The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: PornHub Pulls Out

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

The book bans in Florida is increasing. Katie Blankenship, director of PEN America Florida, gives Billy Corben more information about that and shares with us a victory in the fight against book banning. Maria Cruz is chairperson of End the Corruption and is petitioning to remove Coral Gables mayor Vince Lago from office. She tells us why. Plus...the Wheel of Despair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. 29 years later, Cuervo is still going strong. Family owned from the start, same family, same land. Now's a good time to enjoy Cuervo. The tequila that invented tequila. Go to Cuervo.com to shop tequila or visit a store near you. Cuervo, now's a good time. Trademarks owned by Becle, SAB the CV, copyright 2024, Proximo.

Jersey City, New Jersey, please drink responsibly. Florida is the number one state in the union for cost of living, for insurance, for inflation, and number one in book bands. Good news, Roy. Opening up with good news, always. According to PEN America, book bands in public K through 12 schools continue to intensify in the 22-23 school year. PEN America recorded 3,362 instances of books banned, which is an increase of 33% from the 2021-22 school year. And over 40% of all book bans occurred in the free state of Florida.

Katie Blankenship is the director of Pen America Florida. I like clarifies there that Florida is somehow still a part of America. That's good. Katie, you are fresh, fresh-ish from a almost two-month-old victory now in Escambia County in the Panhandle near Pensacola. You have been on the front lines of battling the book bands to keep the free state of Florida a little closer to free-ish. Can you first tell us about what happened in Escambia County, what this victory was and what it means?

Sure. So this lawsuit was filed about a year ago, and it has to do with the rise of book challenges that we saw that led to book bans across the state of Florida. And as you said, it's becoming the largest book ban in the country by 40%. Escambia County was one of the counties

sort of leading the unfortunate charge in this. And that was due to some individual objections, mostly by one person, but objections in the hundreds that were blatantly discriminatory. You know, when you pull the actual objections themselves, it says, why do you want to pull this book? Well, there's an LGBTQ character, it's indoctrination. There's a black protagonist, It's indoctrination.

There's a black protagonist. It's indoctrination. It was that blatantly discriminatory. So we filed suit. The school board of Scambia County filed to dismiss the case. And it's a tricky case. It's first amendment and K through 12 education. Those are not clear cut issues in the judiciary. We don't have a lot of great case precedent on it. We felt at the time that we were going to bring this case, but we'll see. We had a resounding win from Judge Kent Weatherill, who's a Trump appointee, and just said, these are extremely viable First Amendment claims. The case has to go forward. What's most important, I think, was from the bench he ruled, you may have seen the

news the state is making this argument called the government speech doctrine. Ashley Moody loves this. All right, Ashley Moody loves to file briefs, amicus briefs in support. It says, oh, book bands are public, are government speech. They're immune from First Amendment scrutiny. It's absolute hogwash. It's just garbage town. What she's saying is that there is a thing called the government speech doctrine, because the government has to have a perspective sometime when it speaks. Like if the government says, hey, recycle, that's a viewpoint. It has to be able to have that. It also has to be able to say it. And in those contexts, it's immune from First Amendment scrutiny of saying it can support a viewpoint. What the state is trying to say is, oh, we get to do this when we pull books. When we curate a library, that's the state speaking.

So when you go check out the blue as I, Billy, that's the state telling you no or yes, that we, you know, what we're curating this as government speech. It's craziness. It would be an open invitation to more censorship. And that's what Judge Wetherill said and said, no way. So the case continues. Katie, last month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said both, that was quite a yeah. That was my type of yeah.

That was a Roy yeah. Holy shit, that was just dripping. It was oozing from its pores that yeah. It's been a hell of a few weeks. That was a loaded loaded. Yeah. Yeah I got some bones to pick with the Santas right now. Yeah you you can bones You know me and everybody else me and everybody else in the state Me and every other Floridian Roy and Katie can say more with one syllable than anybody

Anybody I've ever known you can say in paragraphs Wow. Holy shit. Katie, last month, the governor in one breath referred to the debunks the book ban hoax, I think was the headline of the of the press release, but then at the same time said, well, there is some abuse of this legislation. And you you know some individuals who are using it to score political points and who could have predicted that but everybody from the outset of these clearly unconstitutional laws. So let me ask you if the book ban is a hoax why are there so many books being banned from Florida schools and why was the governor calling on the legislature

to clear the mess up that they made? Yeah, those are great questions, Billy. Those are the questions that I have. So that press conference, basically what happens to DeSantis and Manny Diaz Jr., or commissioner of education, have this press conference. Again, just as you said, under this banner of book bans are a

hoax, right? But then in the same breath, asking the legislature to take steps to unwind exactly what DeSantis started. All of this started with Don't Say Gay and Stop Woke in 2022, even though those laws are not supposed to apply to library books. They're intentionally vague, overbroad, and misapplied. And then we have 1069 from last year, which is why we see thousands of books coming out from Orange County and Escambia still. But now it's 1069 and they're pulling the dictionaries. But this was to Santa speak for me of an admission, right? I mean, you're never going to get a real admission. You're going to get gaslighting, blaming, passing the buck, all of these things. But what I heard in that press conference was the first admission of, you know, oh shit, this has gone a little too far. We need to do something. Now, again, he's never going to admit that he's the one

who's caused the problem along with everyone who's been supporting this agenda of censorship, but that's what it is. But what's disappointing about that is, you know, when I first heard that, I was like, okay, you know, it's to Santa speak, but maybe we're going to have some actual progress here. There will be maybe a bit of common sense that comes back to top Florida leadership. I was dead wrong about that. So last week's is a bad bet. Katie. Yeah, it was a bad Florida. Florida is immune to reason insanity. I should have known so much better.

But I think it's just last week, the Florida Department of Education announces a working group that is going to instruct Florida media specialists, our librarians in our public schools about how to comply with all of these laws. Now you know, just guess, three of the six, this will blow your mind. Three of the six members are Moms for Liberty members. Is he? Is he? Yeah.

Mind not blown. Florida rarely shocks me, but regularly disappoints me. So. Oh. Okay. I felt that 100%. By the way, I should have asked you, how many Moms for Liberty members are on this committee.

That's why we should have asked. We should have started there. That's how we should have let it. And wonderfully, one of them is infamous for, if you saw the pornographic goblins rear end that had to be covered up with shorts. Indian River went in and actually drew on books to cover up a little goblin's bottom. So that's who we have advising our media specialists. And do you think they told us the media specialists? Do you think they're planning on sharing the information about the recent Don't Say Gay settlement that says you can't discriminate and pull books off just because it's LGBTQ plus content or characters? Hell no. So it's just, it's more of the same.

At this point, I don't even know why he made the backwards admission because it's just clearly, it rolls on. And this isn't an example of the, you know, law of unintended consequences. This was a law with these intended consequences. Like you said, it was intended to be vague. It was intended to scare people into thinking

that they were gonna lose their jobs or worse, be arrested or something. And that is exactly the kind of confusion and tumult they wish to cause because they assumed that when in doubt, ban a book. Maybe we need as a committee that instead of banning the entire dictionary, we should just ban individual words from the dictionary. There's a lot of profanity in the dictionary. There's a lot of sex in the dictionary, a lot of blasphemy in the dictionary. You can't stop with the dictionary. We just need to remove all of these terms from our lexicon in general and completely rework our culture to be, never mention sex, procreation, absolutely anything.

There's just no line to what they're looking at and what they're willing to ban. It is literally getting back to, it's just this combination of discriminatory intent that's against LGBTQ, that's against BIPOC, and now it's against sexual expression, sex, the existence of sexual expression identity at all. So let me ask you about this, in reference to this backwards admission, in reference to what you said, the settlement in the don't say gay case, which we talked about on this

show last week. Did the legislature take any action per the governor's suggestion in February to clarify the book banning bullshit or the abuse of the book banning? As you said, there's like one person who's responsible for the vast majority of book bans in particular counties. Of course, it's not parental choice. Parental choice is when I get to choose what my kids are exposed to, not when one parent gets to choose what all children in all schools and all grades are exposed to. Also, incidentally, with the Don't Say Gay bill, it was supposed to only apply to K through three or K through five or whatever and then all of a sudden it went all the way to 12 which is exactly the slippery slope that everybody said was going to happen. I guess my question is did the

legislature take any action to clarify the book banning bullshit and how does this settlement in the don't say gay lawsuit apply here to book bans, I mean? Well, let's take the last part first. So the settlement is extremely relevant to where we are with the bans in regards to how Don't Say Gay and Stop Woke have been applied. So just as you said, you know, that these laws are intentionally vague to create a culture of fear and to chill our speech, right?

That's very intentional. Now, if you need any example of like when somebody says, well, how do you know that? Okay, this settlement will tell you everything you need to know. What the plaintiff's lawyers asked for and received, which is clarification that don't say gay does not apply to books.

We cannot ban books because of not wanting to include LGBTQ plus themes or characters, that we can say gay in or characters, that we can say gay in the classroom, that teachers can talk about their families, students can talk about their families, we can be and say gay, right? We're not forcing people into the closet. That is what activists, parents, teachers, school officials have been asking the state to clarify since 2022, begging DeSantis, the legislators, the speaker, all of these folks have been,

please clarify this, does it actually apply this way? And they refused. So if they didn't want this to be vague and over applied, they sure as hell would have taken steps before two weeks ago in 2024. But the law is completely applicable to what we're seeing now and needs to be, as per the

settlement terms, instruction given to all school districts. We'll see how that goes. Did the legislature do anything? They passed a bill that's called 1285. It's an education bill. It's a pretty sweeping education bill. Most of it, I'm not a fan of it all because it just continues to sort of reinstate, reincorporate terms of 1069, which is the book banning, statuting, expansion of Don't Say Gay.

It does include one clause that is a common sense clause that basically restricts the number of non-parents who can make objections. But the problem, Billy, is that that's not why we're seeing all the objections right now. It's the law and the books that the legislators passed, and they're doing nothing to fix what they did. 1069 is why the dictionary is banned. Katie, we're out of time. Katie Blankenship, director, Pen America, Florida.

Find her at pen.org. Thanks so much for being here. Hope you can come back soon. Nice to see you here. Great to be with you. Unfortunately, we'll have more to talk about, I'm so sure. Yeah. I'm afraid that's true. I'm afraid that's true. You're goddamn right meatball

Back in November of 2022 we released a documentary called God forbid The sex scandal that brought down a dynasty went on to become the most watched doc in Hulu history. But it was almost the documentary that never was. It's not exactly true. I'm being a bit hyperbolic. But we actually, this is our, because Miami, how it started, how it's going. In October of 2022, we got sued, really. We got sued by a guy named Gordon Bello,

AKA Jesus Fernandez Jr. He was a former aide to county commissioners, Audrey Edmondson and then Kian Hardiman. And he was a friend of the former pool boy Jean Carlo Grande who got involved in alleged cuckold threesome with Jerry Falwell jr. and his wife Becky Falwell the president and first lady of Liberty the largest Christian University in the world. Has a pretty good football team apparently. Go Flames, the Liberty Flames, they are. That was dripping, dripping.

That was dripping. So this guy was a friend of his, he hadn't seen the documentary yet, but he sued us for defaming him in a documentary that he hadn't seen yet, and he asked the judge in Miami-Dade County to block the release of the documentary. That's very funny, a preemptive defamation suit.

That's funny. Yes, and no less he wanted to enjoin us or prevent us from being able to premiere the movie, which was premiering the following week when he tried to get this injunction. And so Hulu Disney and our company, Rack and Tour, we had to get together and get lawyers to try to fight this thing. And not only did the documentary premiere on schedule on November 1st, but in 2023, last year, Gordon Bellow, aka Jesus Fernandez Jr.

voluntarily dismissed his totally bogus complaint. That's how it started and how it's going is just this past week, a judge granted what's called an anti-SLAPP judgment, which meant that we fought back and said this lawsuit, what they call a slap, it's a strategic lawsuit against public participation, hence anti-slap, and he now has to pay 100% of our attorney's fees. Yeah, you usually can't beat Disney attorneys, you know? Well, usually.

Usually. Usually. I mean, they settled with Ron DeSantis, which I was very disappointed in. That's a bit more complicated. Usually. Usually. Usually. I mean they settle with Ron DeSantis, which I was very disappointed in. That's a bit more complicated. We should get into that next week, because they settled the state case. They haven't settled the federal First Amendment case yet, but I will tell you, when you owe Disney six figures, that's not a good situation to be in. But I will tell you, bringing up Ron DeSantis... Crystal fascist, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, that's BS. No, totally, totally BS. Good segue into this week's Wheel of Despair. Okay. I feel like we need a song for that, or intro to it. How about we just do the sad trombone? I'll do it. That's a good segue into this week's Wheel of Despair.

You didn't have it ready, did you? No, I gotta search for the thing. Roy just turned around and stuck his butt right up to the microphone and just tooted right in the mic. Right there. What was that? Rrrrr an out of tune shofar. Perfect. And that, what a perfect segue into this week's Wheel of Despair.

Okay, here we got the topics over here on my phone. We got Dumb it Down New College. What did Diddy do? What didn't Diddy do? What didn't Diddy do? Well, he did a lot. A lot of, a lot of, a lot of mind. Pornhub pulls out, speaking of what did Diddy do. Oh no, speaking of good segues, oh shit.

Skip It. Skip It. And Too Many Realtors. The Miami story. All right, here we go. The Miami story. All right, here we go. Spin the wheel. It landed on Skip It. Should we?

I don't know what the attendance was, but I think it's pretty brave, gutsy really for the Miami Marlins, the team with the second worst attendance in Major League Baseball last season, to run an opening day ad campaign with the slogan, Skip It! Yes, I know the manager's name is Skip, I get it. And I get that the shtick is like, do you have other plans on opening day? Skip it.

But first of all, plans is plural, you wouldn't skip it, you would skip them, but let's set aside the grammatical error here. I was driving on the 836 on the Dolphin Expressway and there was a giant billboard aside one of these buildings and it said, Marlin's opening day, skip it. But that's all I really saw, was Mar Marlins opening day, skip it. But that's

all I really saw was Marlins opening day and skip it. That was my takeaway driving by and you know an 836 is a major expressway. I was driving by at about three or four miles per hour on the 836. You read the entire billboard letter by letter. But still the takeaway was Marlins opening day Skip it keep in mind that the Marlins have the cheapest tickets in Major League Baseball currently averaging at $13 worth Every penny of it. I'll tell you I think I'm going to the game Oh, wait, which is it? Which is it right? Well, it's went to the game because you know, it's this is Aaron on Friday Let's spin the wheel, right?

It landed on Pornhub pulls out. So Ron DeSantis signed some new laws this past week, one of which requires age restrictions or I should say age verification for porn sites like Pornhub and certain social media restrictions where you basically have to prove that you are of a certain age, obviously 18 or over to access porn sites. Not a bad law, by the way, not a bad idea.

I think seven other states have done it, including Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Utah, Montana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. Red. There's just one problem, though. I think in about six of those states, Pornhub has pulled out. For whatever reason, I don't know if the age verification process is too onerous, if the penalties for not abiding by it are too, you know, severe.

Also, there's there's certain First Amendment issues around providing certain data to these these companies. And Pornhub just basically says it's not worth it. And people in Texas, for example, don't have access to Pornhub. So sorry, Roy. But it looks like, but it looks, sorry, Fuentes. He's not here, right? So yeah.

He's sick. Yeah. So it's just, well, he's sitting at home watching Pornhub before they pull out. But so it, there's no word yet on whether or not Pornhub will be leaving the great penis-shaped state

of Florida yet, but it's a very real risk. Also Roy, they anticipate some First Amendment challenges to the part of the law that basically social media is banned for everyone under 14. And I believe between the ages of 14 and 16, if you have a parent's permission, you can get a social media account. And that's for everybody using TikTok for income. That's for anybody using anything for,

I mean, any social media sites for any reason. And these are the ones that they say are addictive and damaging to kids because you scroll down. It's the forever scroll, the doom scrolling that just keep going on forever, forever, and ever, and ever. The scroll of despair, if you will. Speaking of which, shall we spin the wheel?

(*toy clattering*) Eliana, what did Diddy do? (*jazz music did Diddy do? Diddy's in some trouble. Everybody heard the news about his homes in LA and Miami, homeland security, executing simultaneous raids on both mansions. One right here, actually, right over the causeway from where we are right now. And in what is apparently, we still don't know very much about it, but is apparently

an investigation into sex trafficking. And what's even less interesting about this is at the same time, here's the headline. This one is a little bit aggravating because the headline read that Sean Combs accused Mule quote unquote was arrested at Miami Miami Airport on cocaine and marijuana charges. Here's the thing about this. This guy is a former Syracuse basketball player, Brendan Paul. That's what I call March Madness. And the guy had what they referred to as I was waiting for that, contraband in his personal luggage, which was a little bit of cocaine and marijuana gummies, like candy, edibles.

Well, it's a little bit of cocaine is probably going to get him in trouble. But that's not a drug mule though. That's not a drug mule. That's a kid with some cocaine and some marijuana edibles on a private jet in Miami-Opalaca Airport. What I'm saying is right now, you want to start going through jets at Miami-Opalaca Airport. There's a lot more cocaine than what that guy had. Sure, like this guy seems to be kind of dragged into the greater scandal happening here with Diddy, and this is such a memeable

scandal too. This is like a made this is such a memeable scandal too. This is like a made for TikTok scandal, all of this. The one person I feel bad for is this poor schmuck, Brendan Paul, who is out on $2,500 bail. Is that a drug mule or some sort of like, you know, $2,500. Seems like a light bond. Yeah, come on now.

Adios, Mule. How do we end this segment. Adios, mio. How do we end this segment? Adios, mio. Coral Gables mayor Vince Lago is Miami Dade's second greasiest mayor. I think you know after who Roy. So Vince Lago is like if Francis Suarez was a mogwai and you got him wet and he fired out those hairballs where they get kind of like meaner and dumber and then you fed them both after midnight.

That's like Francis and Vince Lago. Oh man. Vince and I have had our moments he's even gone on Spanish TV to talk about me. Billy Corbin. And accused me of being paid by the firefighters. You remember that bullshit? He said I was paid for play. I was paid by the firefighters to come and criticize him or whatever nonsense he was

talking. Well, it has not gone well for Vince Logo in Coral Gables. He is no longer in the majority on the city commission. And now that he's out of the majority, he seems to think that government is anarchy just because he's voting on the two side of the three to two situation going on in Coral Gables now and he's not able to run the place with an iron fist.

And most importantly, he's pretty damn corrupt I would say. And to that end, Maria Cruz, the chairperson of the political committee and the corruption has launched a recall effort to get Vince Lago removed from office. Maria is joining us now live from a fountain in Coral Gables, it looks like. Maria thanks so much for being here. Let me ask you, why now and why a recall against Vince Lago? The reason that we're doing this is because he's so out of control that we cannot allow

it to continue. The abuse, the harassment, the bullying, the abuse of power has to stop. So can you get a little bit more specific? Cause it's my understanding that you and Vince Lago were pretty tight or were pretty close. I don't know if you supported him in his last runner two for mayor. I say runner two because the second time he ran unopposed and was automatically reelected.

But I understand you were either a friend or a supporter. And what happened? What was the falling out between you two? For many years, I was friends with his wife's family. I consider him better than a friend. We had a group of people that met with him every two weeks or so, always before the commission meetings. And we discussed what was going to happen. And he always appeared to listen. He told us many times that he didn't do business in Coral Gables, that even though he had a building business, that he did not take advantage of his commission seat

to make money. And believe it or not, I believed him. So Coral Gables, for people who are not familiar with Miami-Dade County, is one of the 34 municipalities. It is where the University of Miami is located. A lot of people have trouble believing that the University of Miami is not actually in the city of Miami, though it is in the county of Dade, but it's located in Coral Gables, which is a very beautiful, very quiet, certainly compared to other areas of

Miami, a more affluent community, but it's more of a, almost more of a town than it is a city. Vince Lago is one of these real estate hucksters, Roy. He's one of these guys who, like Francis Suarez, likes to exploit his public position for private profit. And whenever a new business comes into the city, he's like, well, I should invest, or you should use my company to help you build out your space or your location.

He's the guy that was renting office space to Rishi Kapoor, the disgraced developer who has now tainted multiple municipalities, the city of Miami, Miami Beach, now Coral Gables, where this guy is now under investigation, being sued by the SEC, being sued for fraud by multiple people. He was renting empty office space from Vince Lago and Vince Lago's partner,

who was the cousin of who? Who do you think was Vince Lago's partner? Of course. Francis Suarez. So empty office space, Roy. Paying a premium for empty office space. I don't know what you think that sounds like, but that sounds like something extra special to me was cooking in Coral Gables. Maria, what is on your list of abuses of power and kind of anvils that broke the camel's back here,

that why does he gotta go right now? He began, when he was running for the second term, he wanted to get the commission to be all 100% on his side. And he supported and sponsored two commissioners, two people that wanted to be elected with his support and the support of other people that were already in the commission. And he went around bullying the people that dared to have a sign

for the two that he didn't support. And he made it very clear to me that if I voted for them, I was wrong. You have no idea how many older people were told to take down those signs so they would pay the price. But let me tell you, going back to why one of the things that really, really concerned me was when once he got elected on a post, he started going to events where he, uh, ribbon cutting events where he represented the city and took the,

the time to announce that his company, BDI, was the one that did the work, that it was his company. He made it clear that he was working in the city, and there was no doubt in my mind that what he had told me before was not the truth. So, and you think him working in the city is an obvious conflict of interest, I imagine. Of course, working in the city, but it goes beyond that. If you talk to people that work in the development services building,

they would, several of them have made it very clear that when somebody is a developer, a big contributor to his campaign needs assistance, he walks into the building, and he introduces them to the workers, and he expects them to treat him better than anybody else. And if he can't, he sent one or his assistants to do it. He's a mayor for hire, you basically get him as your expediter to walk you through the process and the bureaucracy

and logistics of opening a business in a local government, which can be very convoluted and expensive. And you mentioned earlier, Maria, that he was going around and, I don't know, harassing is the word you'd use, but he was cajoling, you said, elderly residents into taking down campaign signs from their lawn for candidates that he did

not support. And to that end, disturbing headline at politicalcortadito.com yesterday from Elaine Devalle, Vince Lago recall canvassers stopped, harassed by Coral Gables police. I think there's even an instance here where one of them may have been arrested. These are the folks that you're working with to sign a petition to get a recall of Coral Gables Mayor Vinslago onto a ballot for a special election. What the hell is going on with the police in Coral Gables? Well, Vinslago has been very good at convincing city employees that he is the one that's in charge.

Even though we do not have a strong major form of government, people think that if they upset him, if they don't do what he tells them to do, that he will either send court enforcement out to find some violation or he will delay. He will get their permits, whatever they need delayed. And this is why people are so afraid. And during the campaign, he will go knock on doors and tell people, tell the elderly, he really, really worked on the elderly, that you need to take that sign down. And then he will bring the signs that other people he supported to replace the signs that

they had. You may recall, Roy, when I went to Coral Gables to speak at a city commission meeting, I think it was late last year. One of the things I was saying is that the city of Coral Gables, the city beautiful as it's known, is turning into the cesspool of Miami, the city of Miami, which is, you know, you have Joe Carollo, Francis Suarez, you know, weaponizing government against its own residents, business owners, citizens. You don't hire me. You don't hire my cousin. You know, you don't support us in our electoral, you don't hire me, you don't hire my cousin, you don't support us in our electoral and political efforts, you're persona non grata, and we're going to target you

unfairly, unconstitutionally. And Roy, when you have a community, Miami Dade, we are a minority majority. Almost everybody, statistically here in this community, has fled some place else where they had to deal with an oppressive government, where they had to deal with political persecution. Many people who were political prisoners, who went from prisons, from gulags, to the freedom of Miami and the United States. And now you have these local governments acting like tinpot dictators

in some third world banana republic. And Coral Gables especially, which is again known as a pretty beautiful small city, has grown completely out of control. Do you attribute that Maria entirely to Vince Lago? Are there other people responsible here? Or is just if you think if you get rid of him you've cut out the cancer? I for some time I've been saying that we've become Miami West. Because of the way things have turned from a very polite gentle community that you know you had an election, the losers and the winners would shake hands and everything would be good.

To now, where he refused to admit that his candidate is lost, where he would sit with his back to the new lady that was elected, where he would stop them from talking is horrific. What we're going through, I say that those of us that came from Cuba are living a second time in Cuba because he does not respect the people. He's very abusive. If you watch the commission meetings, not the last two meetings,

because for some reason he's doing a little less abusive, but he spends the whole meeting looking at his phone, texting, answering, and he doesn't pay attention to the people. I think he's probably behaving a little kinder and gentler because he's afraid of you and your recall effort in this petition making its way around the city beautiful. No, let me tell you something else so you see the extent of this.

Somebody has complained about me to the ethics commission. One of his political consultants has filed a complaint against me. I'm gonna have to deal with that. The only thing that happens is that now I'm the head of the committee to recall him. Other than that, the item that they're complaining about happened four months ago and they did not file them.

Maria Cruz is the chairperson of the political committee and the corruption behind the effort to recall Coral Gables, Mayor Vince Lago. Maria, good luck to you. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you very much. It has been 11 weeks since Miami City Manager Art Noriega promised a full accounting of the conflict of interest scandal involving his misappropriation of millions of tax dollars to his wife's furniture company. We still haven't got it, Roy. And it's been two weeks since he said that he was

going to give us an interview. He was going to sit down one-on-one with me and answer all of my questions and he wasn't gonna run away from it. I'm sure you got that memo. I will tell you, that hasn't happened yet. Bunch of empty chairs here like Elijah on Passover, okay? Nothing, nothing's, he's not here. Shalom. Donde esta? Art Noriega.

So I'm going to keep reminding everybody every damn week that he does not come on this program, that he does not give me this interview, that he promised me publicly. It's not a Miami moment, it's a Miami movement is really what it is. And that is today's Miami moment. Cocaine's. Our release report to the media. I'll meet with them individually. I'll sit with Billy Corbin across the table and I'll present everything to him.

I have no issue with that at all, by the way. Billy Corbin to me is someone that clearly has a lot of followers and a lot of people that are interested in what he says. I'm happy to give him the information. I'm happy to sit with him. I'll answer whatever questions he has. I have a long history with Billy Corbin.

So I won't, I'm not hiding from it, and I won't run from it. You are a vile little man.