Suarez Isn't As Corrupt As Trump-- But Still VERY Corrupt
Before he was elected to Congress in 2020, conservative Republican Carlos Giménez was mayor of Miami-Dade County. He’s not a big fan of the crypto-obsessed mayor of the city of Miami, Francis X Suarez, who just declared he’s running for president. Obviously that’s absurd but Suarez has a different agenda: a job in a Trump administration for his aid in sliming their mutual enemy Meatball Ron— and an ability to say the corruption prosecution for taking $170,000 in bribes from Rishi Kapoor’s Coconut Grove development project, he’ll be facing is “just a political smear job” against. Candidate for president, which sounds vaguely familiar. Giménez, a Trump supporter has been attacking Suarez, who he’s been fighting with since 2018, although even before that he was fighting with Suarez’s father (also a Miami mayor when Giménez was the fire chief) in the 1980s.
This week, Giménez said Suarez has “done a good job of fooling a lot of people nationally, including donors, and some of the media that think that all mayors are the same. But I can tell you that all mayors aren't the same, and certainly not him… “I don't think that he’s qualified to be president of the United States in any way, shape, or form. He hasn’t demonstrated the ability to lead any large organization. The City of Miami— he’s a ceremonial mayor of the City of Miami. He has very, very little power; he got elected by a total of 20,000 people… Look, he’s not qualified to be VP. He’s not qualified to be anything.” He told Fox & Friends viewers that Suarez is “a fraud.” A lot of Republicans hate Suarez because he voted for Hillary against Trump and for Andrew Gillum against DeSantis.
Yesterday, Politico’s early morning crew speculated that “Suarez is in the race mainly to mess with and attack Trump’s main GOP opponent, Ron DeSantis, who Suarez has clashed with in Florida— in the process setting himself up as a potential Trump running mate or Cabinet official… Whether or not that’s the main reason for his longshot bid, we were eager to hear why the heck he’s running for president. So we caught up with him over Zoom yesterday before his big Reagan Library speech.
On why he, Miami’s mayor, is a better option than the other two Florida Men in the race:“I don’t define myself as, like, a ‘Florida Republican’ or as anti-anyone, or different… I’m a mayor. I’m taking care of my residents— which is a microcosm of what you have to do as president… I’ve seen the urban issues that plague our country. We have 85% of the population of America… in American cities; 91% of the GDP produced by our country is produced by people who live in American cities.”
On why he’d be a better president than Joe Biden: “Under the current president, the current administration, we’re seeing a situation where the poor are getting poorer. We’re seeing a situation where America is getting weaker, which is provoking our enemies to be aggressive. And we’re seeing a situation where if we… don’t confront the generational challenges before us, China may be the lone superpower in my lifetime— and that is not an America that I want my children to grow up in.”
On how he thinks DeSantis is like Biden: “It’s one thing to take an issue which I think was a winning issue— which is that… parents should be the ones that decide whether or not they teach sexuality to young children, for third grade and below… And then take that and make it personal… where you’re saying you’re going to put a jail next to Disney, where you’re going to take away their tax exempt status. That, to me, is indicative of someone like Joe Biden, who doesn’t have a lot of private sector experience. I’ve been in the private sector my entire political career. And I think being tethered to the private sector actually gives you an interesting perspective on what’s happening.”
On how he’s trying to channel MAGA’s populist passions while hewing to a more centrist policy agenda: “You have to understand and respect where that anger comes from. That anger comes from feeling ignored, marginalized. It comes from, oftentimes, a press corps that just doesn’t understand why Republicans are who they are… I want to change the conversation. I want the conversation to be about our future. I want it to be about regular people. How do we deal with homelessness? … How do we deal with mental health issues? How do we deal with urban crime? How do we create prosperity for our children and our grandchildren?”
On why Republicans should act on climate change: “In Miami, our approach is that the environment is the economy. We don’t separate one from the other. We don’t make it a dichotomy. We need our drinking water from the Everglades. We deal with hurricanes which are a phenomenon that we see we have to account for… I think where Republicans get upset is there seems to be an agenda that is trying to create social engineering through climate policy. And I think that’s where, you know, there is sometimes a disconnection.”
On whether he has any regrets about touting Miami as a “crypto capital”: “Not really. And I’ll tell you why— because it’s not just about crypto for me. Crypto is important because I think it’s a generational technology… I think mistakes have been made. And I think part of it also has been a lack of oversight and regulation by the federal government. I think the current administration has missed the boat.”
On whether his campaign is a better investment than MiamiCoin at this point: [Laughs] “Much better. Much better.”
