The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: Democrats Never Miss An Opportunity...

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

...to miss an opportunity. Billy Corben wrote an opinion piece for Medium that ties Miami politicians boarding a free trip to Qatar involving the World Cup to the Israel-Hamas conflict. Before that, however, we make fun of his life as a child actor. We have Jeb Lund on to talk about the New College's foray into athletics despite its athletes lagging in their academics. Plus, CBS Miami's Jim DeFede comes on to talk about his new documentary, “WAREHOUSED: The Life and Death of Tristin Murphy.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. [♪ Music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background our world as the never-ending war in the Middle East once again threatens the end times and the rapture, I went to City Hall to Carl Gable City Hall and had a face off with the mayor of Inslauggeau and came on this show to talk about it and talk about the derivation of my stage name or my professional name from William Cohen to Billy Corbin and talk about, you know, my heritage and my family and, you know, when this, when this old world starts getting me down, I like to trudge around in the cesspool that is the comment section of Instagram. Yeah, that really helps.

And I know, I know you do too, Roy, And I know you went under, we posted a clip, of course, from last week's because Miami. And people had some things to say, some goi explaining. Right. Goi explaining, they wanted to tell me what anti-Semitism is, what it means to be Jewish, what my Judaism should mean to me, and what did you find, Roy? All right.

This really helped me and the mental health aspect of my life, so I appreciate you making me do this. All right, the first comment we have is from King Tom 015. What a sorry act of crap. Of course, Libertard, I guess you tried to say Libertard there. Libertard, you get it? Libertard. Libertard. Libertard. Yeah, sure, you get it? Libbit, libatar. Libbit, libatar.

Get it? Yeah, yeah, sure. We're promoting someone being such a crybaby. You guys are straight garbage and everything wrong with this country. Okay. Mima and Cuba says, Billy, you're addressing a city council. Isn't an audition for a part in a movie. That's your last name. You addressed

you as such. Puto Ifainal. Oh, final. Pundo Ifa Ifa, Ifa, Ifainal. That's right. I don't know Spanish. I'm sorry. Let's go to George Bimuda's 33 who runs Hollywood again. Thinking emoji. Oh, yeah. Jorge Bimuda's once you know who runs Hollywood. I actually, interestingly, I Hollywood again, thinking of their own. Yeah, but I have a question about that. Yeah. What does Hollywood have to do with cold gables? Maybe he's talking about Hollywood Florida. Maybe that's the confusion. Who runs Hollywood Florida?

Isn't that the guy who owns Hollywood Kia, right? Right. I don't know. What else is it over yet, Roy? No, no, we have another. Zach Weber says, Billy Soda out and changed his family name to make it in Hollywood.

The fact this show gives a disc joke of a man a platform is insane. There's eight hundreds, I'm going for a rate on here. There is eight hundreds. Financial literacy skills. Of more respectable people trying to make Miami better for people Why don't you get one of them instead of this attention seeking hypocritical reason of a human being?

Let me tell you something right now, Roy. I absolutely resent the lies and the bullshit that there are hundreds of people trying to make Miami better I think all that's BS now totally totally BS Now totally, totally BS. Hey Roy, you would never happen to have the experience of being on social media and people trying to tell you what racism is or what your blackness means or what you should prioritize or think is important. Oh, those are experts. I really shouldn't listen to what they have to say

because they know better than me being, you know, that I'm black and everything. So let me be clear, despite the very actually overt claims in some of the comments that didn't make the cut here, I am not a self-hating Jew. I am a self-hating child actor. Yes. And I think a lot of people thought

that was the big breaking news on the show last week is that I am a recovering child actor. I think I don't disagree. That was what was the most important thing about the show last week, right? Yeah, well, we got some more stuff for that actually. Do we? Is there a app for that? Yeah, well, no, but there is a top five.

Oh, I wish we had a top five theme song or sound effect or something. I mean, yeah, we actually have some like... But we didn't give an ass-corpon. So we gotta get to it. So. What is your palette cleanser after you went trudging around in the dumpster of Instagram comments? Well, we have the top five worst Billy Corbin child act of moments.

That is what we have. And we actually have six. So we have an outside looking in. Ah. So the O.L.I. a Cassimia St. Cloud commercial. Now, this is some of your early work here. This is from 1986 for the Cassimia St. Cloud Resort area. Wow.

And you did it in Orlando, shot it on location in Disney. I was eight years old, maybe. Seven or eight? Yeah, seven or eight. You did that Disney World and you abused years old maybe. Seven or eight? Yeah. Seven or eight. You did that Disney World and you abused an Orca. Here it is. Whenever the wife and I visit Florida,

we stand the Cosimian St. Cloud Resort area. There's so much to do. That's me. You always stop by while Disney World's the Seas again. I especially enjoy flying by the ancient and a cut center. And SeaWorld is full of surprises. There is so many great places.

There is the Orca. There is the Spanish and Spanish and Spanish. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St.

The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The Casimis St. The little Billy Corbin. I mean, we were on so much cocaine, Roy. It was 1986 in Central Florida.

So much cocaine. So much cocaine. Oh my God, I remember that. I remember that first line, like I can't even like speak like tongue is bigger than my mouth. Like I am actually having trouble like, I remember it was the middle of the night I did do so many takes. I had like this, I don't know, this sort of speech impediment. Andiment and then the actress who was I was working with she was like six or seven years old

She kept saying instead of especially enjoy she kept saying in specially Oh, and we had to keep and the two of us just we were a nightmare Pissed off the adults by the speaker. Oh my God, so cringe. Number five is the Finnelly Boys. Oh yeah. Yeah, the Finnelly Boys was a short-lived 1996 con that lasted one season. And grand opening, grand closing. Joey Pantoliano was in the show.

Joey Pants, that's right. Yeah, and you played a 11 year old asshole who tried to teach a grown ass man, that's grown ass man, was Christopher Maloney. Everybody should know who Christopher Maloney is. That's a question, man. If you are a fan of Scrubs, he was the pediatrician in that show.

Scrubs. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, there's a Scrubs. It's Elliot Stabler from Law and Order SVU. I mean, sure, if you want to go with the most famous title, but I'd rather go with scrubs. Scrubs, was he even on that show?

He was on that show. It was a guestant. It was one episode. It was one episode. It was on a couple episodes. He was back to Cox, tried to get his child into the practice for Christopher Rolong. It's been Elliott Stabler for like 25 years

like a quarter of a century. I'm one of the longest running prime time shows in history. Well good for him, but I like them as well. The finale boys, here it is. That's when the prince and the king went back into the castle. All the villagers rejoiced. And when the sun rose over the forest,

the wicked witch... LAUGHTER Sound it out. And when the sun rose over the forest, the wicked witch... Sound it out! Disintegrated. Disappears. Come here, we can have a book. I don't think we have enough time. I'm only here for the weekend. Little Billy Corbin. Little Billy Corbin.

Little Billy Corbin. Oh my God. What's next? Number four. Nightcourt. Oh my God. This was fun. It's one of the best weeks of my life.

Working on that show. Yeah, I'm sure it was. It looked a lot of fun when I saw that video. It looked a lot. And it was laid in the run, so the show was legendary. By the time I was on it.. It looked a lot of fun when I saw that video. It looked a lot more. And it was laid in the run, so like, the show was legendary by the time I was on it. And then I watched it. And so that was pretty cool.

Yeah, out of the credits on this entire top five list, this has to be one beat. I bought a credits of the biggest one. We played I play an asshole again. Yeah, we played an asshole again. In 1991, this was the eighth season of Nightcourt, as you said, and you played another little asshole. You played this asshole, it was named Billy.

Yes, I was a child actor named Billy, an asshole child actor named Billy. Yeah, kind of like Tony Danza's always playing a character named Billy Corbin. Yeah, exactly. You would shoot a TV show inside the courtroom called the littlest lawyer when you played a 12 year old district attorney. Here it is.

Do you know what a public defender is? Do you know how to talk like a normal person? No to the writers. Use fielding is a model for the transsexual psychopath in episode three. Have you ever heard the word please? You ever heard the word now? Don't get me what I want. Billy, let me let you in on a little secret. What?

I hate you. Ah, martial world field. I think that martial world from these to be a cart. Billy, let me let you in on a little secret. I hate you. All that was so fun. I had a great cart. Billy, let me let you know, a little secret. I hate you. All that was so fun. I had a great seat. Bull, Richard Moll, the Winking,

first of all, that man was literally twice my height at that time. I think it was a scene where he'd like, pick me up and put me on a desk so that we could see eye to eye. It was so much fun. That was an and rest in peace, marquee post. Yes. I had to give a show, I'd give everybody shit in that seat.

Oh my God, that show. Oh, that's awesome awesome. Such a great show. What number are we on? We are number three. And this one is step monster. Now you got the star in this Roger Coleman produced direct to tape monstrosity. Of course a lot of the Roger Colemanorman director tape movies are much faster. Directed tape. That's what he does. That's what he's known for. A very good career Roger Corman had.

This one started Alan Thick and Cory Feldman. And this movie was a very much Halloween staple and Disney challenge back in the day. Now you play the guy named Todd, a boy named Todd, who stepmother, by night turns into this mythical green, scaly creature who feeds on a human flesh. She growls and she eats bones and she changes joggers. She's probably a dog. She's a trapezius. But a trapezius. Did I mention that she eats people? Coincidence?

I think not. We both know that monsters are merely a figment of the imagination. Damn. Ow. No, Todd's got to stop her before she gets hungry again. How do you kill Vampire? Take real a hunt. Oh, how awful.

There was silver bullet. Cool. How about... Choppkins. Choppkins. Oh, probably. He's in the sun. Wow.

Shut the fuck up, Cass. It was amazing. That whole week was amazing. And Alan. It was amazing. That whole week was amazing. And Alan Thick was amazing. Cory Feldman was a trip. I remember he had this group of like, like, recovering child actors, who a lot of whom were probably in rehab at the time, and they would go around whenever one of them would get a job and kind of visit the other

one on set and the dressing rooms. And he had a group of guys there and my mom took a picture of us. We had that somewhere. I wish I had it. And he put his arm around me and we took a picture and Corey said to my mom, you know, Billy, he reminds me so much of me when I was his age. And my mom goes, oh God, I hope not. Just as she took the picture.

I don't ever forget it. And Amy Dolan's Mickey Dolan's his daughter was in it. She was beautiful. I got to be in a lot of scenes with her and really fun. We had a great time on that. On that movie and Wally Fister, the guy who shot it, by the way, is now the director of photography for Christopher Nolan. Oh wow.

The man got an Oscar for Inception. He shot the Dark Knight trilogy. The guy's a genius. I mean, and a lot of folks got their start with Roger Korman. It was all uphill for all of them except for me. Yeah, yeah. Little Billy Cormin. Number two is parenthood.

Oh, yeah. Parenthood is obviously one A in this list of the biggest credits that you have. Yeah. That in Nightcourt. This is the 1989 version of parenthood. This one you start with Keanu Reeves and Joaquin Phoenix as a kid

and some, again, some typecasting. You play a little tin-yoed asshole named Eddie with a foul mouth. You even cursed in Yiddish, Billy. I did. Who cursed in Yiddish? No, you know. Little Billy Corbin.

Oh, a little Billy Cohen, really. Yeah, exactly. You did this during the big birthday party scene received Martin. Here it is. Isn't that him? No, that's a schmuck who brought the horse. Go on and have fun and we'll have some burgers and dogs in a second. Let's watch the horse shit. Yeah Howdy podna. You're Kevin's father. You're not cowboy Dan. Yeah That's right. They call it cowboy guilt.

This movie was directed by Ron Howard, a self-recovering child actor who really inspired me to direct, and I got to interview him for a documentary later called The Taining of America One Nation under hip hop to tell him that he's the reason why I do what I do. And my mother could not believe that little old be cunning ham was making her nine-year-old or eight or eight year old son curse in

a movie. But what's funny is my third line there, which I don't curse in, that was a big deal because when Steve Martin did the rounds on the talk shows, including the tonight show with Johnny Carson, and he quote unquote, brought a clip with him, that's the clip he brought when he was doing the cowboy dance stick at the party. So my line, you're not, you know, your Kevin's father. You're not cowboy. That was like on So you are on the tini show kind of kind of let's go with that You say so

Number one, there's something better than that. There's something better than no, there's something worse than that I mean there's something yes, that's what I meant. Yes, there's something worse than that and that's called Archie That's what I meant. Yes, there's something worse than that. And that's called Archie to Riverdale and Back. Oh, fuck. Oh, I can tell how ashamed you are of this one. Oh, oh shit. Yes, you're the bleep, Bad.

No, that's worth, that was worth the F-bond there. Yeah, in 1990, you know, Wettlingley committed a humiliating version just a bad, bad act of cultural appropriation, as Junkhead's son. In this NBC TV movie, now this has to be the worst cover song that has ever been recorded. This is the widest so-called rap version of the Archie's singing sugar sugar. In fact, it sounds like you did some bad ADR here. It sounds like you went back into the studio and saying for this particular scene. Here it is You are my only girl and you got me, and you got me, and you got me! Break it down, folks, please.

The only thing worse than that was having Mike and Jason in our ears, which the audience can hear, telling us how much longer there is in the clip. Yeah. Like, when they said 20 seconds, I'm like, this is going to feel like two hours, and it did. It did. Coming up next. Sports!

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Subscribe today at publicmobile.ca. Different is calling. You've read him in the Guardian, Rolling Stone, Gawker, Dead Spin, NBC, Esquire, Vice. You just heard him on the show a couple weeks ago. I think this is one of our fastest turn around. Jeb, where were we, Jeb? Where were we? Please clap. We were talking about the remaking of the new college of Florida into a 700 person intercollegiate

athletic powerhouse. It's more. Jeb Lund is great writer, amazing writer. Also the co-host of It's Christmas Town, a podcast that reviews the bizarre and gentle world of hallmark original movies. And he is a graduate of new college here in Florida, which is where we were interrupted when we ran out of time last time you were here and wanted to pick up that conversation because you

were just told your story about how you got to New College. So picking it up from there, New College was a pretty special place. You got a school about 700 students, one of the smallest, I think, public colleges in the state of Florida, but also like, like I said, a pretty unique place for a unique student body and no athletic department up until a very short time ago. So tell us about what new college was and how it has been remade in the mold of DeSantis Dan. Right.

So new college athletics when I was there. And I think for pretty much the bulk of its existence was, the New College kids got really drunk and they took hallucinogens, and they played kickball, softball, or ultimate against the kids from Ringling who took cocaine. I'm guessing there was a quidditch team as well. I don't think we ever did that. I do know that there were like certain inventions like, you know, you take a shot penalty if you go, if you bogie a hole of whiffle ball golf

and things like that. But, you know, it was really not a, there pick up soccer games that were a little bit more serious than the things I've mentioned, but there was never really any focus on like, we need to do something that requires a uniform. You have to buy a jersey. No, you just show up, you walk out, you're 150 feet from where you sleep.

No problem, five minutes prep, you're good to go. I kind of want to go back to Ringling College in the cocaine. So they were playing a clown? So, yeah. Holy shit. Yes, the cocaine clown boys over at Ringling College. I was waiting for that. New college itself, athletics aside,

what was the curriculum, what was kind of the makeup of the student body? Well, it was usually about 60, 40, or at least it has been for about the past 30 years, female to male. So I think that might be one of the things that DeSantis and his cronies objected to,, you can't have patriarchy when you're outnumbered. But you know, it was basically a place for people who didn't fit elsewhere and who wanted to be really academically

rigorous. The nice thing about it was, you know, you might have, I only had three history professors when I was there. So if they didn't teach something that I wanted to learn, I could just go find 14 books, build my own syllabus, and go to one of them, and say, do you have enough experience in this that you can read it with me, and build my own class, or build my own research project. And that was reflected in the way that we got evaluated, which is you didn't get a letter grade. You've got a page or more of typed or handwritten evaluation of your academic performance. And while that might make it difficult to transfer, it was really

great for applying to grad school. And so I think I brought this up last time. It was, it's basically like undergrad for, sorry, it's basically like grad school for undergrad. So new college graduates had something like a 90% doctoral completion rate. If you left new college with a degree, you were almost certainly going to get a doctorate. And that's the sort of people it appealed to, people who wanted to create like multidisciplinary stuff or stuff that just wasn't going to be in an average course catalog. DeSantis has really fixated on it, though, of all the places. He's really fixated on destroying or in his words, transforming this school into a right wing bastion. I would argue a Christian madrasa. I mean, he has a very specific, well,

I mean, Hillsdale is really the mold, I think, right? For what he's going here for. So talk about, let's talk about the hijacking here, because the first thing he did was replace what about half of the board of trustees there. He put a crony into the, at least as the interim president with an outrageous raise, I mean, multiples on what the previous president had made. So let's talk about the hijacking here. How did this start? So he replaced the board of trustees. He did it with some cronies that were little too obvious.

There was one gentleman from Inspiration Academy, which was basically like a Bradenton fifth year high school for getting kids into athletic programs at other state schools. He actually turned out to be so nuts that they turfed him. Christopher Rufo, who's best claimed to fame as I think getting around 4,000 hits per video on YouTube before he discovered casual fascism and getting monetized by right-wing think tanks is also on the trustees 4000 hits on YouTube. I resemble that remark. This isn't just sort of like daytime viewing for him This is like this is something that's that's meant to start a movement and he was we were waiting for him to start until he got help

So like all stealth made men in the conservative movement, he had lots of help from much, much older men. Richard Corcoran, as you mentioned, is the president of New College. He's making more than any other president in the state of Florida, more than UF, despite the fact that he has one tenth as many students. But what they did, the know, the real hijacking

seems to be to remake and punish the student body. And like, if there's one thing about that and misfit aspect of new college, it's that that's where you went if you didn't fit anywhere else. And it seems to be the mission is, guess what, you don't belong here either. And so they brought in over 100 scholarship athletes,

including, I think, double the number of scholarship baseball athletes that UF has despite having one-tenth as many students. And it's subtle, but it's very effective. Dave Zyron and the nation really banged this drum, but I think he's 100% right on it that the culture of athletes is very conservative. It's very easy when you are the 1% in your hobby, you know, and you're the sport that you like to play. It's really easy to believe in anyone can make it if they try.

And he pointed out that they're recruiting some of these athletes from Christian universities. In fact, I got to read the stat that you were referring to. Again, this is a university new college with 700 students. That's how big the student body is. New college will enroll 70 freshman baseball players under scholarship, as Jeb just said. The University of Florida, a division one powerhouse with a student population, 90 times larger than new college, has 37 baseball players on scholarship in total. And despite grades and test scores at lag badly behind other students on campus,

this new crop of student athletes at New College have disproportionately received merit-based scholarships from admissions of the 179 incoming students awarded. The $10,000 per year presidential honors scholarship, 84 of those 179 were student athletes. Yeah. And it really does feel kind of like they decided to import the bullies. I mean, I don't mean to miss merge the student athletes.

I don't think that they're sadists or bad people or anything like that. But kind of the one character of the school that you could say it had was that there kind of wasn't a bully presence. You know, and if you wanted to be a barefoot flower child twirling around, if you wanted to spend the whole day naked, nobody was going to come harass you, even if you were a girl, and walking around with everything hanging out. And I think the attitude is to sort of chill that and to chill the campus culture while also injecting, while also correcting for that male-female ratio and

reintroducing something like male supremacy, I would imagine, and also just to make people feel like you don't have your own place to be where you can relax and explore yourself. This is just like anywhere else. Ultimately, it's going to be a real disservice. This is something that Dave didn't touch on. It's going to be a real disservice to these student athletes. If they want to transfer, if they put up good numbers and they want to go to a different school in the state of Florida, they're not going to have a GPA to transfer with. They're going to have written evaluations. And it's not an

easy school. The whole point of it being grad school for undergrad, you read a lot. You do independent work a lot. And there haven't been that many suicides at New College, but every year there's somebody who's, you know, just on the fence. When I was there, I saw at least two different students get involuntarily committed, Bay corrected, or if you're New York 5150, right, for just melting down from the stress of it. And these kids who, you know, are supposedly, you know, I've spoken to people who know people in the new college admissions who are looking at some of these application essays where the why do you want

to come to new college section is just I want to play ball. And like that's pretty much the essay. And these kids are in for they're going to walk into a hurricane of academia that they're not prepared for. And it's going to start just daisy cuttering the heads off a few of them. And they're not gonna be happy kids, it's not fair. This is really a legacy though of Ron DeSantis is punching down, right?

I mean, it's attacking people with the full weight of the state that can't necessarily defend themselves. LGBTQ plus kids, minorities, immigrants, people who have very little political clout or power and really investing millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars of public money into trying to, as you say, push them out, saying you have, you don't even have this little 700, this tiny public college anymore. That's going to become a baseball school. And I want to ask about that, Jim, before you go, to me, this is the sad sick reality of

Trumpism, of which DeSantis is very much an acolyte, that through all of the racism and misogyny and homophobia and demagoguery and death and destruction. The story is really just a heist movie, isn't it? It's all been like a distraction to steal money. When you look at Richard Corcoran who you brought up, a man with no educational background or experience as an administrator as a teacher, this guy is going to make nearly a million dollars or, you know know that's the thing about this is that aren't they just stealing our money ultimately.

Right, and this has been the right wing complaint about new college was that per student was one of the most expensive schools in the state in terms of what we had to put in you know resource wise for for the attendees. But you got amazing results and it up until 10 years ago there were still members of the Republican Party in Florida who considered New College a jewel. Now this, it seems to be plunder and, you know, I haven't been able to confirm exactly, you know, how much is going on. But allegedly, you know, the, the, the new coaches for these athletic programs are being paid out of the admissions budget. Right. I looked at one of the proposals for a new college getting NAIA that's a step below NCAA acceptance as a school that could then compete.

And if what I saw was what they actually sent in, they were intending to send the student athletes to campus counseling. That was what was going to be their athletic and physical care. Campus counseling is for the people who are going, you know, I feel like I want to jump off a bridge because I can't finish my thesis. It's not for people who've got a bad hammy. So there seems to be this complete contempt for the money. You know, up until now, the concern was, was new college spending money effectively. Now it's just like, it seems to be a piggy bank for this project that only has humiliation

as its end. It doesn't seem to be about academics. It can't possibly be about athletics. They've got 80 baseball players. They've got one baseball field. They want to build another. They're going to have to boot the classic car museum out, raise it to the ground and put another one on there, and then they'll have two.

And there'll still be about two short for the amount of food. You got them right, Meatball. Jeblon, come back next week. The week after that, always I love talking with you and reading you and seeing you and your girthy microphone. Thank you.

Hello, Jim. Hey, Jim. I'm not a man. Hello, Jim. Hey, Jim. Could say hello. I mean, greet a guest for God's sake. You just came out. I thought you were talking about that. I think you have a former colleague here.

Who's that? Jason Granados. He was working in the studio. Oh, great. No, no, him. Bentley, you have to understand that there is a hierarchy in TV stations. Oh boy. No, as the talent, there's only certain people that I interact with, you know, but I'm sure

he's a fine young man and did an excellent job. But yes, no, no, everyone understands. You have to understand your language. No, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, this is TV. Yeah, you know, you are the US's of like some little podcast thing where anyone can just come up to Dan or anyone else in the satiate. Yeah, no, you're on your on camera talent. You're the eye candy. Look, you can't,

you can't keep all this. If you want this, this is what you want on TV. If you want this, all of this thing, I have certain conditions conditions I have to be met with you know and and a certain level of respect and you know a hoofness that I expect. Jim has a writer. Ladies and gentlemen this sexy bastard is Jim DeFeedy a veteran award-winning Miami reporter. Yeah I just started the segment that's what happened. The Miami phase of his career started in 1991 at the new times, where for 11 years, he was part of a murderer's row of writers doing some of the best reporting ever during a golden age of local journalism here in Miami. His first book, The Day the World came to town, 9-11 in Gander, Newfoundland was published in 2002. And his latest book, it only took 20 years, Jim.

It drops in early 2024. It's called The Chronicles of William Sal. It's an anthology of stories. He wrote about Willie Falcone and Sal Magluda, Los Muachachos, the boys, a pair of Miami high dropouts who became the kings of cocaine here, and helped inspire me and my producing partners to commit 12 years of

our lives to produce the Netflix original doc series cocaine cowboys, the Kings of Miami featuring Jim DeFeedy. Jim joined CBS. I love the way the introduction to me turned into a promotion for you and your work. How did that take a weird turn? You're here to promote your doc. I'm going to promote my doc in the intro here. And this is what Jim is here to talk about. Well, you could do that take a weird turn? You're here to promote your doc. I'm gonna promote my doc in the intro here. And this is what Jim is here to talk about.

Well, you could do that every Friday though. Since he joined CBS, he does it every Sunday too, on his show. All right, that's his show. Jim joined CBS Miami in06. He's an investigative reporter, politics reporter. He's the host of its popular Sunday morning public affairs program, facing South Florida.

And also at CBS, he's done something really amazing. He's managed to produce over a dozen outstanding documentary specials, including a powerful trilogy of one hour docs about the Champlain Towers, Collapse and Surfside, his latest warehouse, the life and death of Tristan Murphy. From years Wednesday, October 25th, at 10pm on my 33 in Miami, and 25th at 10 p.m. on my 33 in Miami and streaming online at CBS Miami.com. I just watched it last night and wow, it is riveting, powerful, disturbing. And I think it's your finest work, Jim, which says a lot, Jim DeFeedy, who is Tristan Murphy?

And why have we never heard of him before. So Tristan Murphy is was a 37 year old man who was in prison in 2021 on a, well I'll get to the charge, but this was a young man 37 years old who was sent to a state prison, even though they recognized that he had severe mental illnesses and he ended up killing himself by trying to cut his head off with a chainsaw. It is one of the most harrowing stories I've ever encountered. I found out about it the day it occurred on September 16, 2021. I got a call from a source within the Department of Corrections that said something terrible

had just happened and that the real tragedy of it is Everyone at the prison understood that he had a mental illness and needed to be treated But instead they put him on a work detail and handed him a chainsaw and so after I learned that I went on what became a two-year mission to chart exactly what happened in this man's life. And what I ultimately try to do is use Tristan Murphy's story with the help of his parents to piece together his life and to show how the criminal justice system fails people with mental illnesses.

And that's really what the movie is about. Governor Rick Scott, privatized prison medical care, allegedly to save the state money. What is your investigation show actually happened? Did it save us any money? Did it improve the quality of healthcare in our prisons? It neither saved money nor improved the quality of healthcare, particularly when it came to mental healthcare.

One of the things that ended up happening is the Department of Corrections prior to this, before bringing in private companies to handle the health care needs, the state was doing it themselves. The state would hire nurses and doctors and psychiatrists, and they would staff it. Instead, they freelanced it out to a private contractor. Before they financed it out to a private contractor, the suicide rate at prisons in Florida was much lower. It was better than it was. And then afterwards, because mental health care was not prioritized because of a lot of failures within the Department of Corrections, as well as these new companies that they brought in, the rate of suicide increased.

Overall, the health care of inmates is considered below average to poor. And I realize for a lot of people at home, you begin to think to yourself, well, you don't care. These are criminals. They should be treated terribly and why are we even providing them healthcare? The truth is, in the United States of America, the only group of people, the only group of people entitled to healthcare are prisoners. That is a protected right that prisoners have and they're supposed to receive quality

healthcare. That's not what they're getting in for. And also you get into the competence crisis in this documentary, which is to say that there's a lot of people languishing in jails or even in prisons who are deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. So they're just kind of stuck there in languishing indefinitely in some cases. I mean, isn't it our responsibility as a society if we were going to in prison, these people to take care of them. And in that regard, you have a stat in this doc that just blew me away, Jim,

about this privatization of prison health care. Since 2018, this according to Jim DeFeedy's new documentary We're House, the life and death of Tristan Murphy, a company called Centurion of Florida has been paid over 1.5 billion with a B dollars to provide health care to the state's 80,000 inmates. Is there any transparency or accountability? Do we know how that money is being spent? Do we

know what we're getting for our money, Jim? The state does its own internal auditing. I've never seen. Yeah, so rest assured, that's fine. You'll be happy to know, Billy, that in the future, it will not cost taxpayers 1.5 billion. Their new contract now projects that they will be paid about 2.4 billion. Oh, what a relief. So what the healthcare in our prison system lacks in quality, it more than makes up for in cost, apparently. And let me.

Bill, let me just, just real quick, I want to go back to the point you made at the outset about the competency crisis. And I just want to explain that because it's really important. And that's where the title of the documentary comes from, Warehouse. So let's say that you're someone with a mental illness and you're arrested and taken to jail. More than likely what's going to happen is

you're not going to make bail, you're probably going to be acting out. And so local jails, let's take Miami date out of it because they're doing a little bit better. But the rest of the state, if you're arrested and have a mental illness, you are almost certainly going to end up in a solitary confinement cell.

Because it's easier to put you in an isolation cell where you can scream and cry out and refuse the shower or eat or defecate on the walls. You can do all of that in a private cell. But the one thing that becomes clear is the worst thing in the world, every expert agrees on this. The worst thing in the world you can do with someone who suffers from schizophrenia or a serious mental illness is to isolate them. And according to the state, what happens is you end up, let's say this person, in the case of

Tristan Murphy, the judge in his case found that he was mentally incompetent to proceed. In other words, he did not have the men aware with all to assist him as own defense. And so therefore, they found him mentally incompetent to proceed. And he's supposed to be sent within 15 days to a state hospital where they will balance out his meds, try to get him on meds, even him out so that they can then ship him back to court where more than likely he'll just bleed guilty. In the case of Tristan Murphy, on his first arrest, he was in for 70, 80 days, more, I think. But the second arrest that he was on, he was in an isolation cell by himself for more

than 500 days, almost two years in a cell with no one no interactions no people just an isolation cell where it was locked up 23 out of 24 hours a day that was his life for more than 500 days before he got sent to the state prison where he committed suicide and you can begin to wonder is being held for 500 plus days in an isolation cell part of the problems that ended up leading to his suicide when he entered state custody at the state prison just west of Miami. He was only at the state prison west of Miami for less than 60 days, but in that time,

they failed to diagnose him, they failed to give him the proper medication on a regular basis, they failed to recognize, even though there are notes, the medical records all show that he was at a psychotic state hearing voices, talking about the man with no face And every in me at the facility who interacted with him was scared to death of him because they saw his mental illness and they realized He was not right Jim we're running out of time

But we buried the lead here. I have a lot of questions But what did he do? What was he locked up for? He's not a murderer. He's not a child rapist. What was he in jail for, Jim? He was sent to prison on a littering charge. In a psychotic episode, he had driven his pickup truck to the Charlotte County jail. He was off his meds. Clearly it was a cry for help. He took his pickup truck. There's a small retention pond right next to the jail. He got out of the truck and rolled it into the retention pond and walked away in front of a group of deputies. Rather than see that as a cry for help, rather than understand that he was in a psychotic state and needed

hospitalization and treatment, they put him in jail and charge him with littering and in Florida, littering of more than 500 pounds, which is obviously a pickup truck as more than 500 pounds, is a third degree felony. And after 500 plus days in an isolation cell, he quit guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison and 60 days later, he killed himself. People have to watch this documentary because I didn't have a chance to ask you about, you know, I mean, emails that you obtained

from Centurion, this private prison healthcare company that seemed to admit that the system very much failed this guy that he was supposed to be getting psychiatric help at the time that they sent him out to do yard work. And I just have to ask you in our last 60 seconds, Jim, the question that Tristan's mother asked, why did they give a man with well documented in the prison records, in fact, mental health issues with documented past attempts at suicide and self harm.

They gave him a chainsaw, which was ultimately the weapon that he used to commit suicide with. How did that happen? Nobody talks to each other. The medical staff doesn't talk to their correction officers, they don't talk to the counselors. Nobody talks to each other because they claim they're all overworked, understaffed, underpaid. The Whitney of excuses that come from the bureaucracy.

I will tell you that we did obtain some emails that revealed the truth as to where they failed. Publicly, the inspector general for the Department of Corrections absolved the Department of Corrections of any wrongdoing and said that there were no administrative violations. Even though we got our hands on an email that clearly details all of the administrative violations that they conducted. But the state has decided to try to cover that up as best they can. That's why. But to go one last thing, people should care about this because the prevalence of mental illness is rampant in this country. You may not be mentally ill, but you may have a family member or a friend. And if they end up in this

system where there is little hope for them to receive the type of care and treatment, and instead are just being crushed under a criminal justice model that says better to convict and send someone in prison. And let me make a further point. If that doesn't affect you, if you're not worried about yourself or your family or your loved ones ending up in the same trap, all of these people, unless they commit suicide, all of these people are going to get out one day. And if you're not getting treatment for the people who are mentally ill in prisons, when they get out, what do you think's going to happen? It's not a good story. For public safety

purposes, they need to do better because all of those people, most of those people are going to get out one day and beyond the streets. We're housed the life and death of Tristan Murphy from investigative reporter and documentarian Jim DeFeedy premieres Wednesday October 25th. See it streaming at cbsmyami.com. Jim DeFeedy, thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Billy. Always a pleasure. Thank you, guys. Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Roy. Yeah. You put down a tombstone, actually.

It's going to be on the Florida Democrats tombstone. I'll tell you that right now. You tattooed that on somebody's neck. Like the poor chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, Nikki Fried, who I liked very much, I really do. The distinguished chairwoman. Yeah, Spina, which you actually wrote an opt-ed on medium involving Nikki Fried and the Democrats

now here going to cut her. Yeah, it pained me to write it, but truth be told, if this involved Republicans, I wouldn't have to. The Democrats would be rightfully indignant and calling them out at every opportunity, but instead they remain silent and kind of put their collective heads in the sand. And that silence is hypocrisy, cowardice, and complicity. And I will not be silent. I will not be a hypocrite. I will not be a coward. And I will not be complicit. What happened Roy back in May of 2022, thanks to Doug Hanks, the outstanding reporter who covers Miami-Dade

County at the Herald. We learned that Miami, Dade Mayor Daniela Levine Kava, a Democrat, was in Qatar on an unannounced free trip to tour World Cup soccer stadiums that were built by forced labor of immigrant workers, what human rights organizations called modern day slavery, that resulted in between 400 and 500 deaths. And this luxurious all night,

all expense paid junk it, including round trip business class, airfare, meals, transportation accommodations, at the Ritz Carlton Doha, which cost over $10,000 a person, was paid for by Qatar, a notoriously anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic regime, and alleged financier of terrorism in Israel that does business with a communist Cuban government. Like checks a lot of boxes that Democrats and my amians should be rightfully pissed about. And that's the thing what we've been reminded about Roy is that Qatar has been essentially Hamas headquarters since they were thrown out of Syria.

And I mean, they've been thrown out of everywhere. And then in the Middle East and the Arab world, because they are a terrorist organization, but they have received aid and comfort in the form of accommodations, office space, and over a billion dollars in cash and prizes from the Cattari authoritarian regime. And it turns out that Danielle Living only be called wasn't alone was other democrats my me the commissioners can hardman all over Gilbert my me commissioner christine king also was out of the as the party remember he's a republican but he is under arrest right now the usual suspects in this situation but here's the thing also along for the trip was the man who arranged it

who was mayor levin coovas political consultant and campaign manager Christian Overt. But he wasn't on her delegation list because Overt says, I wasn't there as the mayor's employee, I was there as a registered foreign agent for Qatar. So it turns out that this guy, who is a one of these kind of political consultant characters who works for by the way in this current cycle at least a dozen Miami-Dade Democrats and a handful of Republicans, including Dan Galber who's been on the show Sabina Kovov, Miami Commissioner, Lauren Book, the Senate Minority Leader, Michael Griko, a mayoral candidate,

a litany of county commissioners. They're represented by a guy who is a registered foreign agent for what is essentially Hamas headquarters. Hamas effectively planned and greenlit the terrorist attacks against Israel from the comfort of Qatar, of Doha, where Daniel Livingkava and friends went on this all expense paid junk it so i ask respectfully and frustratedly the chairwoman niki freed of the phoenix democratic party that

the party should demand that living kava hardamon gillbert king and any others return the guitarie blood money approximately ten thousand dollars each in the form of donations to local charities from their personal campaign or political funds not public money and that living kava book pizzo govo actually gantt all over gilbert michael greeko and all the

democrats were working with over to demand that he do the same and his representation of guitar and if they refuse they should end their affiliation with him because democrats need to make a choice. Florida or Qatar, and that's the thing. There is no moral high ground here, Roy. As long as Qatar's blood money is poisoning this party, because I wanted to leave this show on a happy note, Roy. Yeah, good job.

Cause I wanted to leave this show on a happy note, right? Yeah, good job.