Eric Adams Wants to Bring Gay New Yorkers Back from Florida

CLAY: The continued fallout over parents’ rights, the bill in Florida that effectively bans kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade discussion of sex-related issues, well, all of the conversation surrounding this not surprisingly has totally gotten lost from the reality of what the bill does. And Florida has been stealing — and “stealing” is probably an accurate word — but has been the beneficiary of New York falling apart, Buck.

And many people have relocated, particularly if they have conservative or libertarian bents or just don’t like paying insane amounts of taxes from New York to Florida. They now realize they can work remotely just as easily. Many of the highest earners in New York are now living in Florida, and there’s been a discussion — as Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City who’s making this awful decision about kids wearing masks.

He’s been saying he has to get some of these transplants to come back to New York. And now this just said at one of his press availabilities, he’s using this Florida bill as an excuse, and New York is evidently going to put billboards up in five different Florida markets saying gay people should move back to New York. This is real. Listen to mayor Eric Adams.

BUCK: Has he ever been to South Beach, Clay?

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Has he ever been to South Beach, Miami? Because if you’re gonna talk about a place that celebrates diversity in every context and every respect, there are few places that you’re gonna find that have more.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: When I say, “celebrate,” I mean celebrate, you know, like zest-for-life stuff like people partying it up, having a great time. And there’s plenty of places in Florida where there’s a festive atmosphere around the celebrations of diversity, including people from the LGBTQ community. This is a campaign of virtue signaling for libs in the rest of the country.

The anti-don’t say gay bill stuff is just telling people how we feel they are. It has nothing to do with the reality in Florida and mayor Eric Adams is just turning that up a few notches to go even more into this. I would wager… I mean, maybe one or two people just so they can then talk about it on Twitter. There will be no substantial migration from Florida over this bill because he know I know from New York who has left and gone to Florida, you know what they all say? And I hate to say it as a New Yorker.

CLAY: What?

BUCK: They love it and wish they had moved sooner. I haven’t met anybody who’s gone the other direction.

CLAY: That’s what we talked about Ron DeSantis on the program. We had him on, what, last week. And he said he meets people from all over the country and overwhelmingly when he meets them in Florida, they say they love it, and they wish they had moved sooner, just like what you said. And this, to me, seems like another failed virtue signaling attempt by New York, which theoretically is gonna cost them millions of dollars.

I don’t know what the cost of these five digital billboards is, but I would imagine it’s gotta run a million dollars or more and is it going to provide any actual, tangible benefit in that no one is gonna be driving along the interstate, see that billboard, and think, “You know what? I really believe this”. I don’t think a single person is gonna see it and think, “You know what? I’ve gotta move back to New York.”

Now, there will be some people who move back to New York from Florida just because they may be like, “Hey, this heat’s not for me. It’s a lot… It’s too warm.” Or “I’ve got family and friends back in New York and I miss them.” But nobody is going to move from Florida back to New York because Florida’s not diverse and inclusive enough for them.

BUCK: I really do wonder what it’s gonna take for the Democrats to wake up on some of these issues because they launched this whole campaign and they figure, “Oh, once we got Disney on board, once the activists were gonna be push Disney…” DeSantis is like, “What are you gonna do? You gonna move your giant, you know, theme park and amusement park somewhere else? Good luck with that. That’s gonna take quite a bit of engineering.”

So don’t think you’re pushing around the state government with that. This is the way Republicans when they are in power need to act and to actually be willing to stand strong and even go on offense legislatively about stuff like this, be willing to sign bills like the “don’t say gay” bill… Oh, wait, it’s not called that. It’s called the Parental Rights in Education bill. Why did they lie about it?

They lied about it because if people actually know what’s in it, they say, “What’s the big deal? What’s the big problem? This is just about not teaching small children gender politics and sexual identity instruction.” Why is that such a problem for the left, Clay? Most Americans, a majority — including Democrats in Florida, by the way — see this and say, “What’s going on here, guys?”

CLAY: It’s a desperate move, because Democrats looked at what happened in Virginia. They’re looking at parents being angry. Even that clip, Buck, we played of Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, being yelled at by parents as he’s not wearing a mask. Why does your 2-year-old have to wear a mask? Why does your 3-year-old have to wear a mask? This is a desperate attempt to get back what is traditionally a Democratic storyline — which is education — that suddenly has moved into the Republican camp over all of the woke insanity that is occurring in our schools.