Watch full video here.
[Transcript edited for clarity, flow and length]
What is the best way to make sure that the 2028 presidential election is free and fair? Well, that would be to make sure that Democratic Attorneys General get elected in 2026. And a phenomenal Democrat and democracy champion running for Florida Attorney General is Jose Javier Rodriguez, and we had a great conversation.
Please visit JJR’s website HERE
Check out Mary Trump’s Transcend PAC HERE
Mary Trump: I am so thrilled to be here with Jose Javier Rodriguez, who will be the next Attorney General of Florida. It is so good to see you. I know you’re swamped, but thank you for taking the time.
Jose Javier Rodriguez: No, Mary, thank you for having me on. It’s great to be with you.
Mary Trump: So clearly this is an incredibly important election and the position of Attorney General, especially in a state like Florida, is extremely important. So I wanted to get a sense of how things are on the ground right now and why the Florida Attorney General is such an important position for a champion of democracy to hold, because things would be very different if there were a Republican AG in say the 2028 presidential election.
Jose Javier Rodriguez: Well, listen, one of the things that I do on the campaign trail is I ask voters to vote for Jose Javier Rodriguez here in Florida, but I also ask voters to raise their expectations from the Attorney General’s office because Floridians can be forgiven for having low expectations. We’ve learned to expect cheap press conferences, cruel political theater, and brazen corruption from the Attorney General. It’s been very partisan, just like the kind of stuff you’d think they were running for Congress out of the AG’s office. And really what we need is frankly just folks to be normal. We need an Attorney General that’s just going to do the job, strictly enforce the law, go after powerful and dangerous people and stay in their lane. And so in a weird way, I feel like I’m the conservative because my opponent is so radical and so corrupt.
I’m telling people that I’m going to focus on crime, costs and corruption. That is doing the job, making your life better, making you safer, and actually doing the thing that people don’t expect from the AG’s office anymore, which is take on the powerful, particularly economically. They’re screwing us from Tallahassee. I go around and I talk about fighting the utilities and the insurance companies. They’re driving up our costs. And Floridians just don’t even expect that anymore out of the AG’s office. We’ve been without that for so long. And the corruption here is brazen. I can give you an update on just how bad it is from here in Florida.
Mary Trump: Yeah, that would be great because you raised such a crucially important point. The attorneys general should be neutral and should be interested in upholding the rule of law and holding people who break the law accountable. How nice would that be? Right? And it has become partisan. It has become about protecting the powerful and the corrupt. So even more important, again, in a state like Florida, which as you say is mind-blowingly corrupt. So what is the update on Florida corruption?
Jose Javier Rodriguez: Mind-blowingly, yes. Okay, so the biggest political crime we’ve seen in modern times here in Florida is a scheme orchestrated through the DeSantis administration, but my opponent was his chief of staff at the time. They stole ten million dollars that was supposed to come back to the Medicaid program, routed it through nonprofits and political committees that my opponent, James Uthmeyer, controlled in order to use in political campaigns, specifically to campaign against popular ballot initiatives here in Florida in 2024. So just to wrap your head around the fact that they did that, it gets worse. So there’s been bipartisan outrage about that. A House committee in the State House did a criminal referral to a local prosecutor there in Tallahassee. A grand jury looked at the whole thing, laid bare this whole operation where my opponent was at the center of it directing the whole thing. It was his political committees. It appeared to be his idea, although it’s not clear if that was the case.
He was the one directing the whole operation. And the problem here in Florida is apparently out of Tallahassee, the problem for them is not the corruption. It’s the fact that we’re talking about the corruption. So they came up with this brazen effort, not only to go after and tell their story, which is bogus and we could go into that, but the important part is they came up with a legal strategy to try to intimidate people and get people to stop talking about their corruption. The ten million dollars that they stole, they don’t want us to talk about it. And so they sued a whole bunch of people, including the Democratic Party, and then they tried to go to an appellate court and say that the grand jury report, which was leaked, it shouldn’t have been leaked, but people can talk about it. I mean, it was leaked. And they went to an appellate court trying to get the appellate court to order everyone not to talk about it.
That failed. Their lawsuit against the Democratic Party, they had to withdraw it because they were afraid they’d have to actually present testimony and have people cross-examine them in an open hearing. And the last piece is a frightening piece, and I’m kind of winding up to the part that is most concerning. We have twenty state attorneys here. They’re the equivalent of our district attorneys, the locally elected prosecutors. They somehow rallied a small number of them to send threatening letters to TV stations saying if they continued to air ads about Hope Florida and talk about Hope Florida, that they might be subject to criminal liability. This is frightening. First Amendment activity. The same activity the governor himself and the AG have engaged in. We’ve also talked about the grand jury testimony, and they’re sending this to TV stations in the middle of an election.
How unusual it is for prosecutors to say, “Hey, I think what you’re doing is illegal, FYI.” I mean, they don’t do that. So I want to highlight two things. One, no state TV station was cowed. Nobody took the ads down. The other important thing is the majority, if not the overwhelming majority of state attorneys said, “No way.” Democrat and Republican said they want no part of using the threat of law enforcement to squelch the First Amendment right that we all have, especially our journalists. So the corruption has really backfired on them. Their effort to try to get us to stop talking about the corruption has just backfired. And it is a little clownish, their strategy. It’s failed everywhere, but it is also very dangerous. That kind of precedent, that anybody should even think about trying to do that, is very dangerous.
So thanks for letting me speak about that, but it’s an important issue going on here.
Mary Trump: It’s an important issue and it’s an important concept, right? It’s like they float the trial balloon and even if the scheme doesn’t work, just talking about that kind of thing becomes normalized. And again, this idea that the corruption’s not the problem, it’s that people are talking about the corruption. That’s a slippery slope. And you are making the case that anybody who participates in that cannot be trusted to be an attorney general of anything, let alone a state in which these problems seem to be endemic.
So before we go on, I just want to remind everybody that despite the fact that the midterms are almost here, that doesn’t mean that campaigns don’t need people to donate money to them. So please go and donate to Jose Javier Rodriguez’s campaign to be Attorney General of Florida, because even at this late date, money coming in can have a real impact, right?
Jose Javier Rodriguez: A hundred percent. So our website is Here and absolutely, funds we get even at this late date help us keep our ads up, help us have the resources to have a ground game in different parts of the state, and also radio ads and all the things that we need to continue communicating through the end of election day itself. One thing I will mention for those donors that give from Florida, so real live Floridians who donate, that is matched by the state up to two hundred and fifty dollars. It’s a matching program we still have on the books here in Florida. And one thing I’ll mention about that, even though my opponent is wildly corrupt and has a lot more money than us, when it comes to the matching funds, we consistently get as much as nine times what he gets, which tells you that our grassroots support here in Florida is a lot stronger than his.
And so of course we welcome support from all Americans, but obviously it’s at a premium if you’re a real live Floridian and one of the many thousands that support our efforts.
Mary Trump: Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s really good to hear because I know this is sort of a truism at this point, but this is truly the most important election we’ve ever had. And as I said earlier, it always matters who the attorney general of any state is, but particularly in the next couple of elections that we’re going to be facing after this, particularly the 2028 presidential election. So could you just explain to us why that’s the case and why we desperately need somebody who believes in the rule of law and will uphold it like you to be Florida’s attorney general?
Jose Javier Rodriguez: One hundred percent. I mean, I think in addition to our secretaries of state, the attorney generals in our states are extraordinarily important in making sure that the law is complied with and that we have free and fair elections. In many states, just as here, we have locally elected supervisors of election. They are also very important. And in all of those offices, the highest, most important job is to make sure that we continue to have well-run elections that are fair. And so that is obviously a pledge that I will make. Now what my concern is, we’ve had plenty of Republican and Democrat attorney generals here in the state of Florida who have been normal and done the job. I would disagree with some of their priorities, maybe say they’ve kind of abused the office in some different ways, but my opponent is actively doing the opposite of what the job commands.
The ten million dollars out of the Medicaid program, it’s called the Hope Florida scandal. That’s just one example, but there are many other areas where asking the Attorney General to help out is almost like calling an arsonist to put out a fire. He’s doing the opposite, right? And so you want somebody to root out corruption, and it’s not just that he’s sitting on the sidelines and letting it happen. He’s joining in. And the same thing with so many other problems. It’s not just that he’s sitting on the sidelines where our rates go up in Tallahassee. He’s actually helping those special interests to do it. And so that is absolutely not the kind of person you want at the helm on any major controversial issue where you’ve got to stand up and say, “This is the law, this is what’s right.” He hasn’t shown us that he’s willing to do that in any area, much less making sure that election integrity is a top priority.
Mary Trump: Yeah, and obviously you are in opposition to all of what your opponent stands for, and that’s one of the many reasons you are one of our democracy champions. Your dedication to the rule of law, your understanding that accountability is so important and the corruption must be accounted for, and many other reasons. So I want to ask you what you envision happening after the election’s over and Democrats are in power and we have more candidates like you in their positions having been elected. But before you answer that question, I just want to remind people how important it is to vote. So if you haven’t registered yet, please do. If you are registered or think you are registered, check. Don’t take it for granted. Keep checking. Make sure you’re registered up until the time you actually cast your vote.
So Jose Javier Rodriguez, Republicans win, you become Florida’s Attorney General. What can Democrats who have a majority and have real power do? Because not only does so much need to be undone, we need to start reimagining how we do things altogether.
Jose Javier Rodriguez: Absolutely. So folks can go to my website, jjr.vote, to see my day one priorities. A lot of the things that are not just sort of first hundred days, but first couple of days are getting the state of Florida out of a bunch of really silly and expensive things that are just frankly for show. And so what I’ll say is my whole career in one way or the other has been about standing up to bullies. I talk about that a lot on the campaign trail. And as Attorney General, your job is to stand up to the federal government when the federal government is picking on your state or picking on your people. And so having attorneys general that are responsive to the people and not just looking at getting approval from DC on everything, just laying out the red carpet for DC. And by the way, as a footnote, if folks want to know what corruption really looks like and want to look up the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution, read up on that and how my opponent has helped orchestrate the giveaway of one of the most valuable parcels in Miami, a three hundred million dollar parcel on prime land that belongs to our community college here in Miami.
Look it up because it’s pretty crazy, but that’s a footnote. But standing up to the bullies in DC, my heroes are state attorneys general across the country because when you see victories in the courts related to tariffs, the restoration of SNAP benefits, the illegal use of the National Guard or federal law enforcement, a lot of those victories, if not all of the major ones, involve attorneys general at the state level or coalitions of them who bring a legal action. And sometimes what frustrates me is it doesn’t even sometimes make the article who brought the action, or sometimes it’s not until one of the last paragraphs and says, “Oh yeah, by the way, attorney general in such and such a state led a coalition to sue the administration and get this victory.” But that is a key role of attorneys general. I haven’t campaigned on partisan issues.
A lot of these issues shouldn’t be partisan. It’s really just standing up for your state. If you’re getting screwed and you shouldn’t be and the federal administration’s taking advantage of you, again, we have an attorney general right now who rolls out the red carpet for anything and just showers the president even personally with our tax dollars. It’s such an extreme. I mean, stand up for us. My opponent almost treats the president as if he’s like a feudal lord or something like that. I mean, it’s absurd and it’s embarrassing and we just need a normal attorney general who will say no, who will stand up and fight for us when the feds are doing the wrong thing.
Mary Trump: Okay, Floridians, you have your marching orders. The case is clear. This is no contest. Cast your vote for Jose Javier Rodriguez for Florida Attorney General. I cannot underscore how important this race in particular is. So thank you so much for joining us. Again, I can’t even imagine how busy you are right now.
Jose Javier Rodriguez: No, I want to thank you for your work, the high honor of being one of your champions. I appreciate that very much. The site is HERE and all counties here in Florida, we have early voting going on as of now through Saturday. And of course, so make a plan to vote please, and thank you very much.
Mary Trump: All right. Thanks everybody. Please let us know what you think in the comments. Your voice is an important part of the conversation. Thanks for joining us.
Please visit JJR’s website HERE
Check out Mary Trump’s Transcend PAC HERE
I’ll definitely need a shrink after this ordeal has passed but thank you for standing with us to protect democracy
Thank you for promoting Mr. Rodriguez for A.G. Florida needs all the help it can get.