Trump's Florida Nightmare Just Got Worse...

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0:30Ben Meiselas:This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Your job, your kids, where it's going. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at Claude.ai slash Spotify and keep thinking. That's Claude.ai slash Spotify. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile with your summer price forecast. Now, unfortunately, we're seeing rising costs across the country with possibility that big wireless hates you 100%. Now, over here at Mint Mobile, we're seeing sunny skies and dropping prices.

1:16Ben Meiselas:Every plan to just$15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. Donald Trump's nightmare in Florida is getting even worse. Take a look at the latest YouGov economist polling. Donald Trump is net negative 17, but zoom in on Hispanic voters right now, where Donald Trump's approval is only 8 % on the issue of cost of living. Let me repeat that.

1:50Ben Meiselas:Trump's overall approval among Hispanic voters, a group he relied heavily on in 2024 on the issue of cost of living is 8%. And this is significantly impacting Donald Trump's catastrophic prospects and the MAGA Republicans' catastrophic prospects in the midterms. Because you take a look right here at Florida, the massive shift of Hispanic voters who were Republican voters in Florida, also particularly South Florida, who now consider themselves Democrats or who will be voting Democrats. We're talking about shifts of 25 points, 21 points, 13, 11, 25, 11, 12. And you're seeing a lot of these districts that had massive, massive Latino Republicans are basically either even or they're voting Democratic right now.

2:41Ben Meiselas:And Donald Trump's overall approval amongst Hispanics at an all-time low. Democrats lead amongst Hispanics by about 35%, 64 to 29, and that number is getting higher as well. You know, you think about Florida. What else did Donald Trump announce in the past 24 hours? That he would be inviting Vladimir Putin to Florida to the G20 at Donald Trump's Doral Golf Club and resort over there. Nothing says the quid pro quo grift while the American people suffer and pay record gas and diesel prices like Donald Trump inviting Putin to Doral while the American people suffer. I mean, you even zoom in on the, look at the Republican governor candidate, ultra MAGA extremist Byron Donald.

3:31Ben Meiselas:You don't really get much more of a Trump bootlicker extremist than Byron Donald. Byron changed his website and purged his campaign website for governor of all references to Donald Trump, all photos, all references. They are gone. And when Byron Donald was asked why he did this, he was like, well, you know, I just think it needed a refresh. I just think it needed a little bit of an update. I wanted to spruce it up a little bit. And so that's why I had to do it. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is about to have a negative job approval among white people in Florida, which has literally never happened in the history of polling Trump ever.

4:14Ben Meiselas:And he's about to be negative amongst white Floridian voters. Also should be noted this Wall Street Journal poll that was just released late on Friday shows that Donald Trump's overall approval is the worst in Wall Street Journal modern presidential polling history. Their polls date back to 1990, and Trump's is absolutely the worst with a 61 % disapproval, only a 37 % approval. And when you ask questions like, how would you rate the strength of the economy? Only 33 % view it positively. Have President Trump's economic policies made the economy better or worse? 60 % say worse. Only 25 % of Americans say better.

5:03Ben Meiselas:And that's a big deal because remember what Donald Trump promised the people of Florida and the rest of the country? He said, on day one, cost of electricity would go down in half. On day one, he would ensure that gas prices remained at$2 a gallon. He would make sure that interest rates declined. He says, if interest rates increase, it means you're stupid and it means that your country's not hot. Well, interest rates continue to rise. And it was Donald Trump's pick of the new Fed chair who raised the interest rates in a unanimous vote with the Fed board. Donald Trump said no more never-ending wars.

5:40Ben Meiselas:He said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. He said housing would be affordable. He said that we would be so rich, you wouldn't know what to do with it. He said that America would be healthy again as well. And he'd come up with health care plans. He lied about everything. Every word, utterance and sound of this guy is an absolute liar. You look right here at the Wall Street Journal poll, presidential approval before the midterms. Donald Trump quite literally is the lowest in history, lower than George W. Bush, lower than anyone. as how low can you go? Pretty damn low for Donald Trump.

6:14Ben Meiselas:Also, I want to remind people of the races where Democrats won. We saw in the special elections, in some of the elections that have taken place recently, the Trump-endorsed candidates have lost. Remember the Miami mayoral runoff back on December 9th of 2025, where the Democrat Eileen Higgins defeated the Trump-endorsed Republican Emilio Gonzalez, the first Democratic mayor of Miami in nearly 30 years, the Boca Raton mayoral election. Democrat Andy Thompson defeated Republican Mike Liebelson by five votes, the first Democratic mayor in decades there. Florida House District, 87, a special election there, March 24th, 2020.

7:02Ben Meiselas:We come with the receipts here on the Midas Touch Network. Democrat Emily, right? We're just giving you data. Just give the people the data. Democrat Emily Gregory defeated the Trump-endorsed Republican John Maples. This district included Mar-a-Lago, Florida Senate District 14 special election. Democrat Brian Nathan narrowly defeated Republican Josie Tomcob by 400 votes. Previously, that was a Republican-held seat. And zoom in right now on Florida's 22nd congressional district because to me, this tells a very big story over here. You have the Democratic candidate. She's an educator. She founded a high school in Harlem.

7:47Ben Meiselas:She's from Jupiter, Florida. That's where she grew up. Her name is Pia Dandia, and she's beating the MAGA extremist right now in the latest polling, 46 % to 44%. The MAGA extremist she's running against is a guy named Casey Asker right there. And P is leading 46 % to 44%. And here's the thing about Florida's 22nd. It's one of those gerrymander districts in Florida. It was previously a Democratic district or a lean Democratic. And then in the massive gerrymandering, this was the one that was like Frankensteinian engineered to almost guarantee the Republican would win. And so in this district that DeSantis and MAGA worked hard to make this a Republican district, in a generic poll, it's tied.

8:39Ben Meiselas:But people really like Pia Dandia. And so she's up 46 % to 44%. And she's running a guy named Casey Asgar, who's a MAGA extremist through and through. You know what? Why don't I bring in Pia Dandia? Can I bring in Pia Dandia? All right, let's bring in my interview with Pia. Let's bring it in. Now I want to bring in Pia Dandia. Pia, great to see you running for that congressional seat in Florida's 22nd. It's one of these newly heavily gerrymandered seats over there in Florida, which the MAGA Republicans tried to turn the 22nd into a right-leaning district. You're running against someone by the name of Casey Askar.

9:23Ben Meiselas:It's the MAGA Republican candidate. I'm sure our viewers remember when you were on the show, I think back in January during the primary. But here we are, homestretch, staring down these midterms, which are just weeks away to a lot of our viewers. They're saying, finally, it's here. But things are very tough right now, obviously. You think about all of the problems that we were discussing back then. That was before the catastrophic war and things were heading in this direction. Then you add on top of it, Trump's catastrophic war in Iran and things are compounding. And it feels that like quite literally every day because of all the market manipulation that's taken place and all of the lies and the failure to actually try to address the issues.

10:13Ben Meiselas:Now that the Ponzi scheme has been exposed. It's like every day, it's like percentage massively worse than the kind of prior day and it's escalating. So talk to us about this moment in Florida and kind of your race, because these are really, really tough times. And we're seeing a lot of polling data showing Florida could, you know, have some big repercussions on the rest of the country. We are feeling the momentum here in Florida. For better or for worse, our voters are waking up to the reality that they were sold a promise that did not come to fruition with this administration. Every day when I'm talking to voters, they tell me about how much they're yearning for the cost of living to become lower.

10:57They want to protect health care and social security and stand up to the corruption in D.C. This was a district that was gerrymandered, like you said, to try and pull a fast one on voters to cover up for the Republican Party's deeply unpopular agenda. However, this is also a district that Biden won in 2020 and Trump won then in 2024. It's an open race with no incumbent on either side. And the polling is on our side showing that we are at an advantage, which goes to prove that I think this administration and this party is underestimating our voters, how smart they are and how clear they are on the promise they were sold on not being delivered.

11:39They're ready to think differently. And we are really excited and hopeful to be the ones to deliver it.

11:43Ben Meiselas:I mean, you're running against someone who has to constantly kind of change, you know, on a given notice, like everything about themselves, you know, on the one hand, am I a Trump? Am I an ultra MAGA? You know, and then actually, you know, I'm going to now pretend to be a little bit more moderate for the day. And so, So, I mean, you know, you've been relentlessly consistent. I mean, if people want to go back and watch the January interview we did, it's the same person, you know, because we were talking about these issues, affordability, cost of living, you know, the fact that, you know, Trump's been, you know, lied about everything he said about immigration and he's went after to rip families apart.

12:24Ben Meiselas:Florida's feeling, you know, the pain of that also. But your opponent just kind of, all right, where am I today? What do I do? Donald Trump, Golden Bullroom. Am I with the Golden Bullroom or am I not with the Golden Bullroom? stuff like that. It's just fake and phony. Well, you know, my opponent has actually clearly chosen a side in his approach, and it is to be a rubber stamp for Trump. In the primary and since then, he has talked about wanting to rename highways after Donald Trump. And to this day on his website, he states a policy priority of wanting to dismantle Obamacare once and for all, in his words, not mine, in a state where almost 500 ,000 Floridians have been hit so hard by changes to their health care coverage because of this administration.

13:09So I have to tell you, to my own surprise, and unfortunately to the detriment of this district, Casey Asgar is someone who wants it to be very clear that he aligns himself with Donald Trump, that he is not an independent thinker, and that he will be a rubber stamp for this administration. And like I said before, Voters are much smarter than that. They know what they're looking for, and he's not even pretending to try and give them a semblance of that.

13:34Ben Meiselas:Talk to us about what you've seen over the past several months since you and I last talked, though, because I think we were even starting to see then some big movement of people just saying, you know what? I just want people who are competent operators, empathy. We talked about, Pia, your background as an educator, how you kind of really helped, you know, with the school system, what you mean to just the education world. But, you know, we saw that then. And now, you know, it seems that there's this massive acceleration of people saying, don't political message me. You know, I've been tricked by, you're not tricked, but I've been, you know, the phoniness of 2024 and all the things I was sold and how politics was treated as a game.

14:28Ben Meiselas:That's kind of backfired in us all. It's like this is life or death stuff and people are struggling in Florida, it seems. And there's been a lot more of that pain and suffering I think you see in Florida right now as these failed policies exacerbate those problems. You know, the unofficial tagline of this campaign has become make common sense great again. And we carry around these signs at rallies and protests. And it just has this visceral reaction from folks where they say their eyes widen and they say, can I have one of those for my yard or for my window? Because people are yearning for normalcy.

15:01And in Florida, they also, like you said, want candidates who they can relate to, who they feel like actually want to understand their challenges and deliver on them. I was a teacher and a high school principal. I've spent my career serving communities and being a listener first before leading. And I have to tell you that the biggest compliment I get on the trail is when someone introduces me to someone else and they say, this is Pia. She's one of us. She gets it and you can tell her the truth. People are hungry for that kind of honest energy representing us in D.C. And I don't think that high school principal energy would hurt in the federal government right about now.

15:37But what you're saying about Florida especially could not be more true. We have had five special elections in the last few months, not to forget Emily Gregory's special state house election, where she is now representing Mar-a-Lago as a Democrat for the first time in more than 20 years. The Miami mayor, the Boca mayor, for the first time in almost 30 years. Voters are waking up and they are saying, we want something different. And what I think they want is authentic leadership that is actually rooted in their well-being. That's exactly what I hope that our campaign can deliver on. And we're really excited by the polling data and the predictions that show the tide is on our side.

16:16But now we've got to get it over the hump, and I'm filled with energy and excitement to do it.

16:21Ben Meiselas:Talk to us before we go. Final message to our viewers, and where could people learn more about you and the campaign and anything else you want to say to our nearly 7 million subscribers? Don't sleep on Florida. Voters here are waking up. They are hungry for a change and we are determined to deliver it. I'm a mom. I'm an educator. I'm a Floridian born and raised who wants to make my home state proud. And I would love for you to get involved in our race. You can learn more at PIAforCongress.com. Let's build something bigger than any one of us and let's go get them. Pia Dandia, thanks for joining us.

16:57Ben Meiselas:And it's been an incredible thing to kind of watch the journey through the primaries where you really just stood out and really appealed to voters and from all different types of voters and to see you here now weeks away we're going to be following this race pia thank you everybody hit subscribe let's get to 7 million subscribers before you go our book wtf america is available for pre-order now it's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back to pre-order scan the qr code or click the link in the description let's do this Thank you.