James Fishback joins me to talk about his campaign for governor of Florida and why he thinks he might be a better choice than Ron DeSantis to carry on the legacy of his late father, former governor and current governor, Ron Deantis.
00:01:24.360It's very interesting because there has been an endorsement already of a candidate in the race by President Trump, which I think is a critical thing for us to look at.
00:01:34.940But ultimately, a lot of people are asking, is Byron Donald the person to carry on the legacy of Ron DeSantis?
00:01:42.120So I'm going to dive into that with you, why you think that perhaps you might be a better candidate for that legacy.
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00:03:42.340We're seeing Paul Renner, who's a former speaker in the Florida House, has thrown his hat in the ring.
00:03:48.220Though the fact that Governor DeSantis kind of said, I don't know what this guy's doing and I don't think he should have run, probably means that that campaign is over before it started.
00:03:56.980Other people are speculating that the lieutenant governor will also throw his hat in the ring.
00:04:01.000So I guess before we get into that, like, melee of all these different candidates and who's qualified and why, maybe you can just give people some background on yourself and why you thought you should jump into the race.
00:04:13.080Well, Oren, I thought I would jump into the race because I had a chance to actually meet all the candidates beforehand and understand their policy platforms.
00:04:22.900I've run an investment firm and been in other investment firms for the last 10 years.
00:04:27.180And so as a fourth generation Floridian, someone who grew up in South Florida, who now lives in the eastern panhandle,
00:04:32.080I obviously, like you, Oren, have a vested interest in seeing, one, that Governor DeSantis' legacy is preserved, and two, that there's a real affordability policy put in place that can lower property insurance costs, property tax, auto insurance, bring up wages, and tackle programs like H-1B at the state level so our college grads, recent grads, can get jobs again.
00:04:54.540So I entered this race, honestly, because I think I'm the only person who has a vision for the state that is America first, that is Florida first, and that will stand up to the biggest challenges that our state faces.
00:05:07.060And so for us, that is overdevelopment.
00:05:10.140That's the property developers running amok in the Florida House and the FWC, turning our state into the next Shanghai or New York, trying to pave over every little acre.
00:05:18.560That's not the kind of identity we want as a state.
00:05:21.240We are not, as Byron Donald says, we do not want to be the financial capital of the world.
00:05:26.340We want to be the citrus capital again, the ag capital, the cattle capital, the tourism capital.
00:06:03.380Like, what does one sacrifice ultimately for those decisions?
00:06:06.920I think a lot of people recognize, if you live in Florida, how ridiculous the prices are, how out of control housing and all of these other things are, especially, as you say, the insurance, multiple hurricanes blowing through, jacking up rates, car insurance.
00:06:20.700All these things go through the roof as the claims are made.
00:06:23.440And these are all hidden costs of living, things that don't necessarily show up in a simple chart.
00:06:28.620But when you stack them all together, really do make it very difficult for, I think, the young person in Florida to move forward.
00:06:35.380And that's something critical to me because, of course, while I know a large amount of the state is, I mean, even Governor DeSantis made this joke.
00:06:43.040Like, there's a lot of very old people in Florida.
00:06:46.280It's the classic, I'll move there as I get older because the climate's mild and all these things.
00:06:51.240But over time, you recognize that more and more of Florida's economy and the different aspects of its tax policies and other policies have ultimately driven it towards this servicing one particular age group.
00:07:03.940And, again, I have nothing against the older Floridians, but the fact that we have skewed so much of our economy and so much of our development and, you know, the elderly care is a high percentage of jobs in large months of Florida.
00:07:18.060And so it's just this very skewed scenario.
00:07:20.820However, at the same time, I think a lot of people look at the Republican Party and say, well, this has to be the party of free markets, right?
00:07:28.580It's, you know, we are about the trade.
00:07:36.220How do you balance that desire to constantly grow and produce and be, you know, in a competitive economy with also allowing for that affordability factor so that young families can get started in the state of Florida?
00:08:02.120They won it, beat the other bid by 500.
00:08:04.420Today, Oren, when you're buying a home in Florida, you're not just competing against other families.
00:08:09.340You're competing against hedge funds, private equity, Blackstone, companies that want to turn these single-family homes into Airbnbs or short-term rental properties.
00:08:16.580That is not what our founding fathers set out to do when they envisaged private property, the idea being that we compete with other Americans for our soil, not with foreign interests, not with foreign speculators, and certainly not with private equity firms backed by foreign dollars.
00:08:31.200I'm just going to come out and say it.
00:08:32.820I am a staunch conservative, but I think the free market is highly overrated.
00:08:36.500That's not to say that I believe in a Marxist socialist way of dividing up resources, not at all.
00:08:43.000I believe that the free market is a great means to an end, but it is not the end itself.
00:08:48.940And the way to test this, Oren, is that if the free market were the end itself, we would have never abolished the moral repugnancy that was slavery.
00:09:04.840But it was more morally repugnant, which is why it must have ended.
00:09:09.180And at the end of the day, if the free market were the actual end, then we would be in the system we are now, which is the misprioritization of different policies.
00:09:19.540I think the end for our society, for the American experiment, should be a free people, not a free market.
00:09:25.840So a free people is one in which you don't have to compete with Blackstone to buy your first home.
00:09:31.700Because we recognize in America that a delay to home ownership is a delay to starting a marriage, is a delay to starting a family.
00:09:40.540If you can't have a marriage, kids, then what is the point of all of this?
00:09:44.540It goes further to say that AI data centers would fall squarely into free markets.
00:09:49.160Well, why are we bothered if OpenAI or EX, AI, comes in and buys up 500 acres of land to build an AI data center?
00:09:57.780Well, in a free market, you might say, well, it's a market-clearing price.
00:10:01.080There was a buyer, a willing seller, and so on.
00:10:03.500That is very different than a free people.
00:10:07.060A free people would say, you know what?
00:10:08.440We don't want this massive thing that makes a Costco look like a 7-Eleven convenience store.
00:10:12.660We don't want an AI data center that threatens our natural landscape, even our water supply.
00:10:17.160And we certainly don't want them hogging up the electricity on the market.
00:10:20.280Because if the grid isn't welcoming new energy supply, by definition, a massive user of energy is going to drive up energy costs as a result.
00:10:31.000And so when I say free market, I view that as a means to an end, but the end being a free people.
00:10:36.520And that is a big rift in the GOP right now, the Republican Party, is do we want to continue down this path of line-go-up, GDP, stock market-obsessed Republicans?
00:10:45.880Or do we actually want to focus on the prosperity of Americans?
00:10:49.220For me, I'm an America-first conservative.
00:10:51.420And I define America-first not by the stock market going up, not by GDP going up, but how are average American citizens faring economically.
00:10:59.080I think the perfect way to measure this is what percentage of 30-year-old men are married and own their home.
00:11:07.280What percentage of 30-year-old men are both married and own their home?
00:11:10.820In 1960, when my dad was growing up in South Florida, half of 30-year-olds were married and owned their own home.
00:11:19.320And so if I'm elected as Florida governor, my north star is how can we create both a political, economic, but also social policy set that creates the conditions for that 15% to go up, that allows more men and, by extension, women to get married, more men and, by extension, women to own their home and have a family, and all of the great things that come with that.
00:11:43.300So that's great to hear, especially from somebody who has a background in finance and these kind of things.
00:11:51.560But I'd have to ask, does this mean that you would support a ban on the ownership of residential real estate by private equity or foreign investors?
00:12:02.680And if so, do you think a ban like that could hold up in court ultimately?
00:12:14.280And the reason why is there's a compelling state interest in preserving homeownership for Americans.
00:12:21.260I would also go as far as to say that, you know, right now, Oren, if we flew to Canada and wanted to buy a single-family home in Montreal, as American citizens, we would be banned from doing so.
00:12:30.140Because two years ago, Canada banned all foreign nationals from buying up land.
00:12:35.260I think we need to do the same thing in Florida.
00:12:36.780I don't think it's right for a family of four that wants to move into a bigger house to become a family of six, seven, or just start a new, or whatever the case is.
00:12:46.860They shouldn't be impeded from doing that because a foreign national was able to outbid them by $500 or $1,000.
00:12:53.040And so this has actually happened in other countries.
00:12:55.980I think it lines up squarely with a compelling state interest.
00:12:58.820But lastly, there are things that we can do if a full ban were not upheld.
00:13:02.460We have to have plan A, plan B, plan C.
00:13:05.080The additional plans are how can we effectively fine with the purposes of deterring private equity ownership of our homes, which deprives Floridians the ability to buy that home.
00:13:16.300And then secondarily, how can we create a tax system that further disincentivizes that?
00:13:21.020Right now, the old Econ 101 aphorism, right, which is show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.
00:13:28.440Right now, there is every incentive for private equity to outbid a family of four, to deprive them of the promise of homeownership, even though they've saved up and done everything right.
00:13:39.180I would say show me the disincentive and I'll show you the outcome.
00:13:41.860To show you the disincentive is to say, how can we actively disincentivize private equity from buying up homes, buying up entire neighborhoods, turning them into rental communities?
00:13:50.920And how can we incentivize homeownership?
00:13:53.000I say this because a home isn't just a cool thing to have.
00:13:55.980It is in many respects an existential precondition to you getting married, starting a family, retiring, passing on multigenerational wealth.
00:14:20.600If there is liberty for everyone, Oren, there is liberty in turn for no one.
00:14:25.040I believe the North Star of the America First conservative movement should be to deliver liberty, but exclusively and solely for American citizens, lest that liberty be diluted by an obsession with handing it over to private equity foreign nationals, which would strip Americans of their God-given liberty.
00:14:41.820Now, going along with the actual purchase price of the home, as you pointed out, homeowners insurance, car insurance, flood insurance, which I pay on top of all of these things, very expensive, really putting what might have been a home that was in reach out of reach because of that additional cost on top of that.
00:15:01.700The problem is that at one point we are required, the banks require you to carry all of these different insurances in order to own the home, but there's really no way you can find a healthy competition for these, especially with Florida being a state that is frequently visited by natural disasters like hurricanes.
00:15:20.240So the question is, are these fair market prices coming in from these different insurers, are they just insurers doing business and responding to the fact that Florida just exists as a swamp in the middle of a place that gets hit by hurricanes, or is there price gouging involved?
00:15:36.940Is there a way to work with these companies?
00:15:42.340Or is the situation simply not able to be handled because it is just a response of the market to the conditions in Florida?
00:15:48.340Well, it is not a response to the market of the conditions in Florida.
00:15:53.300And the best way to know that is we just had the first hurricane season in a very long time that did not constitute a major hurricane making landfall in Florida.
00:16:00.280In a free market, Oren, you would have had your flood insurance and your property insurance and mine as well cut you a check and say, you know what?
00:16:08.160We overestimated the premium you had to pay because we in turn overestimated the risk of hurricane landfall and the subsequent damage in coverage that we would have had to pay out.
00:16:15.980And so a free market is clearly not what is happening.
00:16:18.920I think anytime you have a system where prices are too high, you have to look at the natural culprit, which is there a lack of competition?
00:16:25.120Absolutely, there's a lack of competition in this market.
00:16:27.480But I also think we need to really be honest about these insurance companies and the games that they're playing.
00:16:31.580Part of it is to do with litigation tort reform that sort of stops the type of fraud that takes place far too often after a hurricane.
00:16:40.560I mean, I saw this growing up as a kid.
00:16:42.120You know, everybody would be throwing stuff in the living room, not me, obviously, but, you know, neighbors and trying to drive up the ability to have a larger claim payout.
00:16:50.040We have to crack down on fraud because when there's fraud in the system, what ends up happening is we end up paying for it.
00:16:57.340Oh, well, the insurance company got defrauded by $50,000, $100,000.
00:17:01.060And they might, the person who defrauded them might say, well, it's, I'm not taking from the people.
00:17:05.220I'm just taking from a billion dollar insurance company.
00:17:07.500No, those, those losses are going to get socialized amongst the rest of the pool.
00:17:12.320So that's the first thing is to crack down on fraud and that will allow and work with insurance companies to tell them, look, here's our plan to crack down on both civil and criminal fraud, fraudulent complaints, et cetera.
00:17:23.680But secondarily, how do we create a system that actually incentivizes insurance companies, as was the case this season?
00:17:32.200Folks are not expecting a full refund of their premiums of the insurance industry would never be financially viable.
00:17:37.960But we are, we are demanding a system that says, you know what, when you don't have a major hurricane at all in the entire state, when there's nothing to pay out, there should be a refund.
00:17:47.280And that's what I would work with the legislature to do is when there are times when we don't actually have the conditions that are creating storms and creating the conditions for claims that there should be a refund system back to Floridians.
00:17:59.440So obviously you're stepping into the ring against what I would say would be a rather well-established candidate at this point, somebody who has served for a while in Byron Donalds.
00:18:12.760You may have other viable contenders soon, but we're not sure.
00:18:16.280So we're just going to work with that as the kind of a lead candidate.
00:18:19.720Now, on top of having a record inside of the Florida legislature and being a congressman, Donalds also has the endorsement of President Trump.
00:18:29.380I imagine that many of the voters that you are trying to appeal to would value Trump's endorsement.
00:18:36.380They would see that as something that speaks to Donaldson being able to carry on that DeSantis legacy.
00:18:42.760What would you say in response to someone who says, look, Donaldson, he's got an established record, seems like a nice guy, has Trump's endorsement.
00:18:51.320I'm just going to go with a safe bet here.
00:18:52.960Why would someone choose you over someone who has President Trump's endorsement?
00:18:57.780Well, he is certainly a safe bet if you want more AI data centers.
00:19:01.000He's certainly a safe bet if you want your college grads to be replaced and not hired by foreign national H-1Bs.
00:19:06.980He's certainly a safe bet if you want the property developers to continue to run amok, to pave over the Everglades, to start drilling off the shores of Florida.
00:19:18.000We don't have time for safetyism, complacency, or conceitedness.
00:19:21.860We need a bold leader, just as Governor DeSantis has been for the last eight years, to step up, to preserve those wins, and to advance an agenda that actually puts Florida first.
00:19:30.360I think the biggest distinguishing factor between me and Congressman Donalds is the fact that he supports the H-1B program and the alphabet letter soup that is the immigration system.
00:19:39.860So this time last year, Oren, he said, quote, we want anyone from anywhere to come to America if they can contribute.
00:19:50.680But when you are in America and you are a foreigner, even if you're given a legal work visa, if you are here, you have a job.
00:19:58.800That is a job that could have gone to a Floridian, somebody from Pahokee or Pensacola, Mariana, or Miami.
00:20:04.300That is a job that could have gone to someone here, someone who now does not have an income and therefore is falling for the vices that are sadly everywhere in our culture.
00:20:14.020Someone that doesn't have an income, which means they can't obtain equity and buy a home.
00:20:17.940Someone who doesn't have a home, can't get married, can't get married, can't have kids, etc.
00:20:21.740There are massive downstream consequences for not putting our workers first.
00:20:25.960That's why I'm the only candidate in this race who, one, has vowed to end the H-1B scam, unlike Byron Donalds, who wants to continue it.
00:20:33.440But number two, actually has a plan to address this at the state level.
00:20:37.980Now, federal preemption is a very important topic these days.
00:20:41.180As you know, Oren, the H-1B program is a creation of the U.S. Congress in 1990.
00:20:47.200But I'm not going to sit here and throw up my hands and say we can't do anything because the federal government is trying to screw up our workers.
00:20:55.640I believe that what is not given to the federal government explicitly in our Constitution is reserved for the states and her people.
00:21:03.160That's me, you, and all of your listeners who may be struggling to get a job themselves, may want a better-paying job, or their kids or grandkids may be in college or in technical school now at the threat of having more and more foreign workers come into our state to take up those opportunities.
00:21:18.600I'm going to use the power of state contracts at the state level here in Florida to tell companies whether they're Deloitte or Microsoft, Accenture or KPMG, doesn't matter how large or small you are, that now, as President Reagan said, now is a time for choosing.
00:21:33.280Do you want your 50 H-1Bs or do you want your $50 million a year state contract?
00:21:38.900Because it would be a shame if something happened to that contract if you decided to screw over Florida workers and keep putting foreigners first.
00:21:45.080And so my plan is to look at the incredible purchasing power that we as a state have, the leverage that we have to drive a very hard bargain for these companies and say, look, you're going to lose out on your state contracts unless you rehire great qualified Floridians for these roles.
00:22:01.980And they're going to do the rational thing.
00:22:03.480They're going to rehire Florida workers.
00:22:05.580And additionally, they're going to be able to create an economic system that actually prioritizes Americans.
00:22:11.260This goes back to this idea of a free market.
00:22:13.880Is it a free market for cheap foreign labor from India, China to come here and take our jobs?
00:22:18.680If it's a free market for them, it by definition cannot be a free market for us.
00:22:24.180And so when I say liberty, I say give me liberty or give me death, but give me the liberty for our people, not for them.
00:22:31.640If I say liberty, I say give us liberty for our natural environment and our Everglades and not for property developers and AI data centers.
00:22:39.320And so I'm in this race because one, I voted for President Trump and Governor DeSantis, but I'm also in this race because our vision, my campaign's vision for the state actually respects the dignity of our workers and will always stand up for them.
00:22:51.940If Congressman Donald's actually had a plan to save the H-1B program, I probably wouldn't be in this race.
00:22:59.360But it's precisely because him and no one else really has an opportunity to really step up and say, how are we going to protect Florida workers from the great replacement?
00:23:08.360At Capital One, we're more than just a credit card company.
00:23:12.720We're people just like you who believe in the power of yes.
00:24:05.900But there is something I am concerned about.
00:24:08.620I don't know if you're familiar, but over, I think it was last Christmas, so it's been about a year, we had the great H-1B Christmas debate.
00:24:17.900We had Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk kind of stepping on every rake they could discussing the H-1B program.
00:24:25.940And I'm sure, you know, at some level, Elon Musk really sees this as just like the key to unlocking critical parts of things you think will be good for the United States.
00:24:33.760I don't want to throw a bunch of, you know, disparaging remarks on the motivations of these men.
00:24:38.940But I think ultimately that just their thinking on the issue has been wrong and they have put toward a forward a vision of even legal immigration that most of the GOP base disagrees with.
00:24:49.660Now, I do really appreciate your point about how to use the Florida budget and its contracts to ultimately leverage these companies into utilizing Floridian labor and not foreign labor.
00:25:01.900However, I was sent a text that had a screenshot of you kind of complimenting Vivek Ramaswamy after his post on this issue about American culture and we don't work hard enough and we watch too much say by the bell.
00:25:14.380I want to give you a chance to kind of contextualize that and answer any concerns that people might have, because if you look just at that snapshot, I'll be honest, it understandably has people scratching their head saying, oh, man, is this guy just kind of saying this now because it sounds good?
00:25:30.240Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.
00:25:31.460So it actually, I wasn't replying to Vivek's tweet.
00:25:33.820I was replying to a guy by the name of Joe Weisenthal who works for Bloomberg and he snipped part of Vivek's tweet, which called out cultural degeneracy.
00:25:41.680I think Vivek is right on that particular point that there is cultural degeneracy in our environment.
00:25:46.560I visit high schools all across the state for my nonprofit debate, League Incubate Debate, and I see kids who've got vape pens.
00:25:52.000They got an AirPod in the air walking into class.
00:25:54.200They got their jeans sagging below the waist.
00:25:56.520The cultural degeneracy that puts Cardi B on a pedestal and tells students that Thomas Jefferson is a racist, of course that's degenerate.
00:26:04.340But that is not an excuse to import the third world and allow us to become the third world.
00:26:09.400And furthermore, Vivek's criticism of Saved by the Bell, his criticism of the jocks, as opposed to the exemplification of academic scholars, that's wrong.
00:26:19.060It's not the America I knew and I grew up in.
00:26:21.320And so I think his comments are abhorrent.
00:26:23.100I think that my record on the H-1B is I have never supported the H-1B program.
00:26:27.600In fact, my investment firm had to take a massive L because we publicly listed an ETF called the Azoria Meritocracy ETF that we launched at almost $40 million of assets in it.
00:26:39.100And then we committed the capital crime of going to our board and saying, you know, we want to be able to further enhance meritocracy by excluding companies that abuse the H-1B program.
00:26:48.600And then nine days later, they voted to delist our fund because apparently that's xenophobic.
00:26:54.080It's xenophobic to stand up for American workers.
00:26:56.680And so our firm personally took, the firm that I started and I'm the CEO of, personally took a $40 million hit defending American workers against the H-1B scam.
00:27:06.280That comment about Vivek's tweet that was actually not in direct response of Vivek's tweet, but it was in response to the cultural criticism of cultural degeneracy.
00:27:15.760I think that if you look at the way that there is a certain level of fatigue now when we go out in public, that there is a frustration that far too many Americans are wearing pajamas on the airplane or showing up to take the SAT in street wear, that is ultimate abhorrent cultural degeneracy.
00:27:31.860And we should absolutely call that out.
00:27:44.180Because a lot of people are, I think, rightfully worried about kind of opportunists in the Republican Party in this moment.
00:27:51.360We're currently seeing a wider struggle between kind of the attempts of the old Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, kind of neoconservatism, trying to kind of fight its way back into and gain control over parts of the Republican Party that have become more MAGA and populist oriented.
00:28:08.780So everyone's kind of keeping their eye out for extra fakery and that kind of thing.
00:28:13.000And so I think it's reasonable for people to be concerned about that, keep an eye out.
00:28:17.800But it's good to know that there's good context for that comment.
00:28:22.120Now, you said many times AI data centers.
00:28:25.860And I don't think most people are – this is not on their radar yet.
00:28:29.760Funny enough, I just ran into some guy in a restaurant yesterday who is a Chicago executive who is planning to do all these AI data centers throughout Florida.
00:28:41.020He was very surprised to know that I knew anything about it.
00:28:43.420He thought just another guy, he's not going to know what I'm talking about.
00:28:47.280But, you know, there is a plan to just secure large tracts of property to, as you say, a lot of pollution, drawing a lot of energy, all these kind of things.
00:28:56.760Can you talk a little bit about AI data centers, why they're becoming so plentiful, what kind of deleterious effect they might have?
00:29:06.000So an AI data center is a giant building full of servers, computers, cooling fans that is designed to do two things, train new AI models like ChatGPT 6 and infer, which is to say to keep up the existing models so when you or I go on to Grok or ChatGPT now that our existing request gets fulfilled rather quickly.
00:29:40.020We're seeing it right now in Georgia, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania that when they build an AI data center, your electric bill in the subsequent months goes up 30%, 40%, 50%.
00:29:49.300That in Tennessee, in particular, outside of Memphis, that the water has literally become undrinkable because of the AI data center being constructed and the deleterious environmental effects it's having.
00:30:00.040I think the great thing about Republicans in our state or in Florida is that we are actually conservationists.
00:30:06.040We don't fall for the climate change hoax.
00:30:08.600We don't fall for the green news scam.
00:30:10.720But we do believe in preserving our environment.
00:30:12.840That's why any Republican in our state should stand up and say, you know what?
00:30:15.920We're not going to allow drilling in the Everglades.
00:30:18.060We're not going to allow offshore drilling in the Gulf of America or in the Atlantic.
00:30:22.520And we're certainly not going to allow you to spring up these AI data centers in Lakeland or in Loxahatchee and then drive up electric bills as a result.
00:30:32.000I am pro the technological revolution, absolutely.
00:30:34.520But that cannot come at the cost of one, our environment, and two, our monthly electric bills.
00:30:41.280And so it's important that I'm in this race because I think one of the reasons why I'm in this race is because of the threat that AI data centers have on our environment.
00:30:51.080And I think the AI data center, to tell you the truth, is also a timely analogy for the perils of overdevelopment, right?
00:30:58.840The AI data center is the new self-storage unit, is the new self-service car wash, is the new endless gas station liquor store weed dispensary.
00:31:07.880The question we have to ask ourselves is what kind of state do we want?
00:31:10.940If you want a concrete jungle, you got New York, you got Chicago, you got LA.
00:32:07.160You have a right to exist in this country, but you don't have a right to come down here and price out families and push us out.
00:32:13.120And we've been here for a very long time.
00:32:14.660Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to push your luck by asking you what we're going to do about the New Yorker problem, like whether we're going to erect border control at the Florida Georgia line.
00:32:41.760But I think we can make clear that the benefits of Florida should largely accrue to Floridians,
00:32:45.240which is why my property tax abolishment proposal only, only goes to Florida residents and their primary homesteaded residents, nothing else.
00:32:54.820So if you're a snowbird from New York and you want to come down and spend five, six months out of the year in Palm Beach or in Polk County, be our guest.
00:33:01.860But you're not going to get the incentive, the incentive of homeownership here.
00:33:07.660And we have to be honest about, again, who are we serving, right?
00:33:12.260Well, if you're serving everyone, Oren, you are by definition serving no one.
00:33:17.720If everyone has a million dollars, functionally, no one has a million dollars.
00:33:21.920And so my job as Florida governor, if given this responsibility by the voters, is to put Florida first, to put Floridians first, to prioritize our workers.
00:33:30.160I'll give you just one other example of this.
00:33:31.560A couple weeks ago, President Trump had an interview with Laura Ingram in which he doubled down on this proposal to bring in 600,000 Chinese students.
00:33:38.600Now, Chinese students would come to our universities, be given the F-1 visa, which allows them to study in the U.S. at an accredited university.
00:33:46.300Now, I, as Florida governor, could not revoke an F-1 visa.
00:33:49.900But here's what I could very clearly do, and I would pledge to do on my first day as governor, which is I would direct the board of governors that oversees our state universities, like UF, FSU, UCF, FGCU, not too far from where you are in Southwest Florida.
00:34:04.000I would direct them to raise tuition on all foreign students to $1 million a year, and it has to be paid up front.
00:34:14.340There's no financing and there's no negotiating.
00:34:16.620And so when all of these foreign students can't pay, guess what?
00:34:20.040That frees up admission spots, opportunities in our colleges for Florida students who want to come, who have gotten great grades, great test scores, but want to be at our university because they are from here.
00:34:31.660And when they graduate, more importantly, they will stay here and contribute and build businesses and hire Florida workers.
00:34:39.800If the Florida taxpayers like you and me are going to fund public universities here in Florida, then those admission spots, those seats in our classrooms and our lecture halls should go to Florida residents.
00:34:50.880And as Florida governor, I'm going to use the full power of my executive to direct state universities to raise the price.
00:34:58.120Again, show me the incentive, show me the outcome, raise the price, price out the foreigners, welcome back thousands of Florida students who have great test scores and grades so they can contribute to our universities.
00:35:09.540So I want to go back and discuss something that you mentioned there at the beginning of that answer that I think is really important.
00:35:15.460Obviously, there's a lot of discussion about abolishing property tax in Florida.
00:35:19.760Now, I made a comment that was not particularly popular, but I also don't care.
00:35:26.160So I pointed out that while I would love to never pay property tax again, I think it's pernicious that ultimately we have to constantly pay for our own property back to the government.
00:35:37.260At the same time, Florida does not have an income tax, which, again, I'm very happy for.
00:35:42.160But that means that the types of revenue that our municipalities, our counties, and ultimately our state can accrue to itself is limited.
00:35:52.020And so my concern is that if we eliminate the property tax, we'll be unduly shifting the tax burden onto younger people and families because the people who pay property tax in Florida,
00:36:03.740the people who own property, and most of the people who own property in Florida are old.
00:37:02.220What I think each county is going to end up doing is going to need to be a custom-tailored solution just because property tax is a wealth tax, right?
00:37:10.040If you or I buy $10,000 of Apple stock and it doubles next month and we don't sell it, we don't owe them a tax bill.
00:37:17.340But if you buy your home and it doubles, you now owe the government the increase in a yearly property tax bill.
00:37:24.800So it is fundamentally a wealth tax, which strikes at the heart of the Constitution.
00:37:31.460So again, I think two things can be true.
00:37:33.460One, property taxes are morally repugnant, unconstitutional, constitute wealth taxes and need to go.
00:37:39.680And then number two, solving for that revenue is not going to be easy, but we should still welcome the challenge because, you know, again, getting rid of slavery was not particularly popular in the South.
00:37:50.580It was also a massive negative economic shock to the Southern economy, but it still made sense, obviously, to do it.
00:38:40.260They're coming to Disney because there's truly no place on earth like our beaches, like our theme parks, like our rivers, springs, and our Everglades.
00:38:48.220And so I would welcome a shifting of the tax burden away from property owners and toward people who visit our state, toward tourists.
00:38:56.020The second thing I'll say is it's not just raising new revenue.
00:39:01.320So I have said that one of the first things that I would do is direct our schools to do a full audit to ensure that every single student is, in fact, a citizen or legal resident of the United States.
00:39:12.540In 1982, the Supreme Court had a disastrous decision called Plyler v. Doe, which found that children who are illegal immigrants still have a constitutional right to attend our public schools.
00:39:24.640That was a horribly decided decision, much like Roe v. Wade.
00:39:27.820And much like Roe v. Wade, when Mississippi stepped up and challenged the legality of that law in 2022, we as Florida and me as governor would stand up and challenge the legality of Plyler v. Doe.
00:39:38.740Now, what is the downstream consequence of this?
00:39:40.580We will be able to block illegal immigrant children from coming to our schools.
00:39:44.760In some school districts, that could be anywhere from 10% to 18% of the student population are children who have no legal right to be in our country.
00:39:53.740Now, what we do by kicking them out is, one, we reduce the cost at the county level, which is, again, curing the property tax burden.
00:40:00.940Because, again, if 15% to 20% of a school is full of illegal immigrants, you could presume that getting rid of them would cut school funding against all else equal, would cut school funding by 15% to 20%, saving money for the taxpayer.
00:40:11.980Secondarily, a lot of these kids don't speak English.
00:40:14.200So when they're sitting in class dwindling their thumbs, they're also detracting from the actual productive classroom environment and hurting other kids in the process.
00:40:21.060And third, to go to the immigration thing, if you take away the free childcare that so many illegals use, which is our public schools, you now give them an active disincentive to leave.
00:40:30.440To leave, to leave, to leave, to leave.
00:40:33.140And so this is really a multifaceted plan that's going to, I think, deliver for Floridians.
00:40:39.960And at the end of the day, I'm not – Oren, you know, of course, what's happening with the Florida legislature.
00:40:46.560There are a bunch of Democrats who identify as Republicans.
00:40:49.380Every single one of the plans that I think I've articulated in our conversation today and that I'll continue to share on the campaign trail,
00:40:55.580every single one of them does not rely on the Florida legislature playing ball.
00:41:01.620Every single thing I've talked about is really about using the power of the executive, using the power of the governor's office,
00:41:08.120whether it's state contracts, whether it's education and kicking out the illegals, whatever it may be.
00:41:13.320I have to be real that I am an anti-establishment candidate and the Florida legislature and largely the entirety of Tallahassee is the establishment.
00:41:44.300You'll know that Justice Brandeis in the 30s coined this idea that each state is its own laboratory to perform experiments of its own.
00:41:51.040And then the national government and other state governments can take cues from that.
00:41:55.300And that's the kind of governor I'd love to be for the state that my family has known now for over 100 years.
00:41:59.380Yeah, just in case people are skeptical at all, let me assure them that having just had the minor amount of experience I had working in Republican politics in Florida,
00:42:09.780I have literally seen Democratic union bosses take the Republican baptism and run Republican the next round and win just because they have an R next to their name.
00:42:19.680And that's how Florida works so that there's a very real instance of the Florida legislature being mostly Democrat while wearing an R on their uniform.
00:42:29.140But I wanted to touch on schools there for a second and immigration because that's a cross section of things that I care quite a bit about.
00:42:34.980I spent a long time as a public school teacher in Florida.
00:42:38.000Florida, you go down to my local Walmart and there's not a single person speaking English, not the customers, not the employees.
00:42:46.200They've got like one manager who's like, you know, break in case of emergency in case an actual American wanders in and wants to know where the avocados are.
00:42:53.920But in general, you just can't have a conversation in the language of the United States here.
00:42:59.920Obviously, immigration is primarily a federal issue.
00:43:02.780But I wanted to ask you, you know, is there anything you can do to encourage employers to be held accountable?
00:43:10.080Because there's just no way Walmart doesn't know that a good percentage of their employees are illegal immigrants in that Walmart.
00:43:18.860And yet there's nothing is going to happen to them.
00:43:21.080They're very confident about their ability to maintain that workforce.
00:43:24.480So actually, I guess I'll ask you in two parts.
00:43:27.360Is there anything you can do on the on the state level side to go after employees who employers who continue to employ illegal immigrants, even though it's very obvious that those people should not be there?
00:43:40.120And so part of it is we actually have the laws in the books or and we just have to better enforce those laws that are already on the books.
00:43:47.500Right. Murder is legal in Chicago as it is in Miami.
00:43:51.020But there's a reason why no one gets killed in Miami on a weekend.
00:43:53.980But so many people will get killed in Chicago because we enforce our laws here and they don't in Illinois.
00:44:00.340And so my job as governor is to take the existing laws before drafting a new law, take the existing laws on the books and increase enforcement.
00:44:10.020Walmart has state contracts with the state government.
00:44:13.260And so yet another lever to pull is to say, Walmart, your employees need to, one, be authorized to work in the United States, two, you cannot be taking away responsibilities from Floridians, and three, if your employees are not speaking English, then you are going to lose out on your state contract.
00:44:33.620This goes back to this frustration that you feel, that I have felt, it doesn't matter where really you go in the state, a Walmart is full of, whether it's the shoppers or more often the employees who just don't speak our language, that we need to have a real standard for what it means to be an American.
00:44:50.520It's really hard for Americans to be Americans in their own country anymore.
00:44:58.800There's this rampant, ubiquitous cultural degeneracy.
00:45:02.440And what I want to do is I have, I think, a vision that a lot of Americans embrace for what being an American is.
00:45:08.500But secondarily, I have an actual plan to execute on that, to actually go to Walmart's head of Florida and say, look at what's happening in Fort Myers.
00:45:17.400Look at what's happening in Sarasota, Miami, Hialeah, it doesn't matter where it is.
00:45:22.860We need to fix it, or our future relationship, the one between Walmart and the state government of Florida, is going to really have some issues.
00:45:32.260So my last question for you before we wrap this up, and again, guys, sorry, we won't be able to do questions today because this is prerecorded.
00:45:39.660However, you already addressed part of this with immigration and the schools, but as a public school teacher, I was working in a majority-minority school.
00:45:49.340Most of the school was either Hispanic immigrants from Venezuela or Mexico or immigrants from Haiti speaking Creole.
00:46:23.840So therefore, you either bump the grade up or we fire you for not complying with all of these English as a second language requirements, which no one does.
00:46:32.700So it's basically like we know you're not going to be able to comply with this, so we'll just use it as like this threat.
00:46:38.640You know, okay, no one's going to comply.
00:46:47.540Similar thing with teachers and grading in schools.
00:46:50.160Now, this has led to a far more concerning trend where when I was teaching during COVID, we changed to a system where basically all students could turn in all work at any time for no penalty.
00:47:02.520And they called this grading with grace.
00:47:05.460And after a while, it became really you could turn in as long as you tried to turn in an assignment, even if you did horribly, you couldn't receive less than I think a 50 or 60 percent on the assignment, which means a student could literally just turn in a piece of paper with their name scrawled on it.
00:47:19.280And they get most of the way to a passing grade just by by doing this.
00:47:24.600That system has stayed in place in the schools.
00:47:28.220This is still, even after COVID, the way that now all students, not just immigrant students, not just during COVID, this is now how all Florida students are graded.
00:47:36.360I know for a fact that we have at least one generation of Florida students who will have had their entire grades completely padded just because it looks better on the numbers.
00:47:46.160Yes. Okay. We passed more minority students.
00:47:49.320So therefore, we're not getting a lecture from the liberal paper.
00:47:54.380Did the children actually gain anything?
00:47:56.560I think the answer increasingly is Florida is no.
00:47:58.840There's no simple answer to this question.
00:48:01.280But I wonder if you thought about this, you know, the desire to create this great inflation, to pump up these numbers, to bolster the idea that we're properly educating minority students and others.
00:48:10.120But ultimately, we're not producing the quality of education that will allow Floridians to compete in the marketplace in the first place.
00:48:18.880And it's one that you know firsthand that a lot of people just will never truly be able to grasp.
00:48:25.100They'll look at test scores and they'll look at rankings.
00:48:27.880But what belies all of that is the hard truth that you're talking about in the classroom.
00:48:33.260So I think a couple things need to be done.
00:48:35.200There needs to be a zero-tolerance policy first on classroom misbehaving.
00:48:40.560And what that means is I would support a three-strikes policy that if a student is given three referrals in any part of middle school or any part of the full duration of high school, that they're immediately expelled and sent to an alternative school.
00:48:52.480I think you may have seen this in the particular school that you were working in.
00:48:54.900But one or two bad apples in the class can make it really frustrating and stressful for the teacher, but also can distract other students.
00:49:01.720And so you've got 18 kids that show up to class, history, math, English, that are eager and ready to learn.
00:49:06.720But one or two class clowns who are beefing or making noise ends up ruining it for the rest of us.
00:49:14.160The second thing, and I think this is solved with the Plyler v. Doe challenge, is by blocking illegal immigrant students from coming to our schools, we also remove that detractor.
00:49:24.320We remove that incentive that says, you know what, Oren, you have to give them a C or higher.
00:49:28.640Well, look, they don't deserve anything above a zero because they don't speak English.
00:49:34.160I was in Hendry County at a high school, and I walked in, there was 27 kids in the room, and seven of them didn't even speak English.
00:49:41.380Some were from Venezuela, some from Mexico, some from Cuba.
00:49:44.760And just our public school had become a modern-day daycare.
00:49:47.660That is not what our schools are there for.
00:49:49.600They're there for Florida kids to be educated, challenged, to work with their teachers, to get career-ready, college-ready, whatever the case may be.
00:49:58.320And so this is all part of a multifaceted plan to, I think, decrease the student population by getting rid of the illegals.
00:50:04.880And two, once that is done, actually have a zero-tolerance policy for misbehaving in the class.
00:50:11.560I'd also support mandatory drug tests if any student's suspected to be using narcotics or even things like marijuana.
00:50:18.280Be very honest about continuing the doubling down of phone banning because, again, it's a distraction for the student using it, the student seeing the other student use it, and, of course, the teacher.
00:50:29.140You know, it used to be my grandmother was a teacher in the 80s.
00:50:31.540She taught for 25 years at Plantation High School English in Broward County.
00:50:35.480And, you know, her frustration with students was they didn't bring a pencil or they got a bad grade.
00:50:40.180Now it's the kid smells like weed, the kid's smoking a vape, the kid has an AirPod in it, the kid has a phone, the kid is Snapchatting, the kid is acting up, the kid doesn't speak English, and so on.
00:50:48.700And so that makes it really, really hard for our teachers who want to do right to actually teach their students well.
00:50:55.160And so part of that is really a comprehensive solution to actually tackle education.
00:51:00.420So our students aren't just graduating career-ready, but there's actually, furthermore, a labor market that will welcome career-ready high school grads to become fully gainfully employed.
00:51:10.880Well, James, it's been fantastic speaking with you.
00:51:13.060I'm glad that we were able to go over so many different aspects of the issues facing Florida.
00:51:17.860If people are interested in your campaign or perhaps supporting what you're doing, how can they check you out?
00:51:25.300I'll tell you that in this economy, I'm not asking anyone to donate.
00:51:28.120It's really, really tough out there with affordability.
00:51:30.080But what I will say is if you've got a couple hours a week or a month and you want to volunteer for our campaign, whether that's door knocking, text messaging, social media, Fishback2026.com is a place to volunteer.
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