Will Cain Country - A Conversation With The Candidates: Mayor Francis Suarez

Episode Date: July 5, 2023

For the second edition of Will Cain’s ‘A Conversation With The Candidates’ series, join Will as he dives deeper into the lives, perspectives, and issues surrounding the presidential candidates.��   With refreshing honesty and a commitment to the real truth and going beyond the surface, Will takes you on an engaging journey that sheds light on those vying to be the leader of the free world.    Gain a fresh understanding of the race for the White House through insightful conversations that go where no other interviews this election cycle will go.   Today, Will sits down with 2024 Republican Presidential Candidate, Mayor Francis Suarez.   Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail]   Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for $5.5 plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. The mayor of Miami. who is running for, President of the United States. It's the Wilcane podcast on Fox News Podcast. What's up and welcome to Wednesday.

As always, I hope you will download, rate, and review this podcast wherever you get your audio entertainment at Apple, Spotify, or at Fox News podcast. Today, on the Will Cain podcast, a candidate for president of the United States. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has run an absolute successful city in the city of Miami. He's young. He has ideas about how to bring people together and how to solve the problems of America. He agreed to come here on the Will Cain podcast and have a good conversation about the leap it is to go from mayor to president of the United States, about some of the mistakes he's already made in running for president and where he stands on a host of issues. It's a pretty fun, laid back, relaxed conversation where we get to know,

Suarez as a person and also types of policies and leader he would be as president of the United States. Here is Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. Mayor Suarez, you jump right out of the gates and you tell me I've got some Miami color going on. And I realize you're talking about my face. I am. And you went right into like your workouts and Navy SEAL training, which is precisely what I love to talk about because I'm a Navy SEAL fanatic and junkie. I love reading about Navy SEAL. It's probably my only regret in life is not having gone to Annapolis or having joined the Navy and served in the military.

You know, it's a being a politician or a public servant is sort of like metaphysical, you know, military service because you take bullets, you know, metaphysical bullets. And certainly it's challenging at a certain level. But I'll tell you that I've seen a lot of these, you know, sort of these trainings that you're talking about. and I've been super intrigued by them. Tell me about it. So, well, before I tell you about why I have this tan and what I'm doing, so that's interesting. So one of your, you say your only regret is you wish you would have given, by the way, it's a regret that I share with you. I've talked about on several occasions.

I think when my life is done, I will regret a couple of things. One will be not having more kids. I have two. I wish I had more kids. I love to have more too. They're a wonderful blessing. So I love it. And being a dad is awesome.

I mean, I just, I don't want it to end. And so I wish I had more kids. And I wish I would have served my country. And I would have liked to think I could have tried to do it in some type of elite capacity, whether or not it's seal. I really, really have come to respect green berets at a really high level. So, yeah, I share that. I wish I would have done that as well. Why didn't you?

You know, I don't know. I mean, I didn't have a military family. sometimes, you know, people that come from a military family have a propensity to serve. My father was in politics, so I went into politics. I've been in a public service for 13 years, so I started young. I was 30 when I first ran for office. I got elected at 32. But I did jump out of a perfectly good plane with the Army Golden Knights, and I was right after the cutoff of being able to serve even, like, as a reserve, right?

And I was so pumped up. You know, I jumped down when I landed on the ground. I was like, okay, where do I sign up? And they're like, yeah, it's too late. But no, I really, not only do I appreciate, obviously, the sacrifices that they make, not only do I appreciate the danger that they face on behalf of our freedoms. But I also really appreciate the discipline, sort of the mental toughness, the adversity that they have to, and the resiliency that they develop.

I think, you know, we live in a world where we underappreciate. those skill sets and you know when you think about how do we deal with mental health issues for example like across the country when you think about kids you know we're not teaching kids resiliency skills right i mean i i created a program as president of the u.s conference of mayors with crossfit and rogue right and the idea was we wanted to get inner city kids to be able to do crossfit exercises by the way it doesn't have to necessarily be crossfit i chose crossfit because i've been doing CrossFit for a while for about 10 years. But I think that CrossFit does a few things.

Number one, it's hard, right? So it creates grit and resiliency. Number two, it creates community, right? Because you have to get together with people. You're usually doing it with a group of people. And number three, we wanted to do it for free by getting our Parks and Rec employees to become CrossFit certified. Dave Castro, who programs the games, was helping us out with getting some promotional stuff. And then Bill, who does Rogue, was also helping us out.

We unveiled that about a month ago. Would you consider yourself, and I hope you won't do the politician thing and just find the most positive answer to this that you possibly can. But I'm curious following up on both our conversation about CrossFit and about Navy SEALs and what you appreciate about these guys. And by the way, I got to fly. I was with ESPN for years. I got to fly with some Air Force pilots out of Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. They're fighter pilots. And one of the things you learned to appreciate with all these guys is there just the high, high, high level of confidence.

competency. You're talking about, like, the professional athletes of soldiers. And no matter what they're doing, flying planes or making amphibious landings in hostile territory, they're just pros. But would you consider yourself, Mayor Suarez, would you consider yourself disciplined? I would. I mean, look, I don't think you can do what I do. I'm running a billion-dollar company with 4,500 employees, four labor unions. I have a private sector life. I sit on boards. I work for a major law firm, and I'm running for president, right? I don't think you can do all that unless you have intense discipline. There's just not enough hours in the day. How does that manifest, Mayor, do you get, what time do you get up and what is your day, is your day highly scheduled and regulated? What time does your day start?

So what I try to do is, first of all, I believe in rest. So I don't believe, like, you know, I know people say, oh, I do it on three hours of sleep or four hours. I think that's bogus. I do think you need to get adequate sleep, adequate nutrition, and exercise on a daily basis to have a healthy lifestyle. So I program all of that, right? I program the amount of sleep that I get. I track the amount of sleep that I get.

I track the quality of sleep that I get. Then I'm very, very studious about my nutrition because that's a major influencer of your energy levels throughout the day. And then I schedule working out like an appointment, right? So it's literally as important as anything else that I do in a given day. And I found that even the busiest people in the world, if you schedule it as an appointment, you're giving it the same priority that you give everything else. So there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it.

I never buy into the excuse that you're too busy to work out. Does it float throughout your day in your schedule? Or is it like every morning at 6 a.m. or whatever point in the day it is important for you? Is there a certain time every day I can find you working out? okay yeah yeah it's every morning at a set time i do it with my wife um i've been doing it with my wife for about two years uh and it's you know probably the pest part of my day i have thought that if i've become the president i will vary the time um because i don't want our enemies abroad to sort of decide that they want to do nefarious things at a particular time of the day um when i'm working

out so i would probably vary it and i probably would ask a navy seals to to train me uh so those are fun things that I've actually thought about. So I'm following just natural curiosity for a moment before I actually get into some of the things I definitely want to ask you about in this conversation. But it's interesting you talked about you grew up in a political family. We're talking about why we both didn't end up serving our country. It is fascinating how we follow our fathers. I'm sure for many of us as well, you follow your mothers down some path of life choices.

My father was a small town attorney in Texas. I ended up going to law school. My life choices since then have departed my father's career path. But I certainly begun to take my first steps down the same path that I was shown, that I was modeled, his path. So your dad was mayor of Miami, and you said, as you grew up, in a political family. So did you kind of always see, perhaps, because your dad was mayor and you were in a political family, that this would be your path to be the mayor of Miami and maybe one day run for president? Not at all. Not at all. I'm not one of these.

First of all, I did not know for sure that I was going to get involved in politics. I didn't like politics that much because I saw my dad, and I think everybody idealizes their father, right? Like, that's sort of, you know, the ideal. My dad is a ninth of 14 kids, came to this country at 12 with nothing from Cuba, exiled from Cuba. I got a full scholarship to high school, presidential scholarship to college, two graduate degrees from Harvard and MPPJD. He speaks five languages and he's written, you know, eight or nine books. So he's, you know, he's an IQ genius. He was the first Cuban mayor in Miami, so I had seen, you know, the press and the criticism, things that I didn't think were fair, happened to him.

A guy who, again, had this, like, impeccable resume, and I just was like, I don't know that I want to do that. When I got married, I've been married for 16 years, I had a small business and didn't have kids at the time. Actually, we actually went through infertility issues for four years, and we actually found out we were pregnant on, actually on Father's Day of 2010. 13. But I sort of backed into it. You know, to your point about regret in life, you know, in life when, you know, first of all I'm very grateful for the community that I live in, for all the things that I've achieved because of this community, because this community has believed in me. And I just felt there was a moment where I had been a victim of a home invasion, I mean, of a robbery in my house. I had been involved in some zoning things as a as a as a as a resident. And the person who was in the, the council ran for mayor and created a vacancy. I was 30 years old. I said, you know, if I'm going to, I don't want to live in regret. I don't want to be one of these guys that just complains about problems.

I want to be someone who does something about it. It's sort of my personality. And so I decided to run. I was the only candidate, not union endorsed. And I won by 260 votes. So I always tell people, listen, if 131 people would have changed their mind, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation. Yeah, fine margins of success and failure.

By the way, zero ambition to be the President of the United States, I never thought that was possible. I never even thought about it as a life path. It wasn't until very recently that I began to think that this was possible and something that I should do or that I knew to do. And what, okay, let's just let's go down this path then. Why are you running for President of the United States? Yeah. So let me take a couple steps back. I've never really talked about this and I think it's a good opportunity to talk about it.

You know, my life started to change. I was actually the first person in Dade County to get COVID, or the second person. And so I started getting a national profile because I went through that journey. I did a diary entry. I brought people in on that journey while I was in quarantine. And people felt very comforted knowing that I was being transparent about it. Then on December 4th of 2020, while New York had kicked out Amazon after winning the HQ2 prize, when California kicked out Elon.

I had responded to a tweet that said, what if we move Silicon Valley to Miami with a very simple phrase, how can it help? And that created a tectonic shift. Miami now is number one in wage growth. We've moved about $3 trillion in assets under managed companies. Billions of dollars in wages. We have the lowest unemployment in America,

and we're number one in tech job growth. So we have completely re-engineered our economic ecosystem. We also lower taxes to the lowest level ever, and saw a double-digit growth in our city, 12%, the second most in recorded history. So we have taken a city that was known as the capital of Latin America and made it into a truly global city. So that all started happening. Like all these things started happening.

I started getting more. I became president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, so president of all the mayors in the United States, all these things started happening. And I realized that there was, in my opinion, a deficiency in the conversation. I thought the conversation, and by the way, I would have loved to have supported someone that I felt fill this role because I understand the odds that I'm against, right? I'm relatively unknown. You know, I'm, you know, mayors never made it to the presidency. Hispanics never made it to the

presidency. But for me, it wasn't about all those dynamics. For me, it was about what kind of a conversation do we want to have in this country. How can we bring coherence back to the conversation? How do we focus on solving big problems, which I have a record of doing? And I have a record of bringing people together as well, having been elected by 85 percent, reelected by 80 percent, in a county that went 30 points for Hillary the year before I got elected and 10 points for Republicans a year after I got re-elected. Yeah, that is an incredible success story, and it is an undeniable, objective reality of a success.

We'll be right back with more of the Will Cain podcast. Following Fox's initial donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, our generous viewers have answered the call to action across all Fox platforms and have helped raise $7 million. Visit go.comfx forward slash TX flood relief to support relief and rebuilding efforts. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes.

We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at thequiz.com. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz. I would love to talk to you more about than what you would envision as your job of President to the United States. So your answer to my question, I assume, as to why you're running for president, and it was to point to your success story in Miami.

But it still didn't, forgive me, Mayor, it still didn't answer my question, though, of why. Why, you know, I heard you in there say you didn't feel like somebody else, be that Donald Trump, I assume, or Ron DeSantis, or Asa Hutchinson from Arkansas. Nobody else has satisfied what you feel like answers to problems of the United States of America. But with, you know, with that objective, positive record on your resume, you as a man, though, why do you want to be a person? to be president of the united states why are you running for president yeah that's that's the right how does it translate right how does just being the mayor of a city right how does that translate nationally and why does that make me qualified uh to be the president uh which is obviously a massive uh endeavor in the most arguably the most important job in the world and it's a and i think

it's fair wouldn't wouldn't wouldn't you think it's fair to say it's a big leap right to go from as you pointed out it's never happened it's a never been done so it's it's not triple a to the majors it's is probably, to be fair, it would be like single A ball to the majors. I think that's fair. Yeah, so go ahead. I think, I think, you know, when you think about people like Alex Rodriguez, when you think about people like Derek Jeter, you know, when you think about a lot of baseball players, they did that leap.

So the leap is doable and it's possible. It just requires exceptional talent, right? And I think, and to be honest, you know, and I'm not saying that I possess that. What I'm saying is that I think that I possess a certain set of skills that are going to help me deal with the major problems of this country. What are they? Inflation, number one, right? I'm the only elected official, the only one you can look this up, who's cut 20% of their budget in one year. Okay. And the skill set that it takes to make those kind of cuts to balance a budget doesn't depend on the number of zeros that you're cutting. Okay. It depends on the quality of the

person that you are. Do you have the courage? Like I said, I wasn't union supported, right? And I won and I had to make tough choices to cut expenses. We have a 20% budget gap right now, which is exactly what I inherited in Miami in 2009. We have to balance our budgets. Unfortunately, the last time we balanced our budget, it was a Democratic president and a Republican Congress under New Gingrich. And we have to do that because we have to get inflation under control. We have to get interest rates under control.

It's making the poor poor in this country. And average everyday Americans who have their money, mostly in bank accounts, are getting hit. The Bidonomics, that's the real Bidonomics, this whole nonsense of Bidonomics. The Bidonomics is the poor get poor under Joe Biden. That's the truth. Second issue is immigration, right? I don't think that there is a person, I don't think anybody can legitimately argue that there's a person that is better qualified to solve the immigration, which is a multi-decade,

multi-administration problem than a Hispanic Republican president, period, full stop. Okay. And we know mostly what needs to happen. I think I bring some new ideas to the solution. Obviously, everybody agrees we have to get our border under control. It's a disaster. mess, 7 million people undocumented legally. Do you want to...

Yeah, I want to jump in on that one point you just made. There's nobody better suited to solve the immigration crisis than a Hispanic Republican president, full stop. Why does your ethnicity make you uniquely qualified, which, by the way, you're Cuban, and for what it's worth, Mayor, I once had a business that focused on Kinsignettas. And one of the reasons that I had a business... Oh, wow. So you know all about it.

But one of the reasons for what it's worth that I chose... to create a media company that focused on kinsenegeras is that the term Hispanic is a broad and generalized term that sweeps over a people who have great amount of differences. The only commonality truly is language. There are cultural divides. But one of the few commonalities is the kinsenera. The only Hispanic or Latino ethnicity that doesn't do the kinsenegra is quite honestly, well, not Cubans.

Cubans have Kinsera's who do sweet 16. It's the Puerto Rican. Yeah, it's the Puerto Rican ethnicity that is adopted to Sweet 16. But my point is, you're Cuban. You know, I think something like 70, 80 percent of the American Hispanic population is of Mexican origin. So what is it about, but I almost find that inconsequential. Why does your ethnicity help you versus me, if I were running for president, in solving the immigration issue? A lot of reasons.

You know, I think, first of all, you can, as you said, you can communicate in their native language for Hispanics. I think that's incredibly important. I think I as a Hispanic understand the nuances of the Hispanic culture better than someone who's not a Hispanic. You know, you can, we can have a quiz on it if you want, but I doubt that anyone understands, and by the way, as mayor of Miami, I doubt that anyone understands better what's happening in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, you know, Uruguay, Paraguay, et cetera, right? And Mexico, among the others. So I don't, I don't think that there's, and then, and then I think it's important that if the person is a Hispanic Republican, it's important politically because the Hispanic population is 20%

of America, and we want them to continue to trend Republican. You have Democrats calling Hispanics, as you said, improperly, monolithically, Latinx, that doesn't work. That doesn't, that doesn't hit, that doesn't stick, right? And then saying, you know, that they're as unique as San Antonio tacos, which is what, you know, the First Lady said, right? And I think yesterday's or today's news is that Connecticut is saying, okay, okay, Latinx doesn't work. We're going to go Latin E. Really?

Again, I haven't heard that yet. Yeah, yeah, that's today's news. So my point is that Democrats have been so deficient on this. And I think I do believe that a Republican, who is Hispanic, who understands the nuances, you've said it correctly, right? It can't just be any Hispanic who can speak the native language, who can understand. I think that person can communicate better. I think he can demystify this issue because now we can attract more Hispanics, which is one of the reasons why I'm also running for president.

Attracting more Hispanics, attracting more young voters, and attracting more people in cities, which I've done successfully in my career. You know, I guess the only reason I kind of latched on and jumped in there for the moment is I, and I think many Americans have just gotten really, really weary of identity politics. and the idea that what qualif... I get that. And I'm not suggesting you're doing that. I truly am not. I don't want someone's qualifications nor their detractions to be attached to their superficial qualities. I just want people judged on their merit and their character and their judgment. For sure. I'm sure you do. I appreciate that.

And I'm going to, by the way, in the course of our conversation, I want to challenge you on a few different issues because I want to see where you land, you know, on all those different characteristics. So let's stick on identity politics for just one moment. You know, on your Wikipedia, and trust me, I will discount Wikipedia as anyone's bio

or description. But one of the things it talks about... We've been trying to change our Wikipedia page for a while, so I don't know what it is that you're focused on. I promise my understanding and research of you is deeper than Wikipedia. But I know that you've been a supporter of pride events in the city of Miami.

And that's great. That's fine. I think for many people it's like there's a bit of a backlash growing towards pride because it's metastasized into something beyond simply we believe, hey, let us live our lives or tolerance. It's gone in a different direction and where it's become something like bake my cake and believe what I believe. You know, and for example, Ron DeSantis, your governor has pushed forward the Parental Rights and Education Act to sort of say we don't need that type of indoctrination in our school.

And I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, something you do not agree with the governor about the parental rights and education. So tell me why. Okay, please correct the record and tell me where you are on this. Yeah, I'll tell you. That's no problem. So first of all, I agree with the central premise that, you know, a lot of people in the pride community, right, are going beyond, you know, equal rights for consenting adults, which is something that everybody agrees with or a lot of people agree with. Maybe some people don't or maybe some people have religious views on it, but have sort of separated their religious views and their personal views from their public policy views and

from how the state manages it, right? But I do think that that has, it's gone to a place where you hear people chanting, we're coming for your children, right? You, you know, in these, you have people that are, that are, that are naked in public, right? Something that we wouldn't allow our homeless to do. We wouldn't allow any human being to do because we think that that's inappropriate, right? And it's not something that kids should be exposed to. It's frankly, that's something adults should be exposed to, right? Where people are not walking around naked. That's just not something that we accept as a society. It has nothing to do with who you love or with who your partner is.

It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with a common decency that we as a society agree on. In terms of the Parenthood Rights Act, I totally agree that I, as a father of two, a nine-year-old and a five-year-old, do not want schools or the government, for that matter, telling us what we should. do with our children in terms of education on sex matters, right? What I said, and I think, you know, the press off, you know, we'll take a kernel and they'll sort of spin it the way that they want to is for, you know, older children, they should be taught sex education. I just don't think it should be indoctrination. And that's where I, where I draw the line, right? Because I think it's one thing to talk about sex education, which I think many of us learned in school as we got older,

but but this indoctrination of you know you know all these different movements now that are that are trying to seep in through education it's wrong it's you know kids should kids have it tough enough you know what I mean without having to have an agenda pushed on them by anyone in in government or in schools or whatever and I think that they can come to their decisions with their friends and their family and their faith and and proceed from there and there's a lot of psychological potential damage that can happen when, in my opinion, on both sides, by the way, you know, trying to get kids not to feel that they're gay or trying to get kids, you know, to do certain things while they're children. There's a lot of psychological information on that, which can be damaging. And I think that we have to be very careful as a society there. So I read, and I love how you emphasized that one of the things that qualifies you, though, to solve, for example, the immigration issue.

is that you are a Republican. Tell me, I read that you did not support Donald Trump in either 16 or 20 and didn't support Ron DeSantis in 2018. Why? So I did support a Republican candidate in 16 and 20. I actually wrote in Marco Rubio, who was a friend and someone who I admire and who I thought was the best choice for president. He made it very, very far, and didn't, unfortunately, become the nominee.

And I supported Mike Pence, who I thought did a wonderful job in the debates. And I thought was, you know, I wrote him in, that was what I, what I decided to do in that. And I've said, by the way, that if somehow I don't get elected and I don't get nominated, that I would support the former president against Joe Biden. And I think that, you know, the current president is just not electable on a multitude of different levels. In terms of the former governor, you know, I did actually support him in the primary. I gave him money. I raised him money in the primary. You know, he made no effort.

He didn't say thank you. He made no effort to build a relationship with me. I don't think that he's been known as a relationship type of person, which is why I think he's lost 12 out of 13 congressional endorsements in his own state, and including, you know, one of my law school classmates, Greg Stuby, who fell from a ladder and didn't get a call from the governor. So I think he can work on that. And that, he never asked me.

By the way, he never even asked me for his endorsement. And I never endorsed his opponent. I never raised money for his opponent. I simply said that I voted for his opponent. Andrew Gillen, right? Is that you referencing Democrat Andrew Gillum instead of Ron DeSantis for governor? I'm glad he won. I supported him in his re-election.

I raised money for him after that election. He came to my law office and raised money for him. So I think people try to spend a narrative because it benefits them, you know, his surrogates, etc. And, you know, and I think, look, I also believe in loyalty. and I think, you know, he was supported in that campaign by the former president, and he had people that helped him in a difficult moment where he made some mistakes in that campaign, and he dumped those people unceremoniously after the campaign. So, you know, look, I believe in loyalty.

I believe in asking people for support. I believe in building relationships. And by the way, as president, those are important qualities. If you want to build relationships with areas that our current president has fractured, like the Middle East and others, you need to understand. understand how to build relationships. Our current president and our current administration does not know how to build relationships. And that's why the United States' status around the world has diminished and why we're projecting weakness just about everywhere. So it's fair to say that

your lack of support previously for Governor Ron DeSantis and your differences today with Ron DeSantis, is it fair to say, are more about personality and character and less about policy differences? Yeah, I think we agree on a lot of policy. I think we disagree on some things. I definitely think we have different personalities. There's no doubt about it. And, you know, I don't make much of it. I know I understand in the press, people like to talk about things that are conflictive.

I like to talk about things that are positive and focus on things that are productive conversations. I don't, you know, I don't agree with my wife on everything. You're not going to agree with everybody on every single issue. That's impossible. So, you know, I think that's a really, I appreciate that point. I truly do. Because the goal of my interview with you and my conversation isn't to get some media splash moment about why Francis Suarez and Ron DeSantis don't get along. But I think, and I love to turn to positive because our country is starving for some positive solutions and some positive attitudes.

I think in asking you your differences with Donald Trump or with Ron DeSantis, what I'm hoping to find, though, is the differentiating factor because you're the third, I believe, you're the third politician from the state of Florida to enter the race for president of the United States. Let's look for those on policy, okay? Let's look for those. My differentiating factors are simple. I define myself by what I'm for, not what I'm against. Let's do that. I want to ask you about a couple of issues, if you don't mind. Tell me, because I know as mayor, you know, preparing Miami for climate events has been a big part of your job.

Where are you on climate change on if you were president of the United States, on where you would prioritize policy when it comes to climate change? Do you feel like it's an existential threat like so many Democrats do? where are you on climate change i think there's an intersection uh between economics and the environment uh that that is where i where i fall for example um we have uh the everglades right which is our drinking water we need to preserve our drinking water for existential reasons right that's something we need to take care of um we also have our bay which is a you know producer of billions of dollars of ecotourism that's an asset um i learn how to snorkel uh i learn how to scuba dive in our Bay, I want my children to be able to do that as well.

So it's an asset that we need to take care of. You know, we have hurricanes and flooding, right? That's not Republican or Democrat. It's not a Republican hurricane or a Democrat hurricane. And to be honest, I've gotten more money from the state, from a Republican-controlled state than I have from the Biden infrastructure bill, right? I haven't seen a penny of that money yet. Now, it may come.

I hope it comes because if he's authorized it, I hope we get it. But I don't agree with climate as a social engineering mechanism, like we've seen with the Green New Deal, where you're basically trying to impose socialism via the sort of climate agenda. And you're talking about, in many ways, things that I would agree with you about, and just to pick up with what you left off right there on the climate agenda, you're talking about environmentalism on many of these issues, protecting our environment, our natural environment. Would that include for you prioritizing carbon emissions? When we talk about a climate agenda, it is always through the prism of controlling carbon. Is that a priority for Francis Suarez? Of course it's a priority, but it's a priority given the good economics of doing that, right? So, for example, do I think we should reduce domestic production of oil?

No. I think it's been a huge problem with the Democratic Party that we have limited domestic production of oil. It's made us weaker in the world markets. It's had the current president talking about buying oil from, from Chavez, for God's sakes, from Venezuela, you know, and then calling the, you know, the prime minister of Saudi a pariah and then saying, please increase production in, you know, in advance of our midterm so that gas prices could go down and he could do better in the midterm, right? That's, that's not appropriate policy. I do think that carbon capture

is, is probably a feasible technology. And I can tell you that there are a variety of different companies, including many of the oil-producing countries of the Middle East, who are investing tons of money on carbon capture and carbon reduction technology. That's just good business. You know, if you think something that you do may harm the environment and you have a mechanism by which you can capture it, maybe even repurpose it and use it for something economic, have it create an economic benefit, why wouldn't you do that? Well, understanding good business is,

That's important, and therefore also is good judgment. I know you've been a big supporter of cryptocurrency. And the cryptocurrency, you know, you've been criticized for your ready acceptance of cryptocurrency, especially when it comes to, for example, the role. FTX had a role in Miami. It was, you know, naming stadium rights and so forth. And I believe you knew Sam Bankman-Fried. Do you look back on those relationships or that support of cryptocurrency?

Is that still something that you are all? all in on? Do you feel like that was good judgment and good business? Absolutely, 100% all in on crypto. Look, I think, you know, I think the former president and the governor and I agree on this. When you're doing this job, you're going to be criticized for a bunch of things that you do. You know, that's not, that is, that comes with the territory. And people always try to create a hindsightist 2020 mindset on things. But for me, what's important is that crypto,

is generational technology and the way that this administration has handled crypto shows how out of touch this administration is they never set the rules for administration and the rules

of engagement really and regulation which which you basically created a lot of these companies being offshore which could have been onshore American companies following a regular set of rules now they're using the SEC to go after

all of these companies as an enforcement mechanism, you know, sort of regulation by enforcement, instead of just regulating and telling people, hey, these are the rules. If you're custodying assets, you need to do X, Y, or Z with those custodied assets. What was being done by some of these exchanges is how they were custodying their assets. What were they investing in? By the way, it's no different than what happened in a lot of the banking crises throughout our history.

It's what asset class are you able to take dollars and invest them? And if you take risky investments, everything can fall, sort of, you know, everything can implode. And then you can, if you have a run on the bank, because there's a notion that you're not properly able to meet the, you know, depositors withdraws, your clients withdraws. Then you have a situation where the whole thing collapses. We've seen that happen in the history of finance many, many, many times. And it could have been avoided, had the Biden administration simply regulated and

create a good set of rules that invites it. innovation. And by the way, when you talk about the poor getting poor and you talk about crypto, you're talking about the possibility of certain kinds of instruments like fractionalized ownership of debt, fractionalize ownership of interests in things that are not particularly available to people of regular means that can have an opportunity to create much more wealth and create much higher gains than what they're getting right now in a bank account where they're losing purchasing power and having to pay higher interest rates. Don't go anywhere. More of the Will Kane

podcast right after this. Listen to the all-new Brett Bear podcast featuring common ground. In-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Bear favorites like his All-Star panel and much more. Available now at Fox News Podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. You talked about in that job, both the former president and anyone running for president today would be familiar with criticism. And you talked about looking at, I think you talked about your dad, seeing him in that position

dealing with the slings and the arrows. You're getting them this week. You're getting them because of a radio interview you did with Hugh Hewitt, where you seemed unfamiliar with the Chinese Uighurs and their human rights crisis there being persecuted for their religion. It's been described as a genocide, certainly slave labor camps, internment camps for the Muslim Uyghurs of China. You seemed in that interview to have never heard of the Uyghurs.

what what you know and by the way i think that's akin to what we were talking about earlier uh you know from single a ball to to the majors right um with skills and talent um is that an example of the great leap you have to make forward tell me about that moment with hughett yeah i mean he used a pronunciation of a word that i had not heard before um i've always heard how did he say it which is the way that oh he said we heard like i did okay and by the way he gave and by the way he gave No context, right? It wasn't like you just gave a tremendous amount of context to the issue in asking the question. It was a gotcha question. And I understand with you, you have to expect those gotcha questions like what's the nuclear triad, which I went into a very long and comprehensive answer to. It was a 19-minute interview in the last question. He says, is, you know, what do you think about Uyghurs? And frankly had never heard the term used in that particular way, pronounced that way. You know, I gave the keys to the city to Enis Cantor Freedom. And if you know Enis, He is an avid human rights activist who has criticized the NBA, particularly for their policy, and they're ignoring the tragedy that the Uyghurs or the Uyghurs are undergoing in China right now.

And that's been the central focus. So I am very familiar with the issue. Very much, you know, I advocated for and gave Akita the city to someone who is fighting that cause, probably in the most vociferous way or one of the most vociferous ways in our country and, you know, he's obviously of Turkish descent and this is, you know,

a minority Muslim Turkish population in, in Jing, Xinjiang. So, you know, I just, you know, I, it is what it is, like you said, you know, you've got to understand that sometimes these things happen and you, you know, you own it at some level because I had not heard that pronunciation.

But, but, but, But look, if I would have asked him what's damas de blanco, or if I asked you right now, what are the damas de blanco? Are you going to be able to answer what the damas de blanco are? No, but to be fair, to be fair, I'm not running for president. I'm not running. But to be fair, I'm not running for president. But let me tell you who the damo de blanco are. The damo de blanco are women in Cuba who are systematically beaten by the Cuban government

because they want to express, you know, their opposition to the government. So, you know, at the end of the day, you know, we can play this game all day. I think if he would have said, for example, look, how do you feel about the repression of Uyghurs, you know, in China and the fact that they've been put in concentration camps and the fact that the Chinese government has ordered to shoot them if they try to escape? Do you think that that is a human rights atrocity that should be discussed more? Do you think that China should condemn for that? I would have said, absolutely. I think it was done in a way that was, like, as you said earlier today, to get the sort of virality hits that it actually got, and it worked for human. Well, yeah, and I appreciate that in our conversation today, you've given me time and given me substantive answers.

I think this, Mayor, I think that you and anyone will be forgiven of mistakes. I think that the, it's interesting in many ways. One of the effects of Donald Trump is that people are willing to look past flaws if they believe. leaving your inherent goodness and your authenticity, and ultimately your competency to do the job. They can trust you, okay? And that trust doesn't require perfection. So if I had two hours with you, I would love to go over every single issue with you and see where you are. But I'm going to ask you one all-encompassing question now. And it's this. You know, you certainly need to survive a Republican primary to get to a general election for president. If I look at the things that you,

where you are, you know, you are very conservative on abortion. I believe you support a ban on abortion past 15 weeks, and I believe, jump in if I get it wrong, even at a national level, you would support that type of ban. I see you nodding along, which is very conservative. Some would say it's so conservative. Some would say it's so conservative it's going to hurt you in a general election. Well, I don't think so. I think the 70% of Americans are at a 15-week federal minimum with exceptions for the life and health of a mother. and with other exceptions for rape and incest.

But, you know, I'm pro-life, personally. I'm Catholic. My wife, my three sisters, I have no brothers. My mother and my mother-in-law, all pro-life. And we have a very long history with the pro-life movement. But I also think that, you know, we should, I think we would save a lot of babies if we had a federal minimum of 15 weeks.

And they continue to inculcate a culture of life, which I think is important, you know, helping crisis pregnancies, helping people who want to maybe give up their children for adoption. Some of the greatest Americans have made some of the most amazing accomplishments in our country that were adopted. And I'm with you, man. There's a difference between how an issue plays politically and where you are morally. And me bringing up whether or not it plays well in a general election doesn't affect how I feel about the issue

morally. So here's the all-encompassing question. I think in this day an environment, there's a great amount of skepticism towards everything. Our institutions, the FBI, the DOJ, agendas on a global scale. And so when I talk to you about climate change or I talk to you about cryptocurrency, I guess one of the things that I think you will, and I hope you do get on that debate stage, I hope you reach the number of minimum donors needed and the polling above 1% needed to get on that debate stage in August. I think the more voices and the more points of view, the better. I think one of the questions you will have to answer in that environment is, do you share that concern? So I ask you about climate change, and I ask you about these things,

because are you prepared to it's not about conspiracies it's not about negativity it's about can i trust francis as a person to look at this client for example climate change agenda but you don't have to address just that one issue and see that it's not just about trying to make sure that hurricanes don't impact miami right it's about whether or not there's a greater agenda at play that's being pulled over the american eyes and can i trust francis sworez's judgment to always see the best thing for the American public. Yeah, look, I think that's a fair question. And the way I would view it is, you know, we spend a lot of time and energy focusing on the things we don't agree on. And I think that's part of the dysfunction of the modern political conversation. And I want to have a different

conversation. I want to focus, A, on the real problems that we have. And I'm not saying climate and the climate discussion is not a real problem or the Uyghurs in China are not a real problem. Of course are real problems. But I think that the central problems for our country, right now are inflation, immigration, and the rise of China, right? And the competitive threat that China poses, not just competitively, but also from a national security perspective. I mean, they're pumping fentanyl through our southern border. They're building bases 90 miles away from us. They're using their Belt and Road initiative to indebt the entirety of our hemisphere in Africa. And we're in a race against them to win the AI war.

war, the quantum war, the crypto war, and also the space ecosystem war, right? So to me, that should be the central focus and the central discussion of the campaign. Is climate important? Of course, it's important as a discussion point. And I think that it should be an economic, it should be driven by economics. And I think that's my view of it. I don't think we have that healthy of a conversation on it oftentimes. Do I think abortion is important? Of course, I think abortion is important. And by the way, voters think it's important, right? It's consistently polls as one of the top five or three issues that people care about. Do I think urban crime is important? Something we haven't had a chance to really talk about. I think urban crime is very important.

I think we have a sense of lawlessness in this country that is not American, in my opinion, right? And I have a great record. I'm the only candidate that has a great record in reducing crime to historic levels. Last year, we had a 1964 homicide low. This year were 40% below that number. We increased funding for police with the limited resources that we had instead of defunding police like other cities did across America. So, yeah, I think that they're, you know, my view and my vision and how I get to the podium and how I get beyond the podium is if people fall in love with a different way of talking about things, right? If they want to talk just about things that are divisive and that are constantly, you know, this, this back and forth, I don't think I'm going to outdo some of the people. that are on that side of the ledger in that way that's not going to happen that's not authentic to use your your your word it's not an authentic version of who i am and it's it's it's

not going to sell because it's not real right i think i have to be who i am and people either like what i have to say or they won't and i'm okay with that because i agree in you know i believe in democracy and i think people have have the right and i by the way i also believe in the thresholds for the debates as well i think that they're they're good thresholds oh you do okay well i hope you meet those thresholds. I truly, I truly do. Look, you have a great record in Miami. And I think that's a great, that's a great set of facts to tout. The question will be whether or not that makes you the A rod of politics, as we discussed earlier, whether or not you're ready to go from A to the major leagues. And that's what I appreciate you taking these questions today,

to see, not to find where our negativity or disagreements lie, but whether or not we can take on those big issues in a positive vision. And by the way, I'm going to take this conversation full circle before we go. The reason I'm tan, okay, is because even though I have these regrets for not serving, I promised a bunch of Navy SEALs. I'd say it's, it's in the hundreds, I think, that in August I would do their annual swim from the Statue of Liberty to Governor's Island to Manhattan to three miles swim, which you're welcome to join, Mayor. You're welcome to join us. It's August 19th. Okay. And we're going to do it on Foxy. So if I'm going to meet on debate stage, It might be a tight thing, but I will definitely consider it for sure.

And we will do it on Fox and Friends. We're going to air it on Fox and Friends live. I am training outdoors at a pool, and I forgot to put on sunscreen, and there's a lot of glare off that water in the heat of Texas sun. I presume we're going to wear a wetsuit, right? No, no, no, no, no, no wetsuit. No. For three miles.

Yeah, it'll be warm enough. We can wear fins, though. You can wear fins. Oh, you can wear fins. I don't know how your swim training is, but, yeah, three miles. I love spear fishing, so I'm a big into, yeah. I'm a big water guy. Hey, man.

Maybe this is your breakout moment, swimming from the Statue of Liberty of Manhattan. Mayor Suarez, I really appreciate your time today, and I've enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, appreciate you. There you go.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Francis Suarez. I hope you will stick with this again, and I'll see you again on Friday. Listen to ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast, and Amazon Prime members. listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon music app. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me. Kennedy, make sure to check out my podcast.

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