have a constitution, we follow it, we protect it, there's separation of powers. Uh that's all that's all proper and it's right for free people. But if you don't honor contracts, if you don't follow through and say that you say if you don't follow through and do the thing that you said you were going to do, your society can start to fall apart. And so like for for a Cuba, a free Cuba, those are the elements that have to get back in there. So I think uh Cubans and others coming from Florida to go and to rebuild that country, that's what's going to that's what's going to be needed.

Yeah.

And all I'm going to tell you is, you're going to have a friend in me.

Let's go. Let's go, baby. Let's go.

It's like almost like almost like Toy Story.

Yeah, that's right.

Almost like Toy Story.

It's going to be a big humanitarian effort at first, you know, but we'll we'll be there. You actually selected um Brian Avila

Yes.

as your lieutenant governor, which I think was amazing. We were there at the Freedom Tower when when you were announcing it. Um how was that Yeah, yeah.

[laughter]

You had a crowd of people around you and but uh

We tried to wave, but you didn't see us.

Yeah, it's all good. It was packed. It was No, no, it was packed, of course. You know, and you had the big support, you know. You have Yes, yes, yes.

How was that call talking to him when you broke the news to him? Kind of give us a little feedback. How's that dynamic been? This is the most diverse ticket that we've ever had, you know, for governor, you know, so

Oh, on the Republican Party? Oh, yeah, by far.

By far, you know, so and I'm very proud of of of that decision that you made and obviously having

Well, actually, hold up. In all of Florida, in Florida's history

Yeah, for that it's it's it is the most

had a black governor either, no?

No.

No, so yeah, so imagine it and Hispanic lieutenant governor, baby. Let's go, baby.

We've had Hispanic lieutenant governors.

We have?

Yeah.

Who?

Yeah.

Was Jeanette?

We had

Oh, that's right. Yeah.

You had Jeanette, you had Cantens, you you you you had a whole

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's okay. I'll give you a I'll give you a pass. A little push push push.

[laughter]

Shout out to Jeanette. Yeah, she's doing great. Shout out to Jeanette. We love Jeanette. We love Jeanette. Um how the call went? Literally, I just it was um I was traveling and I was like, I got to make this call. I think it was a Saturday right before the event on Tuesday. And so I called him. And it went to voicemail.

[laughter]

The draft.

but then but no, he called me back and so

have happened if you called me.

He called me he called me back and he was just like, you know, BD, you what's going on? I go, you ready?

Oh, boy.

That was it. You ready?

I get goosebumps already with that.

Yeah, that's like the draft ball, you know.

That's it. You ready? You ready?

You ready?

Are you ready to work?

You ready to work? Are you ready to work, man? And that's it.

How's the campaign trail been? You know, you were talking a little bit earlier, you know, how much effort you're putting into this, you know what I mean? You don't stop, you're going 24/7. Kind of give us a little insight on on your day-to-day.

Up in the morning, probably some media or a meeting or an event. We do two to three political events a day. Uh we have a bunch of other direct meetings with business leaders, business owners, community leaders. Um all of our events, we stream them online. We I I don't even really give long speeches anymore. We I might speak for maybe 5 to 10 minutes and then we just open up the floor and there's just mics and people pass them around and they ask questions. And I I think that's awesome. I think it's awesome. They just they ask whatever they want. And we answer. We just have dialogue. And then the event ends and you know, we set up the photo line and people want to come over and and then you get the second round of questions. You get the people who didn't get a chance to ask or maybe they didn't feel comfortable speaking in front of others and that's fine. Um a lot of hugs, a lot of love. Rinse and repeat. We're we're going 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. every single day.

Wow.

Every day.

You can tell you love it though. You know I love it. No, no, no, you can tell. You can tell he enjoys it.

So what happens though, seriously? Like it's um what really does go down? Sometimes the time in the car cuz you sit

Yeah.

and then like it hits you. And it's like, okay, I got to I got to walk in here and do this event. The second I get out the car, you meet the first person, it's like people give me energy.

Yeah.

So sometimes it's the energy from the room gives me what I need to just be on be on point.

that injection right there.

And I got the I got fuel injection. I think it's better than cafecito.

Yes, sir.

And you just go.

It is.

And you're just and you're good to go.

The love of the people in politics, it always it always does. I mean, you know, when I always when I back in when I do politics, it was like you would get to places and everybody would be there and everybody would be happy to see your candidate. You know, you see it. You you you live through your candidate. You see when everybody loves it.

But you know what the you know, real quick, you know what the the one thing that is fun I'll tell you about this and it's when you got to do an away game. So not every room loves you.

Right.

Sometimes I get more excited when I know I'm going into a room where it's like I don't have I don't have I I don't have this room.

Right, yeah.

I have I have to I have to go in. I have to go in and I have to go in I have to really

Work it.

uh work it.

Yeah.

And I will tell you

Good challenge.

there's there's no there's no greater feeling. Um even back in the primaries, you would walk into a room and it's like, I could just tell by talking to the first 10 or 15 people, it's like, oh, this is going to be a harder room today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

No, not a fan. Not a fan of mine.

All right.

On that topic, what would you say

But game on.

What would you say that people maybe oppose from your end? Cuz the the one time that we did um a promo job, we put a video, I saw a lot of stuff of like data centers, right?

Yeah.

But then I saw that you put uh you were running legislation or you wanted to run legislation to make sure data centers and these um when they're when they're building them, they're kind of like running their own water, running their own electricity, like being a part of the community and not like leaning on to the community and and and putting costs on them.

Well, I mean, look, with data centers, I understand how people feel. I mean, people number one are concerned, I don't want my I don't want my light bill going up. That's what my mom called it, the light bill. Yeah. I don't want it going up. I don't want it next to me. I need water. I don't want it taking all the water. So, people were frustrated hearing about these things, very concerned. Um and so, my position was, all right, well, we'll take care of the electric bill. We'll make it's not going to go up on you. We'll make sure we protect water. Uh Governor DeSantis actually signed law about this. Brian Brian is the sponsor of the law. Where local governments will decide if they're going to build or not.

Got you.

Not the governor, local governments will decide.

Okay.

Number two, your bills will not go up, period. They have to pay for everything. They got to pay their way. Number three, you got to get a water permit. You you can't use our water recklessly. We're not going to allow for that. And then four, the things we want to add is, you can't put it next to residential communities.

Makes sense.

Nobody wants to see it. Like I don't want to see it coming out my front door. I don't want to hear it. And so, to me, that's just a common sense approach. A lot of people are very upset about data centers. I understand why they're upset about them. Sometimes it's because they they would do these NDA agreements to where nobody knew what it was and all of a sudden it's on an agenda and people are finding out at the last minute. So, we have to fix that in our law. We have to make sure that people know if somebody's going to build one of these, people should know. It should be transparent around. It goes back to the most transparent government. So, that's I mean that's my opinion.

that to to that point though, what what we can't take for granted is that we do need to lead whatever's happening within AI cuz you know, we have to be at the forefront of it.

you got some people are for and not

No, no, there's no other way. That's the next revolution, you know, so

Well, you that's the powers to be. Everybody, you know, you have everybody the ones that are not into this, which I totally agree. You we got to be at the forefront of that, you know, I mean, China's going to go ahead and just and you know,

Yeah.

passes by like this.

And everyone wants to use it, you know, everyone I mean, people use it all the time.

I I will tell you people are using it whether they know it or not.

Correct. Yeah.

It's it's it's it's it's really within things that most people are doing. I was in a room and I I said, "Who here uses Amazon?" Everybody's hands went up and I said, "You like how the product shows up at your door in like like later that day or first day in the morning?" And they go, "Yeah." I go, "They're using AI to do inventory management."

Right.

To know what products need to be in what areas, to know how it gets shipped and dropped in order for you to get it.

They've been using it already.

They've been using it.

They've been using it already.

It's amazing. It's amazing, too.

Now it's when they signed those NDAs, nobody knew about it. Now it's out there. Now people don't don't understand. Talking on that says, you've been in Washington.

Yes.

You know, everybody will tell you about Washington Washington and the the craziness of Washington Washington. How do you feel that Washington has really prepared you to become governor?

Um well,

That's a great question.

Oh my gosh. Well, the first one is in in Washington, that you're in the center of American politics.

Yeah.

So, you know, anything you say, it's getting tweeted or it's going to be in some news segment or whatever. So you everything gets twisted. That's the craziest thing about politics. So you're always having to be mindful of the fact that what you say can become a whole new cycle. What it also taught me is if you can figure out a way to get a bill to the floor, you can get a you can get policies passed in Florida because it is so difficult to work with the leadership, other members of your party, forget the other party, members of your party who come from New York or come from Washington state or come from California or come from Texas and you have to find a way to bring all these different groups together to say this is the right language that we're going to send to the Senate. And hopefully along the way you get Democrats to say, you know what? That does make sense. Let's work together and get that done. And then it goes to the Senate.

Yeah.

And then you have the you have the whole same thing over there.

That's that's another thing.

it it is really difficult to get pieces something passed. Like I have one bill signed into law. That's more than most members.

That's awesome.

Um and actually Joe Biden signed it into law.

Wow.

So like to be able to get that and it was about a our fisheries here in the in Florida, making sure that after a disaster that they could run all the checks at the same time and not have to go from agency to agency and agency and it takes forever. Let's just run them all at the same time. That's the bill.

Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's common sense stuff, but it's just so difficult to move stuff through.

But do you ever think we'll go back and like have more bipartisan support in politics? I feel like things now are just so polarized, you know?

Um I think so. One of the things that I think is also going to start occurring I think and it's really comes from people. I think people are kind of getting over being mad at their family member cuz of who they supported.

Which there's a lot of families, bro.

Yeah, I just think people are getting I think people are tired of it. I think people I think Americans just want to just be Americans again.

Yeah.

And I think that's a healthy thing, but it's going to that takes, you know, leadership across the board.

You're feeling that when you speak to people in the streets? When you're going out there

When I talk to when I talk to Democrats um who are supporting me, they're just like, "You know what? The reason why I'm supporting you is because you just seem like you're just normal and you're relatable."

That's a good point.

And you just want to talk about the issue. You just want to talk about the issue. And I say, "Yeah, and every now and again, will I get on the Democrats? Yeah, of course. If I think their policy is is really dumb, I'm going to get on them."

Yeah.

But at the at the end of the day, it's about people. It's about how you improve their lives. Like when I talk about um you know, our our launch pad initiative on internships and apprenticeships, that's just not a policy. It's about making sure children have multiple pathways to be successful in life. And so I talk about these issues about how you're going to be successful. How do you put food on the table? How do we lower your costs? How do we get government out of your way? How do we keep communities safe? Like just the common sense principles have made Florida the best state in the country. Those are the policies. That's the campaign we're running. And it's resonated with a lot of different people.

Yeah, I mean, listen, and this is the best state in

This is it. This This is why everybody wants to be

Yeah, everyone from New York is coming down now, you know? Like what's going on in New York is crazy.

So, I know you're a huge, huge family guy.

Yeah.

What what what, you know, what goes on in the Donald's household when we're like, "Okay, we get to the house, talk to the wife. Hi, honey. How did it go? The boys, "Dad, you know, what what what's a typical conversation?" Wow, what a day. Crazy, you know? I mean, this is I you know, like I I I love to listen to those things, you know? I go home and I'll sit down with my wife or my kids. Like, "Oh, we did Oh, we did this podcast today. We did this. How did that go?" You know, how did they take when they say, I'm going to, you know, you sat down and said, "We're running for I want to run for" When you say "me," it's the whole family.

It is the It becomes the whole family.

you know what I'm saying? Because it's a it's a it's a team effort. How did that go?

Well, my wife, you know, she's so competitive. She was like she was in before I even said we're doing this.

Let's go.

She's competitive.

"Oh, you finally made the decision?"

[laughter]

Yeah, that Yeah, that's actually what happened. That's actually what happened. Uh so, she's super competitive and she's all in. My sons were excited, but my sons are also older. Like my my oldest son is 23. He's graduated college now. We talk about affordability, I'm thinking about my son. I want him to buy a home. I want him to get married and have kids. I want to have grandkids. So does my wife. She wants them to raise My wife wants our sons to raise their kids in Florida. That's what she wants.

Yeah.

Um my middle son is 19. He's now He's now a sophomore in college.

You know, he plays Division II basketball. My older son plays college football at Holy Cross.

Yeah, I saw you at the game.

Um so, you know, that's that's kind of what That's kind of where they are. My youngest is 15. For him, he's just like his teammates are all like, "Dude, your dad is like so cool."

the man.

Like when I come to the game When I come to the games, they're like they you know, they'll you know, they'll be like, "Oh, shoot. Hey, can we take pictures and stuff like that?"

said, "Dad, don't come to the game. You're distracting me."

me to come to the game. No, it's his friends His friends like it. Well, we did the basketball ad. And by the way, in that ad, it only took me two two times to to make the shot. Second shot, I made it. We ran that ad, my sons were all like, "Oh, this It's going to take him like eight, 10 times to make this shot."

man. You still got it.

I'm listening to them,

I saw that.

like, "I know I I taught all of you how to play basketball. Now you're trying to get on me?" Just give me the ball.

one I shot, it was short. I was like, "Ah, short." Cuz I was in a dress shirt. I was like, "Ah, short. Okay." And the second one, I'm back of my head. I'm like, "Okay, I got it." And it's hot. It's like June, and we're shooting this thing.

It's June, it's hot.

It's like 9:30 in the morning. I was like, I'm going to get this. I turn, I do the whole script, turn, shoot it.

Bang.

Bang. But the problem was my wife cheered. She's like, "Yay!" So you So they couldn't use it, the audio. Yeah, so I had to do it a third time. And the third shot is what's is what's in the ad.

So, keeping on that one, yeah. What What do you hope they'll say your boys will say about dad 15, 20 years from now? My dad was the president of the United States.

No, no, no. Don't put that on me. Don't put that on me. Um he was

[laughter]

I guess the way people talk about it today, dad was all gas, no brakes.

Hell yeah.

Like he dead he left it on the He left it on the field.

Yeah. I like that.

I always told them, just don't let Don't let anybody outwork you. If you're going to If you're going to do it,

Yeah.

you give it everything you have.

Yep.

And if you're going to give it everything you have, that means you're going to sacrifice something.

Yeah. That's why it's so important

you actually can't have it all.

Yeah, yeah.

You got to sacrifice certain things in order to have a shot.

time, you know, family time.

And yeah, on this one you sacrificed a lot of family time. But I think my sons, what they've learned from it is I remember when my dad was just listening to talk radio in the car driving us to school. Now he's running for governor. And through that whole time period, it And it's not It didn't just happen this year or just getting to Congress. That's been a 15-year journey in my life. 15 years of just continuing to be active in politics. And I think for them, what they take out of it is, man, if my dad can go from driving us to elementary school and caring about politics to being governor, man, just what's the goal? I can do that.

Of the great state of Florida. That's crazy.

I can do that.

That's crazy.

Yeah, absolutely.

We know you got to go soon, so I have one or two more questions.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

Are these the hard ones?

What what

the ones that you know

Why do you look at me?

[laughter]

I wanted to get your thoughts. This is not the hard one. I want to get your thoughts on how you feel and this is a a hot topic I see online. How you feel social media has changed the game for politics, you know.

Oh, in a big way. Um social media I don't think can win a campaign, but it can lose one. Um because if you're not if you're not careful to be to watch the narrative that can build on social media, you can be on the other side of an issue and not even realize what happened. It also gives you the ability to communicate with so many different people in so many different ways.

Yeah.

Um and you can target who you want to communicate to. Um so I don't think it's like

Are you in the DMs? Are you responding to people in the DMs?

Nah, not at It's too I honestly I don't.

That's way too much.

I I don't even respond online. People will like at me, "What do you have to say about this?" I don't I just don't

Yeah.

respond to them because once you do one, then you got to do all of them.

Everyone gets jealous.

So you I just put out my message and I just keep it going. Um but it's it's changed politics and it's going to continue to change

I think it's changed politics for the good, you know. A lot of people say no cuz there's bots out there that are pushing certain narratives which I do see that does happen, but we feel closer to our elected officials, you know.

it can really be an amplifier for your message.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? I mean, you can Listen, you wake up in the morning the first thing you should do is

You do the phone here.

You know what I'm saying?

All right.

And and and that's where that's where your message is at, you know. So that's important. You know, you you're going to hit up the

Oh yeah, the hard one.

But this is

I'm going to add to what you're going to say here. Go ahead.

All right.

You you you got to do your your you got to do your self checks. Do your self checks.

BD, you got to let us know your top three restaurants.

Well, your top three restaurants I'm going to say

know if it's in Miami

in Florida. You can you can even throw Florida in there.

Top three.

Top three starting with number three. And then the reason why you like to go there.

Uh number three, Chipotle.

Let's go. I like Chipotle.

And the reason why listen, it's

My daughter's right here. Just opened up. That's her favorite place.

It's a It's a It's a quickest thing to get into and you can actually get good ingredients and don't feel like you

You don't feel lethargic after. You feel You feel like you can keep going. Well, in in your case right now, you're doing 18-19 hour days, so That's big time. Number two.

Cane's.

Raising Cane's.

Whenever we're on the trail, whenever we're near one, it's like We got to do it.

Are you going like extra spicy or

No, there's no extra spicy in Raising Cane's. There's no spicy

It's the chicken fingers. It's just

Fingers and fries and that's it.

Raising Have you been to Raising

No, I haven't been. I but there's a there's a there's a a food spot that has like these different type of like spiciness. I haven't seen that one yet, though.

But I'm just telling you, when you see one, do it. But the number the number

There's one that opened up right over here

Number one.

I'll just have to check it out. It used to be.

Oh, there's one on the route. Right on It's one in the

route, right across from the the resident center in Doral over by um um the golf course, Trump's course over there. There's a There's a Cane's right over there.

you want to go out here, you got you just opened up right here in Coral Way.

Oh, really?

Yeah, like 5 minutes away.

We got to go. I'm going to go with Jay. I'm going to go with Jay. I'll go.

But but here's number one. The number one.

Number one. Go ahead.

Cuban food in Miami.

Let's go.

I'm I'm I'm just telling you.

Let's go.

knows. I'm like, "Hey, can we Do we have time? Can we find a spot?" And then everybody's in there looking in Google or looking in Yelp trying to find a good one to sit down.

Are you doing like a pan con bistec? What What's your go-to?

I'll do the bistec empanizado, the steak with black beans.

Croquetas.

Let me get uh either I'm going to get some pork

Yeah, okay.

or let me get some some uh some shredded some uh

Yeah, I got you.

the ropa vieja.

Ropa vieja.

Ropa vieja. Yeah. It's the ropa vieja. Yeah.

Let's go, man. Let's

Next time you're in here you have at least an hour, you pass by my mom's place.

Yeah.

My mom has the best ropa vieja in town.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah?

The best.

All right. Okay.

With fried plantains and white rice. Little fried plantains and white rice.

That's perfect.

It doesn't.

Congressman, listen, this is great. You know, our our our our viewers are going to be ecstatic. I'm I'm glad you passed by Day Miami giving your message to our all our all our viewers. And you know, I mean, listen, we'll we'll we'll be watching. We'll be there. Give that final message to all our viewers.

46 days till election day. Make sure you get out and vote. By the way, I'm number 30 on your ballot. I'm number 30 on your ballot. I know how it goes in Miami-Dade County. But look, I just want Florida to be the best state in America continuously. We're going to lower costs in the state. We want you to afford Florida. We want our children to achieve the Florida dream, and we're going to have the most accountable government in all of America. I need to be your governor. Go vote November 3rd. Make your voice heard.

Yes, sir. And remember, guys, here we go. And go out and live it, love it, and make it another day in Miami, baby.