The Florida Special Election That Has MAGA Terrified (Josh Weil Interview)

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Speaker 4 Could a ruby red congressional district in Florida turn blue? Momentum seems to be gathering for the Democratic candidate in this special election. His name is Josh Wheel.

Speaker 4 This from, of all places, Florida Voice.

Speaker 4 Democrats putting up a fight in Florida Congressional District 6 early voting data shows where Republican, a very unpopular, ultra-maga Doge extremist by the name of Randy Fine is facing Democrat Josh Wheel, who is a public school teacher.

Speaker 4 A massive cash disparity we're seeing as well as people are really going to Josh Wheel's side here. People are very nervous that this Randy Fine is going to dogeify Florida 6 congressional district.

Speaker 4 We're seeing even people like Steve Bannon terrified. This is what Steve Bannon said on his podcast, The War Room, the other day.

Speaker 8 Let's play it.

Speaker 9 Was it Florida 6?

Speaker 5 Waltz's district.

Speaker 9 Trump won that district by 30 points in November.

Speaker 9 I'm old enough to remember when he won in November by 30 points. We have a candidate that I don't think is winning.

Speaker 9 That's an issue.

Speaker 4 That issue he's talking about is, again, Randy Fine is a state senator in Florida.

Speaker 4 The seat being held by Waltz, who he was referring to, is Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, who you probably know best right now, for the individual doing the fist bump emoji, American flag emoji, flame emoji, when leaking our war secrets and war information on a group text thread with others in the Department of Defense and within the

Speaker 4 Department of National Security.

Speaker 4 Now, let me show you over here just some videos of Randy Fine so you can see who he is. Randy Fine is someone at a hearing, why he's also so unpopular.

Speaker 4 There's a lot of reasons. At a hearing over women's reproductive health, he looked at the women and he said, if you dare even breathe, I'm going to have you arrested.
Here, play this clip.

Speaker 10 The sergeant's staff has been pre-authorized to remove people.

Speaker 10 There will not be warnings. You'll be removed.
If I can hear you breathe from my seat, that will be the standard. So I would encourage people to keep that in mind.
We're going to have a hearing.

Speaker 10 We're going to hear from these folks. It's going to go for as long as it goes.
And then

Speaker 10 we are going to be done. And don't test me.
I'm sure you won't like the outcome. All right, members.

Speaker 4 Don't test me. I'm sure you won't like the outcome.
I'm a big, tough guy who hides under my desk when process servers try to serve me with paperwork. This is a guy.
He got like a public records act.

Speaker 4 like deposition. It's like, okay, you're a public official.
You're going to get those from time to time. The dude was hiding under his desk from the process server.

Speaker 3 Here, watch this.

Speaker 8 Is he really hiding behind the desk?

Speaker 8 Under the desk?

Speaker 8 Wow.

Speaker 4 Come out, come out wherever you are, Randy Fine. Let's bring in the Democratic candidate for that seat in this special election.
Probably have heard about this guy, Josh Wheel.

Speaker 4 Josh Wheel, you're making news in Florida and across the nation right now in this race. What are you seeing on the ground, my man?

Speaker 8 Yeah, people are. excited.
You know, we have a real race here.

Speaker 8 You know, we've known from the beginning that, you know, this is a district that has been neglected by the state and national party for a long time.

Speaker 8 And if we were able to handle our business, get our fundraising right,

Speaker 8 you know, build the right campaign, that we'd be able to get a real response from people. And then January 20th happened.

Speaker 8 Then, you know, we've got all of the executive orders, the fast and furious barrage against the infrastructure of our nation, public services that residents here rely on.

Speaker 8 It's a district that's 25% age 65 plus. You know, they're not happy about massive cuts to the Social Security Administration.
They're not happy about cuts to veterans' benefits,

Speaker 8 you know, Medicaid, Medicare.

Speaker 8 They're feeling the impact immediately.

Speaker 8 And, you know, we've been here with them the whole way,

Speaker 8 making sure that they have someone who will fight for them to preserve those systems in Congress.

Speaker 4 You know, Randy Fine, this guy, I mean, he's a really loathed individual. Like,

Speaker 4 if I guess there's something that brings people together, it's like other than Donald Trump and Elon Musk loving this guy. And Trump posted, Randy, Randy, Randy, we love you, Randy, because, you know,

Speaker 4 he's a Doge rubber stamp. He's a get rid of the Social Security, Medicaid, screw over the older people in your district kind of guy, destroy people's lives the way Trump and Elon wants to do.

Speaker 4 But even DeSantis doesn't like this guy.

Speaker 1 Like, DeSantis, they hate each other.

Speaker 4 DeSantis hates this guy. He goes, he's,

Speaker 4 tell us about the hatred that's there as well.

Speaker 8 Oh, yeah. So when DeSantis was running for president, Randy Fine was the first Republican to jump off and,

Speaker 8 you know, support Trump instead. And they've had this just furious relationship ever since.
We've seen it.

Speaker 8 He called like three special legislative sessions earlier this year, right leading up to the main legislative session that started earlier this month.

Speaker 8 A big part of it was just he wanted an excuse to not be in this district campaigning, which is great for us. But he spent most of the time they were fighting over which

Speaker 8 immigration, which horrible immigration bill

Speaker 8 that they wanted, the one that Trump recommended or the one that DeSantis was putting forward. And he's been the most outspoken critic of Ron DeSantis.
He calls him Ron DeRhino.

Speaker 8 And a lot of people, a lot of Republicans here like Ron DeSantis, so they don't take that kindly. You know, there's, there's two types of people here in district six.

Speaker 8 There's people who don't like Randy Fine, and there's people who haven't heard of Randy Fine.

Speaker 8 So that's pretty much everything.

Speaker 4 Randy Fine is one of these guys who is like, he just wants to party at Mar-a-Lago with the pink Birken bags for $450,000.

Speaker 4 Like, this is a guy trying to like, I don't know, live the high school years he didn't have as like a member of.

Speaker 4 It's a total weird MAGA mutation for this guy, Randy Fine. And he's a very dangerous guy.

Speaker 4 I mean, when he takes to the floor of the state legislature, the types of things that he talks about is like, he goes, we need to erase.

Speaker 4 He said, what, the entire LGBTQ community or words to that effect? He goes, because he connected the community to drag shows.

Speaker 4 And even if it means getting rid of drag shows, if I have to erase all the gay people, it said something. I think we have the clip here.
Play that clip, Salty.

Speaker 10 And they're the ones that are saying this definition applies to them. Well, if it means erasing a community because you have to target children, when damn right, we ought to do it.

Speaker 10 I just don't think you have to inherently say because you're lesbian or gay that you want to target children. I find that statement to be offensive to them.

Speaker 4 I mean, dangerous, weird dude. But here's the thing, Josh.
You know, we

Speaker 4 cover before some of these movements in Florida where there seems to be hope. And look, the early voting data is very good for you, leading in the first two days.

Speaker 4 If you factor in some independence, you know, there could be a, I don't want to get people overconfident, so I'm not even going to go through necessarily what the data is reflecting other than people need to go out and learn about you.

Speaker 4 But how are you really feeling? There are some people who go, we always get our hopes up thinking about a red district flip. I'm sure you get asked this before.

Speaker 4 What do you say to those people who are like, yeah, but it's still Florida? It was a plus 30 Trump area. It's not possible.
What do you say to them, Josh?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, look, it was a plus 30 Trump area because we had no real Democratic campaign here. The last three cycles,

Speaker 8 one of them, there was no Democratic nominee for the seat, and the other two, the congressional candidate was unable to raise more than $35,000 over the entire two-year stretch.

Speaker 8 So, you know, it's really, it's like more like an R plus 14 when you look at the current voter registration data,

Speaker 8 which is a lot more winnable. You know, it's not that our message has been rejected in the past.
It's that there was no one here getting the message out. You know, messaging isn't free.

Speaker 8 You got to be able to build a real campaign to get out and talk to people. And, you know, not only have we been able to do that, but in his arrogance, Randy Fine felt that he didn't have to.

Speaker 8 He spent months not campaigning. Last month, he was interviewed by a newspaper and they asked him,

Speaker 8 you know, what are the issues most important in the district? And he's like, I don't know. He goes, it doesn't matter.
He goes, because I'm here to serve Donald Trump.

Speaker 8 I don't need to know what issues are important to the people there. You know,

Speaker 8 he took two months off,

Speaker 8 raised no money, which, I mean, honestly, we were surprised by. We knew we were going to have outraised him because we were handling our business and getting our work done.

Speaker 8 But he didn't even try raising money for a future war chest for 2026. I mean, he did absolutely nothing.

Speaker 8 No outreach, no messaging, no building of a campaign,

Speaker 8 just hiding out in Tallahassee from the voters. And now he's scared.
Now he's struggling. And we feel really good about it.
I mean, look, there's a lot of Republican voters in this district, right?

Speaker 8 If they,

Speaker 8 there's definitely enough that if they overturn out, they can take this thing back from us in seven days. But right now, we feel really good about where we're at.

Speaker 4 Yeah, Randy Fine has a pattern and practice of hiding under his desk like a little dogey coward, hoping that his daddy Elon and Donald Trump will bail him out.

Speaker 4 And they're trying, but I think the people in your district are seeing what Doge means to the services that literally keep them alive. I see back there, it says April 1st is the day of the election.

Speaker 4 Early voting is taking place right now, right?

Speaker 4 What else do people need to know? Where could they find out more? When's the voting period? What do you tell them?

Speaker 8 Early voting goes through this Saturday, the 29th. You can learn more about the campaign at joshweal.us, j-oshweil.us.

Speaker 8 We have links to sign up. You know, we have volunteers from all over the country who've been doing phone banking for us, reaching out to voters.
We have, if anyone's local or nearby, canvassing.

Speaker 8 Right now, it's just about getting out there, knocking on doors, driving out the vote.

Speaker 8 And, you know, we're

Speaker 8 all the money that we raise going forward is going to, you know, help increase what we're on TV because the Republicans poured like $3 million into the final eight days for television.

Speaker 8 So, you know, we're making sure that we're keeping pace on TV, that we're scaling up our campaign team as much as possible to make sure we drive out the vote. You can donate.

Speaker 8 You can sign up to volunteer. You can learn more about me all at our website.

Speaker 4 There you have it. Josh Wheel running for Florida's sixth congressional district.
The special election, April 1st. We'll be following it closely.
Thanks, Josh.

Speaker 8 Appreciate you. Thank you.

Speaker 4 Everybody, hit subscribe and let's get to 5 million subscribers.

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