You're listening to DraftKings network. When it comes to politicians like the mayor, every accusation is a confession. It's impossible for pay to play people, to fathom that anyone will say and do things just because it's the right thing to do for our community, and not because that were being paid. But people like the mayor, who only act in their own self interest, cannot understand such a concept. And it's no wonder that Lago is losing it and lashing out. He's left in the lurch. Everyone around him, his friends, political allies, and business partners are under investigation or under arrest for crimes like bribery, money laundering, fraud, and illegal campaign contributions. They probably have enough dirt to make him afraid that they're singing in surround sound to law enforcement right now. Now, we expect this from the city of Miami. This is the mo of the mayor's BFF. Francis Suarez of Commissioner Joe Carolo and lago's political pal Alex Diaz. La portilla. But that incestuous cesspool of Miami corruption, cancer has metastasized to the city beautiful via vin slago. That was me. Sounded like you with Bronchitis. Earlier this week at a City of Coral Gables commission meeting, talking directly into the eyes, maybe 10ft away from Mayor Vince Lago.

How can I describe Vince Lago? I'll put it to you this way. My mom texted me when she saw this video, and she's like, oh, my God, I'm I'm shaking at this video of you and Francis Suarez. And I'm like, oh. And I'm like, not exactly, but kind of like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Remember Multiplicity with Michael Keaton? Yes. When he keeps copying himself and they get, like, dumber and dumber and slower. Andy McDonald. Yeah. That's kind of like what's happened that's Lago like Vince Lago is like if Francis Suarez were a Maguire and you got him wet and they started spitting out those hairballs and they get dumber and dumber, and the eyes get all, like, roly poly and crossy. And then if you got Francis Suarez wet, you took the dumbest hairball and fed it after midnight. That's Vince Lago.

So Vince Lago is a gremlin?

Yes, but, like, one of the dumb, slow gremlins who is, like, wishes he could be Francis Suarez when he grew up.

And we're talking about the first movie, not the sequel, not the one with the female smart one.

Hot take. Gremlins Two is one of the best sequels ever made up there with, like, Godfather Two, Superman Two, empire Strikes Back. It's a solid, solid entry and a Trump parody as well.

So the guy that was playing the owner of the building is actually Trump.

It's Trump Tower. That's right. That's exactly right. That was the satire there.

Wow.

You see? You see that? Look at that.

That's very good.

So here's what happened in this nonsense. City of Coral Gables is in a land grab real estate hustle is trying to annex certain areas of unincorporated miami Dade into the city, trying to plant their flag and bring it in the city. I went to a public meeting and spoke out against this plan, and I called out Vince Lago, who is a real estate broker who has been working in the city of Coral Gables, basically making money off of his job as the mayor, just like Francis Suarez does in the city of Miami. He didn't like that, that I called him out. His brother also is the lobbyist for one of the biggest landowners in one of the areas that they want to annex. I'm just saying, like, let's just call it what it is. It's a land grab and a real estate hustle. Like everything else in this town, he didn't like it. He ran to Telemundo and various Spanish language media to talk all about Billy Corbin. That card is actually Vince Lago on Telemundo. And what he said was, Roy, while we were recording this podcast last week, my phone's blowing up and they're like, Vince Lago is on Telemundo talking about Billy Corbin and how you are.

Me, I'm being paid to speak out against him and the annexation by the firefighters union. I'm like what? The firefighters, they got money. First of all, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like, can I get paid by the firefighters? I'm like, Is that a real thing? But he just made this bullshit up, dude out of whole cloth. This is science fiction. He might as well said, I'm being paid by unicorns. And so I decided to go and confront him at this meeting and challenge his defamatory lies about me. I will take a lie detector test, a polygraph on my podcast because Miami to prove that I'm not paid by anyone as long as the mayor agrees to come on the podcast as well and take a polygraph to answer questions about your dealings with your real estate partner, Bill Riley, his co conspirator and now co defendant Alex Diaz la Portia, who is also your political consultant, your real estate client, disgraced developer Rishi Kapoor and any other ways in which you exploit your public office for private profit. I challenge you to take that lie detector test with me live on my podcast.

You know we got a guy for that. Big Joe Harper.

You have a polygraph guy?

Yes, we do.

I wouldn't call him so quickly. He's on a mean that suggestion went over like a fart in a submarine. I gotta tell you, I just got nothing but scared eyes and kind of a panicked expression from Mayor Vince Lago. And I'm guessing he's not going to come on the show to take a polygraph. And while he didn't address my offer head on, I will say that our exchange did not end well. Mayor, you can sell your soul, but please stop selling out your city. Coral Gables deserves better. Thank you.

Jorge espinosa. Mr. Cohen, you may sit down.

Now.

I'm sorry, out of respect what did you call me? I called you Mr. Cohen. Out of respect.

Why don't you just say Jew? Isn't it appropriate that you're sitting under the portrait of a noted anti Semite racist?

What I said was, out of respect for the residents, I will not respond. We will address this later in the court. I will be formally bringing you in in regards to a lawsuit and we will address that in the future. But out of respect for the residents, I will not allow you to make this into a circus like you make everything else into a circus. I hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you, sir.

You're the ringmaster clerk. I should note that shortly after that exchange at this meeting where he threatened to sue me, the commission voted three to two to censure Mayor Vince Lago for being an asshole.

Yeah.

Not just to me, but to his colleagues on the city Commission, and for violating least six or seven of the criteria in his very own code of civility that he sponsored and passed at the city.

It's a pretty scumbag thing to do, what he did there at the end.

Yeah, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the lawsuit threat, because this guy's a bully and he ain't going to do shit. And the reason he isn't is because in the last 24 hours, Roy, I've had no less than six attorneys, people who I associate as being affiliated with the Left and the Right, called me unsolicited to offer to represent me pro bono. And that doesn't even include the First Amendment attorney we have on retainer at rack and tour at our company because we're documentary filmmakers. And that's the thing you need to do. But these attorneys are so excited, Roy, they can't wait to dig into Vince Lago's financials, to get his tax returns, to get his bank accounts, his deposits, and to start to put together this isn't some sort of defamation case against me. This will turn right into a corruption case against Vince Lago. And they will get to depose under oath francis Suarez and Rishi Kapoor and Bill Riley and Alistairs Lapartilla and Keon Hardeman. And I Mean, like, just this David Lila Sentiner. I mean, the list goes on and on. Now, a bunch of those people will probably plead the Fifth because this guy is surrounded by criminals.

They seem to be salivating at this Pandora's box here.

But I got to tell you and this revolution will be televised because all of these depositions will be video recorded and we're going to make a documentary about it, too. I mean, this would be an absolute blast. But let's talk about the other thing that I think you were actually talking about, which was the Billy Cohen of it all. So, I was born William Marcus Cohen. I am named for my father's father's father, my great grandfather. And when I was we'll say, a child actor in Los Angeles working as a kid, I did a lot of TV shows and movies and commercials and pilots and stuff. And I'll put it this way, the name Cohen is like the name Smith or like, Martinez. It's like a very common Jewish name. And not that Smith or Martinez are common Jewish names. I just mean sort of the Jewish equivalent of that. And so it was collective with my representation to change my name. Because despite the conventional wisdom that Jews run Hollywood, yeah, a lot of directors and producers are Jewish, but that's not necessarily an advantage. Content is made for everybody. And so when you walk in as Billy Cohen, they say, well, can Billy Cohen play Kevin Costner's son in a movie?

I'm not going to get that part. And I walked into an audition I'll never forget when I was twelve or 13 years old, and the producer or director looked at my resume, looked at my name, and by the way, this person might have been Jewish themselves, but they said, oh, Billy Cohen, nice Jewish boy. So immediately in the room that turned into, can a nice Jewish boy play this part? Not. Can Billy play this part? But can Billy Cohen, nice Jewish boy. So you kind of want to level the playing field and have an it's a very competitive business. And so the idea was to come up with kind of a neutral name. So my mom always called me Billy, not William or Guillermo, but Billy. And so Billy Corbin became the name. So we didn't have to change it too much. It was just sort of Cohen. Now just change the H to an R and a B. And I remember being in a car with my mother talking about this, and I was sobbing, I was crying, and I said, I am not ashamed of my grandfather's name. I am not ashamed of my great grand, my father's name, my great grandfather's name, and my mother's like, well, that's not the point.

The point is, if you want to keep at it in this business, which is your choice, are you going to create a competitive disadvantage for yourself? And that's just the reality. So I basically changed my name to avoid anti Semitism or to avoid some kind of stereotyping as a result of having a very common Jewish last name. And now we'll call them my enemies in politics, weaponize that against me. And let's be clear, it is not an anti Semitic dog whistle. It is an anti Semitic foghorn. It is used specifically to pander to a certain segment of their base that is racist and anti Semitic. To say, he is not one of us, he is an other. And it's tantamount really, to pinning a yellow star on me to say, Jew, he is a Jew. Take from that what you will, judge that how you will. But in a time in which Nazis are marching in Florida. Nazis are marching in Texas. Israel is under attack, experiencing the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The most perverse genocide of the 21st century so far. This is the tactic that he chooses to use.

And he is not alone. He is not alone. Here's what's interesting about this, Roy, is I went to this meeting specifically to point out how unfortunate it is that the city beautiful, which is the slogan of Coral Gables, that the government there is turning into the incestuous cesspool of corruption, cancer that is Miami and that is spreading via vin slago metastasizing into Coral Gables. And what does this guy do? He just proves my point for me, and he tears a page right out of the Joe Carroyo playbook.

It's a guy named Billy Cohen.

Corbin.

Corbin. Corbin. Corbin Cohen. No real name is Billy Cohen. Oh, wow. I don't think he likes his last name, so he uses Corbin. You're right.

Yeah. It doesn't sound like Vince Lago or Joe Croyo thinks that you're a nice Jewish boy, quote, unquote.

I am proud of my name. I am proud of my father's name. I am proud of my grandfather's name, my great grandfather's name. And I will say this, vince Lago's mama didn't name him Vince. Joe Carroyo's. Mama didn't name him Joe I don't know what it was. Jose, Jose, Joseph, Vincente, Vincenzo, I don't really care. I'll call them whatever they want to be called. I'll call him Vince Lago, and I'll call him corrupt, and I'll call him an asshole. I'll call him he wants to be called Joe Carroyo, I'll call him Joe Carroyo. And I'll also call him a wife beater. You're going to tell lies about me? Because I tell the truth about you. That's fine. But I'm also sitting there, Roy, in the chambers of Coral Gables, looking at this painting, this portrait of the founder of Coral Gables, george Merrick, a proud segregationist, a man who specifically created Coral Gables so it would be all white and all Wasp. The country clubs in Coral Gables. Coral Gables Country Club riviera restricted. No Jews, no people of color allowed. So I'm sitting there waiting to be heard during public comment the whole time watching this portrait.

Might as well be Robert E. Lee up there. This is the city where Vince Lago, a notorious racist and anti Semite. Coral Gables was the last holdout to rename South Dixie Highway, harriet Tubman Highway because Vince Lago would not have it busy whistling Dixie. So I am proud of who I am. I am proud of where I came from. I am proud of my name. And it is because of racist and anti Semites like Vince Lago and Joe Carroyo that I was put in a position where I even had to consider creating a professional name. And I'm sitting here waiting to get served. Are they going to?

No.

Are they going to? No, they're not going to where's the process server, Roy?

They're not going to do it. They don't have the stones to do absolutely not. No, no. He's just bluffing. I don't think he's going to actually do that.

I'll call the lie detector test guy, maybe big Joe Harper. How you feeling, Roy? You full of despair?

Yes.

On brand. How are you feeling, by the way?

My bronchitis is starting to slowly leave, but every time I show up here and start laughing, it reappears.

Is that not communicable, bronchitis?

I doubt that it is. I don't think anybody here is going to catch it. So I think we're all good.

It's a good thing nobody uses their voice here to make a living. I think that's a plus. Yeah. Roy, why don't we take a look at the Wheel of Despair and see what our topics are this week?

Okay, here we go.

Roy stretching for this.

I think I bought my bronchitis back. We got Miami infrastructure week.

Oh, no.

That's right.

I put a hard hat on and duck.

Let's do it. Cover cops behaving badly.

Cops behaving that's a perennial.

Yeah. Proud boys behaving badly.

As opposed to Proud boys behaving goodly.

It's a very rare thing. But got to point it out, gun.

Toting politicians, because Miami yeah.

And at this point, because everywhere. Because america and backstage taylor Swift sex scandal.

That sounds like a cheap clickbait headline by producer Matt Sullivan. That's what that sounds like, Matt. You're goddamn right, meatball.

There you go.

That was Matt Sullivan right there. Chiming in. Roy, before we spin the Wheel of Despair, I want to remind everybody that they can share their despair on the Because Miami Complaint Line.

Yes, we're finally doing it.

Thank you. Right down there. I'm pointing at the number down at the bottom of your screen. That's 786-505-9842. Again. The because Miami complaint line. Share your despair. 786-505-9842. Call. Now we'll throw in free shipping and handling. Roy, shall we spin the wheel?

Gun toting politicians?

So you said because everywhere, because Florida, because America. Because Miami this is all Miami Beach. Miami beach is famous. People know it all over the world. But it is just a barrier island with no more than 100,000 full time residents, and it turns out a bunch of heavily armed politicians. And they are apparently pretty careless about how they handle said firearms. No, I should have made sure you were sitting down. Roy, are you sitting down, Roy?

My fall out of my chair.

Yeah, I'm actually standing. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm standing right now. Miami beach mayoral candidate Michael GRICO, who, incidentally, is a criminal. This is a guy who was once charged in an illegal campaign finance scheme where he conspired to have a foreign millionaire donate money illegally to his campaign. So obviously he's running for office again. And by the way, I should say for the record, he's a Democrat. So just a couple of weeks ago. He left his satchel with his wallet, ID, cash, and a Glock 43 handgun, which, according to a police report, was loaded with six nine millimeter rounds in the magazine and one round in the chamber. That's a direct quote from the police report. He left it at South Point Park, at the dog park at about 10:11 a.m.. On a Sunday morning, where it was found by a woman who immediately turned it in, fortunately to the police department and was luckily not found by, I don't know, a child in a dog park on a Sunday morning. And then Michael GRICO, who was famous when he was lying to the Miami Herald about those campaign finance crimes I told you about, he told Nicholas Niamas, the Herald, he swore to him.

He goes, look into my soul. That's what he said. That was the famous quote. That was the headline. And by the way, his soul was lying. I'll tell you right there. And so now he has told 23456 different versions about what happened. It was stolen. I was about to report it stolen. I was on my way to the police station when they called me and told me they found it. It was snatched from me. I left it there, but it was taken while my back was look into his soul. Roy he's got stories for days. Now he's got six different souls. By pure dumb luck, by the way. It was not found by a child, but as it turns out, a different Miami Beach candidate, a guy running for the city commission, david V. Suarez. This guy was forced by a judge to temporarily surrender at least a dozen guns and his concealed weapons permit to police in 2020 after photographs showed his young child, quote, in close proximity to a variety of different weapons while in the care of his father. End quote. This is all in the process of a divorce, but he had to turn over several handguns, five long guns, including an AR 15, along with his concealed weapons permit, ammunition and other firearm components.

Why do you need all those guns?

Well, to protect his child.

Oh, okay.

Who, apparently, according to this photograph, was in the presence of all of these guns. Now, what he claimed was that there were added locks and that this image, purporting to show his child in a bathroom with a gun on the floor was actually only one part of a gun on the floor of the bathroom. What any part of any gun was doing on the floor of a bathroom with a child in it is anyone's guess. But this man is running for Miami Beach Commission. And this is only the first Wheel of Despair topic.

Sure.

Should we spin the wheel again? Do we have time?

Billy is Miami infrastructure week.

Oh, no. Hit the deck, head for the hills. It's miami infrastructure week. Hey, fun fact. Roy oh, here we go. Not so much fun for the people who died. But did you know that three of the deadliest infrastructure failures, collapses in the United States in the last decade have all happened in one county? I will give you three guesses which county that is.

Monroe.

I will do my own big red X. Big Family Feud red x Duval.

Orange.

Okay.

It's Miami Dade.

Goddamn right, meatball.

Obviously, we know, too. We know surfside. We know the FIU Bridge. What was the third one?

Miami Dade College parking structure while it was under construction collapsed two, if not three, construction workers at the time. And so it turns out. Now, luckily, this has not turned tragic yet, but this is a pretty big deal because the entire economic driver of Miami Dade is tourism. And so the Miami International Airport is the heartbeat of this community. All the blood, all the arteries, they all stem out of this airport. And so it is some of the most important infrastructure we have. And Daniella Levine Kava, as County Mayor, has been derelict in her duty to maintain the airport in any competent or meaningful way. And guess what they discovered? The sky train has extensive structural cracking. It is now closed indefinitely with absolutely no there's no timetable, no estimate for when it may be reopened again. Here's the thing about this. I don't know if you remember back in the day, but probably about 2010, Roy, they redid the Miami airport where they took four separate concourses and they combined it into this big mega American Airlines Concourse D, right? This concourse is over 1 mile long, and this sky train connects most of that mile long 60 gates in this terminal building.

And it's just one long, endless terminal. It goes on forever and ever and ever. There's no moving walkways like they have in certain airports. There is just this guy train, which is now apparently, despite the fact that we spent $130,000,000 to build it back in 2010, and we spend $22 million a year to a private company to operate and maintain the train, it is now unsafe. And basically, they just have a handful of golf carts zipping back and forth for elderly and handicapped customers to have to traverse the mile long concourse. When I say Miamidade has Third World government and Fourth World infrastructure and people want to give me shit for it, like exhibit three oh five, exhibit seven eight six. Here we are.

Whatever the new area code is now.

Exhibit nine two nine. Is that what it is? What is the new I forget whatever.

The new one is. And this is why I fly out of Flo, by the way, out of Fort Lauderdale.

Exhibit nine five four.

Thank you.

For people who know that nine five four is the Broward area code, remember when all of this was 305 country? All of it.

Remember when we didn't have to use the area code?

Oh, seven digit dialing?

You mean yes.

No, I don't remember that. I'm too young, Roy, to remember that Chrysler so old when dinosaurs roam the earth. I got fuentes in my ear. Who is apparently still here. You know where he's going to be tomorrow?

Salsa dancing.

Cue the music. Cue the music. Do we have it? We don't have damn it. All right. But he is going to be shaking his hips in the dr. Pack me in your carry on luggage. Actually, better yet, in your check baggage, because I don't want you to have to schlep me around Miami International Airport for a mile.

No, the people on the runway just throw you into the doggone plane, man.

I guess it could be worse. The sky train situation, it could be brightline, so there could be just piles of dead people yeah.

Running into plane.

Wait a second. Are they a sponsor?

No.

Okay, good. All right, one more time. Shall we spin the wheel of despair? Whoa.

Backstage Taylor Swift sex scandal.

Oh, the this is my shocked face, Roy. That it landed on the clickbait headline.

This is my shocked face.

Roy. You are a living, breathing emoji. You really are.

Yes, I am.

This is a horrific story because it ends in a man's suicide. And what happened here is that this GOP insider best friend of Governor Ron DeSantis, very generous donor to Ron DeSantis and to the Jacksonville sheriff, where this guy had a key card with full access to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office since 2013. So this guy was under investigation by that office and the state attorney's office in Jacksonville for, I guess, kind of a sextortion scheme involving an underage girl who in what officials called a, quote, bizarre and fraudulent scheme to trick a young woman to expose herself using the promise of Taylor Swift tickets and backstage passes. So this BFF of Ron DeSantis of Jacksonville sheriff Mike Williams. Former Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry. He was appointed by Ron DeSantis on the Florida board of Governors. He was named the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office citizen of the Year in 2016. This guy was on the verge of being charged criminally when he committed suicide. This criminal and this coward, while my heart goes out to his family, my heart really goes out to this young woman and her family, who had to deal with this traumatic event, as she described it.

And she also said that despite this ordeal, mine my family's. Heartbreaks for the Sturman family. That was this guy's name. I should probably say it out loud. His name was Kent Sterman. This Florida Republican insider. And I'd like to add just a few details about what it is that he did here. He basically exploited his power to say, I know the people at this venue in Tampa where Taylor Swift is going to be playing. I can not only get you tickets, but I can get you backstage to meet her. You just need to give me something, and he lured her into his office and basically talked her into exposing herself to him and tried to talk her into sending compromising and inappropriate pictures. This underage woman, and she felt essentially kidnapped. She felt that she could not get out of that office unless she did this. He offered her $10,000 to give him a lap dance or $5,000 if she had, quote, FaceTime sex with him. The whole scene is extremely creepy. If you want to read about it. I would like to stop reading about it and stop reading it aloud. But needless to say, this man escaped justice perhaps the easy way by meeting his maker.

And now he is no longer a problem for Ron DeSantis and no longer a problem for the various Republican politicians that he was allied with, that he helped support financially and who also helped to scratch his back. That's the thing, too. If he wanted, he could have just ron DeSantis would have given him that massage, probably. You goddamn right.

Meatball daisy duck boots that he always wears.

I guess not Daisy Dukes, but those daisy duck boots. You know what? Let's end the segment on that image. There he is. There's Daisy DeSantis, live from Disney World. And Ron in his platform boots. I'm just going to breathe a sigh of relief and just say because Miami breaking news here in Desantistan roy, after two years of denying that detailed COVID data and vaccines even existed, they said it didn't exist. Now after I don't know how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation, governor Ron DeSantis and Florida is like, oh, no, it does exist, and we're going to release it, and now we're going to pay your attorneys fees, too, for screwing around for the last two years in this public records request. As a documentary filmmaker, this makes me so angry, because we rely on transparency and accountability to be able to get the information we need to process it, to do investigations, to make decisions about our lives and our families here in the state of Florida. And when they cover this shit up, these records don't belong to the governor. These records don't belong to the government.

These are our records. We pay to create them. We pay to keep them, and we pay to get them when we request them. And then they lie to us and they say, you know what? They don't even exist. And then they go, psych. I mean, it's crazy. Meanwhile, we have this absentee governor who is so busy fear and Florida men on the campaign trail.

I was right in the middle of a reptile zoo, and somebody was giving boost to these goddamn things.

This guy is so busy pretending to run for president that we can't get forget good government. We can't get any government here in the state of Florida. And now we have former state representative Carlos Guillermo Smith from central Florida, a friend. Of the program you've seen him on here before. He was actually the plaintiff in this public records case and led the fight along with his attorneys from the Florida center for Government Accountability, a nonprofit public records watchdog. Thank god for them. That's the thing, too, about public records, Carlos. They are bipartisan. This is not about being a democrat or republican. This is about giving Florida the information we need. So I want to start there. Public records, man. This is our information. And what happens when the government does not give us our information? What does it cost us to get our information? And how has the Florida legislature over the past several years made it harder for us to get that information?

Well, first of all, Billy, thank you for having me back on, because Miami look at the center of this fight, which is why I filed a lawsuit against the DeSantis administration, is freedom of information the public's right to know. It is a constitutional right to know. Florida has some of the strongest sunshine laws, also known as government in the sunshine in the country, because we know that open government is more accountable to the people it serves. It's more transparent when we have open government, which means that we would have a more effective government. And that is why it's so important to, first of all, not allow for the diminishment of our public records laws here in Florida, but also, it's important that when government violates our constitutional right to know that they are held accountable. And that's exactly what I did. I sued the DeSantis administration a couple of years ago to get critical public health data that the public needed to know. While the delta variant was surging in our state, it was making its way through Florida. The DeSantis administration unlawfully denied our request for public records, and we sued them. Of course, they dragged their feet in court.

They dragged this out for two years. They did everything they could to stall, stall, stall. They actually lied about the existence of these public health records in court, in front of a judge. And when they were finally caught red handed, the way they were caught lying about the existence of these public records, they agreed to settle on our terms. They agreed to not only give us all the records that we asked for that they claimed didn't exist, but they also are now required to disclose and be more transparent with the public health data that they have for the next three years, the next 36 months. And they had to pay 100% of my attorneys fees, which wasn't cheap. We accumulated just over $152,000 in legal fees because the DeSantis administration decided that they wanted to drag this out because they chose to deny our lawful request for public records. Yes, they dragged it out for two years, but we persisted, and ultimately, we held them accountable, and we won.

This seems like a gross dereliction of duty here. What are the repercussions for this? Could there be civil lawsuits from residents here in Florida?

We pay. That's what happens. We get victimized, and then we pay to defend the victimization, and then we pay the no, really, the only remedy is the taxpayers continue to pay. Isn't that right, Carlos?

Well, that's right. Well, this is what's happening. What's happening is the DeSantis administration is using millions of taxpayer dollars to defend the indefensible. They are defending their unlawful conduct as it relates to not complying with public records request. They are defending unconstitutional six week abortion bans in court. They are having to defend themselves from a series of lawsuits against unconstitutional laws, and they're doing it all with our taxpayer dollars. But then what they do is they have the nerve to then turn around when they lose because they broke the law, and they decided, for example, in this case, not to comply with our lawful records request. They turn around and they say, oh, well, it's the plaintiffs that squandered taxpayer money. No, it was the DeSantis administration's decision to not disclose public records as they are required to do under the law. It was their decision to drag this out for two years and even appeal, like, the most minor decisions that our judge was making just on administrative procedures to the first DCA. Court. And they squandered taxpayer money because they didn't want it to be exposed. That while the delta variant was ripping its way through Florida, which, by the way, was the deadliest period of the pandemic in our state, 23,000 floridians died during that time.

They limited access to public records and information about the virus to fit their political narrative and help Ron DeSantis run for president. So the delay of this information, of course, helped him politically and helped him continue to push that narrative that, oh, Florida's open for business and everything's okay and everything's fine, and I'm the champion of COVID No, it wasn't. So many people died that didn't have to because they decided that they were going to downplay the threat of this virus. They were going to withhold information, and they did so for political reasons.

And as I said before, of course, public records are bipartisan. And also, you didn't know what this data was going to show. You didn't know if it was going to prove some point you were trying to make. You just wanted the public records. You wanted the data to see whatever it would have shown. But it does strike me, as you just said, that there was an effort here. I mean, a pretty desperate and transparent cover up of this data, I would have to imagine, in an effort to support DeSantis's revisionist history on his pandemic record. In an effort, desperate effort to try to gain some traction for his failing presidential campaign. I mean, is that what's happening here? Does Florida continue to pay for this guy to run for president?

Oh, we're absolutely subsidizing his presidential campaign. Whether it is wasted taxpayer dollars to defend unconstitutional laws that have been passed by the state that he ran through the legislature just so that he could have a talking point on the Republican presidential stage, or whether it's us having to pay for his security and his travel around the country when he meets with millionaire and billionaire donors to his campaign that he's beholden to not only as governor, but as a potential President of the United States. But let's not kid ourselves. Ron DeSantis has a close to 0% chance at this point of becoming the Republican nominee, and he's tried to change the subject of his campaign message probably 100 times since he booted the campaign. He, of course, launched the campaign repeatedly, continuing his so called war on woke the culture wars. He went on Fox News the day that he announced his presidential campaign and was asked what would he do about the conflict in Ukraine. And he talked about how he would get rid of gender ideology in the US. Military, which of course, makes absolutely no sense. We don't have any troops in Ukraine.

How is gender ideology in the military? What does that have anything to do with the conflict in Ukraine? Of course it has nothing to do with it. I think people finally tired of the anti woke culture wars and the agenda because they realize they've been sold a bill of goods. So then he pivoted to COVID, and it's like, I was the champion of COVID and this is what we did in Florida. And of course, he relied on his revisionist historical record of what happened in the state of Florida during COVID Republican voters weren't interested in that either. So now he keeps pivoting from topic to topic to see what will stick. But at the end of the day, none of it's sticking because he's a sucky presidential candidate. He's all talk. He has no core values other than political ambition, and I think people see right through it. Oh, that's BS. No. Totally BS.

Carlos, in the last 60 seconds here, let's talk about what this is a distraction from, which are the real problems that Floridians are facing every minute of every single day while this guy's off pretending to run for president. Headline just this week, bad news for Florida homeowners high insurance premiums unlikely to drop anytime soon. And this is despite all of these efforts, supposedly, as we say in Miami, by the Florida legislature to stem the tide here. You'll pardon the climate change metaphor there, but 30 seconds. What is really affecting Floridians here, and what are the consequences of having an absentee governor?

Well, the consequences are our property insurance market is going to continue to collapse. We know that. We're going to continue to see a severe shortage of affordable housing while Florida is the number one inflation hotspot in the country. We have a massive public school teacher shortage that's been made worse by a legislature that has politicized our classrooms and turned them into political battlefields. Look, we have real problems that we need to solve. We need leadership in our state that is going to be ready to solve those problems with real solutions. But instead, we have a governor who, when the last property insurer left the state of Florida, Farmers Insurance, his response was to just call the insurer, woke on the way out the door and thought everything was going to be better. It's not. We need real leadership. That's one of the reasons I'm running for Florida Senate, but also so that I can continue to hold this administration accountable, especially when they violate our public's right to know.

You're goddamn right. Meatball got the plug in there at the end. Came in on time. Carlos Guillermo Smith, thanks so much for joining us again.

Thanks for having me. Because miami. Thank you.

And in lieu of a Miami moment today, we will end the show with a moment of silence for the people of Israel who are undergoing the worst attack on that country since the 1970s and the worst attack on Jews since the Second World War. And I hope for a speedy and just resolution and response to these terrorist attacks and for a hopefully meaningful and lasting peace.