The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - #BecauseMiami: The Miami of Yesterday is the America of Today

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Billy Corben is back with some more news that will most likely make you sad or angry. Julie K. Brown of the Miami Herald joins the program to talk about the embarrassing results that came from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi releasing the Jeffery Epstein files. John Morales comes on to talk about the DOGE and Trump Administration's cuts to the workforce at NOAA. Plus....the City of Miami and its commissioners are uninsurable. Billy will give you a guess as to why that is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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proximocuervo.com please drink responsibly Cuervo that invented tequila. proximalquervo.com. Please drink responsibly. Quervo. Attorney General Bondi says this is just phase one. She's promising to open the government files on Jeffrey Epstein, but despite the hype, most of what she released so far

had been made public years ago. Attorney General Pam Bondi went on TV to trumpet the release of this material, teasing a big reveal. What you're gonna see, hopefully tomorrow, is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information. But much of the material had been circulating in the public domain for years, including pilot logs from Epstein's plane and his so-called black book of names and addresses. Several conservative media figures were given early access during a visit to the White House, showing off binders and posing for pictures, some later posting how underwhelmed they were. She knows that she's a liar. She knows she's not releasing any information that's actually

new in nature. It's just a bunch of propaganda. It's just a bunch of nonsense and red meat fodder to the base so that they can feel like our DOJ is less corrupt than the Biden DOJ. It's a big black guy. We were told that we were gonna clean up the deep state. We're getting rid of the deep state. We're firing all the corrupt officials at the DOJ, you guys. We're cleaning house at the FBI. And now it's just business as usual. Like we might as well just have the Biden appointees,

Merrick Garland and Christopher Wray right now, right? Because well, they didn't release the Epstein files. So what are we getting here? How is it any different so far than Christopher Wray and Merrick Garland? That was the voice of Florida woman and right-wing influencer Laura Loomer having a MAGA meltdown over this what it was called a complete disappointment, a fraud, a nothing burger release of the long promised Epstein files much fanfare by Trump's new attorney general, Florida woman, Pam Bondi. You have representative Annapolina Luna, Florida woman, a congresswoman from Florida, saying this is not what we are

the American people asked for and a complete disappointment. You've got Trump supporters, including Loomer, fuming, demanding AG Pam Bondi resign over this debacle. Steve Bannon calling it this Jeffrey Epstein file release, a fiasco by the Trump DOJ. This is, I got lots to say about this because I am as close to a public records absolutist as you can possibly find. Obviously there needs to be redactions to protect victims or minors or

national security. But otherwise, I think we're entitled to it all. And what was released here, as far as I can tell, is not only material that has been previously available for a great number of years, but it was actually less than what was previously released, because it was redacted and we had actually previously seen unredacted versions of some of the records that Pam Bondi released last week. So we're talking with Julie K. Brown, the famed investigative journalist from the Miami

Herald whose journalism ultimately led to, I guess I could say, the reprosecution or ultimately the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, who had been kind of let off scot-free prior to her revisiting this case and bringing it all up again. Julie, am I on the right track here? Let's start there. What was actually quote unquote released? What was the bombshell here from Pam Bondi

and the long promised Epstein files. Well the bombshell was that you know we have an attorney general that doesn't even understand the case file or the case that she's speaking about with on national television. I mean she she was saying days before that she had the so called file on her desk. Well, this case has spanned 20 years. There is no way that it would fit into one file she could fit on her desk,

even if she put it in a computer file somewhere. Some of those documents, you know, predate the time when, you know, probably a lot of these agencies even had them on a computer. So, you know, from the get go, I knew that this was going to be this was going to blow up in our face. I knew it was going to blow up in our face. And in fact, it did. And my real question is, though, are there any Epstein files?

What I mean by that is I've got a lot of questions, God knows. I don't know if there's any documents out there that can answer those questions. Right now, it feels like government buy and for the perennially online. Like this is sort of feeding, as Laura Loomer herself said, feeding like red meat to the base, but is there any material out there?

It might not even be at the FBI, it might very well be in Palm Beach here in the state of Florida. Are there any quote unquote Epstein files out there? There are, but let's just divide this up a little bit so that people understand. There's two aspects of this case. The one aspect that is valid is that there's only been

two people prosecuted involved in this sex trafficking operation. We know that there were other people involved, but we don't know how far the FBI went into trying to hold other people accountable besides Epstein and Maxwell. And it is valid to look at what they did or what they didn't do in order to hold people accountable for their crimes. Okay. That's one piece of it to look at their investigative files, which have not all been made public, to find out exactly what they did and what they didn't do. And perhaps there were some people in the government who were saying, you know, let's just drop this. I mean, we really don't know. The other half of it is this, you know, this life that this story has

taken on the internet, where people are making up things like there's a client list that hasn't been released. There's, you know, as if there is some deep state that is, has hidden all these secrets about, you know, people doing horrible crimes with children. I mean, it's been just so many stories out there that don't even have any grounding in any kind of truth at all. So we have two aspects of the case. And the aspect of the case that I try to focus on is the fact that there are files out there, FBI files. Some of them are right on the FBI's website. They have a place on their website, a portal called The Vault, and they've had thousands of

documents on there which anybody can click on. And in those files, it's a bunch of, you know, gibberish. It's numbers. It's, you know, big giant white outs. It's big giant blackouts. It's, there's just nothing, hardly anything that you can decipher from these files. They're meaningless. And there is a lawyer who has been working for Radar Online for probably about at least eight years trying to get the FBI to unredact these files. And he's been, you know, it's just been going nowhere. The justice department keeps making up different reasons why they don't want to, you know, unredact it.

So it's valid to get some of these records. Other agencies, by the way, have records in the Department of Homeland Security, which was responsible for monitoring who was on his plane when he came in from overseas. Those documents I've requested and they're all redacted. So there are many files that should be released at this point. But do we have files that list the names of all his so-called clients? I highly doubt it. I just don't think they exist. I've never heard anybody in the DOJ, the FBI, all the lawyers, you know, dozens and dozens of lawyers, all the victims, hundreds of victims.

I don't think anybody has heard that there exists something called the client list. It's a lot of misinformation that still has, you know, some element of truth to it in the sense that there are documents out there that should be released. Yeah, I was wondering, we know that this man was an evil, grotesque serial sex predator, not an outright pedophile. I do wonder like how much Pizza Gate is here, when you read some of this shit online

and you're like, let's go after the truth. And it's important, I'm a born skeptic, I ask questions for a living. I encourage everybody to ask questions. But when you get answers, you have to face facts and you have to accept reality at some point. And that was the big question, of course. Is there, the term client list,

we heard, I remember the term little black book when Gawker first released the phone book, which was one of the pieces of evidence in phase one here that Pam Pondy released last week. Something we had all seen unredacted, which now she has released redacted, which again is less information than we actually had before. And it was a phone book.

Like it was a rich guy meeting celebrities and other high net worth individuals out and about. And there wasn't necessarily anything nefarious about it. It's like he had Bono's cell number in there because he met Bono's somewhere. One time. It was also gathered by a Maxwell pretty much. Sitting through all these court cases as I have

and studying that as long as I have, his house people, men and women who worked in his households testified and gave statements to the effect that it was really Maxwell that put together that phonebook, that directory. And that it would be kept on a computer and then she would just update it, you know, just print it out, you know, and it included his hairdressers, his doctors, his landscapers, his electrician, the numbers for the various airlines that he used, American Airlines.

I mean, it ran the gamut, but it did include some very famous people. And, you know, by the way, some of the names of people suspected of being involved with these young girls has been released as a result of the Miami Herald suing to get some of these documents unsealed in the past. The Herald has spent an awful lot of time and money unsealing the case that actually ultimately led to, you know, Maxwell's prosecution

because there were a lot of details in there about what they did and how they did it. And it was all redacted and, you know, sealed, and we worked to get it unsealed. And we do know that there are some names out there that, you know, of course, all the men deny that they were involved. But, you know, it's not as if the names haven't been out there. Before we go, I want to know, right after this backlash occurred, Attorney General Pam Bondi went right back out

on the same TV channels and podcasts where she had previously gone off, gone out half-cocked, as you put it, talking about a case and a file she clearly knew nothing about, throwing the FBI under the bus, saying that she was misled, that she's demanding with a hard deadline the release of this material. She just said yesterday that the FBI has delivered, quote,

a truckload, end quote, of Epstein files after she laid down the law and all that. What do you make of that? Where's the truck? I mean, you know, come on. I mean, she's a former prosecutor. I mean, she's like, I just don't even understand it. First of all, if you're a former prosecutor and you understand the way these cases work,

you know that there's a lot of names in there, probably of victims. If for no other reason, just to be a good human being, you would wanna go through it somewhat yourself or work with the FBI hand in hand to make sure this is done properly. You don't just say, put the file on my desk, you know? And I don't know, I just don't... The only thing I can figure is,

this isn't done for the general public. This is done as giving their base more, their base just wants all this material, this deep state material and they have it in their heads that this was all a conspiracy and that the DOJ is involved and look I'm not saying the DOJ and the FBI didn't make mistakes with these cases they absolutely did but I don't think that this is a pizza gate situation I think that you know I think that you know we need to look at what happened so that it doesn't happen again.

Well one more thing I do want to remind the base before we go is that as we knew from before, in these documents released by Donald Trump's Attorney General, Pam Bondi, Trump's name itself was in Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs that were just, I should say, re-released last week, no less than seven times. So if the base is looking for some sort of

deep state conspiracy or, you know, billionaire international network of, you know, conspiracy or something, you know, the caller is inside the house. The caller is inside the White House. Julie K. Brown, before we go, one last thing. What is next? Like what in this story, like what should we be looking for?

What should we be asking for? Where is the mystery? What is it that we don't know that we need to know about Jeffrey Epstein? Well, we need to know why he wasn't prosecuted to begin with. You know, that was a time when they could have put him away, when there were witnesses and victims who were willing to testify.

And you know, it just never happened. And instead, the DOJ essentially minimized the case. They covered it up, really. They made it sound like he just was with one minor and you know, they minimized the scope of his crimes. And I think we need to find out why. Julie K Brown, MiamiHerald.com. Thanks so much for joining us again. The Dan Levitard Show with StuGots is sponsored by BetterHelp. Who's in your support system and how have they changed your

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Build your support system with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash DLB today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-, help.com slash DLB. We're outside DC at the NOAA headquarters where hundreds of people have gathered here in protest of the cuts that were made last week. A lot of layoffs happened on Thursday. Six hundred employees plus across 17 offices. That's a good chunk, about five percent of the workforce.

There's been cuts to the NOAA Hurricane Hunter research program and some of the modeling that the National Hurricane Center uses. This will begin to take effects and make an impact on the accuracy and the speed at which the Hurricane Center and the National Weather Service can deliver those warnings. Finally, got rid of these goddamn deep state unelected bureaucrats who just do nothing but waste our tax dollars and sit around and let me check my notes, offer severe weather outlooks, help gauge the impact of climate change, provide information for our farmers to use daily, monitors our oceans, the health of our fisheries, also fire. I think a lot of what they do helps us save lives and determine the trajectory and impact of fires.

And wait, I'm starting to get the idea that maybe this is these are some essential workers here and maybe this is the kind of thing that you know Roy government is not for profit government is what government is for service and I'm not suggesting by the way that government fiscal conservative that I am that government should not be or could not be more efficient. But there are deliberate inefficiencies built into certain systems. And that is by design. It's to help with accountability. It's to ensure a lack of fraud, waste and abuse. It's designed in a way to that it's not necessarily designed to be so lean

but it's designed to make sure we get things right and it's designed to make sure we offer assistance in public health and safety and this is a conversation we started last year with John Morales who is an honorary member of the American Meteorological Society and a meteorological consultant and hurricane specialist for NBC 6 here in Miami. And he warned us last year of, you know, we had talked about some of the impact of Sharpie based hurricane predictions and meteorology. We talked about this idea of vilifying people at NOAA and the National Weather

Service and now those fears and concerns and that vilification is policy. And we've got about 800 people I think estimated about 5% of the workforce and counting obviously got doged since that's a verb now. John, first your initial reaction to this news. Oh, very alarming. Very alarming because, you know, when you look at the weather enterprise in the US, everything the enterprise does, whether it's in academia or in the private sector, which includes newsrooms and broadcast meteorologists, or of course the private sector, which includes newsrooms and broadcast meteorologists, or of course the government sector. Everything hinges on the scaffolding that's been built around NOAA and the National Weather Service. So when you take a sledgehammer to that three-legged stool,

you know, the stool won't stand. It's going to fall. It is alarming and disconcerting to everybody in the profession. You know, I don't know of a single meteorologist out there or hydrologist or climatologist, climate scientist, oceanographer, you know, all the related sciences. I don't know of anyone who is not alarmed and appalled by this approach, which has been anything but surgical. It's the opposite, just taking a sledgehammer to it and to the detriment of the American people.

Because at the end of the day, it's not just so. The most important thing is the mission of saving lives and property, right? So that is being hindered. And when you when you're talking about government services, like you just did, Billy, you know, it's about the welfare of the people. I mean, if there's one job that government has, is the safety and welfare of the population, and the education and so on and so forth. So these services are essential.

But so that's being degraded by these moves. But on top of that, you know how much of the American economy is impacted by weather? The vast majority of it. So we're talking, you know, two thirds or more of our GDP is impacted in one way, shape or form by weather. No wonder NOAA and the National Weather Service are inside the Department of Commerce, right?

Lies are being put at risk, property damage is likelier now because of these moves. And a negative impacts to our GDP are likely to occur as well, simply because you know, again, you're taking a sledgehammer to this essential service of protecting the economy and protecting the American people. Let's continue to examine your stool sample. I didn't mean for that to sound the way that I did. But the example you use, the metaphor of the of the

three legged stool, what are and you spoke generally about it, but what are the actual implications of the sledgehammer the stool no longer standing the stool falling, you said there's lives property damage this the economy, how so what are the practical examples and implicate? What happens now with this reduced workforce that results in all of those potential tragedies? Well, let's start with the basics.

Observing the weather, right? So we can't predict the weather unless we observe it first. To observe the weather, you need satellites. Satellites, weather satellites, fall under the NOAA umbrella. You need radars. Radars fall under the National Weather Service umbrella, NWS being an agency inside of NOAA. These things sometimes break down.

Sometimes you need technicians, whether they are for IT or whether they are hands-on technicians like electricians, let's say, to repair some of these apparatus. And if we lose, think of a day with a severe thunderstorm outbreak or a potential tornado outbreak here in Florida. With Hurricane, I think it was, well I'm blanking on which one, we had so many this last fall. We had a ton of tornadoes is my point here and when we had all these tornadoes what do we need the most to be able to see where the tornadoes are, how they're evolving and where they're moving and how to properly warn people? We need radars. If the radars are broken down, we can no longer track tornadoes and can no

longer warn people. You're subtracting people from this workforce. So, so that's that those are two examples satellites and radars within observations. Let's think about that. Now, what about modeling? Modeling is where we use the equations that define the behavior of the atmosphere, plug in everything that's going on right now in the atmosphere and what's gone on in the past few days, plug it all in, let the equations work through it, through computers, very powerful computers, and come up with a model of the atmosphere going forward. These models have improved so much that our seven-day forecasts these days are as good as our three-day forecasts used to be just a couple or three decades ago. You know, that's how good our forecasting has become. When these researchers are laid off, fired, you are losing the ability to continue to improve our models so that that type of improvement that we saw

in the seven day forecast can continue going forward. And that's the mundane everyday, you know, seeing on TV forecast, but think of what else models do, right, models help define or forecast what the future track of a hurricane is going to be. How good have we gotten at that? Pretty darn good, I want to tell you. Just this last year, National Hurricane Center got the best year of forecasting the track of hurricanes. Intensity forecasts still have some challenges. We're still trying to get better there. But how else do we

learn to better forecast the intensity of hurricanes? We send hurricane hunters into the hurricanes to gather all this scientific data that we need. You know who got fired? Some of the mission commanders, some of the mission scientists for NOAA's hurricane hunter aircraft are gone. Less than three months before the start of hurricane season. Right. So that means potentially this very season, less Hurricane Hunter aircraft going in to see what's going on with hurricanes,

less monitoring means worse forecasting. So I mean, that's just the observation side. I haven't even talked about research, haven't even talked about the actual haven't even talked about the actual issuing of the watches and the warnings, which is done by National Weather Service folks who were already spread thin. These were offices that you know you had managers, the chief of the office having to work you know midnight shifts because they don't have enough personnel to be able to carry the office going forward. So they were already thin staffed

and now even more so the stress is increasing and I think warnings are going to be degraded in quality and timeliness and the ability again to save life and property will be impacted. So the examples are numerous, Billy. I could go on and on and on. As a native Floridian and a lifelong Miamian, I have witnessed firsthand year after year, I've now had 45. I'm

sorry, no, 46. Oh, this will be my, you know, my 47th hurricanes, I've lost count already how many hurricane seasons I have fortunately survived. But it's demonstrable how much better the science has gotten, how much better the predictions have gotten, how much more accurate the forecasts have become. Fewer what we might feel are false alarms or being over prepared or being you know, or you know, that that's always the the problem too is the boy who cried wolf effect and that Floridians take it less seriously when they get too many of these warnings to

prep for a storm. It's gotten so much, much better. And I always argue with my friends in California, John, my entire life, like, well, what's better, Florida or California? It's like, well, would you prefer mudslides and earthquakes? And we always say hurricanes, because at least we have a warning. At least we know when it's coming and we can try to get the hell out. You know Billy, so since you're talking hurricanes, let me go ahead then dispel this belief that is out there especially in some of the darker places of the web like X, right? Storm front, 4chan, whatever. Right. So, you know, I've seen out there the piece, you know, some people are saying, well, you know, what do I need NOAA and the National Weather Service for? You know, I've got John

Morales for, you know, insert name here of whoever the local favorite, you know, insert name here of whoever the local favorite broadcast meteorologist happens to be. Well, I can't do my job without NOAA on the National Weather Service. I am oftentimes the voice of the National Weather Service. And fine, I mean, I know over the years I've editorialized forecasts quite a bit. I've given my opinion yay or nay on a National Weather Service or a National Hurricane Center forecast and I guess that's what makes me me. But they are my vocal cords. I mean you know I've got no voice without them. This whole scaffolding example that I spoke at the beginning where everything depends on what NOAA and the National Weather Service

provide the the private sector in terms of observations, in terms of modeling, in terms of research. Not just not John Morales, you know, can't can't probably do his job. Neither can AccuWeather, neither can the Weather Channel, right? And neither can those crap apps that people seem to like, which depend on the modeling that NOAA and the National Weather Service provide. Granted, unfortunately, the reason that apps are so bad is because there's no human element in what you're looking at in an app. It's just going straight to a model, extracting a single point forecast and trying to give that to you seven days out at 1 p.m., which is ridiculous for you to think that you can get a forecast for a

specific time of the day seven days out. But I would say it's a user mistake the way they apply these apps instead of realizing that there's better ways to get your weather. If you want to mga and make meteorology great again, you know, there was a time when we did not have radars, we did not have meteorologists, we did not have the science and the knowledge to understand when a hurricane was coming.

And when you'd reach the eye of the storm, people thought the storm was over and had passed us by. And so you have 30 minutes of calm or whatever it may be, and everybody sort of goes out to take stock. And of course you have destruction of property, you've got projectiles lying in wait all over the ground. And people would die because of course the back end of the, they were only halfway through the storm at that point.

That was people were, I suppose, blissfully ignorant, but then they were also dead. And so the science matters and it does, it is public safety, it does save lives. And quick kind of like hypothetical or scenario before we go, like what is your fear this hurricane season, which we are mere months away. What is your fear if this is just phase one here

of layoffs at NOAA and NWS, what is your fear when you are in the weather center at NBC 6 as the hurricane specialist this season and there is some, assuming we know that there is a storm barreling down from the Atlantic, what is your fear sitting in the studio going, oh shit, what? I'm going to give you an example, a real life example, because we can apply what goes on in the Eastern Pacific with hurricanes to what could go on this year in the Atlantic.

So Hurricane Otis, a couple of years ago, went from a tropical storm to a cat five in a matter of hours. I wanna say 24 hours, might have been less might have been 18 the National Hurricane Center Massively missed that forecast They did not call for it to intensify to so rapidly the people in Acapulco were shocked They were expecting a tropical storm. They got a category 5 hurricane. There was loss of life

They were expecting a tropical storm. They got a category five hurricane. There was loss of life. There was massive loss of property there and they're still recovering from that. Again, that was a couple of years ago. Why did the National Hurricane Center miss that forecast? Because hurricane hunter missions are not flown in the eastern Pacific. They're hardly ever flown in the eastern Pacific. Well, you know what I worry about for this hurricane season? These mission specialists from the Hurricane Hunter aircraft that were fired by Doge, right? And I'm not saying they're not going to fly missions, but they're going to fly less missions. Well, what if we miss a couple of crucial observations that could help the National Hurricane Center? Call for rapid intensification. call for a potential disaster in time

to save lives and property. So this is far from a hypothetical, Billy. This could happen this year. And again, lives are at stake, but apparently the regime doesn't care. It's all right. We just saved 0.00000001% I think off of the national budget. How do you like that? John Morales, always good news when you're around. That's the thing about being like a hurricane specialist, right? It's like people only see you when there's bad news.

It's all you're like an old friend. I only see at funerals now. Like that's how that's how this relationship feels, dude. Thank you for being here and good luck to you and good luck to us all. Indeed. Thanks, Bill. Howdy folks, it's Mike Ryan. I talk to you about Miller time all the time but we're in the winter time right now and one of my favorite pastimes is to crack open a Miller Lite and enjoy myself some Miller time during the winter time because when there's a brisk chill in the air it just makes everything right. My friends and I who live down here in South Florida can actually sit outside because it's not

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Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. We've got some breaking news from the broken city of Miami. You heard it here first on Because Miami. Last month at a city commission meeting, Commissioner Miguel Gabela let it slip that city of Miami commissioners are no longer insured. They are not covered by insurance anymore

because the city is too corrupt. Because of the continuity of the last year's year, is precisely, and this is precisely what we got in trouble in the sense that the insurance company dropped us. Dropped one commissioner, because that commissioner was dropped, everybody else was dropped. So right now we're operating, we don't have insurance,

and anything the city's paying for, the taxpayers are paying for, I feel bad about that one thing is having insurance and another thing is the taxpayer footing the bill that's what I'm concerned about as I'm sure the other commissions are concerned about. I was sitting there the meeting I was like wait what they don't have insurance they don't have insurance it turns out, because... He's a white, be a white, be a... Yeah, let's drop the roll, yo... I could have told you that.

And also... Hashtag, because Miami. So he is so corrupt, and he has been sued so many times, and it has cost the city and its insurance carrier so much money that they will not insure the city anymore. And this was confirmed by city attorney George Weissong. Our insurance carrier made a decision a couple years ago, excuse me, that they first they raised the premiums and then they increased the deductible and then they said they would only cover certain

individuals and then it's my understanding that we didn't have policy coverage. I still recommend that we didn't have policy coverage. I still recommend that we should be out on the market looking to see if we can get coverage for you all. So is it the case that the city of Miami and the city commission is just simply uninsurable? The decision was made by the administration, as I was told, that because that one, in other words, they would cover four other commissioners, except that one commissioner. Wait. It's my understanding that we decided as a city that that's unfair and we weren't gonna pick and choose who they're gonna cover. Wait, that's unfair to who? The insurance company wants to carve out Joe Carollo is what's happening.

But they will cover apparently or they would cover because now there's no insurance. They're canceled. It expired. Four out of the five commissioners on the dais they would cover. But because they wouldn't cover Joe Carollo, the city administration run by Art Manuel Noriega, the corrupt city manager and the overpriced furniture salesman, this guy, by the way, who promised to do an interview one on one with us on this show two Feb. Oh, he promised in public at a meeting. Oh, he broke your promise. Oh, that's just unbelievable.

So this is my shocked face, right? Here's the thing. The administration decided it wasn't it wasn't fair to who it wasn't fair to Joe Carollo. How about it's not fair to the taxpayers who have to cover the cost of this insurance, who I'm sorry, they have to just cover the cost of no insurance. They cover the cost of attorney's fees. They cover the cost of this insurance, who have, I'm sorry, they have to just cover the cost of no insurance. They cover the cost of attorney's fees, they cover the cost of settlements. It's ridiculous.

Like they're doing this to basically cover up and protect Joe Corollo, to the detriment of the other four commissioners, and more importantly, to the detriment of the taxpayers. These are not fiscal conservatives or responsible stewards of the taxpayer money. And of course, everybody is suffering as a result. So in other words, I don't for example, I don't have insurance because of another commissioners action. Well, we're self insuring, you know, you don't have

coverage, but yes, I self insured. Roy and everybody listening at home, the difference between uninsured and self-insured is the difference between you and the billionaires. Here these guys are acting like billionaires because they have a $1.3 billion annual budget, but that's not their money. They're playing with the house's money. They're playing with your money. They're playing with the house's money. They're playing with your money. They're playing with taxpayer money.

So to say that we are self-insured, no, it's the taxpayers who are paying for the lawyers to defend corrupt commissioners. The victims of that corruption are the taxpayers who are paying those lawyers to defend the corruption. And then the taxpayers have to pay out of pocket the legal settlements. They have to pay the judgments in those cases. This is why the Miami mafia is undefeated. And then a really funny thing happened, right? Joe Corollo himself decided

to wade into the conversation. Oh, Lord. The man whose corruption has put the city into this position, because I want you to know right now, Roy, there was no problem with the city getting insurance before this happened. It was never a problem, okay, before Joe Carollo came into office eight years ago. So the city of Miami's risk management director, Anne Marie Sharp, Joe asks her to come up

to the podium and starts interrogating her. This is like Ted Bundy representing himself and cross-examining his victims. It's like, so let me ask you, who attacked you? What happened? Have we got out into the marketplace to see what insurance companies are out there that can give us quotes? We get from our broker a list of carriers that they approached and how the carriers respond.

And some carriers will deny to quote on certain lines of coverage, right? Like some carriers will quote your law enforcement but won't want to quote on your public officials liability, for example. This woman is so scared because she doesn't want to say the quiet part out loud. She's like, well, you know, they're certain they want to not maybe necessarily insure everything. But what she just said, to be perfectly clear, she said that there was at least one insurance company that was willing to insure the police department at the city of Miami, a police

department that costs the city millions of dollars a year in settlements and payments for misconduct but they were not willing to cover the elected officials so what they were saying is the elected official we will cover the police department in Miami but the elected officials are too corrupt for us to cover with insurance. Joe seems to have a little bit of trouble understanding all of this. I cannot believe that with all the insurance companies that we have not only in the US but outside of the US we can't find any that will give us quotes. I can believe it. But by the way, that's not what she said. She's like, like he's he's interrogating this woman for all of this time.

And he's not even listening to what she's saying. Like she made it very clear. No, no, no, we did go out. We did get quotes. And this is what they said. Well, the premium, the quotes were, the conditions were, we will write your policy excluding, with certain exclusions. And some carriers will impose more exclusions than others.

You know, the exclusions are different based on the exposure. It's him. He's the exclusion. He on the exposure. It's him. He's the exclusion. He's the exposure. She's the risk management director and she's talking to the risk. And he's asking, he's almost daring her to say, it's you dude, it's you.

This is like OJ Simpson yelling at the LAPD about why they haven't found the real killer yet. That's what this is. And that is, that just absolutely exemplifies. Hashtag because Miami. Now Roy, a new segment that we're so unprepared for, we don't have like a cart or like a jingle or anything for. Nope.

But we're gonna introduce it this week and I'm sure by next week we'll have all the production values. Probably not. This is, this is. Roy. This is. That the production values. Probably not. This is... This is happening. Roy! This is... That was production.

That was production value. Where do you live again? Where I live! So the production values, you see? Yeah. High end. The deluxe here. This is the segment we like to call.

That's the first time. Can you say that in the inaugural? We like to call it like that's just, this is just what it is. No, you can't. This is called... In the board meeting, we went over this and we decided to go with that.? We like to call it like that's just, this is just what it is. No, you can't. This is called. In the board meeting, we went over this and we decided to go with that.

So we like to call it this. Yeah, the board meeting, I spell that B-O-R-E-D. This segment is called the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow translated to the Miami of yesterday is the America of today. First up, we have Miami-Dade's English-only ordinance. In 1973, the Dade County Commission had voted that we could be a bilingual and bicultural community.

So the county paid to translate thousands of pages of English documents into Spanish every year, and interpreters were required at public meetings. We had radio stations that aired Spanish public service announcements, produced at taxpayer expense, encouraging use of Spanish by Miamians. In 1978, Emmy Schaeffer, an immigrant and Holocaust survivor, started an English-only movement when she could not find an English-speaking clerk in county municipal offices.

And in 1980, Schaeffer got a referendum on the ballot to reinstate English as the only official language. Dade County voters approved the measure with a 59.1% majority. That wasn't reversed until May of 1993. And as you may have heard just this past week, Roy, President Donald Trump signed an executive order making English the official language of the United States.

So the Miami of yesterday is the America of today. Cocaines. Amy Schaeffer and her supporters opened their champagne shortly after 9 p.m. last night to celebrate the passage of their anti-bilingual ordinance. Amy Schaeffer is the architect of the current ordinance opposing Dade's official bilingual status. She started it all several months ago with a petition drive. The move called for the end of metro government's use of public funds for Spanish language translations

and Spanish culture. Schaeffer's petition was endorsed by over 100,000 signatures. Two days ago I signed an order making English the official language of the United States of America. The White House says designating English the national language promotes unity, establishes efficiency in government operations, and creates a pathway for civic engagement. The Dan Levitard Show with Stu Gotts is sponsored by BetterHelp. Who's in your support system and how have they changed your life? Think about that your favorite leaders, mentors, idols, they don't all have the answers, but they do know when to ask for help. In a world that glorifies hyper-independence, we sometimes forget that we thrive with support.

We're stronger, healthier, and more resilient when we have people to lean on. Therapy is one of the best ways to build that support system. It helps with positive coping skills, setting boundaries, and becoming the best version of yourself. Here's the thing, therapy isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. It's for everybody. Whether you're facing a big life transition, feeling overwhelmed, or just want to grow, therapy can help. That's where BetterHelp comes in. With over 30,000 credential therapists, you can find somebody who truly understands you. It's fully online, making therapy accessible, affordable, and convenient.

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