The MeidasTouch Podcast - Dem Candidate for Florida Special Election Surges (Josh Weil Interview)

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Trump and the GOP losing support in Florida as Josh Weil, the Democratic candidate in the Special Election coming up, is surging over the MAGA candidate. Visit MeidasPlus.com for more Meidas content! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The reverberations of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Doge wrecking ball to the United States of America is being felt in pissed off voters. We reported before what went down earlier this week, a political earthquake in Pennsylvania, Lancaster County, which didn't go Democrat since 1889. A Democratic Senate seat there flipped to Democrat. A candidate named James Malone became the state senator there. We're seeing Donald Trump withdraw the nomination of Elise Stefanik in a plus 21 Trump district in New York after Trump's pollster, Fabrizio, Trump's guy, started showing Donald Trump all of this data, both what's going on in New York, Pennsylvania, and of course, what's going on in Florida, where Fabrizio, again, Trump's pollster in the sixth congressional district in Florida, has the Democratic candidate, Josh Wheel, up by anywhere between three, four, or even more in what used to be viewed as a plus 30,

plus 35 Trump district. The leaker himself, Mike Walls, now the national security advisor, used to hold the congressional seat there. So this is a vacant seat right now. You have the Democratic candidate, Josh Wheel, running against a MAGA Republican Doge candidate, Randy Fine. And Josh Wheel's got momentum. He said, watch what I was doing a few months ago. And he's got momentum. Look, people throughout Florida are absolutely pissed. It's no different in the six. The people are pissed for a lot of different reasons.

I mean, you've got Trump supporters who may be Cuban or Venezuelan who are now having their family members targeted. We're seeing stories like this in Florida. She's a Venezuelan immigrant now terrified of being deported. Are you afraid of your son walking to school? Yes, truly. Yes. What Are you afraid of your son walking to school? Yes, truly, yes. What are you afraid of? That they'll pick him up and he won't have time to call me. Also that it might happen when I'm not with him or he's not with me. That is the worst fear I have. Like so many other

Venezuelans, she cheered when Donald Trump was elected because of his tough approach to policies, such as his promise to crack down on a violent Venezuelan criminal organization. We will expel every single illegal alien gang member and migrant criminal operating on American soil. You supported Donald Trump, even though you couldn't vote for him. Yes, yes. I believe there is a large community of Venezuelans who did. What she didn't expect is for those policies to throw her life in limbo and stoke fear in her community. Canol is one of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants who were granted temporary protected status, or TPS, under the Biden administration. President Trump wiped that away for all Venezuelans. When they said the TPS is going to be revoked. Were you surprised?

Yes, totally. And this was a hard blow because practically the same day he took office, he went against Venezuelans. Then, of course, you have Donald Trump attacking Social Security, shutting down Social Security administration offices throughout the country, attacking Social Security, Medicaid, attacking veterans in Florida and elsewhere. And then you've got Elon Musk saying it's a Ponzi scheme. That's why we're going after it.

It's a Ponzi scheme. Well, I mean, the government's one big permit scheme, if you ask me. Yeah, well, you can tell me better than that. Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. Right. Explain that. Oh, so, well, people pay into Social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately. But the obligation for Social Security is your entire retirement career. So you're paying, like if you look at the future obligations of Social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue.

Far. Have you ever looked at the debt clock? Yes. Okay. There's our present day debt, but then there's our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations. So basically people are living way longer than expected,

and there are fewer babies being born. So you have more people who are retired and get that live for a long time and get retirement payments. So the future obligation. So however bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it will be much worse in the future. Let's bring in that candidate for Florida's sixth congressional district, Josh Weill. Josh, we had you on earlier in the week before the news of the Fabrizio poll. The Trump's pollster shows you're running ahead. I don't want that to make voters think they don't need to get out. So I somewhat reluctant to even talk about it. But what do you make of

this news? Clearly, you're one of the reasons why he pulled Stefanik's nomination and why they're freaking out right now. What do you make of all this, Josh? When they pulled the Stefanik nomination, you know, it was earlier in the day. And, you know, we looked at, you know, my team and I, we looked at each other right away and we said, you know, this isn't a move you make when you're scared. This is a move you make preparing for a loss. Like you, you think it's done. You think that you've lost this race. If you were scared, you would wait until Wednesday. You'd wait until the day after the election. And, you know, you'd probably call Representative Stefanik now and be like, listen, on Wednesday, we might be having a difficult conversation. But they pulled the trigger five days out. And then like four hours after that, we saw the polls. And, you know, the polls are, I mean, they confirm what our internal

polling has been saying. But, you know, the polls show it's not just that we're leading. It's that they have him only at 41%. The Republican candidate is only at 41%, which, you know, I don't know how big you're, you'd have to have a margin of error of 10 points to get him over 50%, which is what he would need to win. It's, he's so far behind in support that, yeah, we feel fantastic. But just like you said, we have to continue driving out the vote every single day because there are a lot of Republicans in this district and anything can happen until they call this race 7 p.m. on Tuesday. So when you and I talked a few days ago earlier in the week, you were analyzing the data, letting us know what you saw, setting aside that Fabrizio Trump polling as we now head

into the weekend and we head towards that special election on April 1st, next Tuesday. What are you seeing right now as we head into the weekend? We're seeing a historic Dem turnout. You know, we're still at about 40 percent of total voters in this election are Democrats in a district where 27 percent of registered voters are Democrats. So we're seeing incredibly elevated voter turnout. And we're seeing in Volusia County, the largest county in this district, more Democrats have voted than Republicans, which, you know, was historic when it happened on the first day of early voting, because there hadn't been a single day of that in like 30 years. And now it's held. It's held

for an entire week throughout early voting here. So what do we do now? What do you do now? What do the people do now? What do you want to see happen from now until April 1st? What's the closing message look like? The closing message is we're almost there. Our message is resonating with people in this district. just did a pair of side-by-side interviews, you know, myself and Randy Fine separately. And, you know, it's wild because, you know, we watched him speak this entire time and he doesn't mention the voters or the people once. His entire message is either just about how terrible I am or how great Trump is. And, you know, I'm answering the same questions. I didn't know what Fine had said at the time when I was in the studio. And, you know, we're talking about the people, you know, that the people, they rely on these systems. They rely on Social Security. They rely on Medicaid, Medicare. They rely on the VA. These are essential systems for people living and they need someone to fight for that. They need someone to represent their interests. And, you know, that's that's what they want. And if he's not even trying to sell it, which is just wild at this point, because we're four days out.

So for the next four days, we just have to keep we know we have the support, but having the support and having the votes are two different things. I grew up in Long Island. And so a lot of my friends, parents now live in Florida, live in the congressional district you're running in. Side topic, what part of Long Island? Nassau County. I went to Stony Brook. You're right there. Stony Brook's got a great university, great research center, which Donald Trump is absolutely gutting and wrecking right now.

The incredible work that they're doing at Stony Brook University. We're're probably around the same age you may be a little younger than me i don't know how old are you 40 we're exactly the same age and you and you grew up in stony brook we may you play soccer i grew up down here in orlando but um my my family's up in long island um and so i went up there for college i lived with my uncle in St. James. So one of the big trips we took on Long Island was Stony Brook University. We'd go to the research center. And it's sad to see all of that being gutted. Tom Swasey from the third congressional district is the member of Congress there. You know, he's he's great. And he's been getting standing ovations in a plus five Trump district standing up against Trump's coddling of Putin. I showed a lot of clips there. What I want to talk about as well as though a lot of people, though, moving to Florida,

they want to enjoy their retirement right now. They've worked hard for their life savings and their retirement to have the peace of mind. Social security they paid into is going to be there. Their healthcare is going to be there. And what they're seeing now, you know, is every day if they're watching Fox and you've got a lot of people in your district who watch Fox, they're seeing this. So much woo, folks. This is a tough way to end the week

if you're long the market. If you're long gold, you're happy. But Dow is losing about 724. The S&P down 113. the Nasdaq down 484. That will do it for us. Cut low. Hello, folks. Welcome to Cut Low.

I'm Larry Cut Low. So markets crash over 700 points today after a bad inflation report, more tariff confusion. Oh, and by the way, Republicans really going to raise taxes? That could have done it. Our own Sandra Smith, Taylor Riggs and Jerry Wills be right here on set. That's kind of your closing message. That's what Randy Fine and Trump are doing. And you want to fight for the voters. I'll let you tell them yourself. Yeah, 700 points down that day. That was one of the better days that week. You had like four days in a row where it crashed over a thousand points.

Yeah, these are people's retirement. We have DeSantis here and a super majority because of horrible gerrymandering, super majority Republican legislation that had made it impossible to live in Florida. People cannot afford to live in Florida. We're in a housing crisis. We're in insurance crisis. You know, we had the inflation that the entire nation was suffering. We felt here as well. And there are a lot of people on fixed incomes, whether it's their retirement funds that just went in the wrong direction hard under the Trump administration or whether it's their social security or their veterans benefits. And all of those are at risk. And I can't tell you how many people have looked at me. It's just the anxiety,

the not knowing. They never thought they'd be in a place where they didn't know if their next Social Security check was going to come through or what they would do if it doesn't. Well, we'll be following your race. The election is on April 1st. What do you want people to know about where they can find more information about you from now until Election Day? Yeah, follow us at joshwheel.us, J-O-S-H-W-E-I-L.us. You can keep track of our events, where we're going to be. We have mobilized links up for phone banking. No matter where you are in the country, you can jump on for just two hours if you want, make phone calls, dial, get a hold of voters in our district. There's two days left for them

to vote. Early voting is 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and then it's election day, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and that is it. So we've got to drive as many voters to the polls over these next four days as possible. But we are there. It is within our grasp. We just can't fumble the bag. That's it. There you have it, Josh Wheal, running for Florida's sixth congressional district. Everybody hit subscribe, and let's get to 5 million subscribers. Thanks for watching. Can't get enough Midas? Check out the Midas Plus sub stack for ad-free articles, reports, podcasts, daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski and more. Sign up for free now at MidasPlus.com.