Reynolds and miami mayor francis suarez. Gov. Reynolds thank you for being here. Miami is one of the Fastest Growing cities in america. What is something you have done as mayor that you would implement as president . Talk about some of the success you have had their. Mayor suarez thank you for the invitation and thank you all for being here. Iowa holds a special place for me because it is the first place that qualified me to be on the debate stage. I always felt from the first minute that iowans have an incredible iq and an incredible the Due Diligence they are doing in the gravity with which they take this decision, the most important decision in the world, and the way they take their role is inspiring for me as an american. As somebody whose parents were kicked out of their country of birth, seeking freedom here in this country. What we have done is stick to a freedom agenda by keeping taxes low. We actually lowered taxes to their lowest level in history. 14 growth last year. 12 the year before. Double digit growth. The second thing we did was support our law enforcement. Something that never used to be controversial or political. Crime went down. We hired the most officers in our history, we gave them the best technology. Last year, we had the lowest homicide rate since 1964 per capita. This year, we are 37 below that number. To give you some context, chicago which has led the country in homicide, 700 homicides last year. Today, we have 17. Incredible difference. We keep people safe. The last thing we do is we leave it innovation. Lead in innovation. Our childrens future is not guaranteed. Ive a nineyearold and a fiveyearold. I could tell you that as a parent i am very concerned that we are not positioning ourselves to win the generational economic bottle before us. We are messing massive debts which we are passing along to our children. We are not confronting china as an economic threat and as a National Security threat. They have the audacity to say they are going to a military Training Base 90 miles away from our shore. If they take taiwan, it will put us into a depression. You can kiss our cars, our Weapons Systems and unfortunately they are graduated more phds in Computer Science than we are. They are focusing on quantum computing to read our emails. Gov. Reynolds you are trying to make a hub for technology and innovation. The border crisis that is affecting all 50 states. The statistics are really concerning, shocking, and unconscionable. We asked iowans to submit some questions. Katie wanted to know what three actions you would take to control the border. Mayor suarez i was there yesterday and i saw the difference in intentionality from the last administration to this administration. The last administrations wall, one of the walls was 30 feet high, not flammable. I think we need to be intentional about protecting our border. If you want to defund something lets defund the irs agents and use it for Border Patrol agents and technology to make sure our border is safe. I think we really need to designate the cartels a terrorist organization. They are flooding our streets with fentanyl. 80,000 americans die every year. Think about the National Tragedy that was the submersible that collapse. That is not even to talk about the Human Trafficking crisis which has become a bigger revenue generator for the cartels banned drugs. It is awful. I do not know how many of you have seen the sound of freedom. It was executive produced by somebody in miami and it tells the story of what they do with kids. As a father, it is just shocking. We need to have a strong president that projects american strength. We have a president right now that is projected weakness and emboldening our enemies across the worlds to get more aggressive. Gov. Reynolds amen. Nine of the 10 largest cities are run by democratic mayors. You are the only one led by a republican. Increasing taxes, crime, spending. Another issue we see is the homelessness in a lot of the larger cities. How have you address that as the mayor of miami . Mayor suarez i am going to talk about them separately. When you get kicked out of a communist country, they take away everybodys guns. When you look at our country, the democrats will tell you that gun violence is a scorched in america discouraged in america. That is true on some level. America has the seventh most homicides per capita in gun violence. But then if you take off the top five cities all run by democrats with the strictest gun laws, we go from number seven to almost number 100. It is a totally different narrative when you take that out. I think we need to be fair about that issue. When you talk about homelessness. Gov. Reynolds and they have some of the strictest gun laws laws in the country. Mayor suarez that is my point. You take out the top five cities, you go from seven to 100something. Second, on homelessness, we did something called the homeless trust. We created a bed tax for tourists. It is 1 and we created 50 million in annual revenue. We created a network because we are compassionate. I am christian and i believe we are defined by how we treat the least of our brothers and sisters. We gave the Mental Health counseling, drug treatment, and vocational to income a very important. I created a Construction Management program so that they can learn construction and go right into the labor force. We did a culinary program. We have a tremendous hospitality industry. You can start at the bottom and make it all the way to the top. My wife is in hospitality, that is why i am so polite. It is beautiful to see someone graduate as a chef who was homeless and go right into a kitchen and they are making a good amount of money right away. We are teaching people how to fish. We are not giving them fish. That is what you do in socialist countries. If you go to cuba, i have never been to cuba, but you will see it is a snapshot of the 1960s. We in this country believe in freedom, economic freedom, freedom of speech, the freedom to protect ourselves, to bear arms. These are traditional American Values we have to fight for. I think why i am writing running for president is because i can present Something Different to the American People. I believe i can get hispanics, which are critical by the way regardless of who the candidate is. 20 of hispanics are undecided, that is 60 million americans. Our last president ial elections were decided by very small margins. It is a critical demographic. People in cities are a critical demographic. When i was first elected mayor, we had lost dade county the year before to hillary clinton. Last year and the midterms, we won it by 10 . We have to do that across urban america. There is no reason why people in cities should be voting democrat. They are not delivering. Lastly, it is unbelievable to me that a democrat won young voters. I know they are given away education like free debt. But, come on. We have such a prosperity platform to create an innovation economy. Even in agriculture, there is so much innovation. It is really beautiful to watch this innovation creating cleaner and cheaper fuels to power our country. Gov. Reynolds how do we ensure our young people really do recognize the threat of communism and the value of democracy. How do you reach out to them . They see a successful young mayor. What do we do . How do we fix this . Mayor suarez the one thing we need control is what we talk about. This was very near and dear to my heart because my family suffered greatly as a result. My dad came at 12 and my mom came at seven. It is a beautiful american story. Has only gratitude in his heart for this country. We have to disabuse the lie of communism. It is so easy to say why dont we take from people who have more and give it to these people. It never works and it is never going to work. To have somebody personally affected by it and somebody who was young by the way, some people say miami is miami. No, miami in the 1980s was the murder capital of america. We were in the fifth forest country poorest country in america in 2000. That is my record. It is important to have a good record. It is important to have a good personality because you need somebody who can build relationships. Our relationships around the world are fractured and we are seeing how interconnected we are. The fact that the chinese are spying on us or buy in our properties, these people have no shame. It is unbelievable. Gov. Reynolds we also asked iowans to weigh in with questions. We have gas prices rising again. Inflation is still a problem. The majority are pessimistic about the economy. Brett wants to know as president , what steps would you take to lower gas and food prices . Mayor suarez you guys are not convinced about bidenomics yet . I define bidenomics as the poor to poor. Your purchasing power goes down, your dollars worth less money and if you want to borrow money, it is more expensive. I do not understand how that benefits the poor. Whatever economist he is using i would fire. Whatever branding person there they are using, would fire. We need to balance our budget. We cannot live as a u. S. Government any different from how its people live. When i first got elected, we had a 20 expenses over income budget. We balance it in one year. Was it easy . Absolutely not. I had employees that did not shake my hand for two years. It was tough. But now that they see the double digit growth, now that we have the highest reserves in history, we were upgraded to the highest rating ever come on now our employee said this guy was on to something. She understands how the economy works. I have Public Sector experience, but i also have private sector experience. If you look at the field, you will see people who have a lot of Public Sector experience or private sector experience. The Public Sector people have a tendency to want to just use government to do everything. The private sector people have ideas that are maybe a little outlandish and they are not based in reality. A person who has public and private sector experience and knows how to push the envelope. You want to have ideas that are provocative on some level, but then knows how to execute them and create the consensus necessary. That is why getting elected by 85 shows i can unify this country in a way that is needed with the division that we have. Our enemies are the only ones who love this division. Gov. Reynolds could not agree more. Covid gave parents a front row seat to what was happening in our classrooms. In iowa, we passed one of the boldest Universal School choice programs in the country. Our kids do not really understand the history of this country and the values we bring to the table. As president , how do you address educational freedom . Mayor suarez it is such a nobrainer. I crave the Miami Tech Charter School which is starting august 21. Students in miami will be able to go to school for free at the school of their choice and they will be able to graduate high school for free with an Associates Degree in a text field tech field. We have to prepare our youth for those jobs. Those are highpaying jobs. We believe in educational disruption. I can tell you we set up a bank account for every kindergartner to teach them financial literacy, teach them how to save money. We focus on two scholarships for pell grant recipients. We create ideas, we create initiatives that are oftentimes funded by the private sector. I got two scholarships fully funded by the private sector with a little bit of government funding. One of them was for public recipient kids, the poorest kids that are eligible for pell grants. If they want to get a stem career, they go to college for free. The same for the first for their family. We raise the money in the private sector to do that. Gov. Reynolds we are going to do the fast three and then we are going to give you the final question and then let you interact with some of the iowans. Give me a funny moment on the campaign trail. Mayor suarez i did not realize what an advantage it was not to have a private plane. I was that an event and i saw them leave with this nice bus with the pictures on it. They left the event and i realized they were going to be home that night. It is interesting how this process plays out. Gov. Reynolds if you have been having any food at the fair, what has been your favorite . Mayor suarez i am looking forward to having the corndog. I will work out later tonight. Gov. Reynolds what is your favorite walkout song . Mayor suarez my part of town. It is a good one. Or where the streets have no name. Final question. Iowans tell me they are looking for a leader that will stand up for the American People and our freedom, who have the moral conviction to do the right thing when it is not easy, that has resolved to deliver starting day one. They say we need to put a republican in the white house in 2024. Can you tell us why you are that person . Mayor suarez i have absolutely no doubt i would be an impossible candidate for the democrats because i attacked three core constituencies because if that if they were to lose, they would lose the election. If we could win hispanics, urban voters and young voters, it is game over. There is not an United States where democrats can win. Ive already done that improving i have a track record of connecting with those voters commute voters. You have to think who is the best person to lead us into the future. Who understands the future. Who can build an economy and build an ecosystem and pivot our country to make sure we take advantage of the opportunity before us. If we do not do it, we will get further behind. If we keep spending fictitious money, we will bankrupt this country. We have done is postpone the inevitable. The next president by the way, i became mayor, and we got sued, our liability became 700 million. I went to my employees and said i did not lie to you when i said we were not going to raise taxes. I am not going to lie to you now. If you bankrupt the city now, it is over for you. We settled it at . 18 on the dollar. We saved the city and now we have the best financial position. You need somebody who can negotiate, and somebody who has the right vision and a track record of success. I am body all of those qualities. Thank you. Gov. Reynolds thank you for coming to iowa. Give them a round of applause. [applause] thank you all for attending Governor Reynolds fairside chats. Gop president ial hopefuls sat down for a talk at the iowa state fair as part of Governor Reynolds fairside chat. Ladies and g