- [Announcer] This is a production of WEDU "PBS", Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota.

- [Rob] Coming up next, the presidential debate between Trump and Harris draws a big audience and some memorable moments.

- They're eating the pets of the people that live there.

- [Rob] Governor DeSantis sends law enforcement officers to people's homes looking for voter fraud.

And what to make of those polls showing the US Senate race in Florida between Rick Scott and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell are close.

All this and more next on "Florida This Week".

(dramatic music) Welcome back.

Joining us on the panel this week, Carmen Edmonds is the chair of the Hillsborough County Republican Executive Committee.

Eric Deggans is the TV critic and media analyst for "National Public Radio".

Yacob Reyes is a Tampa Bay reporter for Axios.

And Tara Newsom is an attorney and political science professor at St. Petersburg College.

Great to see everyone.

Thank you for coming to the show.

Well, the much anticipated presidential debate took place Tuesday between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

It was highly rated, drawing 67 million viewers across networks and other platforms.

Harris went on offense early seeming to rattle the former President.

- And I'm gonna actually do something really unusual and I'm gonna invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies.

'Cause it's a really interesting thing to watch.

You'll see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter.

He will talk about windmills cause cancer.

And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.

- She said people start leaving.

People don't go to her rallies.

There's no reason to go.

And the people that do go, she's busing him in and paying them to be there.

- [Rob] Trump did get more airtime than Harris, almost 43 minutes for him, more than five minutes less for her, in the 80 minute debate.

When it came to abortion, Trump made this false claim about killing infants.

- Her vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine.

He also says, execution after birth, it's execution.

No longer abortion because the baby is born is okay.

And that's not okay with me.

- There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born.

- I absolutely support reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade.

And as you rightly mentioned, nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion.

That is not happening.

It's insulting to the women of America.

- [Rob] Trump later complained that the moderators were unfair, and he told "Fox News" that "ABC", which sponsored the debate, should lose its license.

Carmen, what'd you think of the debate?

What'd you think of the moderators?

How do you think it went?

- I watched the debate.

It was, it was quite interesting.

It, you know, I even though Donald Trump got more airtime, I feel like he was, it was really, I do believe it was three against one.

I feel like they allowed Kamala Harris to pivot a lot on talking points.

They didn't hold her to task like they did Donald Trump, and I don't think they fact checked her as well as they did Donald Trump and didn't call her to task on if she said something that was incorrect.

They didn't make her go back and correct it like they did Donald Trump.

- Were there times that Kamala Harris said something that you felt should be challenged factually?

Did she say something that was nonfactual?

- Well, absolutely.

Even in the debate against when President Biden was running, you know, they both brought up the Charlottesville incidents and we talked about this earlier, and we all know that has been debunked.

We all know he didn't say that.

That has been out there for eight years now of him not saying that.

And they didn't hold her to task on that one.

And there were several others that they didn't hold her to task on that were clearly incorrect.

- Eric, what'd you make of the debate and what'd you make of the moderation?

- Well, I, you know, I felt there were things that happened with the moderators that both people who supported both candidates could challenge.

They did challenge Donald Trump more, but they challenged Donald Trump when he said incredibly outrageous things that were obviously not true, saying that some Democrats wanted to advocate killing babies after they were born.

And saying that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pets.

That's a level of misinformation that frankly it would've been derelict for journalists to allow to enter the public discourse without commenting on it.

They also, however, didn't enforce the rules for the debate, which said that they were gonna cut off the mics of each candidate when the other one was speaking.

So that's one of the reasons I think why Donald Trump had more speaking time.

He kept interjecting when he wasn't supposed to, and they in fact cut up.

They brought up his mic when he started talking, you know, so, you know, the moderators chose their corrections very carefully, and they seemed to step in when Donald Trump said things that were so outrageous they couldn't possibly let them be said.

Otherwise, they didn't.

CNN did a fact check where they found that Donald Trump told misstatements and lies 33 times compared to one that they could verify for Kamala Harris.

So, you know, to quibble about the corrections that they did deliver, I think is to miss the point.

The point is to keep, you know, really extreme misinformation from becoming a part of the public record and a serious part of the debate, which is what I think they did.

Otherwise, I thought they asked important and serious questions of both of them.

And both candidates declined to directly answer questions that were directed at them about policy.

- Well, let's look at another issue.

Trump charged that the Biden-Harris administration had mishandled the influx of immigrants on the southern border.

- There's never been anything done like this at all.

They've destroyed the fabric of our country, millions of people let in and all over the world crime is down, all over the world, except here.

- [Rob] Harris fired back blaming Trump for blocking bipartisan border legislation.

- That Bill would've put more resources to allow us to prosecute transnational criminal organizations for trafficking in guns, drugs and human beings.

But you know what happened to that bill?

Donald Trump got on the phone, called up some folks in Congress and said, kill the bill.

And you know why?

Because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.

- And speaking of immigrants, Trump stirred up a major controversy by claiming, without evidence, that immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

- In Springfield they're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats, they're eating, they're eating the pets of the people that live there.

- I just wanna clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio, and "ABC News" did reach out to the City Manager there.

He told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.

- And Tara, there was a bomb threat this week in Springfield, the head of the health center for the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio says, it's devastating for the Haitian community in Springfield, and it's created fear for our members who are scared for their lives and the lives of their kids.

And because the target of this pet eating allegation was the Haitian community, immigrant community in Springfield.

What do you make of that?

- Well, firstly, you know, xenophobia and hate mongering in public space has no place in America, no place anywhere.

And it's really curious to me that Donald Trump is not leaning into his Republican roots, you know, a conservative icon.

Ronald Reagan and his last farewell address to America, did a love letter to immigrants saying, you know, America's a beacon of hope and opportunity and we need the renewal and refreshing that these immigrants bring to our economy.

And so this kind of talk is just more division and actually bringing the Republican party farther away from its roots.

Certainly here in Florida, we have a strong Haitian community.

Rick Scott came out and said how much he appreciates the Haitian community and the contributions they make to our economy and to our communities.

And it just looks like more hate mongering, more divisiveness, and it's really pushing away voters from his message.

The other thing I wanted to to say is that it was a whole distraction from the real issue of border policy.

You know, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris didn't necessarily address the complete comprehensive border policy that we need to talk about.

It's not just border security, it's what do we do with refugees?

What do we do about visas?

What are pathways to citizenship?

Neither candidate addressed those issues, but certainly Donald Trump's rhetoric was not that of a conservative that we know in our history of American politics and Republicans.

And that's one that America stands ready to embrace those that come to our country and want to contribute to civic life and community life.

- Carmen, let me go back to you.

How do you think both candidates handled the question about immigration?

- I agree, I don't think that they really addressed it.

I think that our border is a mess.

I think that I do know after the debate, Byron Donald's did come out and he texted and tweeted, or X, you know, posted on X that you know it, there there is a bill sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk that was passed in the Senate and it has not gone forward that would address some of the immigration problems and some of the border problems.

So despite whether or not people think President Trump called the Congress and told him to kill a bill, there is a bill already that's been sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk for I think several months now that has not gone anywhere that he won't release.

So I just think that is an issue where we have to come together.

We can't, to me, in my opinion, and we can't keep being so polarized on so many issues.

There has to be common sense solutions to some of these things to, because the only people hurting are people, right?

When we can't come together from both sides and work on something that's common sense, it's only hurting the people that are out here every day trying to put food on the table and just living their lives as American citizens.

- You know, I do want to make one point, which is that if we do want to have a common sense discussion about immigration, how can we have it with a candidate who is willing to see misinformation on the internet and something as outrageous as accusing our immigrant community of eating pets and then mention it during the most important debate of the year.

I don't understand why there isn't more attention directed towards saying, why did he mention this?

Why did he bring this up?

- And I-- - And, and, and, and how is this, how is this gonna help us get to any kind of solution if we're at the point where we have to correct severe misinformation like that?

That's our problem.

We spend so much time trying to correct severe misinformation that should obviously be known to be untrue, that we can't spend that time talking about the actual, the issues.

- Haitian immigrants are here legally, but President Trump, or former President Trump, is saying he wants to deport anybody who's here illegally, somewhere between 11 and 20 million people.

- I wish we had discussed that.

- Yeah.

- And there is no plan for that.

And there is every, every bit of evidence that shows that would be devastating to the American economy.

- Well, speaking of the economy, let's talk about that.

Immigration is a big issue in the campaign and also here in Florida where many undocumented immigrants working construction and agriculture and Florida has passed tough new laws to try to keep the immigrants out.

The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that more than a third of the state's agricultural workers, nearly a quarter of its construction workers are not US citizens.

This includes both lawfully present and undocumented immigrants.

Last week, "CBS" reporter Martha Teichner, asked State Senator Blaise Ingoglia, a sponsor of a bill to crack down on illegal immigration in Florida, whether the law was hurting industry.

- We are showing people that you can actually have the rule of law, crack down on illegal immigration, and still have a booming economy.

- And I understand the idea that at a state level, you're gonna politically go ahead and send a message to Washington.

In the meantime, crops are gonna rot, crops won't be planted, farmers will suffer.

- [Announcer] John Esformes is CEO of Sunripe certified brands, a giant multi-state tomato operation his family started in 1920.

His view is a lot gloomier.

- Florida cannot continue to produce the food that it has historically produced with the labor that's available either domestically or through the H2A program.

Before long if we keep going down this path, there won't be a tomato, there won't be a bell pepper, there won't be a cucumber, a grapefruit, or an orange that's grown in the United States, because it'll all be imported.

- So Yacob, that guy and the American Farm Bureau Federation says American farms are being threatened because we haven't figured out how to get the workers that we need to work on our farms.

- I spoke with a farmer in Plant City, Fidel Sanchez, and he spoke about how hard it's been for him, especially when strawberry season came to be able to pick up all this crop, right?

And the inability of him to be able to hire the hands needed to give work to people not unlike himself.

Because of this expanded law, SB 1718, which I might add, that the lawmakers behind said its intent and purpose was to demonize immigrants.

I also think that it's worth noting that often this issue is brought up, but it's brought up specifically to, oh, well how do we handle this issue of immigration so that we can benefit from it?

And I think what needs to be also said is when you look at this law, right, SB 1718, when you look at what some politicians are saying, right, how does this impact the average person?

I wrote a story last year about a undocumented woman who survived the Parkland shooting, who was spent her entire life raised here and who had to leave Florida because of SB1718, right?

And so, I bring this up because people are listening, right, to the words that are spoken.

People hear these things and who would like to exploit undocumented immigrants are gonna continue to do so and they'll feel more emboldened and empowered when we have this kind of discussion around the issue.

- And President Trump says, most of these people that are here illegally are criminals.

And there are people that have been released from mental health asylums.

- Well, I've spoken to experts and what they found is that undocumented women of high school age are twice as likely as their citizen peers to fall victim to sexual violence.

And that more often than not, right, that these women fall victim to that.

And only 12,000 in the year 2018 actually went forward and reported it because in the state of Florida in 2009, a woman was arrested for going to the cops.

- There's no migrant crime wave.

The FBI said, there is a dip in violent crime and migrant crime is the same rate, if not lower than domestic crime.

So that's just more mistruths and misinformation.

And the truth of the matter is, 44% of our immigrant population is in agriculture, 25% is in STEM.

And then the remaining is our entrepreneurs growing small businesses in our country, which is the greatest portion of our economy that grows jobs.

And so we really need to start looking at that as not only an economic engine, but through the lens of humanity.

We are all from immigrant families.

- Okay?

- But I don't think really quick, we can't ignore what's going on with some of the Venezuelan gangs.

You look at what's happening in Colorado and now it's happening in Texas where they're going in and taking over apartment communities.

- We had our own kids shoot up our own schools.

- I know, but it, you we're talking about immigration here.

So we, there's some things we still can't ignore when you do have gangs from other countries coming in and starting to, I mean, we have enough of our own crime in our country that we need to be dealing with so, we can't ignore some of these stories as well.

- The mayor of Aurora, Colorado says the stories about Venezuelans taking over apartment complexes is not true.

- Again, our problem is misinformation.

How can we actually come up with a policy that effectively targets problems when what we're talking about are myths or exaggerations?

- Alright, well, state police in Florida are showing up at the homes of voters who signed a petition to get the abortion rights amendment on the ballot this November.

It's part of an effort by Governor DeSantis to find alleged petition fraud and possibly block the amendment from taking effect.

DeSantis has defended police visiting the homes of Floridians who signed the petition.

Critics say the investigation is a brazen attempt to intimidate voters.

And that the probe comes long after a deadline to challenge petition signatures has passed.

Tara, now the amendment has been cleared by all the legal requirements it has to be cleared by.

What do you make of this effort by the state?

- It's unprecedented, it's unprecedented.

And I think people on both sides of the aisle see it as voter suppression and voter intimidation.

All of these petitions had already been verified.

The supervisor of elections in our state have already said that they stand by those verifications.

And so there's no real reason to investigate those signatures other than make people afraid to vote in November.

And there's a tsunami of support for this amendment, okay?

And it's almost 70% of Florida, both Republicans and Democrats are in support of amendment for the right to enshrine a woman's right to her own body and her own healthcare.

- Carmen, what do you think?

- So this is one of my candidates for the primaries.

She had her political opponent do a deep dive on, 'cause you can do public records requests at the supervisor of elections for things petitions you have signed.

And so they were going to use this as fodder against her.

And one of them was, she supposedly signed the abortion amendment petition.

And so she went down and requested it herself and she told me, she's like, this is not my signature.

So I do think that there are to the level to maybe get it off the ballot, I don't know.

But I do know for sure I had a candidate that she went and looked at it, her signature was forged and it was incorrectly filled out and it was still sent to the state and verified as a true legitimate petition.

So, you know, I know for us when we have candidates file for office, at the precinct level, just it's nothing against supervisors elections, but there's only so much they verify.

And so sometimes I do wonder how much does get through the cracks on certain situations.

- Yeah, I would point out that this unit that is investigating this also arrested people who were told by the state that they could vote.

And it seems to me that these issues could be resolved in a bureaucratic fashion without sending police to someone's home and without arresting them.

And so I think part of the problem here is how do you deal with the problem of verifying signatures?

If there's a sense that, you know, the election authorities are not correctly validating signatures.

You don't have to solve that by sending cops to people's homes.

And the there's, and you to do it that way, it seems as if there's another agenda.

- And to your point, the election police officers that went to the homes didn't find any fraud.

I'm sorry that that happened to your colleague, but they didn't find anything.

All that was resulting is individuals being afraid to exercise their right to vote.

- Yacob, the state has set aside a million dollars to the State Agency for Healthcare Administration and it is putting out messages saying that Amendment four threatens women's safety.

Is it right for the state to spend money on this kind of influencing of an election?

- You know, it'd be difficult for me to say whether or not it's right.

I mean, what we can say is that it is happening in that Governor Ron DeSantis is leveraging as much power as he can in order to oppose this amendment, right.

And I think what's interesting is to note when this is happening, right?

This is seven months after these signatures were validated.

Now if you look, when they crossed this threshold, right, when supporters crossed this signature threshold they needed to get this on the ballot, Governor Ron DeSantis was campaigning a failed campaign for president in Iowa, right.

Now, I would wager to bet that he assumed that the Supreme Court would've stopped this.

I say that because in the city of Tampa he spoke and he said that the Supreme Court that most of which are stacked with his appointees, were derelict in their duties to allow this.

This is seven months after all of this.

Now he's weighing in.

The question is whether or not that is legal and that's something that's from critics have brought up.

- Okay, well, several recent polls show the Florida US Senate race between Florida US Senator Rick Scott, a Republican, and his challenger Democrat, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is close.

The most recent by Emerson College and the Hill shows Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is trailing incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott by just one point.

But the real clear politics average shows she is down by an average of more than 4%, which is still close.

The close poll numbers have given some Democrats the hope that they can oust Scott.

They're even calling for the National Party to put more money into Florida for the race.

Yacob, I think we're only gonna have time for you on this, but if Mucarsel-Powell is that close, the Democrats are not spending any extra money here in Florida.

I've talked to several, several Democrats who say the National Party should put more money into Florida.

So Mucarsel-Powell has a chance, but they're not getting any positive response from the National Democrats.

- I've done some interviews, I've spent some months talking to Nikki Freed and other stakeholders in the Democratic Party.

And I think what we've seen here, especially in Debbie's case, is that well they have really done a lot to brand the party to emphasize marketing.

But voter registration lags, right?

Money isn't being raised, it isn't being spent to the extent that it needs to be in order to make Florida to be in play as they claim.

Now, Axios did a focus group of swing voters, most of which did not know Debbie when we showed them her photo.

And so she is, has a huge uphill battle.

And the reality is we keep hearing of this momentum, but are we seeing it?

Are we able to witness the tangible momentum or is it just talk?

- Yeah, all right.

Well, before we go, what other news stories should we be paying attention to?

Carmen, let's start with you.

Do you have a big story of the week?

- So I am super excited and thank you Hillsborough County Republican voters.

This is the first time in many, many years we showed up at a higher percentage rate than Democrats and NPAs for the primary elections.

We are at 25% and Democrats were at 24%.

So keep voting Republicans here in Hillsborough County, show out big in November 5th and let's keep the momentum going.

- Alright, Eric, you have a big story?

Well, we saw this week that four people were convicted of conspiring to work with Russian intelligence, three of the Uhuru movement, and one person who used to be a member of the Uhuru movement.

And it raises these questions of how is the Russian government spending money to funnel it to advocacy groups, activist groups, to perhaps get pro-Russian propaganda?

And of course, the people who were convicted say that it's just free speech.

They were just speaking out and they're being convicted because, you know, they've taken the side of Russia.

And this connects to another case that we saw where influencers were also, right-wing influencers, were also, you know, suspected of being tools of Russian propaganda.

So it seems there's some really sophisticated efforts to bring Russian messaging to the United States.

- Yacob, do you have a big story?

- The Hillsborough Commission is set to discuss whether to renew a 30 year lease with the Redlands Christian Migrant Academy, which services the children of migrants.

So it'd be interesting to see whether or not they renew it.

Commissioner (indistinct) has already spoken out with respect to who are the migrants that are being helped by this and whether or not they're in this country legally.

Alright, Tara, you got a big story?

- I'm watching for the money, infrastructure money.

In 2021, we had a bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed.

$198 million was supposed to come to Florida to help spur climate electric vehicles and charging stations, helping the economy and helping Florida, who has the second highest population of electric vehicles access these chargers?

And no money's been spent in the state of Florida.

And I think a lot of us are wondering when is the state going to start to allow companies and businesses to tap into that, to create an infrastructure that works for our economy?

- Alright, and I've got a story of the week.

It's about the First Amendment victory in Nassau County in Northeast Florida, where the local school board there has agreed to put 36 books it once banned back on school library shelves.

The books were banned after the board received requests from a local conservative group.

They include Khaled Hosseini's book, "The Kite Runner", Toni Morrison's "Beloved", and the book "And Tango Makes Three", the true story of two same-sex penguins at a New York City Zoo who raised an orphan baby penguin.

The bans were the subject of a federal lawsuit.

And before going to trial, the Nassau School District settled out of court.

Well, that's it for us this week, thanks to our guest, Carmen Edmonds, Eric Deggans, Yacob Reyes, and Tara Newsom.

If you have comments about this program, please send them to us at ftw@wedu.org.

Our show is now available as a podcast and from all of us here at WEDU, have a great weekend.

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