Transcript of James Fishback on DeSantis’s Attack on Free Speech, Randy Fine’s Bloodlust, & America Last Globalism

You're running for governor of Florida. Why are you doing that?

I'm doing it because I love my state. I'm a fourth-generation Floridian. I got to tell you, Tucker, it's really hard to be an American in America these days. It's really hard for Floridians who quite literally put the state on the map. They're not being forced out of the state because they can't afford to live here anymore. All while illegal immigrants still get the free stuff from the Biden years, all while H-1B still come into our state, and take jobs that belong to Americans here in Florida. Then I think the last straw was this idea of Washington, DC, negotiating a trade deal with China, and then 600,000 foreign students are going to come to our universities, maybe a third of them to Florida colleges, where their taxpayer-funded universities are going to have to give up their seats from Florida kids from Charlotte County or Lee County to kids from Shanghai and Beijing. It didn't make any sense. I'm running because I'm the only- That's literally true?

Literally.

That's part of the current framework, this bilateral framework between the US and China right now is that DC is now as a concession to the Chinese in this tariff war that we're going to have to accept 600,000 Chinese foreign students at our schools.

And you think you're getting 200,000 in Florida?

We could get 200,000 here in Florida.

They would go to state? That's crazy.

University of Florida, Florida State, UCF, USF. Now, I think it's easy to get lost in all those numbers, but just take one kid from a small fishing village in Florida and say, Hold on, your ability to go to a horticulture program at the University of Florida has now been put on pause. Your entire life has been shelved because we need to have a grand negotiating strategy with China and tariffs and the AI arms race. It's destroying lives here in Florida. It's just the latest analogy of we're losing sight of what the America First Movement is.

That's for sure. I guess this is all obvious, but I haven't talked it through or really thought it through. That would mean that there's no preference given to the American born whose family has been paying taxes to support the school. I should say in Florida, the best schools in Florida are public universities.

That's right. The largest and the best.

Right. University of Florida, number one.

I think. I don't want to get in trouble.

I'm just like, hardest to get into. It's not like they're all going to go to some Boutique liberal arts college and pay 100 grand a year to middlebury or something. They're going to be taking spots at the public universities that are there to serve the children of taxpayers of Florida.

That's exactly right.

Who will not receive preference over them.

Correct. In fact, will be inferior to them in a sense, because when you have this DC mandate coming down that says, Hey, because of our grand strategy with China, because the US-China, the sino-US relationship is on the line, wink, wink, nod, nod, in order to maintain detente with Beijing and Xi Jinping, we need this kid to get in. It's not going to ever be a direct order, but it's going to be implied in the zeitgeist that those pesky Americans, the ones that paid to build this university, they deserve. Forget this idea of fairness and who deserves what. Just objectively speaking, Florida kids who grew up here know the state best. When they graduate, they'll stay in this state. They'll build businesses here, they'll hunt here, they'll raise families here. When you deny them that ability to do all of that, then what's the point?

That is a very distressing thing, and that's happening.

It's happening.

What has been the posture of state government? What's the governor's office say about that?

It's been nothing so far. I think Governor DeSantis has been a great governor, especially during COVID, after COVID, standing up to- Yes, I agree with that. The indoctrination in our schools, which maybe is the only silver lining from COVID, as all the parents actually knew what was going on in the classroom. The white guilt lessons. To the white kids, We don't want the teachers telling the white kids to apologize, and we don't want the teachers also telling the black kids that there's something somehow wrong with them, and they're systemically oppressed and they can never make it. My posture on all of this is, I think it's Conservatives. We have to stop playing defense, stop wagging the finger at things we don't like, and start actually having concrete falsifiable solutions. So this issue of China, here's my solution, very simple. On day one, my first executive order as governor, next January, is to raise tuition on all foreign students to $1 million a year. Tucker, when they can't pay, they're out and our kids are back in. Their destinies, their lives were stored at our great colleges.

In the legislature, you can do that by executive order?

Sure, executive order.

That's clever. Yeah, Because foreign students pay full freight, typically. Unless you're an illegal alien in which it's subsidized. But rich foreigners send their kids to school in America and displace Americans. Correct.

Well, I should say they pay full freight in that moment to what the tuition is relative to the in-state student. But think about the in-state student, 18 years old, probably worked a job in Florida, lived their whole life. Their parents lived their whole life there, possibly. So all of those taxes that they paid over their 18 years, their parents' 45 years, collectively built that university, funded dormitories, janitors, professors, the chief DEI officer. All of that was funded. And so it is full freight in an instantaneous sense. But if you take a holistic view, the kid who just got here from Shenzhen, who doesn't know what a Florida orange juice is. None of that can't possibly, both in an economic sense, but I think, not to sound gay, but in a spiritual sense. In a spiritual sense, does not represent our state our heritage.

It's the opposite of gay, actually. No, I agree with you absolutely and completely. That's, by the way, how a civilization forms its culture is through education. You can't educate the world. That's not your job. In fact, it's counterproductive to having a distinct culture. That's what inspired you to get in?

I think that was the last straw, to tell you the truth, because I met with a lot of college students in my life before this, which is to say four and a half weeks ago. I've been running an investment firm called Azoria that I actually launched at all places at Mar-a-Lago last December, 2024. Kevin Roberts was there, President Trump, Cathy Wood. The firm was based on this idea that instead of channeling money into companies that hate America, why don't we channel money into companies that unapologetically stand for American values like meritocracy, like colorblindness. So in 2025, I'm proud to say we channeled up to $40 million of investor capital in companies that were doing the crazy thing of not hiring on race and gender and hiring on skill and merit. And my company, Azoria, it's actually... Etf got delisted by our board of trustees. They're supposed to be independent, but it got delisted because we submitted an amendment to them saying we wanted to now exclude companies that abuse the H-1B program. We said, Well, look, this abuse, it is systematic, it is systemic, it's hurting American workers. We gave them a five-page research paper that said it's actually hurting the bottom line of these companies because they're bringing in cheap foreign slave labor that doesn't actually add to the synergy of the company.

It leads to higher attrition, it breaks down productivity, etc. Their response was, You're a racist. They delisted our fund. Who did this? The board of trustees of the Tidal Financial Group in October, just nine days after saying, Hey, Here's our formal amendment to broaden the scope of our investment fund, to not just exclude companies that are doing the DEI stuff, but actually exclude companies that are doing something that's far more insidious, which is, you're a white guy? No, you don't get a job. We want an Indian guy to do it for half the price.

Ethnic cartels form within companies that hire within the ethnicity. It's the opposite of what this country promises.

They gaslight us and say, all the white men hiring officers are only hiring white men. Absolutely not. That's a lie. It's not a single HR manager.

It's just a white male country that led in the rest of the world. So clearly, we know that's not true.

Clearly. It's all based on the slanderous lie of systemic racism. The only systemic racism in America is against white Christian men.

I'm aware. That's interesting. It's interesting to hear you say that as a gubernatorial candidate, because even six months ago, hearing that from an aspiring politician would have been totally shocking. It does seem like maybe because of you and people like you saying it more, just like, who could disagree with that?

Yeah, I think for me, I was in a small town called Frostproof in Southern Polk County. Your viewers may know Grady Judd. He's the most famous Sheriff here in Florida. I know Grady Judd, yeah. I was down in Frostproof, and this was a community that was teeming with life just 15, 20 years ago. The peak of our citrus industry was the 2005 Harvest. Two hundred and thirty million boxes of citrus. This last season, only 14 million. And this was predominantly a white man's industry. And when I went there and I saw what used to be a small movie theater, now a Dollar General, what used to be a family-owned grocery store, now some weird, perverted liquor store. When I see entire towns across my state, whether it's Frostproof, Pahokey, Belgrade, Canal Point, Morehaven. Yeah, I've seen it. Otterly hollowed out. And the primary victim of what is effectively this America last globalism that has prioritized other nations and other corporations interest over our own people, it really does hit hard that we have been sold a bag of goods, and the biggest victims in all of it are actually predominantly white men, to be completely honest.

I mean, the victimhood, not to be a victim, but the victimhood is very far-reaching. But if you want to flip the caste system over, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone more oppressed in my state right now than a rural white Christian man who relied on cattle, on citrus, on manufacturing. My own dad was a tree trimmer for 20 years. The devastating Haitian earthquake happened in January of 2010. Then it was this brilliant idea from a guy named Barack Hussein Obama to let a hundred Haitians who were here illegally just stay here and get work authorisation. Now, of course, they can't become a S. A. T. Tutor. So what happens? They do manual labor like tree trimming. Next thing you know, my dad has lost his business of 20 years through no fault of his own, but because the open border legitimized that labor. And now I'm living on food stamps with my parents. We're on the brink of bankruptcy. Thank God we didn't have to go that far. But that is a real concern. And I felt it in my own community, quite literally in my own family.

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It's dead.

Greening. I can't get a straight answer on that exactly. Usda is part of it. Trade deals are part of it. Do you have any idea what happened?

It's not to sound vapid, but it is a multifaceted issue. The proximate cause was greening that really hit '06, '07 and just knocked Citrus out.

I think- Greening.

This, quite coincidentally from China, of all places, and not Wuhan this time, but this infestation that led to the premature falling of fruit, of citrus fruit, whether it's Donaldson or orange, Tangela, whatever, off these trees. You can't sell that fruit if it falls off early. That's obviously the proximate cause. I think it's, again, it's like most Conservatives. I'm not going to sit here and just blame China for everything. I think the ultimate systemic cause is Democrats and dare I say, Republicans in Tallahassee just stopped caring. I mean, look, this destroyed an entire industry, 220 million down to 14 million boxes. Entire communities decimated, not just Citrus, but all the little mom and pop businesses, the diner, the family-owned grocery store, the little movie theater downtown.

Citrus was Florida. It was on the license plate.

It's still it. Well, there's nothing, something else on the license plate now, as I think you know, it's a foreign flag. I've also said as Florida governor, there's going to be no foreign flags flown on our government buildings or on our state license plate.

When I ask you about that. How did another country's flag wind up on your license plate? But I'll ask you in a second. Sure. But Citris was at the very center of Florida's economy and its culture for 100 years.

It was. A hundred years. A hundred %. I grew up in Broward County, which is obviously a very urban place now, but where I grew up in Davy in West Broward, near the Everglades, we had Citrus Groves out there when I was a kid. You could quite literally go out to a Flamingo Gardens, and you could smell. You could smell that orange scent on a crisp every day. It was a wonderful smell. It is perhaps the sickest analogy that, yes, in a proximate sense, China caused this. But much like COVID, Tucker, it wasn't China. It was the government apathy, indifference, and an intentional sabotage of our country against its own people. It's so true. Look, I'm not going to sit here and blame Xi Jinping. He's doing what he thinks is best for his country. If that means screwing us over, I guess that's it. But I can't sit here and say, look, the Chinese are guilty of the fentanyl crisis. These precursors come from interior of China, get shipped to Mexico, get pressed into fentanyl pills, and sent across the Southern border. But really, it is our leaders that have the ultimate responsibility. They're the last line of defense.

I think as Republicans, we need to grow up and stop blaming all of our problems and embracing this left-wing victimhood culture. And so look, China this, China that. Here's my solution as Florida governor. Any scientist in the world who wants to develop a strand of citrus that is impervious to greening, we're going to pay you $1 billion cash. If you can prove, and we'll grow it and we'll do it for 18 months, if you take the best scientists in the world, and they may be in Iran, of all places, it doesn't matter. If there's a scientist or a group of scientists in the world who want to step up and actually solve a problem that has torn asunder entire communities, that's unemployed men and women hauled out entire towns across my state, we're going to pay you a billion dollars because what that industry represented, that would merely be an investment in bringing back the number one thing that put my state on the map.

No, that is absolutely right. They tore up the groves that took, it takes years for an orange tree to go from seedling to fruit bearing. They tore them up. They tore them out of the ground. They burned them. It's really a metaphor for so much. So I want to ask about the foreign flag thing. I always admired DeSantis, certainly during COVID. I thought he was just a remarkable leader. Interviewed him many times. I know him and his wife. It was the foreign policy stuff that made me wonder, what is this and how controlled is he by Ken Griffin and the rest of his donors? Then he had this moment where he signed a hate speech law out of the country. He flew to a foreign country, Israel, to sign a hate speech law for Florida. I thought, well, this is obviously unconstitutional. It's immoral, but it's also part of an elaborate humiliation ritual where you have to go not just enslave your own people with a hate speech law, which that is, it's slavery, but you have to go kiss someone else's wall to show your obedience. I was like, I'm out. How did that happen?

Well, it started like most things, terrible things start here in Florida with Randy Fine.

Randy Fine? Quite literally. The genocide guy?

Yeah, the genocide guy, the starve away Gaza kids guy.

I can't even believe he's What did he have to do with it?

He introduced this law, which effectively criminalized anti-Semitism in Florida. Now, look, Tucker, I think you and I and your viewers recognize that any form of religious hatred should be condemned unequivocally.

Yeah, I have condemned it. I've been condemned anti-Semitism. I've condemned attacking people for being Muslim with their kids for evil, too. I was called a Jihad for that. I'm against all of it, and I'm certainly opposed to the anti-Christian hate from- Which is perhaps the most That's for sure. No, of course, I'm a Christian. I'm opposed to that. But you can't criminalize attitudes. Every person is free to have his own attitudes, ugly as they may be, period.

Correct. The issue is, if you look at... If you When you look at the statutory definition of anti-Semitism here in Florida, which is 10105 in our state statute, it actually says that criticizing the Jewish state, that would be Israel, holding them to a double standard, denying them their place on the world stage. That's literally in state statute 101. 5.

It's against the law to criticize Israel.

Think about that. If you're a college student at FSU and you're having an earnest good faith debate with someone who sympathizes with the Israeli cause, you with the Palestine cause, whatever the case is. One of you says, Netanyahu is a war criminal or Israel is committing genocide. You could literally be punished and expelled from your taxpayer-funded university by that. That is messed up. It is unconstitutional. It's totally un-American. It's totally un-American. Of course, the Republicans and Democrats in Tallahassee got along with it because their donors wanted them to get along with it.

Randy Fine is the one who introduced that? He introduced it.

It was his idea to have it signed in Israel.

Why would DeSantis, who is smart, if nothing, not a warm person, obviously, but he's definitely not stupid, why would he go along with something like that?

It's a great question. I hold to the governor to the incredible work that he did during COVID. Me too. Education, all of that. I think that what's quite telling just recent events is, maybe you heard a foreign leader was here in Florida last week. One Benjamin Netanyahu's fifth visit to the United States. He's a criminal. He's a total criminal. He's a depraved little man, to be completely honest. I agree. He was here, and all of us, Ashley Moody, Bernie Moreno, all came down to meet with him. The governor didn't. Governor DeSantis didn't, but the lieutenant governor, Jay Collins, did. I think it's easy for us to go back and say, why did the governor do this, that, or the other several years ago? But at this moment in time, when the governor had the opportunity to meet with Netanyahu, it seems like he deliberately chose not to, which was an It was an absolutely wise decision. But Jay Collins did meet with him, which is actually rather interesting because 40 hours before that meeting happened, Israeli media said that, I am a, quote, threat, that I am a bigger threat to Israel than Donald Trump's Who is?

I am.

You? Yeah. How old are you?

I'm 31.

Well, congratulations for being an existential threat to a nation state because you're running for governor. They really said that?

They said that. And because I'd push out a policy that was actually quite popular with almost everybody. It is the fact that Florida lends Israel 385 million dollars as we sit here today. What I said is, day one as governor, executive order number two would be to fully divest all foreign bonds of any country, and there's only one country that we invest in abroad, and that's Israel. Are you serious? That's Israel. 385 million dollars. You know what really got them? As I said, I would then take the 385 million and create a statewide down payment assistance program for young married couples because we have to protect homeownership so young folks across our state can buy a place to live, get married, and have kids.

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State pension fund.

Why Why? What does Florida have to do with Israel? It's so far away.

I actually was a government bond trader in a different life, which is, say, three or four years ago. I traded government bonds and interest rate futures and all of that stuff. What happened was after the tragedy that was October seventh, that unequivocally was a tragedy. Yeah, of course. The Florida state government, state chief financial officer, Jimmy Patronas, who's now in Congress, he announced announced that to stand with Israel, we were going to start buying tens of millions, which became hundreds of millions of dollars in Israeli bonds. This was a purely political decision. It wasn't a decision that says, Hey, the yield, the rate of return on Israeli debt is actually quite high, so we should buy some. No, it was to stand in solidarity with a foreign country, we are going to take taxpayer money and lend it in the form of a sovereign government bond purchase. They weren't even hiding how nakedly political they were. Just for a moment, I just want to- But what about the pensioners who rely on the returns of those bonds to fund their retirement?

Or the people of Florida, isn't their fiduciary duty of the legislature to look out for their interest, or is it only about helping Bibi?

The latter. Truly. You're right. By the way, and I save us to someone who was a fiduciary as an investor. Yes. Think about it just for a moment. A country is going to war, is currently being confronted by a soon to be nuclear power in Iran, they say, is escalating tensions with all of its neighbors. Just objectively, forget what country that is. Now you think it's a good time to compromise your fiduciary responsibility and buy their government debt? Can you imagine someone saying- That seems like a good long term bet. Investment, right? Can you imagine someone saying, whoever they are and saying, We just invaded Iraq in '03. We should just stand with Iraq and buy their bonds. Forget who Saddam Hussein was. Why Would it be a good idea to buy Iraqi government bonds? And by the way, they don't offer a terrible amount of interest. Actually, Israeli bonds often yield less than US treasuries. No way. Yeah. It's not like they were yielding 20% and they were actually an objectively good decision for our pensioners. No, it was a nakedly political decision without any risk-reward. It was all risk and no reward to appease the Israeli government and donors.

Here's what I understand. The donors in Florida, so there are a lot of very rich, very active donors in Florida who support Israel also. Why don't they send their money? I don't understand. If you're a billionaire, why are you pressuring some poor, low IQ Florida politician to spend taxpayer money on a foreign country when you could just send your own money to the foreign country?

I actually think it is sadistic. I think so, too. I think it's actually symbolic because you're right. A large hedge fund in Miami or Palm Beach, it would be nothing to buy $380 million of Israeli bonds. They could have leverage. I mean, nothing. It would be done in one day. But it's the symbolism of the solidarity. And by the way, the Florida State Pension Framework prohibits all foreign government bond purchases, with one exception, Israel. Are you serious? It is literally prohibited in their investment framework that you cannot buy the bonds of any country, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the UK. And those actually may be good investments. But Israel, in their own words, to stand in solidarity with them after October seventh, we decided to send 385 million dollars. That's why as Florida governor, I'm going to divest that full 385 and then start a statewide, with that money, a statewide down payment assistance program. Because right now, you got young couples across the state who are renting. They're staring down the prospect of the 50-year mortgage. They can't feel like they have any equity in their future.

What's a 50-year mortgage? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard.

That's the solution to the affordability. It's a property crisis.

It's just turned everyone into a renter? Yeah.

It's usury. It's just imposing usury on us.

Of course, I knew the answer to my own question, but it's just so grotesque. It's hard to believe that's real.

But I think this is the frustration, not with the President, but with a lot of his advisors, is there are real concerns about affordability in my state. Number one is homeownership. If you can't buy a home, can you get married? If you can't get married, can you have kids? If you can't have kids, then what on earth is the point, Tucker? Exactly. I think the President instinctively recognizes that we have to solve this problem. But the solution isn't to go from 30 years of debt slavery to 50 years so you can save $100 a month. My dad and I did the math. For the average home here in Florida, a 50-year mortgage would mean that if you paid $250,000 to the mortgage servicer, you would own precisely $18,000 of equity in your home. This is literally what was called out biblically, what we were warned against. Yes, it was.

That's correct.

We have to be very honest about the system that they're creating. I was skeptical, I think in '15 and '16 when the World Economic Forum trotted out this, The year is 2030 and you will own nothing. We are rapidly racing toward that today. People are getting off on it, and actually in a sexual, sadistic way. I totally agree. That we are, I think, cucked to the point that we have to bend over. We can't own anything. We have jobs in our country anymore. If we ask questions about why we sent 385 million dollars, if I stand up as a candidate for governor, I am smeared by, effectively, the state media of Israel and called a threat to their country.

Well, you are a threat, actually. Because, for example, I didn't know that. I didn't know that the state of Florida's pension fund had invested $300 million in Israeli bonds. They're the only country that the state it's allowed to buy bonds from. I didn't know any of that. Just saying that out loud is a massive threat. I think all of this stuff happens because people don't know it's happening, and they're lulled like cattle into a trance, don't you think?

That's right.

The genocide guy is the one who came up with the hate speech law. Now, was he a member of Congress then?

State's Representatives.

State. Randy Fine. Yeah, State House. Have you talked to him?

Well, he called me the other day, actually.

The genocide guy called you?

Yeah, the genocide guy called me. He woke me up at 7: 00 AM.

That's never a good day. When the genocide guy calls and wakes you up.

He was breathing rather heavily. I bet he was. I think he was in a car. I heard some cheese-its rumbling around in the back seat. I know that sound, Tucker. I know the difference between a cheese-it and a Pringle. I do, too. But, gosh. He calls me and he says, I hear you're running against Byron. I said- But that'd be Byron Donald. That'd Byron Donalds, yes. It goes with many names. We have H1 Byron, APAC, Shakur. We can get into that later. But here you're running against Byron Donalds. And I said, Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I prospect him. I said, I'm thinking about it, congressman. And he said, well, you should know that it's not very nice to Byron if you did that. I don't care what's nice to buy her in congressman. I'm fighting for my state. My state is getting sold off in pieces by the property developers. It's getting sold off. What were once Citrus Groves and cattle ranches are now going to be Scam Altman's next AI data center. That That's not what we stand for here in Florida. And so for 42 minutes, he proceeds to call me out.

I'm just listening. I'm brushing my teeth. I'm on mute. I just let him talk. But it was very clear, and this is before I had formally announced, but it was publicly talked about that I was seriously considering running, that a sitting member of Congress in Washington, DC, at the time, was taking 42 minutes out of his day, not to talk to a constituent about one of their needs, but to intimidate me into not challenging my regards.

Do you think he was trying to intimidate you?

I think It didn't work.

I mean, if he laughs at the murder of children, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Right. Wow. Does he have power in the state?

Not really. He has power in the sense that he was the only Jewish Republican in Florida in the House, State Senate. He, of course, then when Mike Walsh got appointed to National Security Advisor and did such a brilliant job there, his seat was vacant. Then Randy Fine quickly moved into the and decided to run for Congress after, quite literally, two months beforehand, being elected to the state senate after having served in the state house. That's why I'm proud to support my friend Aaron Baker, who's now running against Randy Fine, primarying him.

So Fine is not even from the district?

No, he's not. He's from Brevard County down in Melbourne.

How did he get the seat? How did he win?

A lot of strings. Of course, the President came in and endorsed him as well, but a lot of very powerful people pulled strings. It's actually a very deep red district that he only ended up winning by five points, which just shows you how deeply detested he is by the people of Florida's sixth Congressional district.

Well, yeah. Members of Congress shouldn't endorse genocide or laugh at the murder of children. No. That's disqualifying. Right.

Quite literally, starve away when there was an image, this is July of 2025, an image of children starving. His answer was, Starve away, a sitting member.

I called the speaker of the house when that happened, and I don't get involved in anything, really. But I said, I don't know how you can have this guy in the Republican Party. I'm not going to vote for that. I would never vote for a party that endorses killing kids. Why would I do that? I'm a human being.

But George Santos got some Botox. Yeah, exactly. And he gets expelled. I mean, think about that for a second, right? No.

Still, starve away. It's everything that we have to be against.

That's right. I think whichever side of that conflict, and I think most Americans, they resonate with the words of President Trump is you want the killing to stop, whether it's a Ukraine, Russia, Israel, it doesn't If I was a Jewish, Israeli, Zionist, I would still feel that way.

You can't ever laugh at the death of children. It's totally disqualifying.

To the point where he was literally disavowed by APAC.

Yeah.

Literally disavowed by APAC. Takes a lot. Of all groups. Speaking of which, Miriam Adelson has already announced that she's funding a war chest against me. What? Telled that to NBC News last month. Against you? Against me. Called me out by name. They did the meme, Tucker. We're literally monitoring the situation as what was said. Ms. Adelson will be raising a war chest against Mr. Fishback.

Miriam Adelson is spending against you. Yes. She's backing- Byron. Byron. That's why you call them APAC Shakur, among other reasons.

That's the second part of it for other reasons. I wouldn't call Randy APAC Shakur.

That is just too funny. You don't need to be an economist to see what's What's happening? The dollar is in trouble. It's getting weaker. It's sad, but we're not in charge of it, so we have to respond appropriately in ways to protect our families. When paper money dies, it's going to be replaced by programmable digital currency or gold. Gold survives. The same Americans who think they're protecting themselves with gold are the ones getting ripped off by big gold dealers. After we left corporate media, we got offered tens of millions of dollars to promote gold companies. How do they get the money to spend that much on marketing? Because they're scamming their customers. We didn't want anything to do with that. So we sought an honest broker, and together We formed a precious metals company that you can actually trust. It's called Battalian Metals. At battalianmetals. Com, we publish actual spot prices. We're totally transparent about the VIG, what we take, and we treat everyone with honesty. If you've been watching what's happening, it's not just about money, it's about sovereignty and holding something that endures and cannot be manipulated or taken from you. If you've been waiting for the right time to act, this is it.

Visit battalianmetals. Com. How has he responded to APAC, Shakur.

Well, his campaign called me racist. Not for that comment, but because I called him a slave to his donors. I said, With all due respect, I'll stop calling you a slave if you give the money back. The $45 million you gave to your donor, that your donors gave you.

$45 million?

$45 million in a primary that was uncontested until five weeks ago. No way. $45 million in an uncontested primary until five weeks ago until I entered.

And that was all to encourage him to make Florida better?

Apparently. And his idea of making Florida better. In his own words, he wants to, quote, speed up the construction of AI data centers. His words. He said in a private meeting with donors, I have a friend of mine who was there, and he said, What do you think about Fishback's proposal to ban Blackstone from buying single family homes and forcing us to rent as opposed to own? And what Byron told the donor in that meeting is that Blackstone bailed the economy. They saved us in the financial crisis. They deserve to be able to buy those homes. That's capitalism. That was his response. I said, look, the goal here is we need to look out for our own people when a family of four is getting outbid by 1,500 bucks by a private equity firm that's taking Chinese money at the capital gains rate as opposed to the rate that you and I pay and everyone else pays.

They pay half the tax we do. They pay half.

Carried interest, 20%. He thinks that because of what Blackstone did, which they didn't actually do, what Blackstone allegedly did in 2008, gives them to run rough shot over all of us and to take homes from under our feet. This is not a hypothetical thing. This is happening right now in our state. Byron said that? Byron said that to a donor. Because what I have said, executive order number 3, is that I would ban Blackstone, any private equity firm, any Airbnb speculator, and any foreign national from buying a single family home in this state of Florida. You don't get to have a right to our homes. If you or I were to go to Canada right now, right now and buy a single family home, we would legally be prohibited from doing so. Because say what you want about Trudeau or Carny, I guess they got the memo that Canada is for Canadians. America is for Americans. I don't think it's okay that a Chinese national or a Russian national or an Israeli national, can come here and outbit a family that's known this state for two, three generations and say, You know what? That home that you wanted to buy to get married to your wife and to have three kids, that's not available anymore because a foreign national wants to vacation here for five weeks out of the year.

Man, you're spinning me up. Getting mad just hearing this. What reaction do you get when you say that?

Very positive. I'll tell you one- Yeah, I bet you do. Well, I get a very positive reaction because I think, and you've pointed this out. I loved your speech at AmFest because you recognized that America First is not owned exclusively by any party. Of course not. In fact, if you went out and pulled that very question, that framework that you put out, which is the American government should exclusively look out for the interests of its citizens, 90% of not just Republicans, of literally everyone would agree with that state. Yes. And so what I was amazed by is we had a meet and greet in Tampa Bay this past weekend, and we had 50 or so people RSVP. Over 200 showed up, and a dozen on their way out said, I wasn't even a Republican. I'm an independent. I'm a Democrat. I am changing my party affiliation so I can vote for you in the primary. Because just like South Carolina, I know you had Paul on recently, just like South Carolina. Florida is a red state. The next governor, mathematically, will be a Republican. Trump won the state by 13, Ron DeSantis by 19. The next governor is going to be a Republican.

The question is, what Republican, Tucker?

Yeah, I mean, if it's the Republican who laughs at dead children, I'm not voting Republican. I'm not going to ever vote for anyone like that. Anyone who's pro-death, who's against human dignity for hate speech laws, who doesn't think that providing the next generation a chance to get married and have kids and own a home. If you're not on board with that, then I have nothing in common with you. I don't care what you call yourself.

That's right. I think this idea of the party labels has become a hall of mirrors. That's for sure. What you see isn't what you get. I mean, by the way, Byron Donnells, as of right now, still endorses Randy Fine's re-election bid despite that starve away comment.

Come on.

They tried to cancel you for having a conversation with a certain someone. He's I'm literally endorsing a member of Congress who told innocent children who were literally starving on video to starve away. That tells you everything you need to know about my opponent, Byron Donalds.

I know Byron, and I've always gotten along with him. He's super cheerful. I didn't realize. Is he ideological? I've never detected that. No.

That's why I call him a slave.

Yeah. They called you a racist for that?

They did, which is actually quite interesting because I got a call from the Foundational Black American Society here in Florida who reminded me that Byron's mother is Jamaican, he is Panamanian, and they found it quite insulting in their words that he would try to claim victimhood of slavery without a single descendant of American slaves in his family.

I like those foundational guys. They're so good. Rik Nashid and all. I mean, I don't agree with everything, but they've got a perspective. If your family has been here 400 years, and the descendants of a lot of American slaves or families have been here 400 years, I don't I think that gives... I'll listen to you. You've got a point of view that is legitimate, I think.

Yeah. They're unequivocally heritage Americans.

That's for sure. They're definitely heritage Americans, if anyone is. Someone rolls in from Ghana and gets an MSNBC slot and starts speaking on behalf of Black people. It's like, Shut up, honey. You've got nothing to do with this. That's a fair perspective, I think.

It's good to actually see them call them out for that. That's actually cultural appropriation. Appropriating a struggle of slavery. I totally agree. And the struggle of slavery was real. I don't think Republicans ever want to really whitewash that. It's real. But for Byron- We're against slavery. We're against it.

Whether it's in the West Bank or here or anywhere. Or anywhere.

Yeah, against it. And so for Byron's group, his team, to call me, and essentially our entire supporting base, racists for saying that you're a slave when quite literally you took $45 million. You won't tell us what you agreed to to take that money this early in a primary, which is unprecedented. You know this, how unprecedented that money is in an uncontested primary until now. But secondarily, to actually go out and try to gaslight us and think that you're just one of those guys that has been here since the early 1800s, and your family was in the struggle, too, you're not. And that's a very interesting term that the foundational Black Americans use. It's called the tether. They're tethering these tethers like Byron Donalds. They come here, literally one generation in, and they try to just sit around and act so folksy that we're all part of the same struggle and we're all down on our... And we need to fight against. No, you just got here, dude. Like the Haitians, like the guys from Ghana who just got here, you don't get to just be a part of our system and then lecture us about how our country went wrong.

Well, and if you're a Republican, supposedly conservative Republican, to throw around the term racist, I mean, that's what I, personally, I'll speak for myself, I voted against that in November last year. I don't like that style of non-argument. Just dismiss someone off the top. You're You're a bad person. I don't have to respond to your specific charge against me. I'm too old for that. I thought, aren't we opposed to that, identity politics?

100%. I'll tell you, the identity politics of the right is probably the greatest it's ever been, but it's actually codified into law, which is the scariest part.

I've noticed that.

Say what you want, but left-wing identity politics never criminalized being a racist to a black person in that sense. There was never a hate speech against, which would have been unjust, to call out a black person or black culture or anything like that. I think that's deplorable to single out any... As a Christian, I would, of course, condemn that. No, of course. But it's interesting that there's only a hate speech law for one particular foreign nation as opposed to anything. I'm against them entirely because they're blatantly unconstitutionally. They violate the first amendment. Of course. But it's interesting that right-wing identity politics has gotten to this point where anti-Semitic is just a term. I got a call from the Sunset and the Auditorial Board. They were interviewing me the other day, and they said, this is fascinating. This is the paper of record in South Florida, my childhood paper in Fort Lauderdale. They asked me, why did you put out an anti-Semitic proposal to divest the $385 million? So how is it anti-Semitic to bring back money, our money that was foolishly sent over?

To not buy sovereign bonds? Like, what?

Which actually have a subpar return given the geopolitical risk premium on offer in Israel right now, if we're to be completely honest.

They actually said that to you?

They actually said that. I just challenged the entire- Buy our bonds or you're a Nazi? That's the trade. Buy our bonds or you're a Nazi. And by the way, think about this, Tucker.

This is so bonkers. I can't.

What's actually anti-Semit... Because this 385 million statewide down payment assistance program, this would, of course, go to any Florida resident who is young and married. So the ironic thing is that actually opposing it, if anything, would be anti-Semitic because they're going to be young Jewish couples who are ready to buy a home, start a family, and live out the American dream here in the Sunshine State. It's amazing that we've gotten to this point of debate and discourse in America where the ad hominem attack precludes the debate from even happening. Look, you want to have an honest, earnest debate about buying Israeli bonds? Fine. I welcome that debate. But don't sit here and call American citizens anti-Semitic for opposing a third of a billion dollars being shipped overseas to fund some stupid war.

I totally agree. It is crazy if you think about it. I've got nothing against Miriam Adelson. Personally, I know her. But I mean, she's an Israeli. Donald Trump said in his remarks on television in the Knesset, To her, you care about Israel more than the United States, which is her right. But how is she a huge player in my country, not her country, my country's politics? How is that allowed? If there was some Chinese guy, and he was pretty open about caring a lot more about the CCP than he cares about the United States, it would not be cool to take money from him. That person would not be allowed to get on TV and be like, I don't like what you're saying about my actual country. Therefore, I'm going to drown you in gambling money.

From China? Yeah. From Macau. Yeah. Well, can you imagine the equivalent- What is going on?

Why do we think this is normal? Talk about foreign interference in our elections.

But it's a two-tiered system of foreign interference. Because remember Jack Ma from Alibaba? Very well. Can you imagine if Jack Ma was running around telling NBC News he was going to fund political candidates?

Well, exactly.

How outraged. He would literally get investigated by the DOJ on some made-up money laundering charge. Yes, that is right. He moved some comma the wrong way, and it's suddenly wire fraud under the commerce clause. But think about it. Can you imagine how repulsed we would all rightly be if Jack Ma or some Ukrainian or Russian oligarch It's so true. Was openly, flagrantly being involved in US politics?

That's totally bonkers. When you call... Has Byron taken money from APAC? Yes. That's why APAC, Shegur. Yes.

I just like to- I'm only factual with these things.

Because it's very funny. Did that go over well?

It went over very well. It went over very well. People like it. I think people want... I don't try to take myself too seriously. I think- We're not allowed to. We're not allowed to. Gen Z was such an important part of the president's victory last year. Yes. They feel betrayed by a lot of these Trump advisors and what they've chosen to prioritize and not.

I can see why.

When I've I've met them, and I've met them where they are at their universities, whether it's UF a couple of weeks ago, I'll be at FSU in just a couple of weeks from now, their number one frustration is that, look, they don't want to be lectured anymore. They got a degree. They got good grades. They got good test scores. They didn't study gender studies or black intersectionality. They did the stem thing that Republicans told them to do.

Yeah, learn to code.

Learn to code. And now they say, You know what? Amazon, Google, FedEx? No, no, those jobs aren't available for you, you pesky Americans. You want paid time off. You want to go to church on Sunday. We're going to give those jobs to an entire new class of foreign surfs known as the Indians and the Chinese. We're not going to even interview you for those positions. They don't even pretend that the Chinese or the Indians are smarter. They're not. They don't speak our language. They have no skin in the game. They're not smarter, actually.

They're not at all. Oh, I know.

The issue then becomes, do we actually have a labor market that is utterly rigged against American citizens? The answer is yes. You know that by virtue of the H-1B program, these tech companies, it's not as if they've stopped hiring, generally. They've stopped hiring Americans because they can bring in all this cheap foreign labor. My belief is that a market-based wage is always going to attract the best labor. I agree with that. 100%.

That's the promise of the market, right? It is.

Someone like Ben Shapiro to come out at AmFest in one of the side panels and he said, I want white men to stop complaining and get off the couch because there are jobs that are available. No, here's the truth, Ben. When you say that, you say the Americans won't work these jobs. No, Ben Shapiro. They won't work these jobs at the slave submarket wages that you are offering them. You offer someone here in my state an honest wage for an honest day's work. They'll take that every single time and they'll show up, but they'll take off on Sunday to praise our Christian Lord.

It's funny to see, I never mentioned Ben Shapiro because I don't think about very often, but on those moments where you see what somebody really thinks, if you talk long enough, you reveal what you really think. It's always been my view. Ben Shapiro's total disdain and loathing for white Christian men is every bit as real, every bit as bristling with hostility as any college democratic Socialist of America leftist. It's exactly the same. It's just like he just hates them.

He hates them. Why? It's probably because... I mean, there's a lot of reasons, but I think that entire class of people doesn't have a real solution and in fact has profited on the demise of all of this. It's not just young white men, it's young black women who literally studied engineering and said, You know what? I want to go get a job working on this bridge. No, that job, that's not available for you anymore. That job was given to an Indian. It's actually effectively DEI for Indians in the name of capitalism.

I've noticed.

I think this is a part of a bigger debate that's happening within the party. They call it a civil war. I call it a genuine good-spirited debate, is if we are saying that we're principled Conservatives, then it begs the question, from where do we draw these principles? Exactly. Is it from the American enterprise Institute? Is it from Ron McDaniel's handbook on conservative principles? Or is it from our Christian Bible? Is it from our Constitution, our Declaration Coinclusion of Independence, the federalist papers. And I think this idea of the free market, I think the free market is a great place to get to the destination, but the destination is not a free market. Tucker, we don't get to say here and say, well, our people are suffering and they're unemployed and they're addicted to fentanyl and they can't have kids and they can't own a home and there's 50 years of usury. But you know what? We got a free market and we have the freest market in the world. We have the freest market in the world. No. If the goal was a free market, Tucker, there'd be a slave auction happening outside right now.

There's supply, there's demand, there's an equilibrium. My view in the America First Movement is our North Star should not be a free market, but a free people. When I say free people, I mean American citizens. I don't mean the H-1bs. I don't mean the Haitians on TPS. I sure as heck, I sure as heck, don't mean any corporation that wants to come here and plant a flag and say that our goal is to boost profit margins and stock price. And all of a sudden, all that matters is not whether you can raise a family or buy a home, but the GDP beat expectations on your Bloomberg That's exactly right.

That's exactly right. How did you... Can I say something? Because I know to the extent this will be seen and criticized, I'm sure that people will say, But this guy was in a sex scandal and you didn't mention it. I'm not asking you to respond to this. I just wanted to tell you my reasoning on it. The second you were deemed a threat, they sent people out and tried to call you a sex criminal. You've not been charged of any sex crime that I know of. If you're a sex criminal, I hope you go to jail. If you're not, I hope they stop saying it. But a lot of people are pushing that. I have no basis. I don't want to attack anyone in particular, but it's pretty unbelievable that some of the people pushing that would accuse somebody else of having an unorthodox sex life. I think it's shocking, actually, given what I know. I hope they'll stop doing that because they have no basis for doing that. That's why I'm not bringing it up. I just want to say that.

Well, thank you, Tucker.

Sorry, it makes me mad. That level of hypocrisy is too much. That's pharacy-level hypocrisy. Can't have that.

It is. The truth is that unlike a certain someone who deleted social media recently because he couldn't take the heat, I recognize that my entire life is going to be blown open, that there was a guy who was taking pictures of me outside of my house the other day, people taking videos of me at a bar. It's going to happen, and I welcome it. I welcome that. I think if you're going to run the third largest state, you're going to control the life of effectively 23 and a half million people here in Florida. You should have to be an open book. But on that particular point, if you'll allow me just to address it. Of course. Nowadays, false accusations against men are all too common. Those accusations were brought before a judge in Florida's second judicial circuit. And after two lengthy hearings, I was fully exonerated. So don't take my word for it. There was seven hours of hearing time, evidence, all of that. And a judge said, You know what? Not credible, no evidence to support it. Mr. Fishback, I apologize effectively, and you're exonerated. I think the silver lining to this particular attack against me is that it's already gone through due process.

And the fact that it's coming out now, I think, shows that our campaign, our vision, is a real threat to the deep establishment interests that have hijacked our state.

But if all things to hit you on by those people. That enraged me. If you're going to accuse someone else of having a weird sex life, you better have a pretty normal sex life. If you don't, you shouldn't do that. That's really too much hypocrisy for me. The other attack that I have seen against you is that your views have changed. The response I have seen from you was, Oh, yeah, they have, which is a great response, I think. My views have changed completely, so I'm with you. Tell me how your views and why your views changed.

Well, I would start on this issue of the economy, first and foremost, because I dropped out of college in 2015 to start a hedge fund, and I did that for five years. Really? Yeah. Good for you. I was a macro trader, which meant that I was always fascinating with geopolitics. I was a high school debate kid for four years. It changed my life. I had a stutter. I wasn't as confident speaking publicly. It turns out going to a high school debate tournament every other weekend for four years will turn that around pretty quickly. Yes. First torment, by the way, was at Marjorie Stoman Douglas High School in Parkland. No way. In 2009, where we actually debated an assault weapons ban, an assault weapons ban of all things. That's wild. But yeah, grew up in Broward County, and my career has been as an investor, looking at the world as a macro investor, saying, how is the Fed going to screw this up next? Looking at what happened with COVID, the supply chain lockdowns, the massive fiscal transfers, the stimulus that was going into the economy, oftentimes to the lowest income folks, which had the highest propensity to spend that was clearly going to cause inflation alongside the money printing from the Fed, upwards of $5 trillion.

And so those are the types of trades that I put on as an investor. And so I really viewed a lot of this world from quite literally the perch of a Bloomberg terminal. So when I was saying, looking at GDP expectations on a Bloomberg, that was me for 10 years. I spent a lot more time on the ground. I started a nonprofit called Incubate Debate to offer free high school debate legs all across my state, from Pensacola to Miami. And when I really got to travel these hollowed out places that were once teeming with life, booming with industry, I I saw how detached that world was from this Bloomberg terminal where I had seen GDP and inflation and consumer spending and said, I respect President Trump, but when I hear about another trillion dollars coming in from NVIDIA, I guess the obvious question is, how does that help a single dad who lost his job five years ago and hasn't been able to get back on his feet? What are we optimizing for? Is the goal GDP or is the goal, as I think my friend Nathan Hobbl-Stott from New Founding says, is the goal, I think the ultimate economic statistic these days, which is what percentage of 30-year-old men own their home and are married?

If you think about your entire economic policy framework around that question- And I do. Right? And so if the The question is, will we build this AI data center? I don't know. Does it help 30-year-old men get married or buy their home? The answer would obviously be no, because it employs 50 people who are all foreign laborers for the most part. That doesn't help. But if If we're going to revitalize Citrus here in Florida, if we're going to actually build out local businesses and help people get on their feet and create local great paying jobs and end the H-1-B scam and ban Blackstone, if we focus on those economic policies with the end goal being 30-year-old men are more likely on the margin to buy a home and get married as a result of this policy, then sign me up. My distortion was, look, I spent much of my 20s going to events by the Brooklyn's institution and AEI and Heritage and learning about the economy through that vantage point. And so guilty is charged. I think my views really... I voted for Trump proudly in 2016. I've always been a Republican for whatever that's worth, quite literally since high school, and I registered to vote in junior year high school.

I didn't vote junior year high school. I don't want anyone to think I'm committing voter fraud.

You're not the only one.

But my views, I think if I were to give one reason, I think X, and everyone talks about X But I want to talk about it in a very specific way to my life. I think it's hard to watch something and get really red pilled or socialist pilled. I think you have to have a steady stream of objective factual information. For me and my grandma, that was your monologs in 2020, quite literally, and we bonded over those. For me, the last year or so, it's been following AF Post, this X account that just puts out 30, 40 posts a day. Kind of punchy, funny, but really factually grounded news about what's happening, whether it's a company announcing H1B hires. And they editorialize in the sense that if Amazon announces that they're laying off 30,000 people, they won't just print that headline like the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board will, those globalist shills. They will print that headline, but also contextualize it by saying that Amazon also just brought on 10,000 H-1-Bs. They have no issue firing our people, but they will bring on foreign labor and not apologize for it. And so when accounts like AF Post actually give us the full context around something, which the York Times, the Wall Street Journal would never do.

I really appreciate that. I think for me on the issue, which I get the biggest pushback on is Israel. How you wrote for Barry Weiss, you wrote for the Free Press. I wrote an article about high school debate going woke in 2023, which I'm really proud of. It was the basis for my nonprofit really growing to the next level because there were quite literally high school debate tournaments that were taxpayer-funded. Here in Florida, they were told a young Black girl before a speech about Biden's foreign policy track record that if she mentioned Donald Trump's name, she would be disqualified in a public school. We had one judge in writing saying, In writing, Tucker, I am a Marxist, Leninist, Maoist. If you criticize any of the following subjects, you are automatically disqualified. One judge went so far as to say, again, in writing, not hearsay, literally in writing.

They felt comfortable writing that, yeah.

Which tells you everything about the world of high school debate and academia. But it's really personal to me because high school debate changed my life, and it always was a marketplace of ideas until this guy named Trump came down the escalator. One judge said, If we're debating immigration and you refer to them as illegal, I will end the debate, give you the loss, and lecture you, because I will not have you making the debate space unsafe. I cold-emailed, cold-called Barry Weiss, because I knew the Free Press was in this business of publishing edgy pieces about how institutions had been hijacked. This was in 2023. I said, Hey, I have this crazy story. I'm a former high school debate champion. I have this crazy story about how high school debate has gone woke and my solution to it, which is my nonprofit. She published it and it went bonkers. I think people are looking at that and saying, Well, you were aligned with Barry Weiss. I think to their credit to that thing, I did put out a post when her book came out about anti-Semitism, because after October seventh, I think a lot of people, I saw what was happening on college campuses and said, That's wrong.

Not because it was exclusively focused on Jewish students, but any black lesbian with red hair running into a math class saying free Palestine and white men need to apologize for the alleged sins of their ancestors, that's wrong. I guess I was led to believe that that was all part of this anti Semitism thing. I called it out thinking it was anti-Semitism, but really it was anti-Americanism. It was anti-Christianism.

Well, that's for sure.

My views on Israel changed for two reasons. I was invited on one of these paid trips to Israel as a young business I very quickly found out what it was. It was a propaganda trip, and when I was told that I couldn't go certain places on my own or had to follow a very simple script, when I left about what I would be, I'd have to clear my experiences to share them online. What? Yeah. I said, I'm not doing that. I'm happy to go to a foreign country, but I'm not doing it on your dime and have to pair it out some script that was approved by APAC. That was the first straw where I became a little bit more skeptical. But there was this young man named Muhammad Ibrahim, He's a 16-year-old kid from right here in Florida. He went to visit family in the West Bank last February. He was accused, without any evidence, of throwing a rock at an IDF vehicle. It didn't hurt anybody, but he was accused of it. As a result of that accusation, he was put in an Israeli military prison without any due process, no trial. For eight months, he lost 27 pounds and contracted scabies, and I committed the capital crime.

Wait, is he an American citizen? Yes. How can a proxy state that we pay for, imprison an American citizen without due process for eight months?

It's a great question. To the folks on the other side, I would say, I'm going to hold Israel to the same standard you want me to hold Israel to. You say they're the only democracy in the Middle East. Well, democracies are underpinned by a basic adherence to the rule of law. You don't get to take anyone, but least of all our citizens who are teenagers, and imprison them for eight months. Then Randy Fyne, that was half of the point of his call was to call me anti-Semitic. He said, Well, you didn't tweet about the hostages enough. And I said, Randy, what would have been the correct number of tweets on the hostages that would have given me license to talk about this young American citizen? But because he's a Muslim, because he's a Muslim, to them, he is a second-class citizen. I said, Look, I don't care what he is. He's an American citizen. He grew up two and a half hours from where I did. I went and met with the family, and I put out a video that I actually texted the President directly, and I said, We have to do something about this.

Yeah. One of the principles I'll never give up is you shouldn't be allowed to come here and import your disgusting little ethnic conflicts into my country and make them the focus of my foreign policy. I would say that to any immigrant, Cuba, Venezuela, Israel, doesn't matter. You may have had a thousand-year war with some other tribe, but that's not our problem, and we don't do that here. I think the Muslim hate Muslim.

That's only what that's about. Exactly. My dad showed me a video while we were on the way over here of a black pastor who, I think rightly focused on the one nation under God and our pledge of allegiance. You think about that for a moment. If you come here and to truly pledge your allegiance to our flag, it means you are committing to the one singular nation. Of course. Not to import a generational, multi-generational feud between different nations. When you come here, whether you're Jewish, Muslim, it doesn't matter. You say and you stand for that pledge, and it's sad that we don't do that in our schools anymore, I'll change that as governor as well, that it is a basic precondition that if you go to a public school, that you do a test that we are one nation under God. That's not really debatable. I think it's important because if you've got the Haitians and the Dominicans hate each other for some reason. There's a going on with different Muslim groups and all of that. I say, look, if you're going to come here, at a minimum, you have to commit to the whole one nation thing at an absolute minimum.

I can't think of a better way. Maybe that's why there's this insistence, this reluctance. They're so loathe to actually stand for our pledge. I always thought of it, Tucker, as they were trying to be righteous, and it was like their version of bending the knee. No. They actually don't believe in what the pledge stands for.

At all.

At all. It's not like, well, we don't want to be compelled into something, or we don't believe in chauvinism, or whatever. It is quite literally, they don't adhere to what the pledge represents. Principly, one nation. I don't care what that nation you came from is. When you come here and you stand for that pledge, you must adhere to that principle, whether that nation you left was Israel, Qatar.

You don't get to serve in a foreign military. You don't get to have dual citizenship. You don't get to advocate for another country's interests over ours. These are not crazy ideas. Any nation would enforce those ideas, right? Because they're- A hundred %.

Just go to South America. My mom's from Colombia, and I spent summers going there. I don't, of course, consider myself Colombian. I'm a proud American. My mom is as well. But can you... Going to a Colombian, just even something as innocuous as, I call it football, but a soccer game. Can you imagine going to a Colombian soccer game and not standing for the national anthem? Whether you disagree with what was going on- You could be beaten to death in the men's room. With some Supreme Court decision or whether you had a different view of a board or whatever, to not stand For our national anthem to affirm the very ideals that set this country into motion is to hold the most vile form of contempt for this nation and her people. Exactly.

Damn, I can see why they hate you. Can you win? Part of my ignorance. Florida politics is so corrupt that I just try and stay far away from it. But what do you think?

I think so. I really do. I think I probably shouldn't share inside baseball, but let me do that. I think what has to happen very simply is I'm not going to outrace him. I'm not going to outspend him. But you know what? Neither did Trump to Kamala, neither did Trump to Hillary.

No, true.

I think this is going to Ultimately, we are in an attention economy, and the attention is going to go to the person who can connect and show up and earn the trust of voters. You don't get to earn the trust of voters in that Fox News studio in Washington, DC. No. Byron Donalds is in DC four days out of a week. This is my state. I live here. My dad grew up here. My grandfather taught here. My great grandfather ran a hotel on Fort Lauderdale Beach here. This is my home, and I'm not going to let it be stolen from anyone, least of all Byron Donalds and his donors. And so what I've already announced, Tucker, is that over the next three months, I'm going to visit all 67 counties. In just five weeks, I've visited 12. I'll visit every single state college. And proud to break the news here, I'm doing a statewide Waffle House tour. This is the staple of Florida. I'm going to every single Waffle House to meet voters where they are. They deserve to see a governor hands-on to ask him questions. Heck, if they want to yell at me, debate with me, that's fine.

I am never, never going to shy away from the people that I'm asking to hire me. You're getting fat. I just get the bacon. I get a bacon and a large Coke.

Good call. Good call. I remember Jeb Bush, when he ran in 2016, I traveled him for a while. He was going no carb, and he lost at the end, of course, in, I think, South Carolina. We were in a diner together in South Carolina, and he, whatever his many faults, he could be funny. He's like, No, I'm getting the Blue Rade pancakes. I don't care. It's over. It just immediately... Excuse me. You think your money is going to come from where?

Small dollar donors.

Yeah, you're going to need it because you haven't said a single thing that is going to attract Ken Griffin to your campaign. Fair?

I think so. Yeah. Look, I think that I'm always open to meeting with donors, but it's on the basic pre condition that you are donating to the campaign that already exists. There's no influence on the campaign whatsoever. I would invite people to hold my feet to the fire on that one. I think the biggest thing, though, is if you just look at what the turning point has been for Florida politics. We had an ad commissioner here in 2018 named Adam Putnam. He was the establishment darling, a very good guy.

Yeah, I remember him well.

His family has been here for a very, very long time. Well-respected family here in Florida. Then this guy named Ron DeSantis comes on the scene. There's a lot of twist and turns, but that election in 2018 was really decided by the Fox News primary debate in the summer of 2018, where it was Ron and Adam on stage for an hour and a half unfiltered. No handlers, no donors, just two and a half million voters watching at home. I think if you put me on that debate stage, and I'll be in this race all the way to the end, when we get to that debate stage, I will end Byron Donalds' career, and I will show that my vision for my state that I've known for four generations, our family has known, is the right vision. I view this as a fork in the road. Do you want old Florida or do you want new Florida? If you want AI data centers, if you want what Byron Donald says, which is he wants to make Florida the financial capital of the world. If you want that, that's the new Florida vision. But if you like our state just the way she is, if you want to go back to the way things were 10, 15 years ago, cattle, citrus, space, ag, if you want to end the overdevelopment that has destroyed our communities, pull back the sprawl, I'm running for governor, and I'd be honored to have your vote.

You really think he's going to debate you?

I think he has to. Really? I think he has to.

What about this? So there's a lieutenant governor. I didn't even know he existed until I saw a clip from him that was so over the top. His name is Jay Collins, I think. It was so shocking that I sent it to someone who works here and say, Is this AI? This can't be real. And he was basically saying, You don't have the right to criticize Israel. Yeah. Like, free speech does not exist in the United States.

Was that real? It was real. Who is that guy? He's the newly appointed lieutenant governor. He's been on the job for about four and a half months.

Am I misstating what he said?

No. He quite literally started off by saying, You do not have a right to hurt people with your words. Come on. Which is almost like a true or false question in fifth-grade civics about the First Amendment.

Well, but it's also like the most left-wing thing you could ever say. It's like the MPCs, the people I spent my entire 15 years at Fox railing against these sensitive people who want to claim that words are violence, stochastic violence or whatever. I mean, that's the whole ideology of the left. I can't believe this guy's a Republican. He's real.

So-called. He is what they call the transgender Republicans. They identify as such, but they're not really. When someone actually goes out there and says, You don't have a right to hurt people with your words. I mean, Timmy, true or false? Does the First Amendment give you a right to hurt people with... If you failed that in fifth grade civics, they would hold you back a year as governor. I would hold anybody back who failed that question. It was funny. He put out a comment about Venezuela and Maduro. He was very critical of Maduro, as I think a lot of people should be for what he's done to the country. But I responded, and I think, proudly ratioed him. I said, With I'll due respect Lieutenant Governor Collins. I'm formally filing a complaint with the Office of Hate Crimes Speech for insulting Maduro with your harmful words. That's what it's come to. When you ask yourself, what vision for the Republican Party do we want? I actually think everyone's talking about 2028. 2026, here in Florida, we are the formidable Republican state. I agree with that. This is going to be the proxy for what the party looks like.

I don't pretend to know what the party is going to look like in '28. But if you've got me on the ballot, Byron Donald's on the ballot, Jay Collins, I don't know what he's going to do.

Okay, so Lieutenant governor hasn't decided what he wanted to do.

He hasn't decided what he wants to do. He's still checking with his wife, apparently. Quite literally, that's what he said. He just keeps checking with his wife. Actually? Actually, yeah. So this is a guy, not to go on a big tangent, but this is a guy who actually reached out to my own uncle, my actual uncle, my dad's over there, my father's brother, and tried to convince him to get me to drop out. And so my uncle was calling me all of a sudden on a Saturday. He hasn't spoken to me in a while for an hour and a half on the phone saying, Jay Collins this, Jay Collins that. It's weird, but our governor, Ron DeSantis, is not endorsing Jay Collins. He's certainly not endorsing Byron Donalds. This is a wide open race as far as I'm concerned. May the best person win. The best person, Tucker, is not the person who looks best on Fox, although I don't think Byron looks all that good on Fox.

You're not getting invited on Fox. I'm just telling you that right now. Sorry, they're not having you.

Well, thank you for having me here today.

Yeah, of course. No, I work there. I know they are not inviting you on Fox.

But I think if you look at, and on the way over here, we stopped at Chipotle. We call it Chipotle in our family because we like to be funny. That's the spirit. We go to Chipotle and we say, Can I have the Polo bull with the fagitis? But I was in Jipotle, and a young man by the name of Aiden, he's 22 years old. He works for Charlotte County in the maintenance division. He comes up to me, says, Are you James Fishback? I said, Yeah. I have never voted in any election, not even in a primary. You have my vote. I'm switching over to the Republican Party to vote for you on August 18th. I think, and I don't want to take credit for our vision, it's a vision that's been... Honestly, I've watched a lot of your stuff, read a lot of what's happened in this space. It's one that I believe in. I believe it's the only way forward for my state. And I think there's a real hunger because with a Whatever you want to say about Byron Donald establishment money, even the polls that have come out about him, they still show 54% roughly of the electorate still undecided.

And this is a guy who's been in the race now for 11 months, who's got $45 million, who's on Fox News three times a week, regurgitating the same GOP slop. And he still has half of the electorate undecided about whether to vote for him. So I'm in this race because I think my state needs someone to step up, and I want to earn people's support in being able to do that.

When is the primary?

August 18th. It's a closed primary. So the cool thing about this is you got until July 20th. If you're an independent, you used to be a Republican. If you're one of the Dixie Democrats we've got all over the state who may have voted Republican recently, but hasn't changed their party affiliation, you can do that online for free at the Florida DMV website. Just Google, change voter registration in Florida. It takes you five minutes. That now gives you the ability to show up on August 18th because you know this, Tucker, this is a red state through and through. We haven't had a Democrat governor in 30 years. We may never have one again. And so the election, if you wait till November, you're literally allowing the system to disenfranchize you. That's totally right. I think if we lived in New York City, we'd probably be registered Democrats because you otherwise would not have a vote.

I lived in DC for my whole life. I was always a registered Democrat because I wanted to vote for the least crazy Democrat in the primary because I lived It mattered to me.

My pitch to a public school teacher is, we may not agree on everything, but if you want someone who's going to fight for the dignity of American citizens, someone who's going to make your job easier as a teacher. When we have 1. 4 million illegals in our state, many of whom, all of whom, have children enrolled in our public schools. I met with a teacher a couple of weeks ago in Southwest Florida, not too far from here. She broke down crying because her ninth grade class had 20 students, seven of whom did not speak English. They were illegals. And so executive order number four is to remove all illegal immigrant children from our school. I had someone ask me recently, Isn't that cruel? And I said, No, ma'am. What's cruel is to force American citizens to dilute their education, to take attention away from a teacher who has the second lowest teacher pay on average in any part of the country and say, You have to teach half your class in English and the other half in broken Creole or Spanish for people people who just got here. That's what's cruel. It is cruel. That is what is vile.

Actually, it's weird because the Supreme Court in 1982 found in Plyler v. Doe rather disastrously that illegal immigrant children actually have a 14th Amendment constitutional right to attend public school. I would proudly, as Mississippi did, challenge Roe v Wade. I would proudly, as governor, pass an executive order to challenge that decision. I know we would win in the Supreme Court. Whether it be five, four, or six, three would depend on how she's feeling that day, though.

That was great. That was great. Godspeed.

Thank you. Thanks.