Uh Oh! Trump Collapses in Florida at Worst Time!!!

0:00Richard Lamondin:I'm R.J.

0:00Ben Meiselas:Decker, a private investigator uncovering the Sunshine State's darkest secrets. Tuesdays, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show.

0:10Richard Lamondin:R.J. freaking Decker as I live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder.

0:15Ben Meiselas:It's someone bigger. And a public mess. Trying to get someone back to prison today? You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. R.J. Decker, series premiere, Tuesdays on ABC and stream on Hulu. Rated T for team.

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1:40Richard Lamondin:And for the procrastinators who like to wait until the very last minute. Tax Act is also here for the middlers who file right in the middle of tax season. No one ever talks about the middlers, but Tax Act sees you and Tax Act respects you. Tax Act. Let's get them over with. Adobe Acrobat Studio, your new foundation. Use PDF spaces to generate a presentation. Grab your docs, your permits, your moves. AI levels up your pitch, gets it in a groove. Choose a template with your timeless cool.

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2:19Richard Lamondin:AI builds the deck so you can build that thing. Do that, do that, do that with Acrobat.

2:26Ben Meiselas:Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are getting a rude awakening in Florida, and they're looking at the midterms coming up and ain't looking good for Trump and MAGA. Some of the latest polling has Trump's approval in Florida at net negative 7.5 percent, and that's been decreasing by the day. You have the MAGA Republican governor out there, Ron DeSantis, commenting about the Texas special elections, including the most recent one for state Senate district number nine, where the Democrat overperformed by plus 31 points and won in a plus 17 Trump district by a plus 14 margin against a Trump endorsed candidate named Lee Wham Gans.

3:12Ben Meiselas:Taylor Remitt went on to win that race. And Ron DeSantis writes, special elections are quirky and not necessarily projectable regarding a general election. That said, a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed. Republicans should be clear eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms. And day by day, DeSantis is throwing the Trump regime under the bus even more. That's a story to keep on following. And I saw he came out against data centers and a lot of the AI initiatives of the Trump regime recently as well. You take a look recently, there was that Miami mayor's race as well.

3:51Ben Meiselas:And you had Eileen Higgins becoming the first Democrat elected the mayor of Miami in nearly 30 years when Donald Trump, the same way he endorsed that MAGA candidate in Texas, he endorsed the mayoral Republican candidate Gonzalez in Miami, who suffered a massive loss there. You know, and that brings us really to Florida's 27th congressional district right here, where you have a big race coming up. You have this MAGA Republican candidate, Maria Salazar, her parents, family fled Cuba. And her whole thing was that she was protecting the population from socialism and dictators. And then she hoisted up Donald Trump, who was a dictator and who does socialism for the billionaires.

4:38Ben Meiselas:and she's been saying and promising her constituents all along that, promise you, you know, Donald Trump is not going to do immigration raids. He's not going after people who have been here for a long time. He's only going after criminals. So the day after the presidential election back on, this is by the way, it's what she's been saying. She's been MAGA through and through. And so I'll just give you one clip. For example, the day after the presidential election when she was interviewed by PBS. She said, I promise you, everybody, Donald Trump is supporting my Dignity Act. It's called the Dignity Act because if you've been here and you're hard working and you're an immigrant, you have nothing to worry about at all.

5:24Ben Meiselas:You're good. It's only the violent criminals. Trump told me, he promised me, we're going to get this act passed. Even if we don't get the act passed. He supports it. Watch what she said on PBS the day after the election.

5:36Richard Lamondin:I am sure that we're not that the Trump administration is not going to be targeting those people who have been here for more than five years that have American kids that don't have criminal records that have been working in the economy and paying taxes. I am sure that they're going to hone in on the criminals who arrived less than four years ago because I wrote the Dignity Act and I am the first one who understands that you have to give some type of dignity to those who have been here for more than five years. People who have roots in the country, not people who are coming to commit crimes. If I can just clarify from you, have you received those kinds of details from anyone in a potential Trump administration?

6:14Richard Lamondin:Because so far what we've heard is proposal for mass deportations. We have about 30 seconds left. Have you gotten those assurances? Mass deportation to those who are committing crimes who have been here for less than five years. You understand that you have millions of undocumented who are contributing with the economy and are helping our country to be a better one.

6:36Ben Meiselas:Checking in on the Trump administration. You support what she just said? She said that she spoke to Trump. You read the legislation. You're with it. It's not what you were doing. You were doing, you were attacking hardworking people here in this country and American citizens as well. Well, let's check in with the White House and see what they had to say recently.

6:58Richard Lamondin:Congresswoman Salazar introduced legislation that would give some illegal immigrants in the country a path of citizenship. 10 Republicans signed on to what she's calling the Dignity Act. I'm curious what the White House's position is on the legislation and if the president would veto this bill, if we need it to discuss. From my understanding, the White House nor the president has actually read through this legislation. We've been focused on, of course, the one big, beautiful bill which passed, which is another historic accomplishment of this president in record time. The Genius Act this week, the rescission rescissions package.

7:28Richard Lamondin:That's been the.

7:29Ben Meiselas:They haven't read it. They don't support it. They haven't read it. They don't support it. So Congresswoman Salazar now says, you know, Hispanics are leaving the GOP in large numbers. We got issues. And then here's what she says about about Machado, the former leader of Venezuela. Or the opposition leader, rather, of Venezuela. Let's play this clip.

7:50Richard Lamondin:The America First agenda. Sorry, America First agenda. So just real quickly, if you can, Maria Machado, you just heard what Congressman Crowe said about her not being part of this, at least the initial stage of this plan. I know that you traveled to Oslo with her. Was she disappointed to hear that they're elevating, they're allowing the elevation of the vice president to run the country for now? Well, I have not been able to talk to her, but I do know that she is very much pro-America and she dedicated that Nobel Peace Prize to the president. We have to put things into context and the opposition within Venezuela understands that.

8:29Richard Lamondin:We need to this Del C lady who swore herself in and that we have to work with her for now. But Marco Rubio said it. It's been 48 hours. Let's give us a few months until we create the stability. and I'm sure the Maria Karina Machado.

8:45Ben Meiselas:Let's just give a few more months. Give me two more weeks. It's all going to be better. I promise you. I want to bring in Richard Lamondin. Richard, great to see you. Richard, executive entrepreneur over there in Miami. You're running against Maria Salazar in the 27th Congressional District. You know, just people know her background. She was like a newscaster in the area. You know, she ran making all of these promises and she lies about everything. And it's very dangerous lies because she lured her community into basically a death trap. And now it's like a Ponzi scheme where she keeps moving the goalposts as her people and the district is under attack.

9:27Ben Meiselas:Talk to us about the district that you're running for.

9:28Richard Lamondin:Absolutely. So this district is in many ways the key district here in Florida. It covers the heart of Miami. You mentioned Eileen Higgins, mayoral victory. A big part of this district is the city of Miami where she won. It's a district that is heavily Cuban, heavily Venezuelan, basically pan-Latin American. And you nailed every piece of this where she's been with Trump every step of the way. She has said, like you said in the clip, that we're only going to focus on criminals. We're only going to focus on criminals. And yet here this district is also the one within our backyard is Alligator Alcatraz and that prison camp out there where she went out to the site, toward it and said, oh, the beds were pretty comfortable.

10:10Richard Lamondin:So this is a congresswoman that is basically a weather vane. She leads from behind on every issue. You know, one of the big things that she has done is not support the Venezuelan community. You mentioned Maria Corina Machado, but also Venezuelans here in South Florida have lost temporary protected status while the same Maduro regime is in power. She has not stood up to administration when Cubans have had double the number of deportations this year than they've had last year. A lot of seniors, many of them of Cuban descent, have been left in fear because she initially did not support expanding the SNAP benefits that almost were cut.

10:55Richard Lamondin:She has supported the, Caroline Leavitt talked about the big, beautiful bill. She voted to cut a lot of programs for the seniors in her district. This district has one of the largest numbers of Obamacare recipients in the entire country, and she is one who cut the tax credits that made it affordable. Some of the people in my district I speak to, their insurance bills have gone from $450 to over$1 ,200 a month. So this is a congresswoman that has repeatedly failed. The difference now from previously is that people have caught on to this. I go into a lot of spaces with people who voted Trump three times, Salazar multiple times, and they talk about how they're fed up with her.

11:33Richard Lamondin:She's never in the community. She's focused on political theater, not the real problems in our community. And the fact is her only real solution to this problem, you mentioned the Dignity Act, it's not a pathway to any kind of citizenship. There is no pathway to citizenship in that law. It's a penalty box. It requires immigrants who come here to pay additional fees. It is one that makes sure that we have a second class of citizen here in the United States, something that is completely against the entire concept of the American dream. And she is someone that has failed this community at every turn.

12:06Richard Lamondin:And that's a big reason why I'm running. Right.

12:08Ben Meiselas:I mean, she's a total fraud. I mean, she said this Dignity Act is going to make sure everybody here is protected. We've got your back. Mass deportations does not mean mass deportations. When Trump says he's coming for you, regardless of your background, he's not actually going to be doing that. I got your back. So then Trump revokes temporary protected status. He goes after hardworking people, just people who are here, family members, children.

12:34Richard Lamondin:We see these. Which, by the way, the big one here right now is the Haitians. Right. So the Haitians only recently got restored. We have a huge Haitian community down here in South Florida. So pardon the interruption. But this is something that it's not just Venezuelan community. community, it's not just the Nicaragua and the Cuban community, but the Haitian community. The city is one that is built by immigrants. It's one that when you come here, you could tell that Spanish in many ways is the first language. And so, you know, this is a congresswoman that never shows up in the community, has never hosted a single public town hall her entire time in office.

13:05Richard Lamondin:And so a lot of times when I speak to people, I said, what do you think is going to be different in the next five months that didn't happen in the last five years? She's only passed and written and passed one bill her entire time in Congress. and it's guess what about birds so she is someone who literally has been ineffective as a congresswoman

13:21Ben Meiselas:and and people are ready for a change right so so then she's rooting for the invasion of venezuela because she has to move the goalposts in her ponzi scheme because now if she can get maria carina machado the opposition leader installed as the leader and start you know reuniting families with Venezuela after a lot of the TPS has been revoked and people being deported to a repressive regime and having these atrocities. In her mind, she's like, okay, that's my out. Look, we got Machado. I kept my... And then Donald Trump's like, yeah, Machado doesn't have respect of the people in Venezuela. I'm going to go with the Maduro regime.

14:02Ben Meiselas:I'm going to go with Delce Rodriguez because Trump opens up a Qatari bank account to sell the oil there to his rich oligarch friends to then give himself the money and hide it in Qatari bank accounts makes Machado give him the Nobel prize, like the actual physical medal.

14:22Richard Lamondin:Framed, by the way, like a frame.

14:24Ben Meiselas:And it's just like it's like mocking your district. It's like it's it's the it's I can't think of anything worse to do, but you're saying people are finally waking up. Like you're seeing, like, what was the final thing? Cause I saw videos, you know, still, you know, a little Havana, you know, uh, five months ago and people would be like, well, you know, I don't like his policy here. I don't like his immigration policy, but I do like his policy on, you know, transgender sports. And I'm like, what are you even talking about? You're, you're an immigrant. The policy is to get rid of you. What are you talking about?

14:58about your so so where are we now look it's it's it's very hard to treat people in miami and

15:06Richard Lamondin:especially a lot of times nationally the democratic party has tried to treat hispanic people as a monolith it is not the case at all it it breaks down very much by age how many generations have been here um you know very much there is an immovable group which is the very old school cuban community but there are more recent arrivals as well um i will tell you for a fact that down here, it may sound silly to many folks listening, but the attack of socialists does land here in South Florida because many of these people have fled regimes that have declared themselves that. And so, for example, I was on a Telemundo interview where they asked me, like, what do you think about the Democratic Party being viewed as socialist and communist?

15:45Richard Lamondin:And I said, well, only one of us has created hundreds of jobs. I have. But my opponents created none. Which one of us is the socialist? The answer is none of us. But that's the kind of energy that we, as Democrats need to focus on down here to combat that. And that's the kind of energy that then once I can clear the mind of that sort of like specter of Castro kind of rising up here in South Florida, we're all dealing with the same issues here. I could tell you at the presidential level, I've had people tell me Greenland was the last straw, that the murders of two American citizens in Minnesota was the last straw.

16:22Richard Lamondin:You know, today we have a post we saw where, you know, the Obamas are being portrayed as monkeys being posted by the president. Everyone's kind of having their own last straw. But the unifying factor that unites everyone is the fact that Miami has been, since COVID, one of the most unaffordable cities in this entire country. And when we all, when I talk to you about the impact that the big, bad, ugly, whatever the heck bill you want to call it these days has had on this community it's had an enormous negative impact on seniors on young people i talk about and i talk about my policies in the terms of freedom because i think every every candidate has their own district in a district like mine which is purple leads slightly republican but it's key to us flipping the house and maintaining it i talk about the fact that you can't make it in America if you're not free to be healthy, if you don't have access to health insurance.

17:17Richard Lamondin:You can't make it in this country if you don't have the freedom to raise your family because you can't afford to send them to preschool, which down here is incredibly expensive. That you're not free if you can't afford a home of any kind and get a roof over your head. And you're not free if our seniors can't retire with dignity. And when I talk about the fact that if we don't set as a Democratic Party a foundation for people to be successful, then nobody can achieve the American dream. That is where I break through a lot of the partisan barriers because most people at a values level agree that everyone deserves a fair shot.