Transcript of #BecauseMiami: Escape From (Alligator) Alcatraz New

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Justo Bentancourt is coming up on 3 weeks since he was released from Alligator Alcatraz, and now President Donald Trump is singling out Justo and his daughter, Ariane. In a Truth Social post Sunday evening, Trump writes, "Welcome home to Justo Bentancourt, whose daughter Ariane fought very hard to free her father from Alligator Alcatraz. Enjoy your freedom together." Justo, a Cuban national, spent 6 months in Alligator Alcatraz. A few weeks ago, a judge decided through a habeas corpus ruling he was in the detention center too long.

Pero, like, what the fuck, bro? I've always wanted to open an interview like that.

Really, with an F-bomb?

Yeah. Literally.

Like, literally. Pero, like, Arianne Betancourt is here, whose father mercifully was released from the concentration camp in the Everglades, known humorously, because concentration camps should be known humorously, as Alligator Alcatraz. This message from the president, giving you a Molotov, a congratulations, where did that come from? Do you have a relationship with the president? Are you a fan? Are you a voter? Are you a fan? What is that?

Definitely none of the above. I've never been a Trump supporter, I've never voted, would never vote for Trump. I don't, you know, I'm not a conservative or a Republican. I am living like below the poverty line, so tax breaks don't really apply to me.

But so where did this come from, that the president of the United States is posting on Truth Social a basically a congratulations to you for a hard-fought victory, which it was, to get your father out of Alligator Alcatraz? You have no idea how that happened?

Well, I made a very public campaign and I kind of became one of the few family members of a detained person who was going public with what we were being told.

And let's talk about that, 'cause you have a, so you don't know, the short answer is you have no idea necessarily how.

I mean, I guess I made enough noise. I mean, I just made enough noise from yelling at Kristi Noem at her hearing, from going to State of the Swamp. I've done a lot of things in the last few months.

And clearly.

Helped start the dildo thing in Minnesota. So I was one of the starters of the dildo blitz in Minneapolis. So I think I did so much, to kind of get public attention on Alligator Alcatraz that it got to him.

Clearly caught the eye of the President of the United States.

I'm sorry, I wanna get back to the dildo thing.

I was gonna guess that Roy was caught up on the dildo thing. Roy!

So this was at a Minnesota Timberwolves game, you guys threw dildos on the court?

No, no.

So that was a different dildo thing.

At the Whipple Federal Building. So my aunt is a homophobic, lesbian Republican Trump supporter, and when my dad was detained, she had a problem with me being vocal on my opposition on the immigration policies. So my dad told me not to argue with her. So I chose to just put a dildo on her door. Like, you know, go fuck yourself. So I wasn't arguing with her, but I was like—

On her door, how? You made a sort of like a— No, I got a suction cup one. A psycho knife.

No, I got a suction cup one on Amazon. It was like $5.

The best $5 I've ever spent.

Not at a Minnesota Lynx game, not a WNBA game.

This is very important because Roy keeps track of all the dildo activity in the country.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's in Buffalo, you know, during the Bills game.

Oh no, I have, I'm gonna show you some footage.

Oh, Roy, you're in luck.

Just go on YouTube.

Oh, there's footage of dildos, okay.

Go, just look up dildo blitz.

Okay, so suction cupped this dildo.

And then I told my friends in Minnesota about it, and they were like, this is what we need to take to the ICE agents. They took a few, and then sex shops just started donating thousands and thousands and thousands of dildos to the people in Minnesota to take to protests, because then they can't say people are being aggressive.

If you just—

Oh, I see. So we're looking at footage right now from St. Paul, anti-ICE protest turns heads with bizarre stunt. There are people waving suction-cup dildos in the air, some of them have them suction-cupped to their foreheads, they're throwing them at cars at the ICE detention center, they're penetrating, if you will, Will through the chain-link fence with the dildos. I mean— They're coming all over the place. So this is your fault is what you're saying?

Yeah, so from then, from that—

So you think the president noticed the dildo stuff?

I think that's what it was. Okay, I'm thinking that's what it was.

That's really what caught Roy's eye.

Honestly, I just gave—

Sports!

I just told them, I'm like, hey, I'm a silly goose and this is how I got back at my aunt. And then I told a few people about it and then it became this whole thing. I left Minnesota. Got home, I look on Instagram and I'm like, what?

I'm like, what?

Happy porn!

This is not where I thought this conversation was going, by the way.

You're a silly goose with a dildo.

And by the way, how fast did Lewis like dial up that footage? Like, I've never seen him.

I've never seen—

He had it in his back pocket. He was just like, he's like, did somebody— you had me a dildo. Like, did somebody say dildo? And like, right, boom. I've never seen him bring up footage like that. Like, I've never seen it. Like, this is like— I never even thought to say—

This looks like a job for me.

I never even thought to say, hey, Lewis, can we dial that up? I've never even thought— all these years, I've never thought to do that. And here he is, just with the footage like that. Incredible. I guess we'd call it D-roll. With the D-roll.

The D-roll.

Oh, Lewis with the GIF faces today too. Holy shit. Anyway, thank you for just completely derailing the show like a Brightline train.

You're welcome.

Really just unbelievable.

I think that that's one of the many things that I did.

But you have a really interesting path here too, to, we'll call it activism, for lack of a better term, 'cause you like got, I guess it's been a calling now with what happened to your dad. So what did you do before and what do you do now? 'Cause it's been quite a transformation in your life in just the last several months.

I had a tour business. I was a tour guide, right across the street at Bayside. Managed, uh, two boat operations. I did walking tours, private tours, the bus tours. Since I freelanced, I pretty much worked for everyone. I had like a pretty busy schedule.

So classic hospitality, like your job is to make everybody know how beautiful and wonderful Miami is in the United States is cuz people are coming from all over the world, presumably to Bayside to take tours. So, and now you're kind of on the flip side of, of that. Now what do you do now and how did that happen?

So in January, I quit my job. I went to Chicago to a protest outside of Broadview. My dad was taken to Mexico in those days. That's when I quit my job, and then—

So he was actually deported. He's Cuban though, right?

They tried to deport him, but when he got to Mexico, they had denied his insulin already for a full week.

Oh no.

So when he told the Mexican officials he hadn't had insulin in a week, they were like, we can't accept his entry, we have to deny his entry because it's a liability, you know, it's a 3-day commute to where he has to go on different buses, and there's walking involved.

So he's diabetic, and he did not have his medicine. I can see you getting a little emotional about this now, understandably so. So, but he's Cuban, and they sent him to Mexico, a country— has he ever been to Mexico before?

No.

Never. So they sent him to a country he's never been before without his medicine, which they've also deprived him of for an entire week. And what are you What were you doing during this time?

I went to Minneapolis. I left—

With the dildos?

No, the dildos happened a few days into being in Minneapolis, but I went to Minneapolis and I got to see ice on the streets. I saw the terror, but I also saw the solidarity. I saw people coming together. I saw moms walking around with a trail, like a line of kids kids that aren't even their kids, but they're like, "They're going to be safer with me than having their own parent come out." And when I went to Minnesota right after Renée Goode was killed, I— you know, when you see the government attacking civilians for trying to protect their neighbors, it triggers something inside you. And I think there's a disconnect in humanity, where— Right. There's a group of people that see these things and it affects them and it makes them change and think about the future. And the people that have been conditioned to think, "Oh, this is what's supposed to happen. You follow rules or you get hurt." So this has completely changed your life.

I mean, you were a tour guide, the next thing you know you're leaving your job to pursue not justice for your father, but to get your father home, get him to his medicine, get him—

It became much bigger than just, um, my dad and me. I think within a week of him being detained, I started connecting with other families, and they didn't want to speak up. They didn't want to— they were like, "No, no, no. I'm just— they're going to sign their voluntary departure, and we'll figure it out." They were scared. They were terrified.

They were terrified.

And so your father is in Mexico. Mexico says, "We can't take him. He's sick. We cannot take care of him." And where does he go from there?

Back to Alligator Alcatraz.

Hmm. And what do you do then?

I didn't stop. I, um, then I started working with the Worker Circle, um, the organization that anchors the vigils every Sunday outside of Alligator Alcatraz. I had been working with them, like, on an unofficial basis. I was just doing a lot of volunteer work. So I was connecting with families and relaying the information to them and relaying the information to them. And that became a job. And I went from talking to the families to then also talking directly with the detainees. So for the last 4 months, most of my conversations have been directly with people detained inside of Alligator Alcatraz.

As I understand, as they're trying to, or supposedly winding down operations there, and people are being, I guess, removed from Alligator— like the conditions have deteriorated. Like they're even worse somehow than they were before. Is that right?

Yeah.

How so?

So the food that they were fed the last week or so, everything was dated 2 weeks prior. Like the expiration was dated 2 weeks prior. Stuff that was frozen and expired, and that's what they're giving them. The water is muddy. There's mosquitoes, bugs in it. The guys say the water—

In the water?

Yeah. So they give them these 5-gallon, the, the Home Depot, like, containers, um, that's where they fill up their water. And then they have these little cups. So when the water looks dirty, they add chemicals to the water, like bleach it. So these guys have these rubber cups, and after the first time they use the cup that they drink the water, the cup literally starts disintegrating from whatever liquid is inside of the water. So these guys are drinking this water that's been making them sick for months. They are all, you know, they all complain of, they get excessive diarrhea, they're throwing up, their stomachs hurt, and they tell them, "Drink more water." They don't give them any medications for anything. So they give them water.

They're effectively being poisoned by whatever's in the water, you think. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

How did you get your father out?

We filed a habeas petition, a habeas corpus petition. The first one was partially denied, and then we filed again after him being there for 180 days. And it was granted.

Why was he taken into custody in the first place? He's a Cuban-American, he's been here for how long?

He's been here for 36 years. He did have a criminal record and he had supervision, which has always been the case.

But he's done, he did his time, he's out.

He did his time and he was just, he had had to report once a year.

How old is the criminal record?

10 years. Okay.

Violent crime?

No.

Drug-related crime?

Drug-related.

Okay.

But they told him, stay in line, for your next appointment next year. And he stood in that line for 2 hours, and then they brought him into a room and they told him, oh, you're detained because you came into this country illegally. My dad got here in 1990 because the American Red Cross and the Cuban American Organization rescued him and my grandparents out of a war zone. So he was brought here by the US.

Illegally, according to the US now.

Yeah.

Uh-huh, all these years, 36 years later. So, well, I, wish you the same congratulations the president did, I guess.

Trump is a fucking idiot.

But I do want to ask you this, because you've been— you're out there now full-time, right? I mean, you're out there at Alligator Alcatraz.

Every Sunday, sometimes I'm there— I mean, I'm there a couple nights out of the week. We volunteer, we do stakeouts, we sit there and just watch all of the cars going in, the buses, trying to figure out how many people they've moved, how they're moving them.

And you've had some very strong words for not just the president, for Governor Ron DeSantis, but also for some of our local leadership as well.

Yeah, Marilyna, don't respect her. Marco Rubio, don't respect him.

Why not?

Because they are Cuban Americans that have been conditioned to believe that the path to peace is war. They're not Cubans who've actually lived in Cuba. They're not Cubans that have the same values as the Cubans on the island. And they're not doing anything for the people here. I went to Maria Elvira's office and her rep told me she's in support of President Trump's policies. She's been a big supporter of his policies.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Which policies? The same one she claims she's fighting against on behalf of her constituents?

No, on the Dignity Act. And Carlos Jimenez—

She wants to play both sides. She wants to play both sides.

She wants to play both sides, and it's just, as a Cuban-American who understood that Cuba was dismantled, yes, by communism, but the embargo and the blockade and the sanctions, I mean, what's happened to Cuba in the last 6 months has been a direct attack on the Cuban people.

If you're concerned about the humanitarian issues in Cuba, for the people who all these years through the blockade have been essentially violating it by sending money and aid to— by the way, again, to their to families for humanitarian purposes, this is— I mean, if you really care about that, then this has been pretty terrible for the people on the island, not for the people in power, per se.

But it's— humanity's become a political point. It's like, OK, we give them a little bit so that they can vote for us, and then we're going to take it away because we have to appease the white guy.

Before we go, let me ask you this, because everybody you just mentioned are Republicans, but you are not only taking Republicans to task, relatively newly elected Miami City Mayor Eileen Higgins. She had this to say when she was on the campaign trail and shortly after she was elected.

There's no reason in the city of Miami that our police department should be in the job of federal immigration enforcement. ICE and its tactics have been in my community for over a year. They have been causing great fear and terror in our residents. It is inhumane. It is cruel. I'm a Catholic. It's— I can barely grapple with the lack of humanity around all this. We're a place where most of our Our residents were born somewhere else. And so the harsh, cruel, inhumane, horrible trickle-down hatred tactics that are coming from the federal government, I am convinced, made some people want to vote for me because they think I will stick up for them in the face of this sort of behavior.

Arianne, I'd like to give you an opportunity to respond to Mayor Higgins.

I've said it 20 times and I'm gonna probably say it 100 more.

Oh, shit. Blackjack then, we got 21 today.

She was elected based on that. The only reason she's making history and being the first female mayor, the first Democratic female mayor in whatever amount of time is because of that. Because she made a promise to end the 287(g). 287(g). And then she got elected, and then DeSantis put his foot on her neck. And what did she do? She went against her constituents. And that is exactly what is wrong with politics, because we get representatives who make these false promises on the campaign trail, and then when it comes time to act, they don't. And their constituents will go to their office and they're never available. You send emails, they don't respond. [SPANISH] They get confronted in public events, they just escort the people out. And it's just— there's no accountability at the local level, so how do we expect accountability at the federal level?

Ariane Betancourt, what's next? What is the call to action? What do you want people to do? Where do you want to— where do you want people to go?

Show up to your local representative's office. And if you can't show up, make the calls. I mean, everyone, even when you have a job, you have a lunch break. Take 5 minutes and make a call. "Hey, I want my congresswoman to put an end to the 287(g)." 287(g)." It's all it takes. But people don't understand that we the people are, you know, the force. But if we sit back and allow the government to trample on our rights— I mean, we're seeing what's being done in Alabama and Tennessee. This is not— this is not—— a mistake. This is exactly how the system has been designed. Population grows, you have to control, remove. You get to filter and to make it create whatever you want. And it's not— this is not just a Trump issue. It's an issue on all ends, because our elected officials aren't doing anything for us. And they're sitting here talking about humanity and discussing foreign affairs, discussing political prisoners elsewhere. And we have tens of thousands of people in concentration camps throughout this country because of politics. So they are political prisoners in this country, and our elected officials are watching it happen and concerned about what's happening behind them.

And Roy, you'll bring the dildos.

Uh, I do not have any on hand right now, so no.

I might have one in the car.

Oh, okay, well, you get to order.

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Hey everybody, I wanted to speak to you directly tonight because I have some really difficult news. After spending the last week reviewing every available legal option with my team and with our attorneys, I have made the heartbreaking decision to not move forward with qualifying for Congress in Florida's 28th Congressional District. Over the past week, Questions surrounding a voter registration discrepancy from last year created a complicated legal situation under a newly enacted Florida elections law. We explored every viable option available to us, but ultimately it became clear that moving forward was going to mean prolonged legal litigation, enormous uncertainty, and a campaign consumed by legal battles instead of the issues that actually matter.

Through the years, we've had a lot of candidates on this program who are running for office. I don't know, Roy, have we ever had a former candidate, like someone who just dropped out of a race like last week? As my soon-to-be 98-year-old grandfather says, you live long enough, you see everything.

Roy!

We are seeing a first in the history of Because Miami today. So Hector Mujica was running late last year, early this year for United States Senate in the state of Florida, running in a Democratic primary against the Republican incumbent Ashley Moody. Then in April, switched from the United States Senate race to the congressional race in District 28, Democratic primary there against candidate Phil Ayer, who's been on this program, sat in that seat just a few weeks ago. And that would be to run against Republican incumbent Carlos Jiménez in District 28. And so now, as we can see from that video from last week, you are no longer running for anything. Why don't we start there? There was this mini sort of scandal that erupted in Democratic politics here in the state of Florida that lasted 2, 3 weeks. I don't know how long until the end of your campaign. So let's start there. What happened? Why are you no longer running for Congress?

Yeah, listen, first of all, I'll tell you this, Billy. First of all, thank you for having me on your show, and thank you for bringing the— sounds like the first ex-candidate that you've had on so far, which is—

We've had a lot of ex-candidates who, like, lost races, I suppose, but never who, like, just dropped out of the race and came on to talk There's always a first.

Well, listen, I'm incredibly proud of the race that we ran. I'm really proud of the reasons why we got into the race in the first place. I've come to believe that politics have become incredibly performative and politics have become incredibly tainted with people that are in it for themselves, that are in it for reelection, that are in it for self-serving reasons, for ego, and not for ultimately serving the people, the people of Florida. And I also got in it because we're going through quite a range of inflection points in this moment in time. We're going through an inflection point point socially. Do we see each other as fellow human beings, fellow Miamians first and foremost, or do we see each other as political enemies if we happen to fall on different sides of the spectrum? Do we believe in the American dream that is still within reach, or is it getting further and further out of reach for the average Floridian? And all of this is getting deeply accelerated by technology. Artificial intelligence is gonna change the rules of nearly everything. And that's what got me into the race in the first place. And then—

What got you out of the race?

Yeah, what got me out of the race? On May 29th, we learned that there was a discrepancy in my voter file from 2025, that there was a period of a couple of weeks, 3, 4, or 5 weeks that had me no longer being a registered Democrat and had me as a no party affiliation, and then back into the Democratic Party a few weeks after that.

So there were two party affiliation changes about nearly 8 weeks apart from June to beginning of June to end of July of 2025. And there is Florida law that says that you have to be registered and affiliated with a party for 365 consecutive days in order to run as a member of that party.

Correct, yeah, and that important piece here, the legal landscape shifted a bit in the midst of me running, right? On April 1st, that word consecutive, the word that you just brought into this room, that got added into the law. I think prior to, from what I understand in speaking to our attorneys over the past couple of weeks, there was a fairly weak law that's been in the books for about 7 years now, and that law stipulated 365 days, not consecutive, and then it had no enforcement mechanism, and it was a fairly weak law to the point that several folks have been removed and then the courts have put them back into the ballot.

Yeah, but that was a law since 2021 in the state of Florida. The spirit of the law is that so people can't just suddenly become a Democrat or Republican and be like a shill candidate or a spoiler candidate. They want to at least sort of test your loyalty, I guess, if you will, and say you're really running truly in purely as a Republican or as a Democrat. Now, you're right, there was a recent Democratic-led and sponsored and fought and won, which is very rare that the Democrats win anything in Florida, in Tallahassee at the Capitol. And they won this law to clarify, as you said, the 365 consecutive, give it some kind of teeth with some sort of enforcement mechanism, give someone standing to sue. In the case here, your primary opponent, Phil Ayer, filed an elections fraud complaint against you on May 29th and then threatened to sue.

Right.

Come June 8th, in the event that I guess you qualified or attempted to qualify. So the law was on the books though, and all the, the political campaign consultants and political operatives that I speak to say that for the last 4 or 5 years, since about 2021, 2022 in Florida, they usually do their due diligence to make sure that candidates have been affiliated with their given party for 365 days.

Yeah.

So what happened here though? I mean, you're a good candidate. You're, and we're gonna get into the issues and we can certainly vet the quality of a candidate, but before you can vet the quality, you have to qualify.

In Sri Lanka.

Yeah, you have to qualify for the race. So what happened here?

Listen, in spite of a long track record as a Democrat, and I've, you know, my voting registration history shows me being a Democrat for over a decade or longer, my entire adult life, my voting background, my giving, donation background, my engagement publicly and otherwise, my board memberships, et cetera, have affiliated me with the Democratic Party for the entirety of my adult career. —discrepancy in my voter file last year.

What do you mean by discrepancy, though? Well, first, your campaign said that it appeared to be a clerical error or administrative error that you did not change your party registration to NPA. The Broward County Supervisor of Elections—

Broward!

—pushed back pretty hard, saying they reviewed their records, saying there was no evidence of a technical or clerical error found, that they did in fact find voter registration applications that were submitted and processed in accordance with Florida law, which would have had to have happened twice, once in June of 2025 and once in July of 2025, to change you from Democrat Democrat to NPA and NPA back to Democrat again. So what's the discrepancy? You use the word discrepancy.

Yeah, well, the discrepancy is that, that the ousting of me from the party and then back in, what we're trying to track down, and quite frankly, I personally don't have a lot of answers yet. And I know my campaign team's been submitting and filed a handful of information requests from Supervisor of Elections. We've gotten as far as we can get, and with the information we have, it's still largely an unclear picture as to what happened here. Was there someone acting on my behalf as part of the campaign? You're saying you didn't do it?

I did not You don't remember changing your party affiliation? Correct. Now, I've changed my party affiliation before. I receive a new voter ID or voter registration card, whatever they call it, in the mail. Did you not receive two voter registration cards in June and July of last year?

I dug around, I searched the entire house. We could not dig anything up. I also searched my entire inbox to see if there would be any sort of notification. Could not dig it up. That doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Obviously it happened, and obviously it's in my record, which is why I ultimately decided to bow out. But that doesn't, That doesn't negate the fact that there was no ill intent here. There was nothing of us trying to subvert the electoral process or any of these laws. These laws— this discrepancy came to our attention on May 29th. And in fact, I wish we had known about this. And I will own— the thing that I will definitely own is the fact that we didn't— that we as a campaign, and I ultimately— it's my name on the hat. My campaign and myself, I have to own the fact that we didn't catch this earlier.

So let's talk about that, though, because let me assume for a second that there's some sort of good faith I don't know how your party affiliation could have changed without you doing it, but let's assume that what you're saying is you don't— you said recall, or you have no recollection. Now you're saying you absolutely did not do it. Let's assume that that's accurate for a second. Let's get into the due diligence, because the public records did exist. I mean, your opponent in the primary found it. You have to assume that had you gotten the nomination from the Democratic Party, had you won the primary, that your your Republican opponent, an incumbent Carlos Jiménez, that his campaign knew or must have known and were probably sitting and salivating awaiting you, your win in the primary so that they could get you thrown off the ballot and he would have been automatically reelected like that. Yeah. But my question is, is that you raised over $700,000, you spent over $600,000 in addition to $11,000 that went to you to reimburse a loan to the campaign, a very common thing that happens with candidates. Most of that money went to season experienced political consultants and people who have a lot of experience in running candidates and campaigns who either did know or should have known that you were not in compliance with this law, because based on public records readily available from the Broward SOE, the elections office—

Right.

The Supervisor of Elections office, this information was known, this gap in your Democratic registration that would have broken the 365 consecutive day law. Why did they keep taking your money and your— well, your donors' money for a candidate who was arguably and apparently ineligible?

Yeah, listen, two things. One, to address what you mentioned earlier about Carlos Jiménez salivating and being able to knock me out of the ballot, my— what my attorneys tell me, and again, I'm taking their word at face value, is that the way the law is written, the only people who can knock you out of the ballot is your primary opponents. So in the general, it can't happen. So even if I had made it through when this issue had not come up—

So an ineligible candidate can appear on the general election ballot under Florida law? Apparently. I think that would have been an interesting challenge. I don't know that it would have gone a Democrat's way in this legal system, but it's an interesting legal theory of the case that if everybody just kept their heads in the sand for a little bit longer, you could have made it to the general election ballot. But again, my concern here is that Democrats especially in Florida—

Yeah.

Have limited resources, whether it's donors, volunteers, campaign staff, and so when an ineligible candidate diverts those resources away from eligible candidates, again, not casting aspersions on the quality of said candidate, but that to me, if you're representing that you're raising money from someone, you're saying, "Give me money, and with this money, I am going to do X, Y, and Z," but you are not eligible to do X, Y, and Z, That's a little fraudy, dude. And do your donors have concerns about that? Is there a fear of— are they going to be reimbursed? Is there fear of litigation from your donors for that?

If we had this knowledge the entire time, then I could completely agree with that assessment. If we're finding out about this on May 29th, why— if we— listen, I am the first person to tell you that I wish we had known about this challenge before May 29th. We would have fought this in court from the beginning. I —But who knew what and when?

Presumably— by the way, there's a lot of grifters in this town, a lot of, you know, the consultant cabal who prey on— you're a first-time candidate.

I am.

Okay, who prey on first-time candidates, particularly those who have the ability to fundraise, as you clearly do, you know, with your background and your friends, but—

I call it the consultant industrial complex.

100%. But like, presumably they should have known. Now, they should have come to you and said, "Hey, Hector, I don't think you're eligible,"— but, you know, I call it consultant calculus. Candidate equals campaign equals cash. Therefore, no candidate equals no campaign equals no cash. So obviously, they'd prefer the former than the latter. Were you taken advantage of here by the consultant industrial complex?

I don't want to speculate onto who knew what. What I can tell you is I didn't know this was a challenge until May 29th. The second we learned this was a challenge, shortly thereafter, we stopped collecting donations as we were talking to our legal counsel and beginning to understand and what the legal implications of this is, for the entire first week of June, we still felt pretty certain that—at least what my legal counsel was telling us was, "Hey, we feel certain that there's a pathway through to challenge this." Maybe—there were 3 avenues that they were thinking of challenging this through. One was talking about this voting discrepancy and do we—like, do we even think that, given your record as a Democrat, is that even legitimate? Is that breaching the intent of the law? Right. The second piece was, is this law retroactive? Can this law that got signed on April 1st impact you if you entered into the race or if this happened in 2020?

Well, it was not retroactive. It started to apply in 2026, meaning to the qualifying period of 2026, which was backward looking in that you had to have been registered for 365 consecutive days. So it wasn't quite retroactive, but I see what you're saying.

And then the last— well, and the last piece, and I think probably the most pointing piece of this whole thing is, is this law constitutional? And a lot of folks were telling us that this law is likely unconstitutional.

But the Democrats are the ones— here you are, a Democrat, arguing against the constitutionality of a law that the Democrats fought very hard and successfully to pass in Tallahassee.

Listen, I can't—

That's a weird conflict.

I can't speak to what was in the mind of my Democratic colleagues, and I think there's a difference between between a law that's applicable to state Senate, to state House, to the governor's mansion, and federal law ultimately governs— the Constitution governs who is eligible to be a member of Congress or a member of the U.S. Senate. And there's 3 stipulations. There's an age stipulation, there's a residency stipulation, and there's a citizenship stipulation. Beyond that, there's no additional— If you could also envision a world where then every state across this country begins to put in their own factors. Oh, hey, we want people that have been residents of Rhode Island for the past 60 years.

But they do.

The states do control the elections, and the states are able to regulate certain elements of eligibility. Listen, we spent a lot of time on this. I want to make sure we have time. So I want to ask you, let's assume for a moment, let's play— I don't want to say devil's advocate, but let's play fantasy roleplay here. You're still in the race right now. Let's imagine that. You've been walking the district, you've been talking to people, What are the issues? What are the issues in this race and the things that you would want to be talking about other than what we've been talking about?

Listen, I think these are things that I'm gonna continue to be talking about, 'cause at the end of the day, like, my fight doesn't end with this race. My fight ends when the state of Florida and the people of South Florida are better represented in City Hall, in Tallahassee, in Washington. And what I kept hearing from people up and down the 28th Congressional District, up and down the state of Florida when I was running for Senate, is, quite frankly, the promise of the American dream, the promise that, hey, one day if you work hard and play by the rules, the promise that brought my parents to this country from Venezuela and have them hustle so hard and work diligently to be able to give me a version of the American dream, to go from an immigrant household with a pastor father, with parents that were busting their butts to work really hard, all the way to the executive suite at Google, like that's an only in America, and then potentially, and then running for Senate, and then running for Congress, that's an only in America story. And right now, that version of the American dream feels uniquely out of reach for the average Floridian.

The average Floridian is one $1,000 emergency away from homelessness. The average Floridian is debating what bills to pay because they don't know— they know that they can't pay for all the bills that are coming in that month. Heaven forbid if they get a speeding ticket. Heaven forbid if they get into a car accident. Heaven forbid if they get an illness or a diagnosis, right? And then they're gonna be set back significantly more. And again, all of this, and I mentioned this earlier, all of this is gonna get deeply upended and shifted because of technology. Technology's gonna change the rules of the game completely.

That's what I really wanna talk, 'cause I was most impressed by your platform is that you had, now we can debate the merits of it, the strengths and weaknesses, but you had an AI platform on your website that you spoke about in events, and I'm with you, I think there's an inevitability to it, so the question is how do we regulate it and ensure that it does not crush humanity, both economically and militarily as well. So, and I don't think there are a lot of congressional candidates running in this country right now who are spending enough time on this. It is not some sort of niche issue. It is the tectonic, life-altering issue of our time and perhaps all time.

And what you see is candidates end up leaning into these overly simplistic positions just to win votes. I mean, right now—

It's also 'cause they're all 80 years old, Hector.

I mean, they barely know how to function their iPhone, and somehow these are the people that we're entrusting with ushering us into the next —technological revolution.

People were calling their grandchildren for tech— for IT help.

100%, including Carlos Jiménez, right? I mean, Carlos is pushing 80, right? And like, and our Democratic nominee is not that much younger either. So it's not like we have a lot. We, at this moment, I would argue, demand a new generation of leadership in Washington, a generation of leadership that grew up around technology, ideally a generation of leadership that has worked within tech, that understands how these companies —function, how these technologies function.

Which you have.

Which I have. I worked there for 15 years.

Where?

At Google. I was with Google. I led their philanthropy and impact investing arm globally for many, many years. And that gave me a really unique lens into what the promise of these technologies can be, and also the potential downside, and how do we both honor the promise— this thing can be curing cancer, it can be helping us solve climate change— and how do we not lose our way of life? How do we not lose our environment? How do we not lose our dignity and our humanity in the process. And that's what I would argue this next wave of members of Congress, this next wave of elected officials, those are the questions that they need to be addressing.

And I would argue they're not questions of tomorrow, they're very much questions of today, and to put that off for another cycle, I think is incredibly dangerous. So right. And yeah, because the changes are happening now whether we like it or not. The question is, will government be able to keep up with it in order to protect, I mean, to protect the homeland, to really just to do what they're their major function is, which is national security. And in many ways, that's exactly what this is. Hector, I'm sorry, we're out of time. We could do this literally all day, and I hope you'll come back again. Presumably you'll have the same hat, or a new hat, or a different hat, or something. But thanks so much for coming. Billy, thank you for having me. Cocaine's.