Well, Ron DeSantis has done it, hasn’t he? He’s used political scare tactics to try to get a few votes. Now, what we see, Trump is even moving further ahead. Trump is killing him even in the state of Florida because he thought that this big immigration show that these cats in Tallahassee were putting on was really gonna help him. Just the opposite. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Well, Ron DeSantis has done it, hasn’t he? He’s used political scare tactics to try to get a few votes. Now, what we see, Trump is even moving further ahead. Trump is killing him even in the state of Florida because he thought that this big immigration show that these cats in Tallahassee were putting on was really gonna help him. Just the opposite, right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is one of the most devastating moves to the Florida economy that Ron DeSantis could have done. I mean, we’re talking about 8% of our workforce overall, by putting this law in place, you know, you can’t hire any migrant workers. It’s gonna be a $10,000 fine per worker that you hire. And business leaders are sounding the alarm. But more importantly, we are seeing videos emerge constantly of construction sites, entire neighborhoods being built.
Mike Papantonio: Closed down.
Farron Cousins: It’s a ghost town.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Truckers threatening boycotts in the state.
Mike Papantonio: Well, now, you know, we’re gonna get comments. Oh, that’s nonsense. You’re making that up. No, I have driven by sites that are dead in the water. People don’t have, you’re gonna have immigrants that, look, what is it about the immigrant worker that’s so valuable to the entire GDP of this state? Okay, first of all is mobility. Right. When we have, when crops have to be handled in Central Florida, they’re able to move to Central Florida and help us with that. When crops have to be handled in South Florida, they’re able to move to South Florida and handle that. And all these cats are saying, well, they’re taking my job. Nonsense. If they were taking anybody’s job, those sites wouldn’t be closed down.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: If they were taking anybody’s job, there’d be everybody out there picking strawberries and picking oranges. So the mobility factor alone, because of what Ron DeSantis has done, is going to, this is the projection. The GDP is going to drop by $13 billion. That’s what they did in Tallahassee as they were playing games, as they were involved with scare tactics. So the mobility factor is important, but also the demographic factor. For every, I think what it is, for every 65 year old and older, there are only three people, three bodies that are gonna replace them in the workforce. So the idea of demographics becomes important because we have to have somebody moving into the state to replace and make those demographics solid to where we can have workers that are increasing our GDP. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely. And I think what people don’t understand, there’s great numbers here, you know, like I said, it makes, the migrants make up about 8% of our total workforce, but when you break it down by industry, it gets a lot worse. We’re talking about 37% of our agricultural workers, 23% of our construction workers, 14% of our service workers in the state. And the service industry is one of the biggest industries here. But, so they make up a disproportionate amount of the three industries that keep this state running. And DeSantis is telling businesses, I’m gonna make you pay me $10,000 for every one of these people you hire.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s talk about what’s happened here. People don’t understand the ramifications of this. Let’s start with the very basics. First of all, the genius says we’re gonna put $12 million over to this special, this special group, and the special group is gonna make sure that this thing that we just passed is going to have teeth to it. So here’s what you’ve got. You’ve got 1.8 million immigrants, undoc, excuse me, documented and undocumented working in Florida. This is designed to put fear in their heart, to put desperation in their heart, to the desperation to the point to where they can’t even go to a hospital. Under this bill if they go to a hospital and try to get care for their children, they have to be reported to the government. And, so it’s not just fear, it’s desperation. Anytime you trap anybody with fear and desperation, they ain’t gonna stick around.
And that’s what’s already happening here. Jobs, you know, the jobs thing we’ve talked about so much. It’s just so obvious. The desperation that’s already been caused by this. We did, I think what two segments on this couple of weeks ago, we had 2 million, 3 million viewers on it that were so angry that the comments, it was palpable. I mean, it was palpable. The anger that’s coming out of it. Some of them were very sophisticated. They were obviously coming from the business sector where you had folks that were running construction companies, saying, I don’t know. How the hell am I gonna hire anybody? And I think the thing that makes me the angriest is when you have these people saying, oh, you know, they’re taking my jobs. That’s total nonsense. It’s. They’re not taking anybody’s jobs. These are jobs that nobody wants to do. They don’t wanna clean hotel rooms. They don’t wanna pick agriculture fruit. They don’t wanna build roofs. They don’t wanna be in 120 degrees out in the middle of nowhere putting a roof on a house after a hurricane hits Florida. They don’t wanna do all that stuff. So don’t write in comments to this show saying, oh gee, whizz, you’re putting people outta work. That’s ridiculous.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s funny that you bring that up because about 10 years ago in the state of Georgia, same talking point, you know, the migrants are taking our jobs. So Georgia passes a similar law 10 years ago, says, okay, we’re getting rid of the migrant workers, we’re doing away with this special visa program. And what happened the year after that was that you had crops, and Georgia has far more agriculture than we have, crops were rotting in the field. Homes were left unbuilt and untouched for over a year because even though those jobs were available, nobody wanted to take the jobs.
Mike Papantonio: What happened to the chicken industry? Remember they raid Tyson. They say we’re closing you down. The price of chicken went up 40% in some regions. We couldn’t even buy chicken because somebody was gonna come do these jobs if we get rid of the undocumented migrant. That was the argument. Somebody’s gonna come do this job. You think that’s really a reality? Well, we know it’s not a reality. Historically we know it’s not a reality. Nobody’s gonna fill these jobs. Look, here’s part of the problem we have in Florida. South Florida looks like Jurassic Park. You got all these folks that are, I mean, they’re 65 and up, they’re coming in from all over the country because they love this guy. They love his conservatism. He’s gonna save us. We gotta get out of our state and go to Florida because we love this. So it’s these old people. Hell, it looks like The Walking Dead down in South Florida. So who’s gonna take care of South Florida? Right now you have undocumented immigrants that are taking care of South Florida. They’ve taken care of hotels, building, agriculture, service industry. They’re doing that. You think you’re gonna get these old timers to do all that when all the undocumented workers disappear? It looks like frigging Jurassic Park down there, man.
Farron Cousins: It basically is. And you’re right. I mean, we’re not gonna get the folks down in The Villages to go out there and start building houses.
Mike Papantonio: Tell what, tell the, what are The Villages?
Farron Cousins: It’s this massive retirement community.
Mike Papantonio: Jesus Christ.
Farron Cousins: Where, you know, you get old people all around the country. They come there, they do their golf cart parades and you got about half of ’em that are pro Democrat, half pro Republican.
Mike Papantonio: They’re gonna tip over at any moment. I mean, they’re gonna tip over at any moment. And what are they gonna, are they gonna go fix roofs? Are they gonna pick strawberries?
Farron Cousins: Well, and that’s the thing. I mean, we know one thing they’re doing, they actually have one of the highest STD rates in the entire country. Um.
Mike Papantonio: That’s weird. But it’s a true statement.
Farron Cousins: It really is.
Mike Papantonio: Well, anyway, look, we’re gonna keep at this story. I want him to get the message.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: I want him to understand why Donald Trump is killing him, is killing him in the numbers. And he thought this was gonna help, all of his little pals over there, who’s that guy we always talk about the big forehead? Andrade. How, Andrade was gonna come to his aid and help him with all this stuff. I want these folks to know what the net effect of this is. It’s not good.
