Last night, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) celebrated bringing Floridians back from Israel.
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00:00 Well, we were happy to be able to welcome the first plane load back to Florida.
00:06 Had a few go to Orlando because we helped out when they were in a pinch, but this was
00:10 the first big plane load.
00:12 Two hundred and seventy people here.
00:15 I think if you were watching, you saw a lot of families with young kids.
00:19 So a lot of these people were in a real pinch.
00:22 They had no help.
00:23 They were not able to get out of Israel.
00:24 And the state of Florida stepped up and answered the call.
00:31 We're going to have more flights coming in.
00:34 We anticipated that there could be as many as 700 to 1,000 Floridians that need it.
00:42 I don't know if it's going to necessarily be that much, but we'll probably end up bringing
00:46 pretty close to that much back over the next couple of days.
00:49 So this just shows when there's a need.
00:53 We saw our folks needed help.
00:55 We of course have a very close relationship between Florida and Israel.
00:59 A lot of our folks travel back and forth, have family, friends.
01:03 So we knew this was going to be a big issue for this state.
01:06 They were not getting any help with the federal government.
01:09 We stepped up and filled the void.
01:12 Another thing we're also going to be willing to do is, evidently the feds are dumping people
01:18 in places like Greece.
01:19 But they don't want to go to Greece.
01:22 They want to come to the United States.
01:23 So we may be dropping planes on the way back from Israel, filling up the remainder if there's
01:29 people that need help when they're left in Greece.
01:32 So we want to be helpful.
01:33 I think everybody there was very relieved.
01:37 They were telling me, the kids were just saying, "The bombs are going off.
01:40 Rockets are going off."
01:41 And they're like, "We want to go to Florida.
01:42 We want to go to Florida."
01:43 Well, now they're in Florida.
01:44 How many Floridians were on the flight?
01:45 Did you notice that?
01:46 I don't know off the top of my head.
01:49 I mean, I would say that it was not 100 percent because some people maybe had family in Florida,
01:55 but they live elsewhere.
01:57 And then others may not have necessarily had a connection to Florida.
02:00 But I don't think we were in a situation where if someone was desperate, we're all Americans,
02:04 right?
02:05 So we wanted to help.
02:06 Well, look, I think one of the things we can do to keep the whole country safe is to stop
02:25 having an open border.
02:26 We've had 7 million people come illegally into this country since Biden took office.
02:32 We don't know who these people are.
02:34 We know they've come from over 100 different countries.
02:37 They have come from Iran.
02:39 They have come from Russia.
02:40 They've come from China.
02:42 They've come from the Middle East.
02:44 And do you think that our enemies aren't going to exploit that border?
02:48 So I think it's been a huge, huge security issue.
02:51 We already know that there's people being sex trafficked and human trafficked.
02:56 We already know about the fentanyl deaths.
02:58 And I was saying even before this Israel attack that somebody that's come across that border
03:03 is going to launch a terror attack at some point in this country.
03:07 So we deployed resources.
03:10 This is something we've always been sensitive to.
03:13 But I think if you look back over the past week to 10 days, it was bracing to see in
03:19 this country before the blood of these Israeli civilians was even dried, to have people going
03:27 out and communicate.