Transcript of Zaslow's Fried Chicken Blunder | Local Hour

Miami is now one of the most expensive places to live in America. Costs are totally out of control. And what's Maria Alvarez Salazar doing about it?

Communist. Communist. Communist. Socialist. Communist. Socialist. Communism. Socialist. Socialist. Socialist. Comunista. Comunista. Socialist. Socialist. Socialist. Paradise. Communism. Communist. Communist. Socialism.

Socialism. Socialist. Socialist. Socialist. Socialist. Socialist.

Socialist. Communist. Marxism. Communism. Communist. Socialist. Communist. Socialist. Communist. Communist. Socialist.

Miami needs a serious person in Congress. We can't afford Maria anymore.

The Communist Manifesto.

Comunista! Comunista!

Jesus. You know, it's just demagoguery for our lizard brains. And we all have that primitive part of our brains that the fear-mongering appeals to. And they adjusted. It's—how to put it—it's the exploitation of generational trauma for power and profit. And it's not just for the Cuban American community. It's for the Jewish community gets a 2. The Black community gets—

I know.

The white people get it. Just straight-up white people. Now, I can talk about this because.

I just want to let everybody know I have a few Black friends. Congratulations.

So Spyron Donald's not one of them. But for certain segments of our community, it's the Comunista, Comunista bullshit. For the Jewish community, they invoke, you know, Hamas and ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood. All of it, though. All of it is a distraction from what's really going on. It's a bit of prestidigitation. Did I say that right?

I don't know.

Prestidigitation. Prestidigitation.

It came out somehow.

Prestidigitation. Prestidigitation. They're.

Came out through your teeth.

They are distracting you with the shiny object, and while you're looking over here, they are robbing you. Miami is pretty used to—I always say the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow—Miami is pretty used to this. Because in Miami, it's been like this 60-year war over Cuba, which has always been our North Star, the sun in our solar system. But the second you travel outside of Miami, no one really knows where it is, what it is. A lot of people don't really understand the issue or the beef.

Comunista! Comunista!

Republicans are kind of taking that playbook and using it nationally. And man, oh man, is it so silly. Elliot Rodriguez is running for Congress in the 27th District here in Florida against Maria Alvarez Salazar. And he was just caught up in the biggest non-story of the election cycle: Patalito gate.

A typical Miami political story. In fact, I'm calling it Patalito politics. It started with the backlash over this video. Democratic candidate for District 27, Elliot Rodriguez, seen here with Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House. And this is what Congresswoman Maria Alvarez Salazar had to say about Rodriguez on this story. She says he and his socialist friends turned a Cuban small business into a political prop and left the Patalito business dealing with the fallout.

We stand by beliefs that we want to support freedom. We're against communism.

It is a veritable who gives a shit a thon. Like, and I'm remiss to give it any oxygen. I'm spotlighting it because I know everybody else outside of Miami is laughing. And by the way, most people inside Miami are laughing too. This was pretty ridiculous because it certainly wasn't Elliot Rodriguez who put this small business in anyone's crosshairs. It was Maria Alvarez Salazar and her supporters who made something out of nothing and barely. They made nothing out of nothing. Elliot Rodriguez is joining us now. Elliot, with all due respect, I think you're the best candidate in this race.

It sounds like the beginning of a joke. Billy, thank you very much. Let me just say that it's ridiculous for me to have to say it, but I'm going to say it. I disavow socialism. I disavow communism. It's ridiculous that I have to say that. And the good news is that a lot of people in Miami aren't buying this BS anymore, Billy. I think that most people who responded to this are on our side. They can see through it. They can see that this is all they got. When they don't have answers to talk about what's going on with our economy, when they don't have answers talking about the price of gas, the war in Iran, and what's going on with this immigration policy, they just call you a socialist.

Elliot, I'm of the belief that aside from the people who actually lived through it, that people don't really know what the term communism or socialism means for that matter. In fact, I think they conflate the two. What say you?

The people who use it seem to understand, at the least, the people who use those words.

Absolutely. But I will say this. I will say this. And we know that there's a difference between socialism and communism. But in my community, those two words are used interchangeably. And I know the emotional feelings that people go through when they're talking about that, when they had firsthand experience at what socialism and communism did to Cuba, did to Venezuela, and did to Nicaragua. But if we were going to live in a democratic country, if we're going to call for democracy in the countries that we come from, we need to learn how to live in a democracy.

And that's leadership. He doesn't get to elect everybody. He doesn't get to choose who runs and who wins in every House district. You have over 400 of them in the country. He just has to work with whoever as leader of the Democratic House. He has to work with whoever. I just, dude, my stomach turned when you opened this interview with some red scare shit that you have to disavow. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party or the—it's insane. I'm more interested in asking the question, are you or are you not Bob Odenkirk?

Absolutely. And that whole socialism-communism nonsense drowned out the real story, Billy, why Hakeem Jeffries was here in the first place. Hakeem Jeffries was here because the Democratic Party has identified my seat as one they can flip. They put me on something called red to blue, which means that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee believes that I have a really, really good chance of flipping the seat. So they're sending us resources. That is why Hakeem Jeffries came here. And when he was here, I spoke to him about the plan the Democrats have for the first 100 hours in Washington when we take over the majority.

I just have this to say.

Vote everybody out of office.

That's, I think, the parting message. But also, I think it's important on our way out, Elliot, to find out what it is that our current Congressperson, Maria Alvarez Salazar, because she's all about America first. Am I right, Maria?

Where are the Cubans?

While your gas, groceries, and housing prices have exploded, what does Maria Alvarez Salazar care about?

Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Venezuela, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Colombia, Colombia, Latin America, Brazil, Venezuela, Guatemala, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, Fidel Castro, Cuba, Cuba, Venezuela, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuban spies, Venezuela, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, the Castros.

What about us, Maria?

Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua.

I'm a constituent in this district. What about us, Maria? Elliot Rodriguez, thanks so much for being here. Good luck on Election Day next week.

Billy, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

We've been talking about how if the Republicans had something to run on, anything to run on, they wouldn't be lying and obfuscating and pivoting and demagoguering. By the way, that's the dangerous drinking game of the show. Every time I say demagogue or demagoguery or demagogue, some variation on demagogue, go ahead and do a shot.

This is why I'm dry.

Yeah. Well, this is why half the audience will suffer from liver failure. I hope nobody's driving while they're listening to this. But this is the thing. Alexis Colladeyud was first elected in 2022. And let me ask you this, Roy. Are we better off now than we were four years ago when she was first elected? Is anybody in Florida or South Florida better off now than we were four years ago?

I think as a country, I can say probably not.

That's not just in Dade, that's also in.

Right.

So there's nothing to run on. So hilariously, I couldn't find the video. I wanted to show it. Richard Lamonden is running against her for the Florida Senate in District 38, where I am also a constituent. We're starting to see a theme emerge here. And he wants to replace this incumbent who is running an ad, an attack ad, Richard, that says that you want to overdevelop the district. Did I get the message right?

That is the accusation that I'm a millionaire developer, which as I'm telling people right now, that's the one attack I wish was true. I'd have a nicer house.

And you'd be able to buy yourself a state Senate seat at that because that seems to be where most of Alexis Colladeyud's money is coming from, from those very developers, millionaire developers that she's accusing you of being. But here's the thing, Richard, even if it was true that you were a millionaire developer who wanted to overdevelop, you'd only be able to do that because she sponsored the Live Local Act, which we talked about the last time you were on the show, which is a law that I called it an act of terrorism by the state legislature against our communities.

Which one of us is running, you know?

Running for the border is what I'm running for.

But look, I mean, she's taken over a million dollars from those developers who have profited off the law. That's a fact. The fact is that this is a huge issue across the political spectrum because they passed a one-size-fits-all law for the entire state of Florida that has taken away people's say about what gets built in their neighborhood. Now, you know, I am the Democratic nominee for the seat, but I do believe that the government closest to the people is usually best, right? That used to be a conservative principle that clearly has gone out by the wayside. And so, yeah, look, I think you nailed it.

I want to talk about that in just a moment, but you brought up something really compelling, and I talk about this a lot. I realize that of all of my friends, I seem to be the most conservative, lower C and capital C for that matter. In terms of what we learned growing up, conservative values were. And I remember growing up learning about, in addition to separation of powers, which doesn't seem to be a thing anymore, learning about what do Democrats believe in? What's their ideology? Republicans, what do Republicans and conservatives believe in? And all that shit is totally flipped on its head.

Well, where's the line of demarcation on that? When exactly did that happen?

When did that happen? I mean, I think in a way it's always been a lie, you know, but it's definitely I think there was a threshold with Ronald Reagan, I think, actually. I think if you want to draw the line in the sand about what every Republican president, for example, in the lifetime of people who were born in 1979 or later, they say every Republican president exploded the deficit, created a recession, and started a war in the Middle East. You know, like that's really when those values started to kind of shift and change.

No, what I was going to say is you'd said at the top, which is instead of actually having a real conversation about this record, it's just been attack ad after attack ad. I've actually gone, Billy, believe it or not, from being a raging socialist communist, even though I'm an entrepreneur, who started my business from scratch and scaled it nationwide, to now being the millionaire developer overdeveloping your neighborhoods. When my opponent who wrote that Live Local law is now saying she's fighting back on.

Oh, I'm sorry. You meant over the course of the attack ads is what you mean.

Yes, the course of the attack ads. I've evolved. Yes.

Come on in now.

And so somehow I am now a communist millionaire developer at the same time, Billy. You're trying to make heads or tails of that. But look, I think.

It's hard to keep up with lies, Richard. That's the problem too. That's why they say tell the truth, it's the easiest thing to remember. Like it's like, I'm sorry, which lie should I respond to first, right?

Exactly. And we're actually at early voting sites right now debating in front of voters where, you know, for example, I talked to voters about the fact that, you know, she voted to help fund Alligator Alcatraz, for example, and she says, "No, I didn't. It was paid for with hurricane funds." And I said, "You knew where those funds were going because the Alcatraz was being constructed and operated while you were authorizing those funds." So that's the kind of nonsense that we're seeing right now, Billy. And I think.

Lies.

I mean, we're tired of it. You mean you look at what's happening across this community. I hate talking so negatively, but I know you don't as much, Billy, but the fact of the matter is that things are not okay right now. And you have to, as a challenger to a seat, explain to the people why, as you said at the top, the last four years have not been beneficial to us. And that is what I've been doing up and down the campaign sites as we go.

You know, I've been doing this all show so far is like we're talking about bullshit and nonsense and lies and distractions and demagoguery. Do a shot. And press the digitation. Did I say that right, Roy?

Maybe.

And that's what we're talking about right now. So let's talk about what are the issues as you're out at the polling places, as you've been knocking on door for months. More than that, you've been knocking on doors for like over a year, I feel, now.

A year and a half almost, Billy. Good Lord.

So you've been talking to people in the district, in this community, other than Pastelito Gate, what do they actually care about?

Look, I think they care about the fact that right now we have schools closing across the district. You have a lot of parents in this community. They talk about the fact that they have seen the public education system been kneecapped and schools not be held to the same standard. I'm here to make sure when I go to Tallahassee that any school taking public dollars has to be held to the same standard. That means being able to teach children how to read as a basic mandate, which voucher private schools do not have to do right now. It means making sure that we have transparency on where the money's going. What a concept in government.

Surprise.

We talk about, yeah. I mean, we could put protections in on surprise billing. This is a government where we have our property insurance bills going up that set we had property insurance companies send over a billion dollars out of state to their parent companies, say they'd lost $400 million and my opponent voted to bail them out and to put protections in place where you can't sue your insurance company when they don't pay out your claim. So these are the types of things that are affecting everyday people. The problem is when you what they want is all these distractions to distract from the fact that they're being screwed at every turn by their government in Tallahassee.

Vote everybody out of office.

I do want to mention before we go, Roy, what Richard was talking about earlier, this Leverage Live Local event. So exactly what you were saying. She votes to protect special interests, insurance companies, developers, Alligator Alcatraz, private prison companies, all to the detriment of us because they use.

And funded by all of them, by the way.

And funded by us, damn it. That's our money. It is not their money. And when I watch these meetings and I watch them talking about tax dollars like it's monopoly money that they can buy, sell, and trade for themselves and their cronies and their donors and Alexis Colladeyud, while everybody's suffering from all of this environment and this economy that she helped create, that she voted to create this suffering, she was at the Four Seasons Hotel right here in Brickell, blocks away, at a Leverage Live Local event.

Look, this is the seat that breaks the supermajority in Tallahassee, full stop. And so, you know, when I talk about the fact I'm the father of a four-year-old son, I'm a business owner who built everything in this community, born and raised in the 305. So I'm doing this because I'm deeply concerned for my son's future. I believe that this is the time that we have to take a stand against all of what you mentioned, Billy, the corruption that has happened. The fact is Florida doesn't have a resource problem. We have a priorities problem. And for too long, we have diverted our resources in the wrong direction. I'm going up there to make sure we right the ship and make sure that we are actually serving the real people of this community.

Amen. It's a priorities problem. We have so-called leaders who have warped priorities and perverse incentives. And they measure success on the number of construction cranes that they can count on the horizon and the amount of our millions and billions of dollars in taxpayer money that they could siphon away to developers and sports team owners. Richard Lamondon, good luck on Election Day next week.

Thank you, guys. Appreciate you having me on as always. And thanks for keeping up the fight, Billy.

Do you not want to respond to TS's allegations? Sorry? I have told you that when this case is done, I will be responding in writing only. And you.

You never told me that.

And you said I did. I published it. It was.

You published it where? I don't read the Herald.

When you're ready, when you're ready, you and I will do a live interview unedited.

Okay.

But let's understood and it will be later.

That's fair. Thank you. Myame Herald out here catching strays.

Yeah, that's because they fired Greg Cody.

Sorry, not sorry about that. And well, and Tess Riske, who I actually respect. That was Republican Florida House member Fabian Basabe. And that was before, maybe the day before, he was found liable by a civil jury in Tallahassee this past July for sexual harassment and battery against his male former legislative aide and intern, and also found liable for defamation against that legislative aide and his mother. And so we invited him here on the podcast, but he had all kinds of crazy demands.

No spoilers.

And also, Fabian Basabe, a notorious liar and fabulist, and now adjudicated defamer. We can't just let a guy who's been held liable and ordered to pay $450,000 in damages for, among other things, defamation. We can't platform lies on this show. We are responsible for that. We're responsible for the content. So of course, whatever nonsense he's spewing has to be vetted. And of course, we have to ask him tough questions about the people he's victimized, about his abuse of taxpayer dollars, about his abuse outright of his constituents.

Okay. Yeah, you ready? Just do like the back half.

Caligula. That is exactly right. He just treated it like scenes from Caligula. Listen, Republicans have what's his name? Michael Caruso running for county clerk and comptroller of Palm Beach, where he was removed from office because he was arrested in August on five felony charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of a young family member of his under the age of 12. The man's on the ballot. There's people voting his on right now. There are people voting for this guy.

Any carpet for him?

Accused serial sex pest who has been accused under oath, mind you, of sexual misconduct by no less than five men. And by the way, the reason why I mention the Republicans is because this is not some sort of partisan attack. These are young Republican men, for crying out loud. Lucia, poor Lucia has to, you know, listen to all this nonsense because she's here to talk about her and her race and her platform. So Lucia, I'm going to start with the when I say the best argument Fabian Basabe has for reelection, I mean the only argument that he really has for reelection.

Oh, plenty, plenty, Billy. Thanks for having me. But yeah, it's a very weak argument. I would say Fabian has not delivered. If being in the majority is an advantage, we're not seeing it here in District 106. I mean, he's had four years to lower property insurance, to deal with the overdevelopment here in District 106. And if he had all this power, he could have carved out the barrier islands from Live Local in 2023 when he was supporting it.

But Lucia Baez-Geller, Fabian Basabe said, I heard this live and I almost I had to like scoop my jaw up off the floor. Fabian Basabe claimed at a candidate forum that you were at that he has brought home more money to the district than all previous state reps in this district combined. I don't know where he got did he just make that up or is that quantifiable?

Not quantifiable at all. I mean, this district before him has had Democratic representatives that have brought the same amount, if not more amount of money to this district. It's, you know, it's really unfounded completely. He puts in the appropriation requests, plenty of them, and he's only getting about a quarter of his requests funded after the governor's veto. Whereas you see other legislators here in Miami-Dade County are getting between 50 and 70% of their appropriations funded.

And I've got sources who tell me, I don't know if you know anything about this, but that there are constituents, lobbyist groups, people from the district who are looking for appropriations or for help or for funding. And he has been so useless, they go to other state representatives who represent other districts to try to get help, support, and money for their organizations and our district.

Absolutely. I mean, we're seeing that even when he is the vice chair of a certain committee, he's still having trouble right now passing bills through in his own committees. He has not shown any sort of power or relationships whatsoever. So I mean, I'm not going to give any sort of credit right now to him being in an advantage. He's not. And recently we see he doesn't even have the support and credibility of his own party. They did not endorse him. They did not put him on the slatecard.

Roy, do you have any idea what you have to do and what kind of person you have to be for the Republicans to not endorse you as a Republican? I mean, like it's takes.

Excuse me, pedophiles.

You got to work extra, extra hard to be a ghoul for the Republicans to say. You know, and that's always been the thing too, is like people are like, oh, all both parties are the same. That's not true. The Democrats have had a much better track record at purging the ghouls out of the party. Graham Platner, not a thing anymore. Eric Swalwell, not a thing anymore. Still not entirely sure why Al Franken resigned, but he was forced to resign by his own party from the US Senate, for crying out loud.

All right, go ahead with the Andrew Gillum joke.

But like, is Andrew here? Let me look on the floor. Andrew, Andrew, are you here, honey? No, I don't see him.

Are you happy you got to quarter him?

I got to I didn't even listen, you're the one who brought him up.

I had to.

I didn't even bring him up.

I bait you into this.

I knew you were going to bring it up. What a mess. I mean, a mess. So Lucia, I want to ask you this. It's a shame to we've been talking about demagoguery and distractions a lot on this show today. I want to ask because there's this sort of insane, possibly defamatory attack. I don't know if it's an attack ad, if it's sort of a social media attack. It's certainly happening at the polling place where you've been for early voting at Miami Beach City Hall. But I'm not entirely sure I understand what the accusation is, that your husband, who is Jewish, is some sort of Islamo-fascist or terrorist or I'm not sure I fully understand it, but I understand he's a criminal defense attorney.

No, no, it's not a coherent argument whatsoever, Billy. And I have to say, these are very shameful, very serious and shameful allegations that are being said involving my husband, which it's very sad to see a desperate man grasping for straws because as you see, our record, my record is clear. My husband's record is clear in his service to the Jewish community. My record is clear on the school board very publicly. All of the help and the support I've given to the Jewish community, that is clear.

Yeah. And it's Roy been talking about, again, demagoguery and distractions. And I would ask everybody, if you want to understand how effective some of this hate mongering and fear mongering and demagoguery is, everybody listening, raise your hand if you know personally or can even name one trans athlete. Raise your hand wherever you are. Okay. Now let's try this. Raise your hand if you pay rent or a mortgage.

Thank you, Billy.

We are joined now by Congresspeople Carlos Jimenez, Maria Elvira Salazar, and Mario Diaz-Balart. That's a visual joke. If you're listening, there's three.

Skulls.

Halloween skulls.

Skulls on the table right now.

Fresh from the Spirit Halloween store, which is.

They're still alive.

Open in the lobby of this building here. But closing arguments, the reason why we have not had a Because Miami Show in a while and we might not have one for a few weeks after this is because I well, I'm not going to spoil it. Just go to cocainecowboys.com and you'll find out what it is I've been busy working on. And when you go out to vote, I think it's important to remember, I know it's a bit trite, but it's trite for a reason. The famous definition of insanity, Roy, you know what it is?

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result every time.

Vote better. Vote different. This is not sports. This is not red versus blue, okay? This is us versus them. This is about the people in power who have been exploiting that power for their own personal profit. And as I said earlier, are you better off now than you were four years ago? The only people really answering yes to that question are the people in power and the people who paid to put them there. And that money is being paid back and it's coming out of our pockets, not just our pockets.

Way past a trillion.

Well, way past like 40 trillion, actually, I think at this point. But so the money's not just coming out of our pockets. It's coming out of our children's pockets and our grandchildren's pockets and their grandchildren's pockets and their grandchildren's pockets and so on and so forth to infinity. So if we want to stop the bleeding, if you want to stop the theft, if you want to stop the corruption, we got to give somebody else a chance. That's the bottom line. So when you have a state like Florida, and I say the Florida of today is the America of tomorrow, you have a state like Florida that has suffered under single party rule for all of these years, and now you have a federal government where one party has been in control of the White House, of the legislative branch of Congress, both the House and the Senate, and of the judicial branch for that matter, it's time to change.