You're listening.

To.

Draftkings Network. Roy, as we survey the hellscape that is our world as the never ending war in the Middle East once again threatens the end times and the rapture, I went to City Hall, to Carl Gable City Hall and had a face-off with the mayor, Vince Lago, and came on this show to talk about it and talk about the derivation of my stage name or my professional name from William Cohen to Billy Corbin and talk about my heritage and my family. When this whole world starts getting me down, I like to trudge around in the cesspool that is the comment section of Instagram. Yeah, that really helps. I know you do, too, Roy, and I know you went under... We posted a clip, of course, from last week's Because Miami, and people had some things to say, some goysplaining. They wanted to tell me what anti-Semitism is, what it means to be Jewish, what my Judaism should mean to me, and what did you find, Roy?

All right. This really helped me in the mental health aspect of my life, so I appreciate you making me do this. All right, the first comment we have is from King Tom 015. What a sorry act of crap. Of course, Libertard, I guess he tried to say.

Libertard there. Like Libertard. Do you get it? Libertard.

Libertard. Get it? Yeah, sure. What promotes someone being such a crybaby? You guys are straight garbage and everything wrong with this country.

Okay.

Mima in Cuba says, Billy, you're addressing a city council isn't an addition for a part in a movie. That's your last name. He addressed you as such. Punto if final or final?

Punto if final. If final. Yeah, that's right.

If final. I don't know Spanish, I'm sorry. Let's go to George Bermudaz, 33, who runs Hollywood again? Thinking emoji, thinking of a finger on the chin.

Oh, yeah, Jorge Bermudaz wants to know who runs Hollywood. Actually, interestingly, we talked about that last week and about how despite the fact that a lot of directors and producers and studio bosses or whatever happened to be Jewish, it actually doesn't preclude there being some innocent bias even against some of their own.

Yeah, but I have a question. I have a question about that. Yeah. What does Hollywood have to do with Carl Gabels?

Maybe he's talking about Hollywood Florida. Maybe that's the confusion.

Who runs Hollywood Florida? Isn't that the guy who owns Hollywood KIA, right?

I don't know. What else? Is it over yet, Roy?

No, we have another. Zach Weaver says, Billy sold out and changed his family name to make it in Hollywood. The fact this show gives a disjoke of a man. A platform is insane. There's a hundreds, I'm going verbatim here, there's a.

Hundreds-.

Financial literacy skills.

-of more respectable people trying to make Miami better for people. Why don't you get one of them instead of this attention seeking, hypocritable reason of a human being?

Let me tell you something right now, Roy. I absolutely resent the lies and the bullshit that there are hundreds of people trying to make Miami better. Oh, that's BS.

No, totally BS.

Hey, Roy, you would never happen to have the experience of being on social media and people trying to tell you what racism is or what your Blackness means or what you should prioritize or think is important.

Oh, those are experts. I really shouldn't listen to what they have to say because they know better than me being that I'm Black and everything.

Let me be clear, despite the very actually overt claims in some of the comments that didn't make the cut here, I am not a self-hating Jew. I am a self-hating child actor. Yes. I think a lot of people thought that was the big breaking news on the show last week is that I am a recovering child actor. I don't disagree. That was what was the most important thing about the show last.

Week, right? Well, we got some more stuff for that, actually.

Do we? Is there an app for that?

Yeah, well, no, but there is a top five.

I wish we had a top five theme song or sound effect or something.

We actually have some like... But we didn't give an answer yet. Billy Corbin. We got to get to it.

What is your pallette cleanser after you went trudging around in the dumpster of Instagram comments?

Well, we have the top five worst Billy Corbin child acting moments. That is what we have. We actually have six, so we have an outside looking in. The old LI is a Kassami St. Cloud commercial. Now, this is some of your early work here. This is from 1986 for the Kissimy St. Cloud Resort area. You did in Orlando, shot on location in Disney.

I was eight years old, maybe seven or eight.

Yeah, seven or eight. You did at Disney World and you abused an orca. Here it is.

Whenever the wife and I visit Florida, we stay in the Kasemi St. Cloud Resort area. There's so much to do. That's me. You always stop at Walt Disney World to see the gang. I especially enjoy fine dining and chug at a cut center. And SeaWorld is full of surprises. There are so many great places to stay at the Kusimie St. Clair Resort area.

The.

Kusimie St. Clair Resort area.

You make kids in the headquarters in Central Florida. My voice was the one that was slightlyless high pitched.

Little Billy Corbin.

We were on so much cocaine, Roy. It was 1986 in Central Florida.

So much cocaine.

Eight years old of you. Oh, my God. I remember that first line. I can't even speak. My tongue is bigger than my mouth. I am actually having trouble. Remember the wife? I remember it was the middle of the night. I had to do so many takes. I had this, I don't know, this speech impediment. Then the actress who I was working with, who was six or seven years old, she kept saying, instead of especially in Joy, she kept saying, especially. The two of us just we were a nightmare.

You're so cute. You're so cute. You're pissed off the adults by misspeaking.

Oh, my God. So cringe.

Number five is The Finale Boys.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, The Finale Boys was a short-lived 1990 sit-com that lasted one season.

Grand opening?

Grand closing. Joy Pantaleano was in this show. Joey Pants, that's right. Joey Pant. Yeah. You played a 11-year-old asshole who tried to teach a grown-ass man. This grown-ass man was Christopher Maloney. Everybody should know who Christopher Maloney is if you are a fan of Scrums. He was the pediatrician in that show. Scrums? Yeah.

What the hell are you talking about? Yeah, it was in Scrubs. It's Elliot Stabler from Law and Order SVU.

I mean, sure, if you want to go with the most famous title, I'd rather go with Scrums.

Scrums. Was he even on that show?

He was on that show. It was a guest stint.

It was one-one episode?

He was on a couple of episodes. It was Doctor Cox try to get his child into the practice for Christopher Maloney.

It's been Elliot Stabler for like 25 years for a quarter of a century and one of the longest running primetime shows in history.

Well, good for him, but I like him as scrubs. The Finale Boys, here it is.

That's when the prince.

And the king went back.

Into the castle.

All the villagers rejoiced. And when the sun rose over the forest, the wicked.

Witch… Sounded out.

Disintegrated.

Disappeared.

Can we read you.

Another book?

I don't think we have enough time. I'm only here for the weekend.

Little Billy Corbin.

Little Billy Corbin.

Oh, my God. What's next?

Number four, Nightcourt.

Oh, my God. This was fun. It's one of the best weeks of my life working on that show.

Yeah, I'm sure it was. It looked a lot of fun when I saw that video.

It looked a lot of fun. And it was late in the run, so the show was legendary by the time I was on it, and I watched it. That was pretty cool. Yeah, out.

Of the credits on this entire top five list, this has to be one B out of all the credits, of the.

Biggest.

Ones. Wait, I play an asshole again.

Yeah, you.

Play an.

Asshole again.

In 1991, this was the eighth season of Nightcore, you said, and you played another little asshole. You played this asshole was named Billy.

Yes, I was a child actor named Billy, an asshole child actor.

Named Billy. Yeah, like Tony Danza is always playing a character named- Little Billy Corbin. Yeah, exactly. You were shooting a TV show inside the courtroom called The Littlest Lawyer, where you played a 12-year-old district attorney. Here it is.

Do you know what a.

Public defender is? Do you know how to talk like a normal person? Note to the writers, use fieldings as a model for the transsexual psychopath in episode three.

Have you.

Ever.

Heard the.

Word.

Please? You ever heard the word now? Don't get me what I want.

Billy, let me let you in on a little secret.

What? I hate you.

Marshall Warfield.

I think that Marshall Warfield needs to be a cart. Billy, let me let you in a little secret. I hate you. Oh, that was so fun. I had a great scene. Bull, Richard Mul, the Ricky. First of all, that man was literally twice my height at that time. I think there was a scene where he picked me up and put me on a desk so that we could see eye to eye. It was so much fun. That was a rest in peace, Markie Post, who I had to give everybody shit in that scene. Oh, my God, that show. Oh, that's awesome. That's such a great show.

What number are we on? We are on number three, and this one is Step Monster. Now, you got to star on this Roger Corman-produced, director tape, monstrosity. Of course, a lot of the Roger Corman-directed tape movies are monstrosity. Directed tape. That's what he does. That's what he's known for. A very good career, Roger Corman had. This one starts Alan Thick and Corey feltman. This movie was a very much Halloween staple on Disney Child back in the day. Now, you played a guy named Todd, a boy named Todd, whose stepmother, by night, turns into this mythical green scaly creature who feeds on human flesh. Here it is.

We're going to be married. You're what? Denise will be your new mother. It's for boys. Todd has a problem.

He thinks his mom is a monster. She growls and she eats bones and she chases joggers.

She's probably a dog.

She's a Tripopkin.

What are tripopkins?

Did I mention that she.

Eats people? Coincidence? I think not.

We.

Both know that monsters are merely a figment of.

The imagination.

Now, Todd's got to.

Stop her.

Before she gets.

Hungry again.

How do you kill a vampire? I just take.

Her to the hub. Oh, how awful.

They're.

Wolves. Silver Bullets. Cool. How about...

Tropopkins?

Tropopkins. Wow.

What.

A cast. It was amazing. That whole week was amazing. Alan Thick was amazing. Cory Fieldman was a trip. I remember he had this group of recovering child actors, a lot of whom were probably in rehab at the time, they would go around whenever one of them would get a job and visit the other one on set in the dressing rooms. He had a group of guys there, and my mom took a picture of us. We had that somewhere. I wish I had it. He put his arm around me and we took a picture. Cory said to my mom, he reminds me so much of me when I was his age. My mom goes, Oh, God, I hope not. She took the picture. I'll never forget it. Amy Dolens, Mickey Dolens, his daughter was in it. She was beautiful. I got to be in a lot of scenes with her and really fun. We had a great time on that movie. Wally Fister, the guy who shot it, by the way, is now the director of photography for Christopher Nolen. The man got an Oscar for Inception. He shot the Dark Knight trilogy. The guy is a genius.

A lot of folks got their start with Roger Corman. It was all uphill for all of them, except for me, probably.

Yeah.

Little Billy Corbin. Number two is Parenthood.

Oh.

Yeah.

Parenthood is obviously 1A in this list of the biggest credits that you have, that night court. This is the 1989 version of Parenthood. This one you start with Keano Reeves and Joachim Phoenix as a kid. Again, some typecasting. You played a little 10-year-old asshole named Eddie with a foul mouth. You've been cursed in Yiddish, Billy. I did. Who curses in Yiddish?

Little Billy Corbin. Or Little Billy Cohen, really.

Yeah, exactly. You did this during the big birthday party scene with Steve Martin. Here it is. Isn't that him?

No, that's the smuck who brought the horse.

Go on and have fun, and we'll have some burgers and dogs in a second.

Let's go watch the horse shit.

Yeah. Howdy, Padna.

You're Kevin's father. You're not Cowboy Dan. Yeah. That's right.

They call me Cowboy Gil.

This movie was directed by Ron Howard, himself a recovering child actor who really inspired me to direct. I got to interview him for a documentary later called The Taning of America: One Nation UnderHip-Hop, to tell him that he's the reason why I do what I do. My mother could not believe that Little Lopee Cunningham was making her nine-year-old or eight-year-old son curse in a movie. But what's funny is my third line there, which I don't curse in, that was a big deal because when Steve Martin did the rounds on the talk shows, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he brought a clip with him, that's the clip he brought when he was doing the Cowboy Dan's stick at the party. My line, You're Kevin's father, you're not Cowboy. That was on The.

Tonight Show. So you are on The Tonight Show.

Kind of. Kind of. Let's go with that.

Little Billy Corbin. You say so.

Number one- There's something better than that. There's something better than that?

No, there's something.

Worse than that. I meant, there's something...

Yes, that's what I meant. Yes, there's something worse than that. That's called Archie to Riverdale and Beck.

Oh, fuck.

I can tell how ashamed you are of this one. Fuck. Oh, shit.

Yes, you're the bleep bat. No, that was worth the F-bomb there.

Yeah, in 1990, Yung Weddingling committed a humiliating version, just a bad act of cultural appropriation as Judghead's son in this BBC TV movie. Now, this has to be the worst cover song that has ever been recorded.

This.

Is the whitest, so-called rap version of the Archies singing Sugar Sugar. In fact, it sounds like you did some bad ADR here. It sounds like you went back into the studio and sang for this particular scene. Here it is.

Break it down for me, fella.

I'm going to make your.

Life so sweet. Rock and then moving, taking.

That stuff.

I'm going to rock the world, come clean. Rock and then moving. Let me put a little sugar on it.

Rock.

Sugar.

Oh, honey, honey.

You are my candy girl. And you.

Got me rocking you.

Break it down for me.

Sugar. Oh, honey, honey. I'm a candy girl.

You are my candy girl.

And you got me rocking you. Break it down. Come on.

And you.

Got me. And you got me. And you got me. Break it.

Down, won't you, please.

The only thing worse than that was having Mike and Jason in our ears, which the audience can't hear, telling us how much longer there is in the clip. When they said 20 seconds, I'm like, This is going to feel like two hours. And it did. It did. Coming up next. It's sports. You've read him in The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Gocker, Dead Spin, NBA, Esquire, Vice, Vice. You just heard them on the show a couple of weeks ago. I think this is one of our fastest turnarounds. Jeb, where were we, Jeb?

Where were we? Please clap. We were talking about the remaking of the new College of Florida into a 700-person intercollegiate athletic powerhouse.

Sports. Jeb Lund is great writer, amazing writer, also the co-host of It's Christmas Town, a podcast that reviews the bizarre and gentle world of Hallmark original movies. He is a graduate of New College here in Florida, which is where we were interrupted when we ran out of time last time you were here and wanted to pick up that conversation because you had just told your story about how you got to New College. Picking it up from there, New College was a pretty special place. You got a school of about 700 students, one of the smallest, I think, public colleges in the state of Florida. But also, like I said, a pretty unique place for a unique student body and no athletic department up until a very short time ago. Tell us about what New College was and how it has been remade in the mold of DeSantisthan.

Right. New College Athletics, when I was there, and I think for pretty much the bulk of its existence was, the New College kids got really drunk and they took hallucinogens and they played kickball, softball, or ultimate against the kids from Ringling who took cocaine.

I'm guessing there was a Quittitch team as well. I don't.

Think we ever did that. I do know that there were certain inventions like you take a shot penalty if you bogey a hole of wiffelball golf and things like that. But it was really not a... There were pickup soccer games that were a little bit more serious than the things I've mentioned, but there was never really any focus on like, We need to do something that requires a uniform. You have to buy a jersey. No. You just show up, you walk out, you're 150 feet from where you sleep. No problem. Five minutes prep, you're good to go.

I want to go back to Ringling College and the cocaine.

Is it all playing the clowns?

Yeah. Holy shit. Yes, the cocaine clown boys over at Ringling College. I was waiting for that. New College itself, athletics aside, what was the curriculum? What was the makeup of the student body?

Well, it was usually about 60, 40, or at least it has been for about the past 30 years, female to male. I think that might be one of the things that De Santis and his cronies objected to, that you can't have patriarchy when you're outnumbered. But it was basically a place for people who didn't fit elsewhere and who wanted to be really academically rigorous. The nice thing about it was you might have... I only had three history professors when I was there. So if they didn't teach something that I wanted to learn, I could just go find 14 books, build my own syllabus, and go to one of them and say, Do you have enough experience in this that you can read it with me? And build my own class or build my own research project. That was reflected in the way that we got evaluated, which was you didn't get a letter grade. You got a page or more of typed or handwritten evaluation of your academic performance. While that might make it difficult to transfer, it was really great for applying to grad school. I think I brought this up last time. It's basically like grad school for undergrad.

New College graduates had something like a 90 % doctoral completion rate. If you left New College with a degree, you were almost certainly going to get a doctorate. That's the people it appealed to, people who wanted to create multidisciplinary stuff or stuff that just wasn't going to be in an average course-course catalog.

Desantis has really fixated on it, though, of all the places. He's really fixated on destroying, or in his words, transforming this school into a right-wing bastion. Iwould argue, a Christian Madrasa. I mean, he has a very specific... Well, Hillsdale is really the mold, I think, for what he's going here for. Let's talk about the hijacking here, because the first thing he did was replace what, about half of the board of trustees there? He put a crony into the, at least as the interim president, with an outrageous raise, multiples on what the previous president had made. Let's talk about the hijacking here. How did this start?

He replaced the board of trustees and he did it with some cronies that were a little too obvious. There was one gentleman from Inspiration Academy, which was basically like a Bradenton fifth year high school for getting kids into athletic programs at other state schools. He actually turned out to be so nuts that they turfed him. Christopher Rufo, who's best claim to fame as I think getting around 4,000 hits per video on YouTube before he discovered casual fascism and getting monetized by right-wing Think Tanks is also on the trustees.

4,000 hits on YouTube. I resemble that remark.

This isn't just daytime viewing for him. This is something that's meant to start a movement. We were waiting for him to start until he got help. Like all self-made men in the conservative movement, he had lots of help from much, much older men. Richard Corcoran, as you mentioned, is the President of New College. He's making more than any other President in the state of Florida, more than UF, despite the fact that he has one-tenth as many students. But what they did, the real hijacking seems to be to re-make and punish the student body. And if there's one thing about that misfit aspect of New College, it's that that's where you went if you didn't fit anywhere else. And it seems to be the mission is, guess what? You don't belong here either. And so they brought in over 100 scholarship athletes, including, I think, double the number of scholarship baseball athletes that UF has despite having one-tenth as many students. And it's subtle, but it's very effective. Dave Zyron and the nation really banged this drum, but I think he's 100 % right on it that the culture of athletes is very conservative. It's very easy when you are the one % in your hobby, in the sport that you like to play.

It's really easy to believe in anyone can make it if they try.

He pointed out that they're recruiting some of these athletes from Christian universities, in fact. I got to read the stat that you were referring to. Again, this is a university, New College, with 700 students. That's how big the student body is. New College will enroll 70 freshman baseball players under scholarship, as Jebb just said. The University of Florida, a Division 1 powerhouse with a student population 90 times larger than New College, has 37 baseball players on scholarship in total. Despite grades and test scores that lag badly behind other students on campus, this new crop of student-athletes at New College had disproportionately received merit-based scholarships from admissions of the 179 incoming students awarded the $10,000 per year presidential honors scholarship. 84 of those 179 were student-athletes.

Yeah. It really does feel like they decided to import the bullies. I don't mean to smurch these student-athletes. I don't think that they're sadists or bad people or anything like that. But the one character of the school that you could say it had was that there wasn't a bully presence. If you wanted to be a barefoot flower child twirling around, if you wanted to spend the whole day naked, nobody was going to come harass you, even if you were a girl and walking around with everything hanging out. I think the attitude is to chill that and to chill the campus culture while also injecting, while also correcting for that male-female ratio and reintroducing something like male supremacy, I would imagine, and also to make people feel like you don't have your own place to be where you can relax and explore yourself. This is just like anywhere else. Ultimately, it's going to be a real disservice. This is something that Dave didn't touch on. It's going to be a real disservice to these student-athletes. If they want to transfer, if they put up good numbers and they want to go to a different school in the state of Florida, they're not going to have a GPA to transfer with.

They're going to have written evaluations, and it's not an easy school. The whole point of it being grad school for undergrad, you read a lot. You do independent work a lot. There haven't been that many suicides at New College, but every year there's somebody who's just on the fence. When I was there, I saw at least two different students get involuntarily committed, Baker-acted, or if you're in New York, 51-50 for just melting down from the stress of it. And these kids who are supposedly... I've spoken to people who know people in the new college admissions who are looking at some of these application essays where the Why do you want to come to New College? Section is just, I want to play ball. And that's pretty much the essay. And these kids are in four, they're going to walk into a hurricane of academia that they're not prepared for, and it's going to start just daisy-cuttering the heads off a few of them, and they're not going to be happy kids. It's not fair.

This is really a legacy, though, of Ron DeSantis is punching down. I mean, is attacking people with the full weight of the state that can't necessarily defend themselves. Lgbtq+ kids, minorities, immigrants, people who have very little political clout or power and really investing millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of public money into trying to, as you say, push them out, saying you don't even have this little 700, this tiny public college anymore. That's going to become a baseball school. I want to ask about that, Jeb, before you go. To me, this is the sad, sick reality of Trumpism, of which DeSantis is very much an acolyte. That through all of the racism and misogyny and homophobia and demagogyy and death and destruction, the story is really just a heist movie, isn't it? It's all been like a distraction to steal money. When you look at Richard Corcoran, who you brought up, a man with no educational background or experience as an administrator, as a teacher, where this guy is going to make nearly a million dollars. That's the thing about this, is that aren't they just stealing our money, ultimately?

This has been the right-wing complaint about New College was that per student, it was one of the most expensive schools in the state in terms of what we had to put in resource-wise for the attendees. But you got amazing results. Up until 10 years ago, there were still members of the Republican Party in Florida who considered New College a jewel. Now, it seems to be plunder. I haven't been able to confirm exactly how much is going on, but allegedly, the new coaches for these athletic programs are being paid out of the admissions budget. I looked at one of the proposals for New College getting NAIA, that's a step below NCAA acceptance, as a school that could then compete. And if what I saw was what they actually sent in. They were intending to send the student-athletes to campus counseling. That was what was going to be their and physical care. Campus counseling is for the people who are going, I feel like I want to jump off a bridge because I can't finish my thesis. It's not for people who've got a bad hammy. So there seems to be this complete contempt for the money.

Up until now, the concern was new college spending money effectively. Now it's just like it seems to be a piggyback for this project that only has humiliation as its end. It doesn't seem to be about academics. It can't possibly be about athletics. They've got 80 baseball players. They've got one baseball field. They want to build another. They're going to have to boot the classic car museum out, raise it to the ground, and put another one on there, and then they'll have two. They'll still be about too short for the amount.

Of-you're goddamn.

Right, Meatball. Jeblon, come back next week. The week after that always I love talking with you and reading you and seeing you and your girthy microphone.

Thank you. Hello, Jim.

Hey, Jim.

Could say hello. I mean, greet a.

Guest, for God's sakes. You just came in. I thought you were talking to me. I think you have a former colleague here.

Who's that?

Jason Granados. He was working in the studio. Okay, great. You may not have known him.

You have to understand that there is a hierarchy in TV stations. Oh, boy. There's only certain people that I interact with. But I'm sure he's a fine young man and did an excellent job. But yes, no, everyone understands. You have to understand your lanes.

No, absolutely. Yeah. This is TV. Yeah. You are.

This isn't like some little podcast thing where anyone can just come up to Dan or anyone else and say shit. Yeah.

Wait a minute. No, you're on camera talent. You're the eye candy.

Look, you can't keep all this. If you want this, this is what you want on TV. If you want all of this, then I have certain conditions I have to be met with, and a certain level of respect and a goofness that I expect.

Jim.

As a writer. Ladies and gentlemen, this sexy bastard is Jim Defeati, a veteran award-winning Miami reporter. Yeah, I just started the segment. That's what happened. The Miami phase of his career started in 1991 at the New Times, where for 11 years, he was part of a murderer's row of writers doing some of the best reporting ever during a golden age of local journalism here in Miami. His first book, The Day the World Came to Town, 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland, was published in 2002. His latest book, it only took 20 years, Jim. It drops in early 2024. It's called The Chronicles of Willy and Sal. It's an anthology of stories. He wrote about Willy Falkone and Sal McGluda, Los Muchachos, the Boys, a pair of Miami High dropouts who became the Kings of Cocaine here and helped inspire me and my producing partners to commit 12 years of our lives to produce the Netflix original doc series, Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami, featuring Jim DeFiti. Jim joined CBS.

I love the way the introduction to me turned into a promotion for you and your work.

How did.

That take a.

Weird turn? You're here to promote your Doc. I'm going to promote my Doc in the intro here. This is what Jim is here to talk about.

Well, you could do that every Friday, though.

Since he joined CBS, he does it every Sunday, too, on his show. That's his show. Jim joined CBS Miami in 06. He's an investigative reporter, politics reporter. He's the host of its popular Sunday morning public affairs program facing South Florida. Also at CBS, he's done something really amazing. He's managed to produce over a dozen outstanding documentary specials, including a powerful trilogy of one-hour docs about the Champlain Towers collapse and Surfside. His latest warehouse, The Life and Death of Tristan Murphy, premieres Wednesday October 25th at 10:00 PM on my33 in Miami and streaming online at cbsmiany. Com. I just watched it last night and wow, it is riveting, powerful, disturbing, and I think it's your finest work, Jim, which says a lot. Jim Defeaty, who is Tristan Murphy? And why have we never heard of him before?

Tristan Murphy was a 37-year-old man who was in prison in 2021 on a... Well, I'll get to the charge. But this was a young man, 37 years old, who was sent to a state prison, even though they recognized that he had severe mental illnesses, and he ended up killing himself by trying to cut his head off with a chainsaw. It is one of the most harrowing stories I've ever encountered. I found out about it the day it occurred, on September 16th, 2021. I got a call from a source within the Department of Corrections that said something terrible had just happened and that the real tragedy of it is everyone at the prison understood that he had a mental illness and needed to be treated, but instead they put him on a work detail and handed him a chainsaw. And after I learned that, I went on what became a two-year mission to chart exactly what happened in this man's life. What I ultimately tried to do is use Tristan Murphy's story with the help of his parents to piece together his life and to show how the criminal justice system fails people with mental illnesses.

That's really what the movie is about.

Governor Rick Scott privatized prison medical care allegedly to save the state money. What does your investigation show actually happened? Did it save us any money? Did it improve the quality of health care in our prisons?

It neither saved money nor improved the quality of health care, particularly when it came to mental health care. One of the things that ended up happening is the Department of Corrections, prior to this, before bringing in private companies to handle the health care needs, the state was doing it themselves. The state would hire nurses and doctors and psychiatrists, and they would staff it. Instead, they freelanced it out to a private contractor. Before they financed it out to a private contractor, the suicide rate at prisons in Florida was much lower. It was better than it was. Then afterwards, because mental health care was not prioritized because of a lot of failures within the Department of Corrections, as well as these new companies that they brought in, the rate of suicide increased. Overall, the health care of inmates is considered below average to poor. I realize for a lot of people at home, you begin to think to yourself, Well, you don't care. These are criminals. They should be treated terribly. Why are we even providing them health care? The truth is, in the United States of America, the only group of people entitled to health care are prisoners.

That is a protected right that prisoners have, and they're supposed to receive quality health care. That's not what they're getting.

In for. Also, you get into the competence crisis in this documentary, which is to say that there's a lot of people languishing in jails or even in prisons who are deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. They're just stuck there and languishing indefinitely in some cases. I mean, isn't it our responsibility as a society if we were going to imprison these people to take care of them? In that regard, you have a stat in this doc that just blew me away, Jim, about this privatization of prison health care. Since 2018, this according to Jim DeFiti's new-documentary warehouse, The Life and Death of Tristan Murphy, a company called Centurion of Florida has been paid over $1.5 billion to provide health care to the state's 80,000 inmates. Is there any transparency or accountability? Do we know how that money is being spent? Do we know what we're getting for our money, Jim?

The state does its own internal auditing. I've never seen- Oh, good. Yeah, so rest assured that's fine. You'll be happy to know, Billy, that in the future, it will not cost taxpayers 1.5 billion. Their new contract now projects that they will be paid about $2.4 billion.

Oh, what a relief. What the health care in our prison system lacks in quality, more than makes up for in cost, apparently. Let me-.

But I want to… Billy, let me just real quick. I want to go back to the point you made at the outset about the competency crisis. I just want to explain that because it's really important. That's where the title of the documentary comes from, warehouse. Let's say that you're someone with a mental illness and you're arrested and taken to jail. More than likely what's going to happen is you're not going to make bail. You're probably going to be acting out. Local jails, let's take Miami date out of it because they're doing a little bit better, but the rest of the state, if you're arrested and have a mental illness, you are almost certainly going to end up in a solitary confinement cell because it's easier to put you in an isolation cell where you can scream and cry out and refuse to shower or eat or defecate on the walls. You can do all of that in a private cell. But the one thing that becomes clear is the worst thing in the world, every expert agrees on this, the worst thing in the world you can do with someone who suffers from schizophrenia or a serious mental illness is to isolate them.

According to the state, what happens is you end up, let's say this person in the case of Tristan Murphy, the judge in his case found that he was mentally incompetent to proceed. In other words, he did not have the mental wherewithal to assist in his own defense, and so therefore they found him mentally incompetent to proceed. He's supposed to be sent within 15 days to a state hospital where they will balance out his meds, try to get him on meds, even them out so that they can then ship him back to court, where more than likely he'll just plead guilty. In the case of Tristan Murphy, on his first arrest, he was in for 70, 80 days, more, I think. But the second arrest that he was on, he was in an isolation cell by himself for more than 500 days, almost two years in a cell with no interactions, no people, just an isolation cell where he was locked up 23 out of 24 hours a day. That was his life for more than 500 days before he got sent to the state prison where he committed suicide. You can begin to wonder, is being held for 500-plus days in an isolation cell part of the problems that ended up leading to his suicide when he entered state custody at the state prison just west of Miami?

He was only at the state prison west of Miami for less than 60 days. But in that time, they failed to diagnose him. They failed to give him the proper medication on a regular basis. They failed to recognize, even though their notes, the medical records all show that he was in psychotic state, hearing voices, talking about the man with no face. Every inmate at the facility who interacted with him was scared to death of him because they saw his mental illness and they realized he was not right.

Jim, we're running out of time, but we buried the lead here. I have a lot of questions, but what did he do? What was he locked up for? He's not a murderer. He's not a child rapist. What was he in jail for, Jim?

He was sent to prison on a littering charge. In a psychotic episode, he had driven his pickup truck to the Charlotte County Jail. He was off his meds. Clearly, it was a cry for help. He took his pickup truck. There's a small retention pond right next to the jail. He got out of the truck and rolled it into the retention pond and walked away in front of a group of deputies. Rather than see that as a cry for help, rather than understand that he was in a psychotic state and needed hospitalization and treatment, they put him in jail and charged him with littering. In Florida, littering of more than 500 pounds, which is obviously a pickup truck, is more than 500 pounds, is a third-degree felony. After 500-plus days in an isolation cell, he played guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison, and 60 days later, he killed himself.

People have to watch this documentary because I didn't have a chance to ask you about emails that you obtained from Centuri and this private prison health care company that seemed to admit that the system very much failed this guy, that he was supposed to be getting psychiatric help at the time that they sent him out to do yard work. I just have to ask you in our last 60 seconds, Jim, the question that Tristan's mother asked, Why did they give a man with well-documented, in the prison records, in fact, mental health issues, with documented past attempts at suicide and self-harm, they gave him a chainsaw, which was ultimately the weapon that he used to commit suicide with. How did that happen?

Nobody talks to each other. The medical staff doesn't talk to the correction officers. They don't talk to the counselors. Nobody talks to each other because they claim they're all overworked, understaffed, underpaid, the litany of excuses that come from the bureaucracy. I will tell you that we did obtain some emails that revealed the truth as to where they failed. Publicly, the Inspector General for the Department of Corrections absolved the Department of Corrections of any wrongdoing and said that there were no administrative violations, even though we got our hands on an email that clearly details all of the administrative violations that they had conducted. But the state has decided to try to cover that up as best they can. That's why. But to go one last thing, people should care about this because the prevalence of mental illness is rampant in this country. You may not be mentally ill, but you may have a family member or a friend. If they end up in this system where there is little hope for them to receive the type of care and treatment and instead are just being crushed under a criminal justice model that says better to convict and send someone in prison.

Let me make a further point. If that doesn't affect you, if you're not worried about yourself or your family or your loved ones ending up in the same trap, all of these people, unless they commit suicide, all of these people are going to get out one day. If you're not getting treatment for the people who are mentally ill in prisons when get out, what do you think is going to happen? It's not a good story. For public safety purposes, they need to do better because all of those people, most of those people are going to get out one day and be on the streets.

Warehouse the life and death of Tristan Murphy from investigative reporter and documentarian, Jim DeFiti, premieres Wednesday, October 25th. See it streaming at cbsmiany. Com. Jim DeFiti, thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you, Billy. Always a pleasure. Thank you, guys.

Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Roy.

Yeah, you put down a tombstone, actually.

It's going to be on the Florida Democrats' tombstone. I'll tell you that.

Right now. You can tattoo that on somebody's neck.

Like the poor chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, Nikki Freed, who I like very much. I really do. The distinguished-chairwoman.

Yeah, speaking of which you actually wrote an opt-ed on medium involving Nicky Freed and the Democrats down here going to Qatar.

Yeah, it pained me to write it, but truth be told, if this involved Republicans, I wouldn't have to. The Democrats would be rightfully indignant and calling them out at every opportunity. But instead, they remain silent and put their collective heads in the sand. That silence is hypocrisy, cowardness, and complicity. I will not be silent. I will not be a hypocrite. I will not be a coward, and I will not be complicit. What happened, Roy, back in May of 2022, thanks to Doug Hanks, the Outstanding reporter who covers Miami-Dade County at The Herald, we learned that Miami-Dade mayor, Daniela Levin Kava, a Democrat, was in Qatar on an unannounced free trip to tour World Cup soccer stadium that were built by forced labor of immigrant workers, what human rights organizations called modern-day slavery, that resulted in between 400 and 500 deaths. And this luxurious, all-night, all-expense paid junket, including roundtrip, business class, airfare, meals, transportation accommodations at the Ritz Carlton Doha, which cost over $10,000 a person, was paid for by Qatar, a notoriously anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic regime, an alleged financer of terrorism in Israel that does business with a communist, Cuban government, checks a lot of boxes that Democrats and Miami should be rightfully pissed about.

That's the thing what we've been reminded about, Roy, is that Qatar has been essentially Hamas headquarters since they were thrown out of Syria. They've been thrown out of everywhere in the Middle East, in the Arab world because they are a terrorist organization, but they have received aid and comfort in the form of accommodations, office space, and over a billion dollars in cash and prizes from the Qatari authoritarian regime. It turns out that Danielle Levin Kaverr, he wasn't alone. There was other Democrats. Miami D. Commissioners, Kean Hartman and Oliver Gilbert. Miami Commissioner, Christine King. Also was Alex Diazle-Partee. I remember him. He's a Republican, but he is under arrest.

Right now.

The usual suspects in.

This situation. But here's the thing. Also along for the trip was the man who arranged it, who was Mayor LaVine Kava's political consultant and campaign manager, Christian Ulvert. But he wasn't on her delegation list because Ulvert says, I wasn't there as the mayor's employee. I was there as a registered foreign agent for Qatar. It turns out that this guy who is one of these political consultant characters who works for, by the way, in this current cycle, at least a dozen Miami-Dade Democrats and a handful of Republicans, including Dan Gelber, who's been on the show, Sabina Kovo, Miami Commissioner; Lauren Book, the Senate minority leader; Michael Gricoe, a mayoral candidate; a litany of county commissioners. They're represented by a guy who is a registered foreign agent for what is essentially Hamas Headquarters. Hamas effectively planned and greenlit the terrorist attacks against Israel from the comfort of Qatar, of Doha, where Danielle Levin Kava and went on this all-expense paid junket. I ask respectfully and frustratedly the chairwoman, Nikki Freed, of the Florida Democratic Party, that the party should demand that Levin Kava, Harderman, Gilbert King, and any others return the Qatari blood money, approximately $10,000 each, in the form of donations to local charities from their personal campaign or political funds, not public money.

That LaVine Kava, Book, Pizzo, Govo, Ashley Gantt, Oliver Gilbert, Michael Grico, and all the Democrats who are working with Ulvert should demand that he do the same and end his representation of Qatar. If they refuse, they should end their affiliation with him because Democrats need to make a choice: Florida or Qatar. That's the thing. There is no moral high ground here, Roy, as long as Qatari blood money is poisoning this party. Because I wanted to leave this show on a happy note, Roy.

Yeah, good job.