For joeicted a victory biden and Kamala Harris in the state of florida in 2020. What gives you confidence that they will win . Downturns an economic because of covid. Decrease in the state of florida, it is the largest economic driver. What has happened here is we have 1. 2 million floridians out of jobs. They are looking for leadership. Former president who has a plan to not only beat covid but also get our economy back on. Herent get tourism back until we get our economy under control. Is going tobody who be empathetic to the situation, have a plan and are smaller farmers who have been waiting for support from the federal government. They are looking for new leadership. To donald trump is not going buy the game plan hes been putting off the last four years. Host just to remind viewers of the challenge ahead for the democrats, just looking at some recent votes in florida. In 2018 and the senatorial vote, rick scott edged out mel nelson by a percentage point. The governors race in 2018 as well area tight. Ron desantis twinning. And your own race was a 50 50 split practically between you and matt caldwell. What are democrats doing differently on the ground in florida. Guest all elections in the state of florida are very narrow margin. Have done this year differently. We are more organized. We understand it has to be not only getting out the votes protecting the votes. We spent a lot of time the last year and a half. And getting a message to not just democrats but independence and modern republicans. We took our shot last time with trump. We made a mistake. He was not ready to be president. He has not stood up and became a leader during covid. We have a message about a plan for the future of our country to make sure that we are not just focusing on the top 1 ors. In ourreally investing Small Businesses, cities and communities. The joehe message of Biden Kamala Harris ticket. We are taking the message to not just democrats but independence and modern republicans. We are organizing, we have a clear concise message. Candidate with a character that is going to bring us together, isnt going to be inciting violence but really bringing hope and peace and become a beacon of light for the country in the world. Floridians understand that the road to the white house goes right through the state of florida. Ofocrats in the state florida are ready to step up and make sure we are delivering florida to joe biden. Host nikki fried is our guest. We are talking about campaign 2020. We welcome your comments and questions as well. For those of you who support joe biden and Kamala Harris, 202 7488000. Resident President Trump and Vice President pence supporters 202 7488001. 202 and undecided 7488003. Guest count not only are we having more engagement from a , but theemographic demographics are changing. Some peopleseeing coming down from the northeast moving here to the state of florida. We have about a thousand people moving to the state per month. We have a great economy outside of covid. So we are seeing a lot more of our companies that are coming here to the state and expanding the workforce. They are all middle and lower class economy individuals. Making sure they have representation is going to be the change of this election. A lot of people are starting to get engaged and hopefully that court case will be heard and decided before november which will expand the voting base significantly. Would beon floridians affected by the restoration of civilrights. Line fordo have a florida voters. Coronavirus in the state of , the number of cases 600 33,442. Total debts so far 11,651. The total hospitalized in florida 38,859. Desantissn ron cabinet. Assess how you think the florida government has responded to covid19. Andve been very upfront honest about that. Ron desantis was not ready, is still not ready for what was put in front of him. I called for a statewide shut down three weeks prior to him initiating it. I had a very datadriven methodical plan and he didnt follow it. He arbitrarily opened up our state into phase one and two, brought wwe into the state of florida. Opened up our gyms and bars. Wasy step along the way he following Donald Trumps lead. There was nothing he did in the state of florida the didnt have the permission and express thumbsup from the president. We saw there was a lack of transparency, mismanagement. He was trying to give it all to the local governments and when the local governments did something he would track their power and there was a lack of data coming out of the department of health. Misinformation from our Nursing Homes and prisons. Medical examiners were told to change their data. So every step along the way he has made mismanagement and missteps. 7000 to 8000 additional individuals who died because he was rushing to open up the state. A victory lap on across the country saying we beat this. There is a whole press conference of president pence where hes yelling at the media saying, i told you we would beat this. Weeks later we are the epicenter for not just the country but the entire world. Because of his arrogance and his lack of empathy and information, he really has lost the trust of the state of florida and its citizens. Mentioned schools a moment ago. What is the status of schools in the state of florida . Is it virtual, some sort of hybrid or totally in person . That was the problem. There was an order that came down that said they had to be brickandmortar. You had teachers and parents very concerned. Back. Tarted to pull the second he started doing that they said, if you dont open up work and mortar we are going to withhold funding. Most of our districts are actually back open with brickandmortar. Just the firstn few days we had hundreds of students across the entire state that were sent home because there was a closure and have to quarantine for two weeks. It didnt have to be like this. We could let teachers and School Districts decide what was right. We could be saving a lot of lives. While we know that covid doesnt spread as easily for 10 and under, 10 and over children have just as much chance of spreading the virus as an adult. We are concerned about the parents that they come home to. We have people all across the been contacted, Behavioral Health experts. They are not even mandating masks inside the district. There has been a huge push from experts saying we should be expecting in the month of september spikes again in the state of florida. Host lets get to your calls. 202 7488000 democrats. Republicans. 1 202 7488002 undecided. 202 7488003 floridians. Our guest is nikki fried. First up is gaily in newport, kentucky. In newport, kentucky. Caller its easy to pick a winner. Im in kentucky, the horseracing capital of the world. Easy to pick a winner. It seems democrats always come up with a good plan after the facts. Blaming this on one person and state, itsn the sad to use this covid as a in an election. Applies in kentucky doesnt necessarily apply in florida and it has to be handled on a statewide basis and state to state. That bident think and henry offer anything different. It wouldnt change. Its easy to pick the winner after the race is run. Host nikki fried. Guest no one is blaming donald trump for creating the virus. Control overhad no the fact that the virus is happening. He kept deflecting things saying it was going to go away. Did not put any type of credence behind the severity of the cases and what the virus is going to do. Complete mismanagement. You are even seeing today, we have a political divide in our country about wearing masks. If the president would have just been a leader and said we need to all wear masks, there would be no question and everybody across the entire country would have put their politics aside and worn a mask. Time lastst week, the amount of times it was mentioned made it seem like covid was behind us. He continued to try to say that this is not as severe as possible. Was pushing for our schools to open. Pushing false kinds of vaccines. During times of trauma and drama in our country and turmoil, we expect our leaders to stand up, to unite the country, to show leadership. We saw that during the Great Depression, after 9 11. Every time our country has been whether its high or low, you look to the president to be that individual that is the only position in the entire country that everybody gets to vote on. In congress you only have your districts. So we are counting on the president of the United States to put partisan politics aside for things like this and rise up to the occasion and show leadership. Host lets hear from val in florida. Caller i would like to mention two words to this woman. Andrew gillum. Where did he end up . Bad data all the reporting that was reported on fox, our station down here about how you are reporting deaths that werent actually attributed to the covid virus at all. And third of all, i love ron desantis and im from Flagler County that has very low cases of the covid virus. Not a lot of people are wearing masks. And we do very well here. Our school is open. Doing just fine. You dont stand a chance in florida. Guest obviously we have a very different opinion of the status of our state. They are seeing record numbers of deaths in cases across the state. Florida, in in south have a 90yearold grandmother. My mother herself went to cancer and they cant leave their house for months because of what is happening in our tricounty area as well as orlando and tampa. Seeing a significant amount of people that are concerned. Every single day im talking to teachers that are very scared of whats happening here in the state of florida. When it comes to round two santos, he walked into 2020 with a high approval rating. He has dropped 35 points in his pulling since the pandemic has hit. Created just me who has criticism and not been supportive of Ron Desantiss opinions about how he has dealt with covid. Host lets hear from bob on the joe biden line. Hello my man from cspan. I just love what biden said which makes me just love him. Said the virus, the sickness first. And then the economy. And that makes so much sense. Just common sense. And then Everything Else will fall into place. You and i appreciate you being on today. Fried, let me ask you about the economy. Report of Central Florida economy stuck in plateau. The main thoroughfare stays. Ight address that issue of the economy in a state like florida that does rely a lot on tourism and the hotel industry. Are a 1 trillion gdp. We are a large economic driver for the country and most of that is reliant on tourism. 60 decrease had in tourism. Not only are the residents in the state not going out to movie theaters and restaurants, people arent coming here because of the fact that covid is still rampant. People arent traveling. Industry,cruise line all those problems are down significantly. People are not going to travel. Heres the other aspect people need to realize. Peopleave 16 million across the country that are unemployed, a great deal of joes those jobs are never coming back. While we are seeing record numbers in the stock market because we are infusing trillions of dollars into the stock market and the one per centers but the American People are without jobs. They cannot afford to purchase those goods and services in the stock market and are certainly not even having the Financial Capability to travel. American people are struggling and suffering and they dont have expendable cash to come to the state of florida to visit our amazing beaches and theme parks. Control get covid under and start to rebuild our economy by putting money into the pockets of our actual middleclass and workingclass here in the United States, people arent going to be able certainlyand they arent going to travel when they see we have a governor who believes covid is behind us and has disregarded the severity of covid. Do and a lot of work to it will take until covid is under control and beaten. Host on the florida line. I would like to ask your guest. It was just a couple days ago our governor in the state terminated the contract of Quest Laboratory because they made a data dump of 75,000 cases of the covid. And it dated all the way back to april. Goes, hesoe biden talking about raising 4 trillion in taxes. Over 400,000. Ke do you realize a lot of Small Business owners make 400,000 a year and they plow a lot of money back into their businesses. I have worked for familyrun billy businesses and they do a good job. Takesen the government and puts regulations, which increases the cost where they are not able to hire people. Winded 400,000 in this country become rich . Host headline in usa today reiterating what he was talking about. Withtis, dohs advertise quest diagnostics. Guest we have been having issues with testing results. People waiting in florida for weeks to get results just defeats the purpose of why you are testing. If someone has to wait weeks to get the result, in the meantime they are going around and talking to friends and visiting establishments and spreading the virus. With quest there was a significant backlog that they dumped and we canceled the contract. The contract they had initiated and because of the lack of leadership and oversight they really didnt understand what was going on in the state. Certainly we have a lot of work to do to put back the trust of the citizens in the state. Charlotteear from next. Caller i have three things to say. They keep saying that President Trump we should all wear masks, everybody would wear masks. Thats a lie because the democrats wouldnt follow a damn fitting that he said to do. The other is that he hasnt done anything. Follow the science. We had dr. Fauci. This has a very low chance of coming to the United States. So when President Trump shut the airports down from china, all of a sudden he was a racist he had nothing nice to say about this man. It doesnt matter whether he cured cancer. You still wouldnt say anything nice about this man. Your hatred for this man is just unbelievable. Fried, any response . Guest we obviously have a difference in opinion about his leadership in the white house. My dad is a diehard republican. My mom is a diehard democrat. I was brought up in a household where i listened to both sides and came up with a rational. Ecision of how to govern the Trump Administration has polarized the situation and certainly if the president had stood up and shown leadership on closed down the airports, but then what happens. This was a virus that was spread communally. It was all about going to tulsa and going to a big rally and we saw how many people got infected afterwards because it was all about his ego. I am somebody that i dont care if you are a democrat or republican. If youve got the right policies, im going to support them. We would be in a much better place here in america today. You are the agriculture commissioner for florida. Canrote about what covid19 teach us about food. Covid19 has exposed weaknesses in every link of the food supply chain. Tell us about that. Guest here in the state of florida, we had first and we direct how our children are getting fed. Of our over 2 million kids. We had to start redirecting where our kids were able to pick up food. When all of our restaurants shut down, our cruise line industry, our theme parks, our Typical Service industries, our farmers didnt have direct access to the people because everybody is so used to the farmers going directly to the restaurants or having a distributor distributing the food to larger establishments. Handing to redirect how to get the food directly to the consumers was a challenge for all of us. We saw a 522 million hit in the state of florida. Milk being spilled out. Our food banks didnt have the capacity to handle so much the perishable food. They are so used to having some perishable food but mostly a lot of canned goods. Being able to take the food that was coming off of our farmers to the food bank just wasnt practical. Giving waivers to allows to purchase directly from our farmers. You saw a lot of hiccups in the system. We were able to pivot quickly. Community commodity website that allowed agriculture producers and growers to update all of the different commodities they had available, where the farmers markets where an arc consumers were able to go onto that website and buy directly from our farmers. Hopefully we start fixing those issues and have more of the consumers buying and wanting local produce. We have been very critical of usmca, the new nafta deal that has been illegally dumping produce from mexico into our state. Our smaller farmers had to plow on dative fruits and vegetables and then go to the nearest food vegetablesll the right there instore are coming in from mexico. He saw this glaring problem that got escalated because of covid. Now we are taking methodical ouroaches to increase marketing in the state and make sure the consumers understand the powers in their wallet and they can go directly to the the groceryemand stores to be carrying more of our locally grown produce in the state as opposed to that is being imported from across the world. About 15 minutes more without against, nikki fried. The only statewide elected democrat in that state. We have a lot of florida voters lined up. Starting with jesse in shalimar, florida. Go ahead. Caller i want you to know that im a republican and i intend to vote for donald trump for president. But i wholeheartedly agree with this lady when it comes to the wearing a mask. I believe that we have enough circumstantial evidence that stop orring masks helps at least hinder the spread of the virus, and im not happy alsoour leaders are not trying to encourage us to wear masks. I think masks should be mandated. Thats all i have to say. Host nikki fried . Guest i agree. I called and Governor Desantis to issue a statewide mast mandate. Do so evensed to until today and a lot of his supporters are actually challenging in the court system the local mandates. They have lost every single one of those cases. And this is something so simple. When we are in a car we have to put on a seatbelt. We have to put our kids in car seats. This is just fundamental of what we have to do to protect ourselves. If youre not going to do it for yourself, do it for your family members. This is